Retrospection and Introspection

Mary Baker Eddy wrote only briefly about herself, in a short volume titled Retrospection and Introspection, published in 1891. In it she told of her childhood, her family, and the experiences leading up to her discovery of Christian Science in 1866. She also included an account of the early steps she had taken in establishing the Christian Science movement, concluding with her dissolution of the earliest organizational phase of the movement in 1889. The first part of the book outlines her family’s history and her own youth and early adulthood in New England. She then explores her discovery of Christian Science and essential ideas of a scientific Christianity that brings healing. Retrospection and Introspection is still published today, as a standalone volume in several formats and languages, and also as part of the compilations of Eddy’s Prose Works and her Collected Shorter Writings.

First announced in the December 1891 issue of The Christian Science Journal, the Notice read, "The new book, Retrospection and Introspection, by the author of Science and Health, is a treasure of Love…." (Editorial, Journal, December 1891, 394.) A later Journal issue advertising the revised edition specifically called out the addition of the "Human Concept" chapter as a "Way-shower," adding "It rebukes folly, presumption, dishonesty, and gives courage, patience and forbearance to the meek and the strong, the honest and the faithful."(Editorial, Journal, June 1892, 131.)

Retrospection and Introspection arrived in the tradition of spiritual autobiography. This genre of memoir focused more on an emphasis of the author's inner life and beliefs as opposed to a strict chronology of events and historical episodes. For Eddy, the development of one's relationship with God was far more important than the accumulation of accolades. She wrote in Retrospection, "Mere historic incidents and personal events are frivolous and of no moment, unless they illustrate the ethics of Truth. To this end, but only to this end, such narrations may be admissible and advisable; but if spiritual conclusions are separated from their premises, the nexus is lost, and the argument, with its rightful conclusions, becomes correspondingly obscure." She then added, "The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged." (Retrospection and Introspection, 21-22.)