There was an interesting new phrase that was cropping up here and there. As early as 1834 a circular advertising Oberlin College announced, “Where this Institution is beginning to diffuse the cheering beams of Christian Science, less than one year since was the darkness of a deep Ohio forest without inhabitant.”80 In 1847 The Youth’s Magazine; or Evangelical Miscellany, published in London, quoted the verse from Philippians, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord,” and added, “The sentiment of the text is,—The transcendency of Christian Science.”81 The following year a volume of poems by Sarah Josepha Hale contained the lines:
’Tis Christian Science makes our day,
And Freedom lends her gladdening ray.82
In 1850 a volume entitled The Elements of Christian Science by William Adams was published in Philadelphia. It was a high-minded but commonplace discussion of Christian ethics, specifically disclaiming any metaphysical interest; and indeed all these early uses of the phrase Christian Science were imprecise and without deep significance. The same thing is true of the article “Three Graces of Christian Science” which appeared in Charles Dickens’ weekly journal Household Words in 1854.83
There undoubtedly were other examples of similar usage, and Mrs. Patterson may or may not have run across one or more of them.84 The important point is that the phrase, the idea, was in the air. Christianity ought to be a Science.
80 [“Circular. Oberlin Collegiate Institute,” 8 March 1834, Subject File, Christian Science - The Term, MBEL.]
81 [“Christianity in Relation to Science,”The Youths’ Magazine; or, Evangelical Miscellany, February 1847, p. 58.]
82 Sarah Josepha Hale, Three Hours; Or, The Vigil of Love: And Other Poems (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1848), p. 42.
83 [William Adams, The Elements of Christian Science. A Treatise upon Moral Philosophy and Practice (Philadelphia: H. Hooker, 1850). “Three Graces of Christian Science,” Household Words, 20 May 1854, p. 317.]
84 See, for instance Abraham Coles, Transactions of the Medical Society of New Jersey (Newark, NJ: Daily Advertiser, 1866), a 45-page poem entitled “Microcosm” which included a stanza headed “Christian Science” (p. 24) read by Coles himself, the president of the society, at the annual meeting on January 23, 1866.