Christian Science Author Martha Wilcox Biography and Publication Index

PAPERS of MARTHA WILCOX deal with the subjective consciousness and how it can be changed through an understanding of God. Mrs. Wilcox shows that change is inevitable when we treat the inner self through prayer as taught in Christian Science. The strong point of her writing is her emphasis on the need to so spiritualize the subjective self that it results in healing.

Martha Wilcox was a prominent teacher during the years when the Christian Science organization was at its peak of prosperity. She grew up on a farm in Kansas, under the influence of a religious family life. She studied privately for a Teacher’s Certificate and became a teacher in the local schools. Before finding Christian Science, she was an  active member of the Methodist Church. It was through a series of events, in which she sought medical aid for her ailing husband, that she was presented in 1902 with a copy of Science and Health. As she studied and pondered this book, she was healed of a physical problem of long-standing. While her husband was not interested in Christian Science, she definitely was.

Within the next six years, she had Primary class instruction, became an active member of a branch church in Kansas City, Missouri, and managed to devote much of her time to the healing work, in addition to caring for her family. In 1908 she received a call from The Mother Church in Boston asking her to serve Mrs. Eddy at her home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

In Mrs. Wilcox’s first interview with Mrs. Eddy, it was impressed upon her that everything in one’s experience is subjective or mental. Mrs. Wilcox writes of this interview: “[Mrs. Eddy], no doubt, realized that at my stage of growth, I thought of creation — that is, all things — as separated into two groups, one group spiritual and the other group material. But during this lesson I caught my first glimpse of the fact that all right, useful things — which I had been calling ‘the unrighteous mammon’ — were mental and represented spiritual ideas. 

She showed me that unless I were faithful and orderly with die objects of sense that made up my present mode of consciousness, there would never be revealed to me the ‘true riches,’ or the progressively higher revilements of substance and things.” Mrs. Wilcox later wrote: “I well remember when for the first time I understood that everything of which I am conscious is thought, and never external to or separate from what I call my mind, and that which I call my mind is not always seeing things as they actually are.” 

In 1910, Mrs. Wilcox was recommended by Mrs. Eddy for Normal Class instruction, with Bicknell Young as teacher. This was the beginning of a long and successful career for Mrs. Wilcox as a practitioner and teacher. In 1911, she taught her first class. 
Until her passing in 1948, she was dedicated to serving the Christian Science movement, and became one of the most respected teachers in the Field. She was the author of many profound papers on Christian Science, mainly papers given each year to her association of students.

Mrs. Wilcox’s two years with Mrs. Eddy equipped her to understand so well the subjective nature of all things. She explains how to shift the focal point of thought from the objective world of people, things, happenings, to the subjective world of intuitions, thoughts, ideas. Although she stresses the mental cause of disease and discord, she goes beyond an analysis of the human mind and explains how to relate to God subjectively through prayer; how to develop an understanding of Him that spiritualizes consciousness and heals, how to transcend the false material view of creation and find the spiritual view. 

At the time that Mrs. Wilcox wrote these addresses, the Church organization would not permit the publication or circulation of such papers. But Mrs. Wilcox did share them privately with students, and they were handed down over the years to the present time. In giving these papers to her students, it is possible that Mrs. Wilcox hoped they would someday go forth to bless the world, for surely she must have been aware of their timeless message.
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