MISS ABIGAIL DYER THOMPSON – a brief biography

ABIGAIL DYER THOMPSON, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, first met Mrs. Eddy as a young girl in the 1880s when she accompanied her mother, Emma A. Thompson, C.S.D., on two long trips to Boston to visit Mary Baker Eddy, where her mother experienced a memorable healing on both occasions.

Abigail, who had always been a frail child herself, was also healed through the prayerful work of Mrs. Eddy.

Abigail D. Thompson Portrait by Elizabeth Piutti-Barth. Longyear Museum Collection

As a result of these healings, there was a closeness between Abigail and Mrs. Eddy, and when Abigail visited in later years, the two discussed questions that arose from the Christian Science activities she was involved with in Minneapolis.

When Abigail was in her 20s, Mrs. Eddy invited her to attend her final class in 1898, a class that produced many fruitful workers in the movement. Abigail went on to become a Christian Science teacher and practitioner in Minneapolis for nearly half a century where she was active alongside her mother in the organization and growth of Second Church of Christ, Scientist.

In the 1920s, Miss Thompson was active in the creation of Star of Bethlehem Home and construction of the first facility dedicated to Christian Science care in the Midwest.

In 1942, Abigail Thompson gave an address at the Annual Meeting of The Mother Church, in which she shared many of her recollections of Mrs. Eddy.

Thompson, Abigail D.

Here is how author Christopher L. Tyner described Abigail Dyer Thompson’s experience at Mrs. Eddy’s final class in his wonderful work “Paths of Pioneer Christian Scientists.”

EXCERPT 1

Abigail Thompson: “The genius of progress, the genius of work”

By Christopher L. Tyner – April 28, 2009 | Longyear Museum

“As she moved down the reception line toward her teacher, Abigail Dyer Thompson was thinking how she would thank Mary Baker Eddy for what she had just received.

The November 1898 class had just ended and this smart-looking woman in her mid-twenties — one of the youngest of the group of sixty-seven mostly seasoned students — stood out like a bright spring flower.

Mrs. Eddy had selected the names for this class with great care, calling together not only the pillars of the current movement — the professorial likes of Judge Hanna and Edward Kimball — but also a small contingent of the up-and-coming generation who were fast making their way into the vineyard and taking up work alongside their elders.

As she often did at the beginning of a class, Mrs. Eddy had gone around the room addressing students, and arriving at Abigail’s mother, Emma Thompson, she singled out her mother for her years of faithful service in the vineyard — her extraordinary healing work that had become the talk of Minneapolis, resulting in extraordinary growth of the churches there.

But the next chapter of the Christian Science story was already being written.

Indeed, in a mere thirteen months from this class, calendars would flip to the new year 1900, and from this threshold one could see the clutch of progress being let out on the twentieth century, sending incredible power to the wheels of American invention and industry. This was to be a century in which Christian Science would encounter both remarkable growth and startling resistance.

Mrs. Eddy saw this, her last class, as, in part, an invitation — calling new names to step forward to meet a new century’s challenges.

Abigail was one of those names.

Mrs. Eddy saw this, her last class, as, in part, an invitation — calling new names to step forward to meet a new century’s challenges.

Abigail was one of those names.

Finally having worked her way through the line and reaching her teacher, Abigail shook Mrs. Eddy’s hand. She had decided that words were not up to the job of gratitude, and so, in effect, she offered her teacher a promise:

“I have no words to express my gratitude for the great inspiration you have given me, but I hope my life may,” Abigail said, as she recorded this encounter in her private reminiscence.

Mrs. Eddy placed her hand over Abigail’s, looked into her student’s eyes, and said: “It will, dear, it will.”

Walking out of Christian Science Hall into the streets of Concord that day after the class ended, Abigail was determined to turn her few words to Mrs. Eddy into a reality. Indeed, in the five-page account she wrote of what transpired in the 1898 class, her last sentence shows the compass course she had already set for herself:

“My greatest desire since that memorable day has been that some time my healing work may prove worthy of her inspired teaching.”

How Abigail brought that desire to fruition, taking the place alongside her mother as one of Minneapolis’s preeminent Christian Science practitioners for over half a century, is a story of dedication and love — love for God, Christian Science, and its Founder.

How Abigail brought that desire to fruition, taking the place alongside her mother as one of Minneapolis’s preeminent Christian Science practitioners for over half a century, is a story of dedication and love — love for God, Christian Science, and its Founder.

It is also a story of how focus, persistence, and hard work manifest an ideal, in this case a spiritual ideal, which would transform a young woman into a Christian Science practitioner whose career spanned the first half of the twentieth century, until her passing in 1957.

“The genius of progress is really the genius of work,” Abigail said in 1933, addressing fellow members of Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Minneapolis; it is “the ability to see a goal and move steadily towards it without wavering, in the spirit of St. Paul when he said, ‘This one thing I do,’ (Phil 3:13).”

Horse photo: Abigail Dyer Thompson, circa 1900. Longyear Museum collection.

EXCERPT 2

Christian Science Pioneer Abigail Dyer Thompson: “I have been busy in your vineyard”

By Christopher L. Tyner – May 21, 2013 | Longyear Museum

About half a year after attending Mrs. Eddy’s 1898 Normal class, Abigail Dyer Thompson (1878 – 1957) found that her healing practice was making rapid strides. She reported to her teacher the following May:

“Many months have passed since I last wrote to you, but all the time I have been busy in your vineyard, faithfully watering and pruning each day as love directed; and Mother, more and more do I realize the import of your wonderful teaching last autumn, and my heart overflows with gratitude for the privilege of having been called to sit at your feet.” (Note 1)

As with her mother, Emma Thompson, many of Miss Thompson’s cases came from the ranks of those who had been given up by doctors. These cases arrived in her office sometimes within days of receiving a medical diagnosis that offered a lifetime of debilitation from some incurable disease. But under Miss Thompson’s care, many of these cases resulted in remarkable examples of physical healing, the news of which found its way around Minneapolis and was generating continued interest in this new religion – interest which her mother had pioneered in this city.

Early Healing Examples
After a doctor had diagnosed young William P. Finlay as having a “very bad” case of valvular heart leakage, the eleven-year-old was brought to see Abigail in 1904. Through Christian Science, her work overruled this diagnosis with the truth, and the result was that William found himself completely healed.

“You gave me treatment for two weeks, finally telling me that I was healed,” William Finlay wrote to Miss Thompson some two decades later. The healing was confirmed by the same heart specialist when his mother took him back for a follow-up exam. He was pronounced completely healed. “Since that time, of course, Christian Science has been our only help,” William Finlay wrote on May 4, 1927. (Note 2)

Under constant medical care from the time he had a severe fall, a Mr. Muir came to see Abigail Thompson in 1922. Despite the best medical care, his leg had begun to shrink, and doctors could promise him little more than a life of invalidism. Once Miss Thompson took the case, he quickly improved, and at the end of two weeks had no evidence of lameness. He traveled to the South to spend Christmas with his mother. Six months after this healing, Miss Thompson saw Mr. Muir and was able to bear witness to the completeness of this healing.

“He had gained so much in weight I could scarcely believe it was the same discouraged sick man who, a few months previously, had struggled into my office with a feeling of utter hopelessness and despair,” Miss Thompson wrote. “Now, with a merry laugh, he told me he ran up flights of stairs, two steps at a time, with the freedom of a boy, and could dance or take any exercise he pleased with perfect ease.” (Note 3)

After a heart specialist determined that Charles Edward Russell, a resident of Washington, D.C., had a severe case of heart disease, he decided to try Christian Science and came to see Miss Thompson. Completely healed, he testified in a letter to her, “I am deeply grateful to you for your patient, persistent and faithful work upon a not very promising subject.” An examination by a heart specialist many years later confirmed he had indeed been healed and was in “perfect condition.” (Note 4)

All of these cases came to Abigail Dyer Thomson’s office with a medical verdict of incurability and ended with a metaphysical triumph.

NOTES

Abigail Dyer Thompson to Mary Baker Eddy, May, 16, 1899, The Mary Baker Eddy Library, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection.
William Finlay to Abigail Dyer Thompson, May 4, 1927, Longyear Museum collection.
Longyear Museum collection.
November 19, 1925, Longyear Museum collection.