It was during some year in the early "80"s that I became aware--from that close contact with public feeling resulting from editorial work in daily journalism--that the Boston atmosphere was largely thrilled and pervaded by a new and increasing interest in the dominance of mind over matter, and that the central figure in all this agitation was Mrs. Eddy.
To a note which I wrote her, begging the favor of an interview for press use, she most kindly replied, naming an evening on which she would receive me. At the hour named I rang the bell at a s.p.a.cious house on Columbus avenue, and I was hardly more than seated before Mrs. Eddy entered the room. She impressed me as singularly graceful and winning in bearing and manner, and with great claim to personal beauty. Her figure was tall, slender, and as flexible in movement as that of a Delsarte disciple; her face, framed in dark hair and lighted by luminous blue eyes, had the transparency and rose-flush of tint so often seen in New England, and she was magnetic, earnest, impa.s.sioned. No photographs can do the least justice to Mrs. Eddy, as her beautiful complexion and changeful expression cannot thus be reproduced. At once one would perceive that she had the temperament to dominate, to lead, to control, not by any crude self-a.s.sertion, but a spiritual animus. Of course such a personality, with the wonderful tumult in the air that her large and enthusiastic following excited, fascinated the imagination. What had she originated? I mentally questioned this modern St. Catherine who was dominating her followers like any abbess of old. She told me the story of her life, so far as outward events may translate those inner experiences which alone are significant.
Mary Baker was the daughter of Mark and Abigail (Ambrose) Baker, and was born in Concord, N.H., somewhere in the early decade of 1820-"30. At the time I met her she must have been some sixty years of age, yet she had the coloring and the elastic bearing of a woman of thirty, and this, she told me, was due to the principles of Christian Science. On her father"s side Mrs. Eddy came from Scotch and English ancestry, and Hannah Moore was a relative of her grandmother. Deacon Ambrose, her maternal grandfather, was known as a "G.o.dly man," and her mother was a religious enthusiast, a saintly and consecrated character. One of her brothers, Albert Baker, graduated at Dartmouth and achieved eminence as a lawyer.
MRS. EDDY AS A CHILD.
As a child Mary Baker saw visions and dreamed dreams. When eight years of age she began, like Jeanne d"Arc, to hear "voices," and for a year she heard her name called distinctly, and would often run to her mother questioning if she were wanted. One night the mother related to her the story of Samuel, and bade her, if she heard the voice again to reply as he did: "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." The call came, but the little maid was afraid and did not reply. This caused her tears of remorse and she prayed for forgiveness, and promised to reply if the call came again. It came, and she answered as her mother had bidden her, and after that it ceased.
These experiences, of which Catholic biographies are full, and which history not unfrequently emphasizes, certainly offer food for meditation. Theodore Parker related that when he was a lad at work in a field one day on his father"s farm at Lexington, an old man with a snowy beard suddenly appeared at his side, and walked with him as he worked, giving him high counsel and serious thought. All inquiry in the neighborhood as to whence the stranger came or whither he went was fruitless; no one else had seen him, and Mr. Parker always believed, so a friend has told me, that his visitor was a spiritual form from another world. It is certainly true that many and many persons, whose life has been destined to more than ordinary achievement, have had experiences of voices or visions in their early youth.
At an early age Miss Baker was married to Colonel Glover, of Charleston, S.C., who lived only a year. She returned to her father"s home--in 1844--and from that time until 1866 no special record is to be made.
In 1866, while living in Lynn, Ma.s.s., Mrs. Eddy (then Mrs. Glover) met with a severe accident and her case was p.r.o.nounced hopeless by the physicians. There came a Sunday morning when her pastor came to bid her good-by before proceeding to his morning service as there was no probability that she would be alive at its close. During this time she suddenly became aware of a divine illumination and ministration. She requested those with her to withdraw, and reluctantly they did so, believing her delirious. Soon, to their bewilderment and fright, she walked into the adjoining room, "and they thought I had died, and that it was my apparition," she said.
THE PRINCIPLE OF DIVINE HEALING.
From that hour dated her conviction of the principle of divine healing, and that it is as true to-day as it was in the days when Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth. "I felt that the divine spirit had wrought a miracle," she said, in reference to this experience. "How, I could not tell, but later I found it to be in perfect scientific accord with the divine law." From 1866-"69, Mrs. Eddy withdrew from the world to meditate, to pray, to search the Scriptures.
"During this time," she said, in reply to my questions, "the Bible was my only text-book. It answered my questions as to the process by which I was restored to health; it came to me with a new meaning, and suddenly I apprehended the spiritual meaning of the teaching of Jesus and the principle and the law involved in spiritual science and metaphysical healing--in a word--Christian science."
Mrs. Eddy came to perceive that Christ"s healing was not miraculous, but was simply a natural fulfilment of divine law--a law as operative in the world to-day as it was nineteen hundred years ago. "Divine science is begotten of spirituality," she says, "since only the "pure in heart" can see G.o.d."
In writing of this experience, Mrs. Eddy has said:
I had learned that thought must be spiritualized in order to apprehend Spirit. It must become honest unselfish, and pure, in order to have the least understanding of G.o.d in Divine Science. The first must become last. Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to a perception of and dependence on spiritual things. For spirit to be supreme in demonstration, it must be supreme in our affections, and we must be clad with divine power. I had learned that mind reconstructed the body and that nothing else could. All science is a revelation.
Through homeopathy, too, Mrs. Eddy became convinced of the principle of mind healing, discovering that the more attenuated the drug, the more potent was its effects.
In 1877 Mrs. Glover married Dr. Asa Gilbert Eddy, of Londonderry, Vermont, a physician who had come into sympathy with her own views, and who was the first to place "Christian Scientist," on the sign at his door. Dr. Eddy died in 1882, a year after her founding of the "Metaphysical College" in Boston, in which he taught.
The work in the Metaphysical College lasted nine years, and it was closed (in 1889) in the very zenith of its prosperity as Mrs. Eddy felt it essential to the deeper foundation of her religious work to retire from active contact with the world. To this college came hundreds and hundreds of students, from Europe as well as this country. I was present at the cla.s.s lectures now and then by Mrs. Eddy"s kind invitation, and such earnestness of attention as was given to her morning talks by the men and women present I never saw equalled.
MRS. EDDY"S PERSONALITY.
On the evening that I first met Mrs. Eddy by her hospitable courtesy, I went to her peculiarly fatigued. I came away in a state of exhilaration and energy that made me feel I could have walked any conceivable distance. I have met Mrs. Eddy many times since then, and always with this experience repeated.
Several years ago Mrs. Eddy removed from Columbus to Commonwealth avenue, where, just beyond Ma.s.sachusetts avenue, at the entrance to the Back Bay Park, she bought one of the most beautiful residences in Boston. The interior is one of the utmost taste and luxury, and the house is now occupied by Judge and Mrs. Hanna, who are the editors of the _Christian Science Journal_, a monthly publication, and to whose courtesy I am much indebted for some of the data of this paper. "It is a pleasure to give any information for _The Inter-Ocean_," remarked Mrs.
Hanna, "for it is the great daily that is so fair and so just in its att.i.tude toward all questions."
The increasing demands of the public on Mrs. Eddy have been, it may be, one factor in her removal to Concord, N.H., where she has a beautiful residence, called Pleasant View. Her health is excellent, and although her hair is white, she retains in a great degree her energy and power; she takes a daily walk and drives in the afternoon. She personally attends to a vast correspondence; superintends the church in Boston, and is engaged on further writings on Christian Science. In every sense she is the recognized head of the Christian Science Church. At the same time it is her most earnest aim to eliminate the element of personality from the faith. "On this point, Mrs. Eddy feels very strongly," said a gentleman to me on Christmas eve, as I sat in the beautiful drawing room, where Judge and Mrs. Hanna, Miss Elsie Lincoln, the soprano for the choir of the new church, and one or two other friends were gathered.
"Mother feels very strongly," he continued, "the danger and the misfortune of a church depending on any one personality. It is difficult not to centre too closely around a highly gifted personality."
THE FIRST a.s.sOCIATION.
The first Christian Scientist a.s.sociation was organized on July 4, 1876, by seven persons, including Mrs. Eddy. In April, 1879, the church was founded with twenty-six members, and its charter obtained the following June. Mrs. Eddy had preached in other parishes for five years before being ordained in this church, which ceremony took place in 1881.
The first edition of Mrs. Eddy"s book, SCIENCE AND HEALTH, was issued in 1875. During these succeeding twenty years it has been greatly revised and enlarged, and it is now in its ninety-first edition. It consists of fourteen chapters, whose t.i.tles are as follows: "Science, Theology, Medicine," "Physiology," "Footsteps of Truth," "Creation," "Science of Being," "Christian Science and Spiritualism," "Marriage," "Animal Magnetism," "Some Objections Answered," "Prayer," "Atonement and Eucharist," "Christian Science Practice," "Teaching Christian Science,"
"Recapitulation." Key to the Scriptures, Genesis, Apocalypse, and Glossary.
The Christian Scientists do not accept the belief we call spiritualism.
They believe those who have pa.s.sed the change of death are in so entirely different a plane of consciousness that between the embodied and disembodied there is no possibility of communication.
They are diametrically opposed to the philosophy of Karma and of reincarnation, which are the tenets of theosophy. They hold with strict fidelity to what they believe to be the literal teachings of Christ.
Yet each and all these movements, however they may differ among themselves, are phases of idealism and manifestations of a higher spirituality seeking expression.
It is good that each and all shall prosper, serving those who find in one form of belief or another their best aid and guidance, and that all meet on common ground in the great essentials of love to G.o.d and love to man as a signal proof of the divine origin of humanity which finds no rest until it finds the peace of the Lord in spirituality. They all teach that one great truth that:
G.o.d"s greatness flows around our incompleteness, Round our restlessness, his rest.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
I add on the following page a little poem that I consider superbly sweet--from my friend, Miss Whiting, the talented author of "THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL."--M.B. EDDY.
AT THE WINDOW.
[_Written for the Traveller_.]
The sunset, burning low, Throws o"er the Charles its flood of golden light.
Dimly, as in a dream, I watch the flow Of waves of light.
The splendor of the sky Repeats its glory in the river"s flow; And sculptured angels, on the gray church tower, Gaze on the world below.
Dimly, as in a dream, I see the hurrying throng before me pa.s.s, But "mid them all I only see _one_ face Under the meadow gra.s.s.
Ah, love! I only know How thoughts of you forever cling to me: I wonder how the seasons come and go Beyond the sapphire sea?
LILLIAN WHITING.
April 15, 1888.
(_Boston Herald_, January 7, 1895.)
EXTRACT.
A TEMPLE GIVEN TO G.o.d.--DEDICATION OF THE MOTHER CHURCH OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.
Novel Method of Enabling Six Thousand Believers to Attend the Exercises--The Service Repeated Four Times--Sermon by Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, Founder of the Denomination--Beautiful Room Which the Children Built.