FOUNDER OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 96, 24 April 1931, Page 2 (Supplement)

FOUNDER OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

A "LIFE" OF MRS. EDDY.

The author of "Mary Baker Eddy, a Life-Size Portrait," a handsome, wcilillustrated volume, that is printed for Australian and New Zealand consumption by Angus and Robertson, is a minister of note in the American Episcopal Church, who has been interested in Christian Science for many years. Dr. Lyman Powell explains that "his appreciation of Christian Science grew, along with his sense of amazement that no presentation, substantial and satisfying to the general public, was in print touching a woman who had a record to her credit of more extraordinary and benignant things in life than any other woman in the history of the world." When he decided to write this book, the Christian Science headquarters at Boston placed unconditionally at his disposal the correspondence of the movement in the church archives, including Mrs. Eddy's letters. The result is a, volume that is heavilv documented; in addition to 280 pages of biography, in which free use is made of Mrs. Eddy's correspondence, there are 43 pages of notes. Dr. Powell's conviction of Mrs. Eddy's greatness is impressive, but his treatment of a movement that is the subject of so much controversy may not satisfy all readers. From a literary point of view the book would been improved by compression and discipline of style. It does, however, give a vivid picture of Mrs. Eddy and her wonderful success in founding and building up a great world-wide church, which is steadily increasing in size and exercises an influence outside its own borders. Dr. Powell tells the story of her life from the very beginning, and brings home to the reader the amount of tribulation that Mrs. Eddy went through before she found what she regarded as the truth and made that her gospel. She was widowed soon after her first marriage, and was unable to bring up her only child as she wished. Her second marriage was unhappy and she was again thrown on her own resources. She suffered years of ill-health._ From being a chronic invalid or semi-invalid, she became a woman of radiant health and extraordinary energy, capable into advanced old age of transacting a huge amount of work. She organised her church and did not hesitate to dismantle all her machinery and begin again. She controlled a great publishing business and started the "Christian Science Monitor," which men of all classes and creeds now acknowledge as one of the greatest newspapers in the world. When the new Mother Church in Boston was dedicated in 1906, 30,000 Christian Scientists from many lands took part in the ceremony. Dr. Powell gives full prominence to the spiritual foundations of Mrs. Eddy's belief. Many people think of Christian Science primarily and even solely as something that claims to heal physically, but Dr. Powell shows how much more it is than this. It is a conception of God and the universe, founded on the Bible. Mrs. Eddy did not claim to have found something entirely new. The Bible was the basis of her work, and she always had the Bible by her side. "What Jesus brought to light, and then in dark ages many lost, Mrs. Eddy brought to light again." Dr. Powell contends that her views on the nature of matter are confirmed by the theories of the most modern philosophy. In the beginning of the book he quotes a number of testimonies to Christian Science. The late Archbishop of Canterbury said that "there is much in Christian Science which ought to be found within the Church, where it would be supplemented by truths which in Christian Science are neglected," and the present Archbishop of °York has spoken in similar strain. 1 The Rev. E. T. Vernon, of London, said "God used Mrs. Eddy for a special revelation. . . . She has founded a great Church, and, let us say it frankly, brought great blessing on countless lives." Dr. Powell says the days of persecution are passing, but the peril of prosperity remains. That, however, is a peril to which all churches which grow large and wealthy are exposed. NOTES IN PASSING. The monument in the courtyard of Lambeth Palace to commemorate the 25 years' primacy of the late Archbishop Davidson, is almost completed'. A.T.S.J., in "The Christian World," remarks that "There can be such a thing as 'blind brains,' and that it is a destructive thing whether in science or religion." One thousand delegates, representing the three uniting Methodist Churches, attended the recent Methodist Congress at Sheffield. Dr. Hay Fleming, the eminent historian, in a letter to a Home magazine on the subject of postures in prayers, says that to sit during prayer seems to him a very disrespectful attitude. As early as 1709 a society was founded in Edinburgh to give instruction to the Young in Christian truth, and the first Sunday school in Scotland is believed to have been opened in Brechin about the year 1760. One of the interesting things about the apparently dry body of laws affecting daily life and conduct laid down in the earlier books of the Bible is their wonderful knowledge of the laws of health, and the importance they attach to hygiene. Writing of the "tramps" in the Old Country, Commissioner Lamb, of the Salvation Army, says that they number over 11,000, and he gives them quite a good character; 67 per cent of them are teetotalers, he says, and 82 per cent are genuinely looking for work. Most of them are men under 40. Three new books of missionary interest have been published recently: "The Clash of World Forces," by Basil Mathews; "The Far Adventure," by Edith Anne Robertson; and "The Missionary Survey of the Pacific," by the Rev. J. W. Burton. "I suppose," says Miss Maude Royden in a recent sermon on the healthiness of our Lord, "that He might have had a very happy life if He had chosen it. He belonged to the working class, but not to the very poor. . . . He had exceptional vitality and health. One has only to remember how He lived and' that in the records of His life we rarely hear of His being tired, and never ill, to realise that He must have had a vigorous and splendid physique." Archdeacon Charles, the late Archdeacon of Westminster, London, was a man of amazing learning, and, with it all, had the heart of a child. He was Catholic minded, and impatient of sectarian rancours, and intolerance. One who knew him .well says that his capacity for taking pains with his work was enormous, and, that his ability to utilise, in his preaching, the fruits of erudite research, has had few parallels in our time.