THE MOTHER OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13908, 6 December 1910, Page 7

THE MOTHER OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

A EXTRAORDINARY CAREER,

Mark Twain described Mrs Eddy as "easily the most interesting person on the planet, and, in several ways, easily the most extraordinary woman that was ever born upon it." Her early environment was an extraordinary one. Born in 1821, near Concord, New Hampshire, Mary A. Morse Baker came of a stern New England family. Her mother's religious tendencies were Congregational, but her father, Mark Baker, whom she seems to have most resembled, was a man of stern, passive, ungovernable temper, and an extremist in politics and in religion, in which he was a violent calvainst. He was a strong advocate of slavery, openly rejoiced over the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and was so strict a Sabbatarian thafc he made his six children, after attending services on Sunday, sit quietly with folded hands all the rest of the day. His daughter Mary was the only being who could have her wav with him, and it is astonishing to "read of the tenderness and deference with which tlie rough, stern farmer theologian treated her. In girlhood she was subject to fainting fits and hysteria, and unable to endure the severe routine of the schoolroom, but her mind was vigorous and enquiring, and she read with avidity all tho books that came within her grasp, picking up a good deal, of classical lore in this way. She was moro religious even than her relatives, reading her Bible with absorbed interest, and making its characters the familiar friends of her mind. She apparently received ghostly visitations in early youth. In her autobiography she says that at the age of eight she heard a voice calling to her, but when she got the courage to answer it, it made no response.. The hysterical outbreaks which Mrs Eddy was liable to until an advanced age were of an extraordinary character. Ono account says that at times thc attack resembled convulsions. Mary fell headlong to tho floor, writhing and screaming in apparent agony. Again she dropped as if lifeless. At other times sho became rigid like and cataleptic, and continued for a timo in a state of suspended animation. One manifestation of her pathological condition was a mania for being rocked or swung. Mark Baker frequently took the grown woman in his arms, dropped into a big rocking chair, and soothed her to sleep like a baby. His agitation while these attacks lasted was pathetic; he rushed about like one demented. But the unsympathetic called these spells "tantrums," and declared she used her nerves to get her. own way. Mary Baker waa attracted to the occult and mysterious from her. earliest day, and sho became absorbed in mesmerism, clairvoyance, animal magnetism, and other psychological phenomena; and sho almost certainly camo under the influence of the Shakers, who, under their prophetess, Aam Lee, made a great stir in her neighbourhood in her impressionable years. \Dr. Ladd, the family physician, practised mesmerism on her, and found her a pliable subject. "I can make that girl atop in th© street at any time by merely thinking," he said, and he often demonstrated his ability in that respect. »"*lien Mrs Eddy was twenty-two she married a bricklayer, George Washington Glover. He died of yellow . fever six months nfter his marriage. Three months later was born her first and only son, George W. Glover. After ten years widowhood sho married a dentist, Dr. Daniel Patterson, and the bridegroom—such was her delicate health—had to carry her downstairs to church, and upstairs after the ceremony. This marriago was an unfortunate one, and in 1878 she divorced her second husband.

When Mrs Eddy was forty years of age, and had been bedridden for many years, she visited a mind healer, one Dr. Quimby, who had disoovered "The Science of Health," which he sometimes described ac "Christian Science." The method of this physician is described as simplicity itself. The medical profession constantly harped on the idea of sickness- Quimby constantly harped on the idea of health. "This ia my theory," he announced in a pamphlet, "to put a man in possession of a science that will destroy the ideas of the sick, and teach man one living profession of his own identity, with life free from error and disease." Mrs Patterson, as she then was, under the caro of Dr. Quimby, was restored to perfect health in a week. She became an enthusiastic disciple, and eagerly imbibed all the teachings of this original character. It is believed that these teachings form the basic principle of the doctrine she afterwards formulated and gave to tho world as "Christian Science." At one time she became interested in spiritualism, Mrs Eddy's book "Science and Health" was first published in 1875, and at the same time Christian Science practically came into being. W r o can quote one passage which fairly sums up the teaching: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substanco in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in All. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is tho unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His, image and likeness; hence, man is spiritual and not "material." The first Christian Science church was built at Boston, with Mrs Eddy as pastor. Thero arc now over 700 branch churches, some 60 being in foreign countries. Although Mrs Eddy had to encounter a great deal of opposition, she, in tho words of a biographer, built up "the largest and most powerful organisation ever founded by any woman in America. Probably no other woman so handicapped—so limited in intellect, so uncertain in conduct, so tortured by hatred, and hampered by petty animosities—has ever risen from a state of helplessness to a position of such power nnd authority. All that Christian Science comprises to-day—the Mother Church, branch churches, readers, boards, committees, societies, are so completely under Mrs Eddy's control as if she were their temporal, a_ well as their spiritual, ruler." Her business acumen was profound, and money flowed into her coffers in an unending stream for many yeans.

"Science and Health" has gone through 500 editions. Mark Twain, who was fascinated by Christian science, though he did not believe in it serir ouslv, estimated that in ten years there will be 10.000,000 Christian Scientists in America, and 3,000,000 in Great Britain. Mark Twain criticised Mrs Eddy and her methods very severely, challenging her veracity, and describing the Church as the most despotic in'--the world, but he acknowledged that to her followers she appeared: "Patient, gentle, loving, compassionate, noble-hearted. unselfish, uidely cultured, splendidly equipped mentally, a profound thinker, an able writer, a Divine personage, an inspired

CABLE NEWS.

messenger whose acts are dictated from the Throne, and whose every utterance is the Voice of God. She has delivered to them a religion which has revolutionised their lives, banished the glooms tJi.it shadowed xhem, and filled them and flooded them with sunshine and gladness and peace; a religion whose heaven is not put off to another time, with a break and a gulf between, but begins hero and now, and molts into eternity as fancies of the waking day melt into the dreams of sleep. They believe it is a Christianity that is in the New Testament; that it has always been there; that in the drift of ages it was lost through disuse and neglect, and that this benefactor has found it and given it back to men, turning the night of life into day, its terrors into myths, its lamentations into songs of emancipation and rejoicing."