BELIEVED HERSELF IMMORTAL

Evening Star, Issue 20023, 14 November 1928, Page 3

BELIEVED HERSELF IMMORTAL

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE LEADER DEAD [Fbom Our Own Correspondent.] SAN FRANCISCO, October 15. One of America’s most picturesque public characters has just passed away with tho death of Mrs Augusta it. Stetson, former leader of the Christian Science Church, who claimed she was immortal, hut who expired in Rochester, New York, after an illness of ten weeks. , . , Although she had always relusod to tell the date of her birth, relatives said she was eighty-six or eighty-eight years of age. Death came to the woman, who resigned from tho First Church of Christ, Scientist, in New York, in 1909, after friction with tho mother church in Boston. in the hotel suite of her nephew, Major Harold W. Stimpson. A sister, Mrs E. W. Stimpson, and her nephew survive. Sho went to Rochester early in August from her cottage in Canada. At that timo it was reported that she was ill, but relatives declared that she was “well, and resting and writing.” Sho served for seventeen years ns pastor and first reader of the First Church in New York, which sho helped to organise in 1880 at the instance of Mary Baker Eddy. She was a student of Mrs Eddy in Boston when t she was selected to organise the New York church. In 1909 Airs Stetson was called before tho Christian Science board of directors in Boston for questioning as to the correctness of her teachings. She refused to recant or compromise witJi the directors on the doctrinal issue, and was dropped from membership in the Boston organisation.

Mrs Stetson was also known to the general public for her efforts to abolish the third verso of ‘ Tho Star-spangled, Banner,’ maintaining that it was subversive to both peace and goodwill.

Sho continued her studies and writings up to the last. At one time she ran full-pago advertisements in newspapers carrying her teachings. WOULD NEVER DIE.

When the Christian Science Institute in New York was chartered in 1891 Mrs Stetson raised 1,250,000 dollars to build the First Church in New York City, and dedicated it free of debt. It was only after years of labour on behalf of Christian Science that friction arose between Sirs Stetson and the mother church, resulting in her resigning from membership of the First Church in New York,

Mrs Stetson repeatedly proclaimed that she would never die, physically or spiritually She held that only sinners “died,” and that as her life was unstained by sin her immortality was assured. Not long ago she followed her statement of belief in physical immortality with the assertion that Mary Baker Eddy would shortly return to the world, because Mrs Eddy was the Christ in feminine form. The trustees of the Christian Science Church repudiated that dogma. In regard to her opposition to the third verse of the National Anthem ot the United States, she was called as a witness in 1924 in air inquiry investigating the financial source of propaganda against ‘ The Star-spangled Banner.’ She testified that she spent IG.OOO dollars for an advertising campaign aiming at deletion ot the song’s third stanza.