Mary Baker Eddy - Page 2

directed at her upon every possible occasion.

But Mrs. Eddy won out, and legislation and courts were compelled to whistle in their hounds. Your right to keep well in your own way is now fully recognized. Doctors are not liable when they give innocent sweetened water and call it medicine, nor do we place Christian Scientists on trial if their patients die, any more than we do the M. D.'s.

In fact, Mrs. Eddy influenced both of the so-called sciences of medicine and theology. Even those who are perfectly willing to deny her, and noisily discard her tenets, are debtors to her.

Homeopathy modified the dose of all the Allopaths; and Christian Science has attenuated the Hahnemannian theory of attenuations, it having been found that the blank tablet often cures quite as effectively as the one that is medicated. Christian Science does not shout, rant, defy nor preach. It is poised, silent, sure, and the flagellants, like the dervishes, are noticeable by their absence.

The Reverend Billy Sunday is not a Christian Scientist. The Christian Scientist does not cut into the grape; specialize on the elevated spheroid; devote his energies to bridge whist; cultivate the scandal microbe; join the anvil chorus, nor shake the red rag of wordy warfare. He is diligent in business, fervent in spirit, and accepts what comes without protest, finding it good.

Mary Baker Eddy lived a human life. Through her manifold experiences she gathered gear--she was a very great and wise woman. She was so great that she kept her own counsel, received no visitors, made no calls, had no Thursday, wrote no letters, and even never went to the church that she presented to her native town. Mrs. Eddy's step was ever light, her form erect--a slender, handsome, queenly woman. When she passed on, in December, Nineteen Hundred Ten, in her ninetieth year, she looked scarce more than sixty. Her face showed experience, but not extreme age. The day I saw her, a few years before her death, she was dressed all in white satin and looked like a girl going to a ball.

Her eyes were not dimmed nor her face wrinkled.

Her hat was a milliner's dream; her gloves came to the elbow and were becomingly wrinkled; her form was the form of Bernhardt. Her secretary stood by the carriage-door, his head bared. He did not offer his hand to the lady nor seek to assist her into the carriage. He knew his business--a sober, silent, muscular, bronzed, farmer-like man, who evidently saw everything and nothing.

He closed the carriage-door and took his seat by the side of the driver, who wore no livery. The men looked like brothers. The big, brown horses started slowly away; they wore no blinders nor check-reins--they, too, had banished fear. The coachman drove with a loose rein. The next day I waited in Concord to see Mrs. Eddy again. At exactly two-fifteen the big, brown, slow-going horses turned into Main Street. Drays pulled in to the