The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 17

by Sibyl Wilbur

CHAPTER XVII

ORGANIZATION OF CHURCH AND COLLEGE

THE development of machinations usually has the result of clearing the atmosphere. The hostile plot related in the previous chapter operated in this manner. Its workings were like a chemical precipitation. Mrs. Eddy’s spiritual genius was resisting the encroachments of the little group around her and preparing to deal with the larger needs of a great spiritual movement.

She foresaw the future prophetically, and that the hour had struck for a new movement in the history of human rationalism. In less than twenty-five years the century would close, and in the opening of the twentieth century a new era of mental life awaited humanity. Mrs. Eddy realized this; she desired to prepare for it, to have in readiness processes of amelioration for the miseries of an age more or less in the bondage of fear, an operative organization by which humanity might lay hold of the new hope which should thrill it. Christian Science must go forward, it must be presented to the world beyond this little city of Lynn, it must be organized.

To trace in any great movement, as Lecky the historian of rationalism has pointed out, the part which belongs to the individual and the part which belongs to general causes is an extremely delicate task. Mrs. Eddy had already made an amazing gift to her time which might well be deemed a sufficient work for any one individual to have perfected. In her treatise, “Science and Health,” she had given to the world a new conception of the nature of the Supreme Being and His habitual government of the universe. But having received a spiritual revelation, and having formulated this revelation into a treatise, Mrs. Eddy now apprehended that there existed a socially diffused sense throughout the world that a new age of reasoning was to appear with the dawn of the twentieth century. In apprehending this she realized a fresh work which was laid upon her, the work of bringing into the full glare of the world’s thought a spiritualized realization of the Christian faith.

What then were the tasks of the hour? An effective church organization was the crying need. After that Mrs. Eddy foresaw the necessity of establishing a college of instruction which would serve as a strong center of propaganda. Her book must have a third edition and this edition must be effectively circulated. Teachers and practitioners must be sent forth. It was a great work which unfolded itself in her mind in the very face of the conspiracy to dishonor her in Lynn, directed at her through the persons of her husband and student.

During the summer of 1878 Mrs. Eddy had ventured to carry her work into Boston. She first gave lectures on Sunday afternoons in the Shawmut Avenue Baptist church, and later lectured in the Parker Fraternity building on Appleton street. This latter place was a hall for public meetings which seated from three hundred to four hundred persons. At first her lectures drew but a few people, but very shortly the audiences grew larger and she was soon able to fill the hall.

The Boston audiences were a revelation to Mrs. Eddy. The listeners attracted to the new doctrine were distinctly of a cultivated world. While her long labors in Lynn had unfolded her own powers, they had attracted to her only disciples whose intellectual limitations caused them to be more or less disappointing. They had been able to follow her only a certain distance in philosophic speculation, whereupon a reaction of some sort of stubbornness would ensue, a stubbornness impossible to cope with. In Boston a new quality of mind responded to her. Those first Boston audiences revealed to her that the foundation of her church was to be laid in the city of liberal culture.

Though Lynn was stubborn, the founder of Christian Science was not yet done with her efforts there. From that base her future activity was to be projected. The last two years of her residence in Lynn were not without the compensation of blessedness and fruition. A few students who remained loyal to the work were taught in Broad street, and when she went forth they followed her to Boston and became her aids. She could not personally do everything that lay before her; she must direct them to tasks by the faithful performance of which the struggles of the early church might have been greatly minimized.

Mr. and Mrs. Eddy lived a tranquil domestic existence. Their union was based on affection and mutual esteem. Their housekeeping was ideally simple and harmonious. Perfect orderliness, exquisite cleanliness, and gentle social courtesy were Mrs. Eddy’s marked characteristics, while calm, upright, steadfast, a continual support and protection to his wife, Mr. Eddy has been likened to the late President McKinley in his individual traits.

A vivid idea of the interior of that home may be gained, which is pleasing to remember when one is tempted to think of it only as a storm-buffeted center, its inmates scandalized, ridiculed, and outraged by hirelings and plotters determined to molest its peace. The exterior of the little house with its balconied portico, its flowers and shade trees has already been described. The first-floor rooms, so long occupied for classes and lectures, were now converted into a charming little parlor and study. Mrs. Eddy received her callers in the first room and did her literary work in the second.

The walls of the reception-room were finished in plain gray paper with gold cornices. The windows were hung with white lace draperies, looped back over high gilt arms. A crimson carpet covered the floor and the furniture was of black walnut. The tables always held vases of flowers, for Mrs. Eddy was devoted to the cultivation of plants in summer and winter, and her success with them was an evidence of her continual love of the beautiful. It is impossible to impart in such meager details the veritable charm of Mrs. Eddy’s home, a charm which has existed in every home she has made; but those who have described the room speak of it as a place where one breathed the atmosphere of graciousness expressed in rare simplicity.

In this room Mrs. Clara Choate was received by Mrs. Eddy in January, 1878. She was one of Mrs. Eddy’s devoted students during that troublous time, and her description of the home life shows that Mrs. Eddy was not overwhelmed by her difficulties, but calm and resolute. She also tells of a certain buoyancy and gaiety which at times characterized Mrs. Eddy, a gaiety which caused her to rally her students to cheerfulness and mirth, as she later rallied the lawyers and journalists who assembled with awe-struck countenances to catechize her on the rationality of her mind.

Mrs. Choate, whose husband belonged to the family which has given so many distinguished publicists to the American nation, and who was herself related to the Blaines, was an early reader of “Science and Health.” She secured a copy of the first edition and read it with wonder and delight, but she did not immediately become a Christian Scientist. Having sent from her home in Salem for a practitioner and having been greatly benefited in health, she determined to meet the author of the book and study its doctrine at first hand. She accordingly came to Lynn. When she was shown into the little gray-walled parlor, she looked about in some wonderment. Expecting to find austerity, she was surprised to behold harmony, beauty, and sunshine. Yet this presently appeared the natural environment for the religion of love. Her meeting with Mrs. Eddy was typical of many such meetings. She describes it thus:

When the double doors leading into the back parlor were at last opened and I saw her standing there, I was seized with a sense of great gladness which seemed to be imparted by her radiant expression. Mrs. Eddy instantly healed me of every ill that had claimed me. I cannot describe the exhilaration that rushed through my whole being. I was uplifted and felt a sense of buoyancy unspeakable. It was as though a consciousness of purity pervaded Mrs. Eddy and from her imparted itself to me, whereupon I felt as if treading on air to the rhythmic flow of music.

Mrs. Eddy was over fifty years old, but Mrs. Choate describes her as a graceful figure in a violet-colored house-gown finished with lace at the throat and wrists. Her hands were small and expressive, her hair rippled about her face and was dressed high at the back of her well-shaped head. Her cheeks glowed with color and her eyes were clear, unwavering, like wells of light.

Mrs. Choate was not much over twenty, a young wife and mother who had never been away from home before. Mrs. Eddy called her “child,” and took her into that circle of friends which closely surrounded her. Later Mrs. Choate and her husband came to live across the street. She was much with Mrs. Eddy in and out of the house, and her happy spirits often relieved the strain of Mrs. Eddy’s arduous days. It was in May that they came to reside in Lynn. Her husband, George D. Choate, entered a class during that month, his opposition to Christian Science having been swept away by his wife’s marvelous healing and her enthusiasm for the cause of the new religious movement. They were later to aid in the establishment of college and church.

Other students who now came into the work were Miss Julia Bartlett, Mrs. Ellen J. Clark, Arthur True Buswell, and James Ackland. Some of them lodged in the Broad street house, occupying the several chambers of the second floor, but not living at the family table. Many incidents of the daily life of Mrs. Eddy were related by the students which show her never to have forgotten those sterling habits gained from the guidance of a mother remarkable throughout her life for housewifely virtue.

Though occasionally entertaining her students at table and serving them with the food she prepared with her own hands, she was ever the teacher, writer, lecturer, organizer. If she sometimes walked on a pleasant evening with them to her favorite retreat on the beach, she never relaxed into the idleness of mere diversion. Spiritual realization was the constant theme of her conversation. Those around her had found health, harmony, joy in the science of being which she had taught them; they must help her to spread this gospel. The world was hungering for this truth; it must be fed. The world was sick in sin and error; it must be healed and taught truth. None of the students found in her a companion in idle thought and self-seeking. Sometimes they complained of it and would have had her merrier, more diverted, less contained, and full of far-seeing plans. Because of her persistently maintained superiority to these human instincts some of the students were eventually estranged.

Organization was her word for the hour. It had become in her mind an imperative duty to organize the Christian Science church. A tentative organization had been made. In 1875, it will be remembered, the little band of eight students had pledged themselves to raise money for church services, but their ranks had been broken by rebellion and that organization was disbanded. On July 4, 1876, the Christian Scientist Association was formed to hold the students together for work and occasional meetings. This proved effectual for its purpose for a number of years. Mrs. Eddy now urged the incorporation of a church society. This was accomplished in August, 1879, and a charter, issued August 23, was received from the state. The articles of incorporation stated that the Church of Christ, Scientist, was to be established in Boston, thus fulfilling Mrs. Eddy’s prophetic vision.

The members of the new church were twenty-six in number and the organization was made at the home of Mrs. Margaret Dunshee in Charlestown. The first officers and directors were: Mrs. Eddy, president; Margaret Dunshee, treasurer; Edward A. Orne, Miss Dorcas Rawson, Arthur True Buswell, James Ackland, Margaret J. Foley, Mary Ruddock, Oren Carr, directors. They elected and ordained Mrs. Eddy pastor after the Congregational method of New England. This is not the basis of the present Christian Science church, but the organization continued in existence for about thirteen years when the church was reorganized.

For a year and a half the church carried on public meetings in the parlors of the various members. Not until December, 1883, were regular services held in a public hall. The first public meetings of the church were convened at Hawthorne Hall on Park street, Boston, and that hall, which has since been demolished, was the real cradle of the church. Mrs. Eddy was the active pastor from the date of organization and regularly preached a Sunday morning sermon. Even before the church regularly engaged a hall in Boston she preached at Parker Fraternity building, making the trip to Boston from her Lynn home for this purpose. On the morning of each Sabbath her students would seek her and find her sitting with closed eyes, deep in meditation. Urging her to eat, to dress, to make preparation for the delivering of her sermon, they expressed much love in solicitation. She would, however, send them away, demanding silence and time for thought. On the railway train from Lynn to Boston the students would join her. She was always faultlessly dressed and usually in a mood of spiritual gaiety.

In the pulpit there was never a trace of fatigue. It has been said that her sermons were exhilarating and moved her audiences to emotional exaltation; yet in the same breath critics add that she brought forward only the healing phase of her teaching, seldom touching on religious questions, such as repentance, humility, or prayer. They say that she was cold or indifferent to such topics. These two statements are not consistent, nor is the latter founded on fact. Many of her sermons are included in “Miscellaneous Writings” and are essentially spiritual. Prayer, Mrs. Eddy teaches, is the realization of the omnipresence of God and the aspiration for purity. Silent realization has always been an opening ceremony of her church. As for repentance, she taught the very essence of it, which she declared was the forsaking of sin.

The seeds of rebellion were in the first church organization. The reactionary effect observable in many of the early students was to repeat itself. Kennedy had persisted in the use of mesmerism, Spofford endeavored to wrest the leadership from the church’s founder, now Arens conceived the idea of writing a book on the topics he had studied, and for that purpose stole bodily from Mrs. Eddy’s writings. He preceded her to Boston and opened an office not far from where Kennedy had established himself. Rebellion now broke forth with violence in a group of students who walked out in a body. They prepared the following statement as their reason for so doing:

We, the undersigned, while we acknowledge and appreciate the understanding of Truth imparted to us by our teacher, Mrs. Mary B. G. Eddy, led by Divine Intelligence to perceive with sorrow that departure from the straight and narrow road (which alone leads to growth in Christlike virtues) made manifest by frequent ebullitions of temper, love of money, and the appearance of hypocrisy, cannot longer submit to such leadership. Therefore, without aught of hatred, revenge, or petty spite in our hearts, from a sense of duty alone, to her, the cause, and ourselves, do most respectfully withdraw our names from the Christian Science Association and Church of Christ, Scientist.

This document, dated October 21, 1881, was signed by eight protesting students whose names need not be commemorated here. Their statement is interesting because of a state of consciousness presented to view.

Examining the charges summed up in this statement, it can readily be seen how the fresh impetus at work in Mrs. Eddy's mind had wrought upon these narrow-visioned artisans. The Boston lectures had seemed to take the work beyond their sphere; the influx of new students from beyond Lynn had detached the teacher's attention from their immediate concerns; the necessity to provide funds for propaganda had put an end to the easygoing communistic methods of the primitive movement; and above all, Mrs. Eddy had commanded an implicit obedience from her later students and they had yielded it. Mr. Choate went to Portland where she sent him to teach, heal, and lecture, Mr. Buswell went on a similar errand to Cincinnati, Joseph Morton was sent to New York. These were the signs of a burgeoning of the work which alarmed the first students, and some of them retaliated, as has been shown, by malediction.

Had Mrs. Eddy been the virago and the avaricious hypocrite that they in their suspicion and jealousy brought themselves to believe, her work would have died in Lynn, and the greatest religious movement of modern times would never have been known. But instead of receiving its death blow from the carefully worded epistle of apology, it was re-baptized and confirmed, and the young church was in reality purged of the worst elements of opposition and encumbrances of ineffectuality which had hampered its growth.

The apology was read at a meeting at the home of Mrs. F. A. Daman of Lynn, in whose parlor the Christian Science church convened in the summer and fall of 1880. Mrs. Eddy, who had attended the meeting unaware of the agitation brewing secession, was entirely unprepared for the epistle. Grieved and astounded, she addressed the meeting in reply. She declared that these deluded students were the victims of that worldly influence which perverted the sense of spiritual things, an influence which the teaching of Christian Science almost invariably aroused in its first encounter with worldly desires, but not to be expected from those who had resisted flippancy and ridicule for years. She pleaded with them to rid themselves of such thoughts, to rise above personal rivalries, jealousies, and ambitions, to purge their minds of the critical spirit which led them to misconceive her own life and work, and to reaffirm the high purpose to which they had been called, namely the founding of the church.

Finding that her appeal did not meet with the response which would have shown the rebellious students merely the victims of a temporary delusion, but beginning to realize that they were incapable of the work to which she urged them, she made a masterly decision. She took from them the right to resign by expelling them from the ranks of her church, thereby preserving the church's charter. She took one week for this sweeping move, having warned them directly after the reading of the paper that they were liable to expulsion. They failed to comprehend her meaning. She was, however, about to assert that power and strength which has been hers in all subsequent emergencies in her church, the force and foresight which has caused the world to acknowledge her a leader preeminent in efficiency and masterly direction. She was determined to preserve her church against such internecine strife by asserting its substantial integrity and its power to rid itself of rebels.

Her act had a most salutary effect on the loyal students. Dismay had at first threatened them. They now rallied around her and in a few weeks published in the Lynn papers a reply to the seceders in the form of resolutions. In these they expressed their heartfelt love and gratitude for their teacher and acknowledged her as their leader in Christian Science, saying that she alone was able to protect the work she had founded; they denounced the charges brought against her as utterly false and deplored the wickedness of those who could abuse one who had befriended them in their need and rebuked them with honesty. They expressed their admiration and reverence for her Christlike example of meekness and charity, and declared that in future they would more faithfully obey her instructions in appreciation of her Christian leadership.

Thus Mrs. Eddy preserved the organization of her church and she had already laid the foundation for the college of instruction she purposed to establish in Boston. The Massachusetts Metaphysical College was the name she selected for that institution, which she organized in January, 1881, six months before the struggle in her church. She drew up an agreement with six students to teach pathology, ontology, therapeutics, moral science, metaphysics, and their application to the treatment of diseases, and for these purposes the college organization received a charter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Mrs. Eddy was named president and the six students directors.

To thoroughly understand the force of Mrs. Eddy’s character it is only necessary to view the difficulties of the situation in which she was placed when she perfected these two basic organizations. She had been so pressed for money that she had been obliged to go upon her knees and cleanse her own floors, she had had to make over the garments she wore to present a faultless appearance of good taste to the public; she had protected her husband by her own energetic conference with counsel and witnesses in a conspiracy to charge him with murder; she had seen her oldest and most trusted women students plot against her and desert her; she had lectured and taught, and sent out missionaries to the North, South, and West; she had sent Mrs. Choate as a precursor to Boston.

In the midst of such activities the third edition of “Science and Health” had been prepared and was in press. It was issued in 1881, and contained those chapters whose mere captions arouse to-day in her thousands of followers the enthusiasm of faith. Footsteps of Truth, Science of Being, Recapitulation, Creation, Prayer, and Atonement were in its contents. This edition retrieved the blundering workmanship of the second edition and is in some respects a clearer statement of her doctrine than she had yet made. With such comprehensive and effective efforts for the future, she prepared to leave Lynn and to step into the full current of the life of her times in the city conceded to have the greatest culture in America.

Thus very shortly after the publication of the resolutions by her faithful students in February, 1882, the furnishings of the Broad street house were packed and stored until determinate arrangements should be made for a future residence. On the last evening before leaving Lynn a meeting of the church was held in the denuded rooms, the members seated on packing-cases for their final deliberations. At this meeting Miss Julia Bartlett was received into the church. She later performed an important work of teaching and healing in New Hampshire. Miss Bartlett was probably the first member of the Christian Science church who remained unfaltering in loyalty to the cause. She resides to-day in St. Botolph street, Boston. She has been a remarkably successful healer and it was through her work in New Hampshire that many students, among them the family of Ira O. Knapp, were interested in Christian Science. Mr. Knapp became a director of the Mother Church.

Before settling in Boston Mr. and Mrs. Eddy made a visit to Washington and on this occasion Mr. Eddy performed a service of inestimable value for his wife and the cause to which she was dedicated. This was the thorough investigation of the subject of copyrights. Through the labors of her husband, Mrs. Eddy was thoroughly enlightened on this most important matter, important to the security of all her subsequent work. It has been remarked again and again, sometimes critically by those who saw only the worldly advantage of protection to property, again admiringly by those who perceive that every act of Mrs. Eddy’s business career was established in sanity and adherence to the law, that her copyrights have been iron-clad and infrangible and never neglected. Perhaps to her followers alone the real value of her copyrights is apparent. Their value to Christian Scientists is that they preserve Christian Science unadulterated for the years to come.

The necessity for investigation into this highly abstruse and perplexing subject was made apparent by the perfidy of the student, Edward J. Arens. He, some time in-1880, became imbued with the idea of metaphysical authorship, doubtless planning to turn his energies to the same purpose that had been threatened by a former student, namely, to wrest the leadership of Christian Science from its discoverer. He issued a pamphlet entitled “Theology, or the Understanding of God as Applied to Healing the Sick.”

The preface to the third edition of “Science and Health” was written by Asa G. Eddy, and in writing it Mr. Eddy dealt vigorously with Arens. He states that while Arens says he has made use in his pamphlet of “some thoughts contained in a work by Eddy,” he for over thirty pages repeats Mrs. Eddy’s words verbatim, having copied them without quotation and filching, among other passages of the book, the very heart of Christian Science. This is the scientific statement of being which Mr. Eddy calls “that immortal sentence,” and which reads: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance 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 the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness; hence, man is spiritual and not material.”^[1]

Mr. Eddy very tersely says in his arraignment of Arens: “If simply writing at the commencement of a work, “I have made use of some thoughts of Emerson’ gave one the right to walk over the author’s copyrights and use page after page of his writings verbatim, publishing them as his own, any fool might aspire to authorship and any villain become the expounder of truth.” He then makes this statement concerning his wife: “Mrs. Eddy’s works are the outgrowth of her life. I never knew so unselfish an individual, or one so tireless in what she considers her duty.” As for Arens, he dismisses him with this emphatic characterization: “It would require ages and God’s mercy to make the ignorant hypocrite who published that pamphlet originate its contents. His pratings are colored by his character; they cannot impart the hue of ethics, but leave his own impress on what he takes.”

The federal courts subsequently enjoined Arens not to publish or circulate his pamphlet, and all printed copies were destroyed by order of the court. This did not happen until after Mr. Eddy’s death, or until process of law dealt with Arens, as shall be presently recounted. But Arens’ perfidy wrought upon Mr. Eddy seriously. He suffered real anguish of mind from it, being far more disturbed than was his wife, for he regarded it as a culmination of bitter attacks upon her work and an exhibition of malicious animal magnetism.

Speaking in a purely human sense, Mr. Eddy resented the unfaithfulness of one whom Mrs. Eddy had taught and trusted very largely with her business affairs. He felt it keenly that one who had gone through such an experience of unjust prosecution as Arens had suffered jointly with him in the Lynn conspiracy and who had been defended by his wife’s faithful energies should now array himself against the cause. Arens was living in Boston not far from the house on Columbus avenue which Mr. and Mrs. Eddy leased in the spring of 1882. He was teaching and preaching adversely to Christian Science, and as yet had not been restrained from circulating his pirated writings.

Whether or not it was as a result of sorrow engendered in his heart or distress arising in his mind over the continual harassment brought by attacks on the work to which he had given his energies, Mr. Eddy visibly failed in health. His heart became weak; he lost his appetite and could not sleep. He complained of a sense of suffocation, an oppression of the suggestion of evil. Mrs. Eddy summoned Dr. Rufus K. Noyes, a graduate of the Dartmouth Medical School, who was then a resident of Lynn, and many years a distinguished Boston physician. He was known to Mrs. Eddy as a young man of brilliant achievements for his years, and had recently served as a resident physician in the city hospital.

She summoned Dr. Noyes to diagnose her husband’s case, for much perplexity had arisen among her students concerning his condition. She told the physician she believed her husband was suffering from the suggestion of arsenical poisoning, because, to her, the symptoms appeared to be those of actual or material arsenic. Some of her household had believed Mr. Eddy was suffering from cancer of the stomach. Dr. Noyes diagnosed the case as disease of the heart. He advised rest and tonic, digitalis and strychnia. But Dr. Noyes believes that his prescription was not adhered to and no medicines were administered.

It may be asked why Mrs. Eddy called a regular physician, especially if she did not intend to administer the medicines prescribed. A great deal of excitement was aroused by her husband’s illness, both among her friends and her critics. She desired a diagnosis at which no man or woman could cavil. She did not believe that her husband had cancer, or that his heart was defective, but that he was suffering from suggestion. She believed that a practising physician, trained in natural science, would bear her out in this and thus clinch her own diagnosis. But she was ahead of her age. Experimental psychology had not then made the important discovery that the deadliest poison is a secretion engendered by the working of hatred.^[2]

That Mr. Eddy suffered greatly, and that Mrs. Eddy suffered with him in her deep affection and sympathy is vouched for. A student who came and went in Mrs. Eddy's house with the freedom of a sister has drawn a picture of the hour of sorrow which is tenderly beautiful. Mrs. Eddy had the work of her church to carry on; her room was Uttered with books and papers; there was no order there at this time, for she could give but snatches of attention to affairs while her husband was lying stricken in an adjoining room. He breathed with agony and with physical sobs. Sitting by him, Mrs. Eddy would lay her face close to his and murmur, “Gilbert, Gilbert, do not suffer so,” and under her silent treatment he would be relieved for a time and sleep.

But Mr. Eddy observed that he distracted his wife from her pressing business and heroically declared, “My sickness is nothing; I can handle this belief myself.” He steadfastly declared he was coping with the attack and urged his wife to leave him. When she had reluctantly done so, he experienced a depression, but refused to have her called to relieve him. Just before his death he cried out, “Only rid me of this suggestion of poison and I will recover.” Mrs. Eddy had retired but was called; her husband expired, however, before she could reach him. This was before daybreak on Saturday morning, June 3, 1882.

If there is any truth in the old saying, died of a broken heart, it might well be applied to the death of this good man. Because of the persistent rumors concerning his illness and death, rumors that he had had a cancer, that he had been taking arsenic, and even that some one had actually given him a dose of poison, Mrs. Eddy again called Dr. Noyes, this time to perform an autopsy. Dr. Noyes exposed the heart and exhibited the physical organ to Mrs. Eddy, pointing out the valvular difficulty. He found no traces of arsenic whatsoever, no cancer or other disease of the stomach.

In so far then as the surgeon’s knife can prove anything, Mr. Eddy died of heart exhaustion. But the surgeon’s knife cannot find everything; it cannot find love, for example, in the noblest heart that ever beat; nor can it find hate in the cruelest. Who can with authority deny Mrs. Eddy’s statement that poison mentally administered killed her husband? “Not material poison,” she declared, “but mesmeric poison.”

It may not be the term that natural science would admit, but natural science acknowledges readily that grief, disappointment, and profound depression will cause heart failure. Remembering the wicked charge of wilful attempt to murder falsely brought against Mr. Eddy, and the cruel assaults upon his wife, whom he loved and cherished, by the seceding students, and the attempt at a veritable overthrow of the work to which he was devoted, it may be very easily understood why Mrs. Eddy declared that her husband was mentally poisoned, and in that statement doubtless she was scientifically exact. It should be remembered that this happened in the early days of Christian Science practise and at a time when Mrs. Eddy was just awakening to the pernicious mental influence of hate. Christian Science presents a doctrine of love which antidotes hate. “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need,” says Mrs. Eddy in “Science and Health.”

Mr. Eddy’s remains were taken to Tilton, New Hampshire, and interred in the cemetery on the banks of the Merrimac River in the shadow of the beautiful foot-hills of the White Mountains. A granite shaft marks the spot. Mr. George D. Choate accompanied the body and Mrs. Clara Choate remained with Mrs. Eddy who arranged for her the topics of the eulogy which Mrs. Choate delivered on Mr. Eddy in Hawthorne Hall. Her subject was: “Blessed are they who die in the Lord; for their works shall follow them.”

1. “Science and Health,” p. 468.
2. The Washington Herald in August, 1907, printed an article descriptive of the experiments of Professor Elmer Gates in his laboratory of psychology and psychurgy. The article was also printed in the Chicago Tribune. It states: “Professor Gates has shown the causative character of thinking in a long series of most comprehensive and convincing experiments. He found that change of mental state changed the chemical character of the perspiration. When treated with the same chemical re-agent the perspiration of an angry man showed one color, that of a man in grief another, and so on through the list of emotions, each mental state persistently exhibiting its own peculiar result every time the experiment was repeated.

   “When the breath of Professor Gates’ subject was passed through a tube cooled with ice, so as to condense its volatile constituents, a colorless liquid resulted. … He made his subject angry and five minutes afterwards a sediment appeared in the tube which indicated the presence there of a new substance produced by the changed physical action caused by a change of the mental emotion. Anger gave a brownish substance, sorrow gray, etc. … Each kind of thinking produced its own peculiar substance which the system was trying to expel. … Professor Gates undertook to discover the character of the substances which he obtained by condensation of the breath of his subjects. The brownish precipitate from the breath of any persons administered either to men or to animals caused stimulation and excitement of the nerves. Another substance, produced by another kind of discordant thinking, when injected into the veins of a guinea pig or a hen, killed it outright. … The deadliest poison known to science is hate. Professor Elmer Gates is the man who has found it out, … who has demonstrated it.”