The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
THE NEW POLICY—MRS. EDDY RESIGNS FROM PULPIT AND JOURNAL AND CLOSES HER COLLEGE—DISORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH AND ASSOCIATION—RECONSTRUCTION ON A NEW BASIS—MRS. EDDY IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL AND POSSESSION
Mrs. Eddy's retreat from the centre of Christian Science activities was the first step, as will be seen, in the new policy toward which she was slowly feeling her way. From her point of view it was wise to let Christian Science in Boston lie fallow for a time; to allow the plots and counterplots of the factions composing the remnant of her church to die out; and to secure for herself peace, and time to decide what next should be done. There is no doubt that during her visit to Chicago the year before, her eyes were opened to the strength of the general movement of Christian Science, and that it was in the larger field, and not in the local Boston church, that Mrs. Eddy now saw her opportunity.
Mrs. Eddy retired from the editorship of the Christian Science Journal, May, 1889.
In announcing Mrs. Eddy's retirement, the Journal of that date says:
. . . As our dear mother in God withdraws herself from our midst, and goes up into the Mount for higher communings, to show us and the generations to come the way to our true consciousness in God, let us honour Him and keep silence; let us keep from her and settle among ourselves or with God for ourselves, the small concerns for which we have looked to her.
At about this time, Mrs. Eddy also gave up teaching. It was with great reluctance that she closed her college, and here again she felt her way to a final decision. The first plan was that she merely give up active teaching, and remain president of the institution, while her adopted son succeeded her as instructor. She gave this arrangement a trial, but soon announced that, as the demand was for her own instruction exclusively, she would close the college altogether. In the late summer of 1889 Mrs. Eddy again reconsidered, and announced that General Erastus N. Bates of Cleveland would reopen the college and conduct the classes. General Bates, who was a healer and preacher in his own city, gave up his practice there and came on to Boston to take up Mrs. Eddy's work. No sooner had he begun than Mrs. Eddy again changed her mind, and in less than a month after General Bates arrived she closed the college, despite his earnest protest.
Mrs. Eddy next disorganised the Association. At her request it was voted "to set aside the official organisation and the constitution and by-laws of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College Association, and to meet in the future as a voluntary association of Christians to promote growth in spirituality." The Journal, in its announcement, continues: "What was embraced under the name of 'business' was thus dispensed with. Nothing valuable of the purposes of the organisation had been lost and a new realisation that all is mind and of union in love had been gained." The effect of this disorganisation, the Journal said, would be "to lift them from the material sensual plane to that of voluntary association or love," and to eliminate "rivalry, jealousy, envy, and stir of personality."
While she was moving about and experimenting, Mrs. Eddy was also engaged in preparing the new edition of Science and Health, which appeared in 1891; and her chief difficulty in getting the book on the market was, as always, mesmerism. She had fled from Boston to escape it, but it was ever on her track and it throve in Concord as well as in Boston and Vermont and Roslindale. The ordinary delays which occur in the best-regulated of pressrooms and binderies, she attributed directly to the results of malicious animal magnetism, and that eminently reliable and decorous establishment, the University Press, was supposed to have been given over to the riotous disorders of demonology. Mrs. Eddy set half a dozen of her students to treating the pressmen and binders against errors and delays, and wrote out an argument for them to use in their treatments. The veteran printer, Mr. John Wilson himself, she assigned, for especial treatment, to her son, E. J. Foster Eddy. The letter in which Mrs. Eddy issued instructions that the treatments upon the press were to begin, was written to Dr. Foster Eddy, and reads as follows:
Jan. 13, 385 Commonwealth Avenue.
My Dearest One: Please to go at once to Miss Bartlett and give her the directions inclosed. See Capt. Eastaman and give him the same. After writing out sufficient copies, distribute them as follows:
To Capt. Eastaman, Miss Bartlett; for Mrs. Munroe; Press and Bindery, for Mr. Johnson, Mr. Knapp, Mrs. Knapp.
You keep Mr. Wilson, the printer of Cambridge, under your care alone. Also the Mr. Wilson, or proprietor, whoever he is, in Boston, who manages the bindery, under your care only. You know they cannot be made sick for printing and binding God's book, and you must show your faith by works in this instance.
Attached to this letter is a sheet of manuscript in Mrs. Eddy's handwriting, which reads:
Argument
Nothing can hinder the book, Science and Health, from being published immediately. The press and machinery that publish this book and all who work on it in the press and bindery are safe in God's hands, they cannot be and are not governed by hatred. They are governed, upheld and prospered by Love and the book is coming out rapidly. When the book goes to the bindery then stop the press aid and turn all their force there.
Tell each one that I say by no means take up the mesmerists or any personality, but to have faith in God and this will do it all—just as the prayer asks.
Your personal work for the Wilsons must be done as I have taught you, to help them, and not touch others.
If I or Mr. Frye write or telegraph to you then you must stop at once the student's argument. You understand this, do you not?
The last sentence in Mrs. Eddy's instructions seems to imply that it was possible to over-treat the pressroom, and that it might be necessary to stop the treatments at any time. Just what the results of over-treatment might be, it is difficult to conjecture, but from another letter to Dr. Foster it is evident that Mrs. Eddy thought the treatments had been too vigorous and had thrown everything into confusion:
Dearest:
I have just found what did (but did not)[1] produce a temporary tempest here. It was the help you procured on the Press! Never, never put "new wine into old bottles."
Those persons named are utterly incapable of handling the Red Dragon.[2] They can command serpents but not the last species.
At once dismiss your help and confine your treatment to the Proprietor Mr. W —— and electricity take no other personality into thought but the ones employed at the Press.
All is God, Good there is no evil.
It was in the early autumn of 1889 that Mrs. Eddy conceived the idea that malicious animal magnetism was interfering with the proper conduct of the Christian Science Journal. She sent one morning for Mr. William G. Nixon, publisher of the Journal, and directed him to take the magazine and flee with it at once into some other city; if he stayed in Boston a month longer, she declared, mesmerism would wreck the periodical. Mr. Nixon tried to explain to her the difficulties of picking up a periodical and "fleeing" with it between publication days, when no preparatory arrangements had been made and no new location selected. But Mrs. Eddy was immovable. In business disputes Mrs. Eddy had always one argument which none of her associates could hope to equal: she would draw up her shoulders, look her opponent in the eye, and say, very slowly, "God has directed me in this matter. Have you anything further to say?" Mr. Nixon naturally wished to remain in Boston; he had brought his family there from Dakota, and his contract with his printer was unexpired. But there was nothing to be gained by arguing with Mrs. Eddy; and there was no time to be lost if he was to find a new location for his business in time to get out the next month's Journal. He went to Philadelphia, where he at length found a suitable office and a printer who would undertake to get the magazine out on time. Just as he was about to close the contract, he received a telegram from Mrs. Eddy telling him to bring the Journal back to Boston at once.
In directing the Journal's policy, Mrs. Eddy was never afraid to change her mind, and often repudiated to-day what she had yesterday advanced as divine revelation. On one occasion she wrote to Mr. Nixon that God had directed her to recommend a certain candidate for the editorship of the Journal:
385 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston, Sept. 30 1889
My dear Student
God our God has just told me who to recommend to you for the Editor of C. S. Jour. but you are not to name me in this transaction. It is Rev. Charles Macomber Smith D.D. 164 Summer St Somerville Mass. He was healed by reading Science and Health and left a large salary to preach Christian Science and then left that position for the hope J. F. Bailey had held out to him of preaching for my Church but I objected to taking him solely because his church had not been consulted before giving him a call.
Get him sure but be very reticent let it not be known until he is engaged or you will have a fuss about it.
Lovingly,
M. B. G. Eddy.
Mr. Nixon had not had time to act upon this letter when he received another in which Mrs. Eddy explained that her recommendation of Mr. Smith had been the result of mesmerism, and not of divine inspiration:
Concord, N. H.
62 State St.
To Mr. Nixon
My dear Student
I regret having named the one I did to you for Editor It is a mistake he is not fit It was not God evidently that suggested that thought but the person who suggests many things mentally but I have before been able to discriminate I wrote too soon after it came to my thought He has not been taught C. S. and I hear refuses to be taught by any one but me. Love to wife
Ever Affectionately
M. B. G. Eddy.
In another letter she reprimands her publisher for not affixing the author's name whenever he refers to Science and Health in the columns of the Journal, and for not printing the name of that book always in small capitals. Mr. Nixon felt that the Journal should be the magazine of Christian Science rather than Mrs. Eddy's personal organ, and had rashly attempted to persuade her that it would be more dignified in her to keep her own name a little more in the background, especially when so many of her enemies were asserting that Christian Science was nothing but a glorification of Mrs. Eddy's "personality." On this point she says to Mr. Nixon, in a letter dated June 30, 1890:
Those who are trying to frighten you over using my name at suitable intervals and who are crying out personality are the very ones that persist in their purpose to keep my personality before the public through abusing it and to harness it to all the faults of other personalities and make it responsible for them. But neither of these efforts disposes of personality nor handle it on the rule our Master taught nor deal with mortal personality scientifically.
In the same letter she reproves him for having omitted her appellation of "Reverend" when referring to her in the Journal.
Among Mrs. Eddy's letters to her publisher, Mr. Nixon, is this rather amusing one:
July 14 1890.
385 Commonwealth Ave.
My dear Student
Many thanks for your copy of Brotherham's translation of the New Testament But I cannot see the merit in it that Mr. Bailey attaches to it in his long notice in the Journal. The language is decaying as fast as that of Irving's Pickwick Papers I prefer the common version for all scriptural quotations to that.
Most truly and affectionately,
M. B. G. Eddy.
Having divested herself of her responsibilities as editor and teacher, Mrs. Eddy further protected herself from the importunities of her students by the publication in the Journal of seven fixed rules, which announced that she was not to be consulted regarding the personal or church difficulties of her followers.[3] Her next step was to disorganise the Boston church. Upon this action the Journal of February, 1890, comments as follows:
The dissolution of the visible organisation of the church is the sequence and complement of that of the college corporation and association. The college disappeared that the spirit of Christ might have freer course among its students and all who come into the understanding of Divine Science, the bonds of the church were thrown away so that its members might assemble themselves together to "provoke one another to good works" in the bond only of love.
After Mrs. Eddy disorganised it, the church continued to hold regular services and, to all intents and purposes, went on just as before with the one important exception that it held no more business meetings and transacted no business. The real reason for this disorganisation seems to have been just that, for the time, Mrs. Eddy wanted no business transacted. Her explanation that organisation was a detriment to spirituality could scarcely have been more than a convenient pretext, for at the same time that she put this check upon the Boston church, her messages to the workers in the field continually urged them to organise churches. It would seem that what was hurtful to spirituality in Boston would be hurtful elsewhere; but the fact was that ever since the schism of 1888 Mrs. Eddy had been dissatisfied with her Boston church, and she had decided to take it to pieces and make it over. A plan was forming in her mind, and putting a stop to all the business transactions of the church gave her time to feel her way toward its accomplishment.
The Boston church was still homeless and held its meetings in public halls. In 1886 its members had purchased a lot on Falmouth Street—where the original Mother Church now stands—with the intention of erecting upon it a church building. They paid two thousand dollars down upon the date of purchase and assumed a mortgage for the balance due. By December, 1888, the church had paid $5,800 upon the property, and had reduced the mortgage to $4,963.50. Mrs. Eddy then stepped in and, through her lawyer, secured an assignment of the mortgage for the amount due upon it. Eight months later she foreclosed and bought in the property herself through her lawyer's brother.[4]
In other words, Mrs. Eddy sold to herself the land upon which she now held the mortgage, securing for $5,000 a piece of real estate which three years before had sold for $10,763.50,—and which since then had almost doubled in value,—and the members of the Boston church had lost all equity in the property upon which they had paid $5,800.
Since Mrs. Eddy intended ultimately to give this land back to the church, why, the reader may ask, did she not come forward when the payments ran behind, and satisfy the mortgage, leaving the property unincumbered in the hands of the organisation which had already paid on it more than half the purchase price? The reason seems to have been that there were still in that body persons of whom Mrs. Eddy did not feel sure; members who might be elected to office, might have too active a part in the church government, and might even incite a new rebellion like that of 1888. Her plan now was to give this building-site to the Boston church directors under such conditions as would forever do away with congregational self-government, and would place the church wholly under the control of such trustees as she should appoint.
Mrs. Eddy was aiming at (1) the entire personal ownership of the site of the Boston church, (2) perpetual personal control of the church which should be reared upon it, (3) making the Boston church not merely a local church and the home of the Boston congregation, but a church universal, the "Mother Church" of Christian Science the world over, with Mrs. Eddy installed as its visible head. And a seemingly insignificant real-estate transaction was actually the means of accomplishing this important end.
Up to this time Mrs. Eddy's name had been kept out of the various conveyances on the Falmouth Street property, and she desired that it should not directly appear in future transactions. She now had the land deeded to her student, Ira O. Knapp. Mr. Knapp then conveyed the property to three trustees, Alfred Lang, Marcellus Munroe, and William G. Nixon, who were to hold it for the purpose of building a church thereon. The trust deed by which the conveyance was made was of such an unusual character that Mr. Nixon insisted upon having the title examined before the trustees should place on the lot a building paid for by Christian Scientists residing in all parts of the United States. After examining it, the Massachusetts Title Insurance Company refused to insure the title, and, in spite of Mrs. Eddy's argument that "the title was from God, and that no material title could affect God's temple," the three trustees returned all the donations to the building fund which they had received, and resigned. The property was now conveyed by Mr. Knapp to Mrs. Eddy (who had in reality been its owner all the while) for a consideration of one dollar, and Mrs. Eddy began all over again.
On September 1, 1892, Mrs. Eddy conveyed this much-bandied-about plot of ground to four new trustees: Ira O. Knapp, William B. Johnson, Joseph S. Eastaman, and Stephen A. Chase, who were pledged to erect upon the site, within five years, a church building costing not less than $50,000. Among the provisos of the trust deed were the following:
That in this church there should be no services "which shall not be in strict harmony with the doctrines and practice of Christian Science as taught and explained by Mary Baker G. Eddy in the seventy-first edition of her book, entitled Science and Health, which is soon to be issued, and in any subsequent edition thereof."
That these trustees should be called the Board of Directors and should constitute a perpetual body or corporation, fill ing any vacancy in their body by election, and filling it only with such an one as should be "a firm and consistent believer in the doctrines of Christian Science as taught in a book entitled Science and Health by Mary Baker G. Eddy, beginning with," etc.
That this board should elect the pastor, speaker, or reader, maintain public worship, and was "fully empowered to make all necessary rules and regulations" for this purpose.
That "the omission or neglect on the part of said directors to comply with any of the conditions herein named, shall constitute a breach thereof, and the title shall revert to the grantor, Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and assigns," etc.
That "Whenever said directors shall determine that it is inexpedient to maintain preaching, reading or speaking in said church in accordance with the terms of this deed, they are authorised and required to reconvey forthwith said lot of land with the building thereon, to Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and assigns forever, by a proper deed of conveyance."
At last, then, Mrs. Eddy had the Boston church where she wanted it; an institution without congregational government, controlled by four directors whom she should appoint and who should elect their successors at her suggestion; who were pledged to see that the church taught only what was in the seventy-first edition of Science and Health, and whatever Mrs. Eddy might please to put into any subsequent edition; and who, if they did not comply with all these instructions, were bound to give back the lot, and the building upon it, to Mrs. Eddy and to her heirs forever. A Mother Church thus constructed would have great possibilities.
But here an objection arose. A corporation must be formed, and when Mrs. Eddy asked the State to grant her a new charter for a new church body, the Commissioner of Corporations refused. His reason was that the original charter, granted in 1879, had never been annulled and was still in force. But Mrs. Eddy had no intention of recognising the old church or its charter; if her new directors merely held the property in trust for a church organisation, her end would be defeated. As the deed of trust read, the directors were virtually to hold the property in trust for Mrs. Eddy herself, to the end of executing her wishes. There must be a way, Mrs. Eddy insisted, in which her trustees could hold the property without recognising the existence of the chartered church body, so she set her lawyers to work. "Guided by Divine Love," she said, her attorneys found in the laws of Massachusetts a statute whereby a body of donees might be considered a corporate body for the purpose of taking and holding grants and donations without the formal organisation of a church.[5] This old statute once unearthed, Mrs. Eddy's plan was entirely worked out: the Mother Church was now controlled absolutely by her four directors; the corporation consisted of her directors and not of the church body; and the congregation had no more voice in the management of the church than has the audience in the management of a theatre.
The members of the Boston church were dazzled by Mrs. Eddy's lavish gift, and very few of them had followed the legerdemain by which the church had gone into Mrs. Eddy's hands a free body and had come out a close corporation. Mrs. Eddy announced her victory in a long communication to the Journal, asserting, "He giveth his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."
In reviewing this real-estate transaction in the Journal, Mrs. Eddy said:
I had this desirable site transferred in a circuitous, novel way. . . . I knew that to God's gift, foundation and superstructure, no one could hold a wholly material title. The land and the church standing on it must be conveyed through a type representing the true nature of the gift; a type morally and spiritually inalienable, but materially questionable—even after the manner that all spiritual good comes to Christian Scientists to the end of taxing their faith in God and their adherence to the superiority of the claims of spirit over matter or merely legal titles. . . . Our title to God's acres here will be safe and sound "when we can read our titles clear" to heavenly mansions.
Mrs. Eddy now for the first time came out in the Journal and made a personal appeal for money to build her church, requesting that the contributions which Mr. Nixon and his associates had returned to the donors be doubled and forwarded to Boston. Her request had scarcely been printed when money began to pour in upon the trustees; the old contributions were doubled and in many instances were increased threefold.
The official organisation of the Mother Church was made September 23, 1892, but no mention is made in the Journal of such an occurrence until a year later. Then, on October 3, 1893, the first annual meeting of the Mother Church was held in Chickering Hall. The clerk announced in his report that "Since the meeting in which the church was formed, there have been held seven special and four quarterly meetings. It is in the records of those meetings that the history of the church is contained, but its doings could not be profitably set forth in a report of this kind."
This was the first open official meeting. Up to this time few Christian Scientists knew that a meeting for the selection of church officers had been held in the fall of 1892, but supposed that there was still no formal organisation of the body other than the "voluntary association" which Mrs. Eddy had advocated as a means to spiritual grace, and under which the Massachusetts law allowed the trustees to receive funds.
Boston Christian Scientists had supposed that Mrs. Eddy did not wish to organise her new church under the old charter because, as she had stated, she felt that material organisation was a hindrance to spiritual growth. But when her new church began its operations, they were confronted by a solid formal organisation which had been effected without the knowledge or consent of the church body as a whole. In addition to the usual church officers, Mrs. Eddy had chosen twelve charter members, whose duty it was to ballot upon every candidate for admission to the church and these twelve were the only persons permitted to vote upon such candidates. All the original members, some of whom had been identified with the church for twelve years, were considered as "candidates" for admission to the new church, and were balloted upon by the twelve just as were the new applicants. In this way Mrs. Eddy was enabled carefully to select the personnel of her new church, and to keep out of it such members of the old organisation as had not been agreeable to her. Every candidate for admission to the Mother Church is still balloted upon in this way.
The Boston church, built by the contributions of Christian Scientists throughout the country, had now lost its local character. With a membership of 1,502 drawn almost entirely from the branch churches, it was now the head of all the churches in the field, and at the head of the Boston church was Mrs. Eddy, installed under the title of "Pastor Emeritus," and governing through a subservient Board of Directors. No more was heard now concerning the spiritual disadvantages of organisation. Every one realised that in unity under Mrs. Eddy, and in obedience, lay the road of progress. The old watchword, "Mrs. Eddy and God make a majority," was revived.
"What," asked the Rev. D. A. Easton, pastor of the Mother Church, in his Easter sermon, 1893, "what does membership in the Mother Church mean? It signifies obedience. Mrs. Eddy has invited Scientists everywhere to unite with the Mother Church. To obey cheerfully and loyally marks a growth in Science.
| " | Theirs not to reason why, |
| Theirs but to do and die." |
"Brethren," wrote Dr. Foster Eddy in the Journal, "this is an epoch in the history of Christian Science. The year has been a marked one to us. The chaff has been separated from the wheat in a most marvellous manner." "We have come," he told Christian Scientists at the first annual meeting, "to the time when all should listen to the voice of Love, and hearing it, we should follow implicitly whether we understand or not, and the way will be made plain."
"Experience, and above all, obedience, are the tests of growth and understanding in Science," Mrs. Eddy wrote to her students through the Journal.
Members of all the Christian Science churches in the field began to apply for admission to the Mother Church; it was an expression of zeal and loyalty which all earnest believers were eager to make. Mrs. Eddy's direct personal control of the Boston church soon meant the direct personal control of a membership reaching from Maine to California.
The Boston congregation, which had been meeting in public halls for fifteen years, was at last to have a home, and the building of the Mother Church was about to begin. It was to be a memorial, as Mrs. Eddy said, "for her through whom was revealed to you God's all-power, all-presence, and all-science." An inscription across the front of the building was to proclaim, as it does to-day, the name of Mrs. Eddy and the title of her book.[6]
The financial distress of 1894 caused a temporary check in the growth of the building fund, and, to give the work a fresh impetus, Mrs. Eddy made a personal appeal to fifty prominent Christian Scientists, asking them to contribute $1,000 each. Her request was instantly complied with. On May 21, 1894, the corner-stone of the Mother Church was laid.
During the eighteen months that the Mother Church was building, its membership, recruited from the churches in the field, continued to increase. At the second annual business meeting, held in Copley Hall, October 2, 1894, the clerk reported a total membership of 2,978—1,476 having been admitted during the year.
The original Mother Church[7] is a solidly built structure of gray granite, with a seating capacity of 1,100. In its equipment it is very like any other modern church of its size. Its one unique feature is the "Mother Room," since 1903 called the "room of our Pastor Emeritus." This room, consecrated to Mrs. Eddy's personal use, is finished in rare woods, marble, and onyx, and contains a superfluity of white-and-gold furniture. In the alcove are a stationary wash-stand and a folding-bed—in which Mrs. Eddy has slept once. All the plumbing in this alcove is gold plated. A stained-glass window represents Mrs. Eddy seated at her table in the old skylight room at Lynn, engaged in searching the Scriptures; through the open skylight shines the star of Bethlehem, enveloping her in its rays. Before this window hangs the Athenian lamp which was formerly kept burning night and day.
This room was fitted up for Mrs. Eddy by the children of Christian Scientists, who were organised into a society called the "Busy Bees" and who maintained a fund for the purpose of furnishing and caring for the Mother Room. After the fittings of the room had been paid for, the children wished to continue to express their affection for Mrs. Eddy, and their offerings were used to keep the room supplied with fresh flowers and to maintain the Athenian lamp. Mrs. Eddy showed her appreciation by dedicating to the "Busy Bees" her next book, Pulpit and Press, a thin volume made up of newspaper articles upon the Mother Church and interviews with Mrs. Eddy. This book sold at $1.06 a copy, but Mrs. Eddy announced that each of the 2,600 children who had contributed to her room should have one copy each at half price, fifty cents, postage extra. By this means the author secured an additional sale of 2,600 books, and the children had the advantage of the reduction in price. With the possible exception of the dedication there is certainly very little in this book of press clippings to tempt a youthful reader.
Dedicatory services were held in the Mother Church, January 6, 1895. Four times the service was repeated to audiences that filled the assembly-room, and an address from Mrs. Eddy was read. When her little congregation used to meet in Hawthorne Hall, Mrs. Eddy had usually been on hand to remind them that the gates of hell should not prevail against her; but at the dedication of her memorial church, with its membership of nearly three thousand, she was not present. Her absence must be considered as an indication of her failing strength. Afterward, indeed, she upon two occasions spoke from the pulpit of her new church, but the days on which she could be sure of herself were fewer than they used to be.
From this time on Mrs. Eddy was a name rather than a person in Boston. Her presence there was no longer necessary to her best interests. In obtaining absolute personal control of the Mother Church, with its national membership, she had ended her long struggle for possession. Before the reorganisation of the Mother Church, Mrs. Eddy had still to bring questions of church government before the church body; she had to conciliate, to persuade, to make concessions, and sometimes to explain and justify her own conduct. In 1888 her seceding students had even considered a plan to expel Mrs. Eddy from her own church, and only by constant exertion had she kept the organisation under her control. But from the time the Boston church was reorganised, Mrs. Eddy's power over it was absolute. She was the church. She wrote its bylaws, appointed its officers, selected its membership, and virtually owned the church property. Its doctrines were her books—the church was committed to teach as the everlasting truth what she had written and whatever she might write in the future. Mrs. Eddy was never again called upon to explain or to modify her commands, and never again was there dissension or division in her church. She had completely conquered her spiritual kingdom. She had now but to go on revealing the alleged will of God, and her church had but to go on obeying her.
- ↑ Mrs. Eddy's contradictory statement means that the confusion was not real because all is God and discord has no part in God. A "tempest" was produced In "belief" but not in reality. The sentence is peculiarly illustrative of her philosophy. One is (but is not) ill, exhausted, melancholy, etc., etc.
- ↑ Mesmerism.
- ↑
NOTICE.
SEVEN FIXED RULES.
1. I shall not be consulted verbally, or through letters, as to whose advertisement shall or shall not appear in the Christian Science Journal.
2. I shall not be consulted verbally, or through letters, as to the matter that should be published in the Journal and Christian Science Series.
3. I shall not be consulted verbally, or through letters, on marriage, divorce, or family affairs of any kind.
4. I shall not be consulted verbally, or through letters, on the choice of pastors for churches.
5. I shall not be consulted verbally, or through letters, on disaffections, if there should be any between the students of Christian Scientists.
6. I shall not be consulted verbally, or through letters, on who shall be admitted as members, or dropped from the membership of the Christian Science Churches or Associations.
7. I am not to be consulted verbally, or through letters, on disease and the treatment of the sick; but I shall love all mankind—and work for their welfare.
Mary B. G. Eddy.
- ↑ The exact steps of this transaction were as follows:
In 1886 the Boston church, through its treasurer, William H. Bradley, had purchased from Nathan Matthews the plot of ground upon which the Christian Science church now stands, paying down $2,000 and assuming a mortgage for $8,763.50. By December, 1888, the church had paid upon this land, in all, $5,800, reducing the mortgage to $4,963.50. At this date Mrs. Eddy, through her lawyer, Baxter B. Perry, later disbarred, secured an assignment of the mortgage from Mr. Matthews for exactly the sum due upon the land. Although this assignment occurred December 6, 1888, it was not recorded until August 6, 1889, this date being also the date of the recording of Mrs. Eddy's foreclosure of the mortgage. The Suffolk County Register of Deeds shows that Baxter E. Perry sold the Falmouth Street lot at a mortgage foreclosure sale held on August 3, 1889, to his brother and law partner, George H. Perry, for the sum of $5,000. George H. Perry then deeded the land to Ira O. Knapp, for the sum of $5,100, the additional $100 apparently forming Mr. Perry's fee for his part in the transaction.
- ↑ In Section 1, Chapter 39, of the Massachusetts Public Statutes, it is provided that:
"The deacons, church wardens, or other similar officers of Church or religious societies, and the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal churches appointed according to the discipline and usages thereof, shall, if citizens of this Commonwealth, be deemed bodies corporate for the purpose of taking and holding In succession all grants and donations, whether of real or personal estate, made either to them or their successors, or to their respective churches, or to the poor of their churches."
- ↑ This Inscription reads:
"The First Church of Christ, Scientist, erected Anno Domini, 1894. A testimonial to our beloved teacher, the Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, discoverer and founder of Christian Science; author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures; president of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, and the first pastor of this denomination."
- ↑ The original Mother Church now forms the front of an entirely new building. dedicated in 1906. The old church is still called the Mother Church, while the new structure, although many times larger than the old, is called the Annex.