Stately Home for Believers in Gospel Healing.--A Woman of Wealth Who
Devotes All to Her Church Work.
Christian Science has shown its power over its students, as they are
called, by building a church by voluntary contribution, the first of its
kind, a church which will be dedicated to-day, with a quarter of a
million dollars expended and free of debt.
The money has flowed in from all parts of the United States and Canada
without any special appeal, and it kept coming until the custodian of
funds cried "enough" and refused to accept any further checks by mail or
otherwise. Men, women, and children lent a helping hand, some giving a
mite and some substantial sums. Sacrifices were made in many an instance
which will never be known in this world.
Christian Scientists not only say that they can effect cures of disease
and erect churches, but add that they can get their buildings finished
on time even when the feat seems impossible to mortal senses. Read the
following from a publication of the new denomination:
One of the grandest and most helpful features of
this glorious consummation is this: that one month
before the close of the year every evidence of
material sense declared that the church's completion
within the year 1894 transcended human possibility.
The predictions of workman and onlooker alike were
that it could not be completed before April or May
of 1895.
Much was the ridicule heaped upon the hopeful, trustful ones, who
declared and repeatedly asseverated to the contrary. This is indeed,
then, a scientific demonstration. It has proved, in most striking
manner, the oft-repeated declarations of our text-books, that the
evidence of the mortal senses is unreliable.
A week ago Judge Hanna withdrew from the pastorate of the church, saying
he gladly laid down his responsibilities to be succeeded by the grandest
of ministers--the Bible and "SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE
SCRIPTURES." This action it appears, was the result of rules made by
Mrs. Eddy. The sermons hereafter will consist of passages read from the
two books by readers, who will be elected each year by the congregation.
A story has been abroad that Judge Hanna was so eloquent and magnetic
that he was attracting listeners who came to hear him preach rather than
in search of the truth as taught. Consequently the new rules were
formulated.
But at Christian Science headquarters this is denied; Mrs. Eddy says the
words of the judge speak to the point, and that no such inference is to
be drawn therefrom.
In Mrs. Eddy's personal reminiscences, which are published under the
title of "Retrospection and Introspection," much is told of herself in
detail that can only be touched upon in this brief sketch.
Aristocratic to the backbone, Mrs. Eddy takes delight in going back to
the ancestral tree and in tracing those branches which are identified
with good and great names both in Scotland and England.
Her family came to this country not long before the Revolution. Among
the many souvenirs that Mrs. Eddy remembers as belonging to her
grandparents was a heavy sword, encased in a brass scabbard, upon which
had been inscribed the name of the kinsman upon whom the sword had been
bestowed by Sir William Wallace of mighty Scottish fame.
Mrs. Eddy applied herself, like other girls, to her studies, though
perhaps with an unusual zest, delighting in philosophy, logic, and moral
science, as well as looking into the ancient languages, Hebrew, Greek,
and Latin.
Her last marriage was in the spring of 1877, when, at Lynn, Mass., she
became the wife of Asa Gilbert Eddy. He was the first organizer of a
Christian Science Sunday-School, of which he was the superintendent, and
later he attracted the attention of many clergymen of other denominations
by his able lectures upon scriptural topics. He died in 1882.
Mrs. Eddy is known to her circle of pupils and admirers as the editor
and publisher of the first official organ of this sect. It was called
the _Journal of Christian Science_, and has had great circulation with
the members of this fast-increasing faith.
In recounting her experiences as the pioneer of Christian Science, she
states that she sought knowledge concerning the physical side in this
research through the different schools of allopathy, homeopathy, and so
forth, without receiving any real satisfaction. No ancient or modern
philosophy gave her any distinct statement of the science of mind
healing. She claims that no human reason has been equal to the question.
And she also defines carefully the difference in the theories between
faith cure and Christian Science, dwelling particularly upon the terms
belief and understanding, which are the key words respectively used in
the definitions of these two healing arts.
Besides her Boston home, Mrs. Eddy has a delightful country home one
mile from the state house of New Hampshire's quiet capital, an easy
driving distance for her when she wishes to catch a glimpse of the
world. But for the most part she lives very much retired, driving rather
into the country, which is so picturesque all about Concord and its
surrounding villages.
The big house, so delightfully remodeled and modernized from a primitive
homestead, that nothing is left excepting the angles and pitch of the
roof, is remarkably well placed upon a terrace that slopes behind the
buildings, while they themselves are in the midst of green stretches of
lawns, dotted with beds of flowering shrubs, with here and there a
fountain or summer-house.
Mrs. Eddy took the writer straight to her beloved "lookout"--a broad
piazza on the south side of the second story of the house, where she can
sit in her swinging chair, revelling in the lights and shades of spring
and summer greenness. Or, as just then, in the gorgeous October coloring
of the whole landscape that lies below, across the farm, which stretches
on through an intervale of beautiful meadows and pastures to the woods
that skirt the valley of the little truant river, as it wanders
eastward.
It pleased her to point out her own birthplace. Straight as the crow
flies, from her piazza, does it lie on the brow of Bow hill, and then
she paused and reminded the reporter that Congressman Baker from New
Hampshire, her cousin, was born and bred in that same neighborhood. The
photograph of Hon. Hoke Smith, another distinguished relative, adorned
the mantel.
Then my eye caught her family coat of arms and the diploma given her by
the Society of the Daughters of the Revolution.
The natural and lawful pride that comes with a tincture of blue and
brave blood, is perhaps one of her characteristics, as is many another
well born woman's. She had a long list of worthy ancestors in colonial
and revolutionary days, and the McNeils, and General Knox, figure
largely in her genealogy, as well as the hero who killed the ill-starred
Paugus.
This big, sunny room which Mrs. Eddy calls her den--or sometimes
"mother's room," when speaking of her many followers who consider her
their spiritual leader--has the air of hospitality that marks its
hostess herself. Mrs. Eddy has hung its walls with reproductions of some
of Europe's masterpieces, a few of which had been the gifts of her
loving pupils.
Looking down from the windows upon the tree-tops on the lower terrace,
the reporter exclaimed: "You have lived here only four years, and yet
from a barren waste of most unpromising ground has come forth all this
beauty!"
"Four years!" she ejaculated; "two and a half, only two and a half
years." Then, touching my sleeve and pointing, she continued: "Look at
those big elms! I had them brought here in warm weather, almost as big
as they are now, and not one died."
Mrs. Eddy talked earnestly of her friendships.... She told something
of her domestic arrangements, of how she had long wished to get away
from her busy career in Boston, and return to her native granite hills,
there to build a substantial home that should do honor to that precinct
of Concord.
She chose the stubbly, old farm on the road from Concord within one mile
of the "Eton of America," St. Paul's school. Once bought, the will of
the woman set at work, and to-day a strikingly well kept estate is the
first impression given to the visitor as he approaches Pleasant View.
She employs a number of men to keep the grounds and farm in perfect
order, and it was pleasing to learn that this rich woman is using her
money to promote the welfare of industrious workmen in whom she takes a
vital interest.
Mrs. Eddy believes that "the laborer is worthy of his hire," and,
moreover, that he deserves to have a home and family of his own. Indeed,
one of her motives in buying so large an estate was that she might do
something for the toilers, and thus add her influence toward the
advancement of better home life and citizenship.
(_Boston Transcript_, December 31, 1894.)