is the great daily that is so fair and so just in its
attitude toward all questions."
The increasing demands of the public on Mrs. Eddy have been, it may be,
one factor in her removal to Concord, N.H., where she has a beautiful
residence, called Pleasant View. Her health is excellent, and although
her hair is white, she retains in a great degree her energy and power;
she takes a daily walk and drives in the afternoon. She personally
attends to a vast correspondence; superintends the church in Boston, and
is engaged on further writings on Christian Science. In every sense she
is the recognized head of the Christian Science Church. At the same time
it is her most earnest aim to eliminate the element of personality from
the faith. "On this point, Mrs. Eddy feels very strongly," said a
gentleman to me on Christmas eve, as I sat in the beautiful drawing
room, where Judge and Mrs. Hanna, Miss Elsie Lincoln, the soprano for
the choir of the new church, and one or two other friends were gathered.
"Mother feels very strongly," he continued, "the danger and the
misfortune of a church depending on any one personality. It is difficult
not to centre too closely around a highly gifted personality."
THE FIRST ASSOCIATION.
The first Christian Scientist Association was organized on July 4, 1876,
by seven persons, including Mrs. Eddy. In April, 1879, the church was
founded with twenty-six members, and its charter obtained the following
June. Mrs. Eddy had preached in other parishes for five years before
being ordained in this church, which ceremony took place in 1881.
The first edition of Mrs. Eddy's book, SCIENCE AND HEALTH, was issued in
1875. During these succeeding twenty years it has been greatly revised
and enlarged, and it is now in its ninety-first edition. It consists of
fourteen chapters, whose titles are as follows: "Science, Theology,
Medicine," "Physiology," "Footsteps of Truth," "Creation," "Science of
Being," "Christian Science and Spiritualism," "Marriage," "Animal
Magnetism," "Some Objections Answered," "Prayer," "Atonement and
Eucharist," "Christian Science Practice," "Teaching Christian Science,"
"Recapitulation." Key to the Scriptures, Genesis, Apocalypse, and
Glossary.
The Christian Scientists do not accept the belief we call spiritualism.
They believe those who have passed the change of death are in so
entirely different a plane of consciousness that between the embodied
and disembodied there is no po
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