Article December 17, 1910 Issue

It is peculiarly human to venerate and sanctify our ancestors...

The Woman's National Daily

It is peculiarly human to venerate and sanctify our ancestors and stone those who seek to better life while we are living it. But a comparatively few years ago a man died whose life had been spent in causing the world to swim in blood and misery. The world trembled and gasped in relief as he died, and then proceeded to glorify him as it had groveled at his feet while he lived. He had emptied a million homes of their breadwinners, caused more widespread misery and distress than any man who ever lived, and built a world empire which crumbled before he was gone; yet when Napoleon Bonaparte died all the world bowed its head in tribute to the beating he had given it.

Two nights ago a frail little old gentlewoman died who, too, had built an empire, but not of blood and misery. A million hearts silently mourned her for a moment, but in accordance with her own teachings it was only a tribute of love and loyalty for the brighter, better view-point of their own life and death she had taught them. There was no pomp; but a few brief words following the usual services, and the announcement that a loved and revered Leader had exchanged a mortal form for an immortal one. She had shed no blood, destroyed no homes, shackled no nation, but what she had done was to take away a little human misery and substitute a happier, better attitude toward life. She taught nothing new, for what she taught was but a different view of the first thing—the beginning and the end. We may differ from that view, but none even now can doubt but that she was one of the most remarkable souls that has appeared in human guise.

We cannot know how much of such rare human lives is abnormal genius and how much a message and a lesson put in understandable, humanly tangible form by divine Love. Certainly, whether we agree with teachings or reject them, the lesson is the same and the world grows better with each such lesson. We stoned her for a time, as usual, and perhaps she will be soon forgotten, or perhaps future generations will cloak her with divinity. At any rate, the world owes that frail woman a greater debt than it owed the world-conqueror, and if her works be of life they will live; and if not, they will die, but the fact that even a single life has been made better will not be lost in the world's melting-pot from which through countless centuries a great purpose, beyond our human understanding, is being worked out. Some time in the future, perhaps, the race will stone the bloody monster who seeks to make it swim in blood to gratify his own lust, and honor the pure of heart, who seeks to brighten it; but we are not yet quite that civilized. I have never read Mrs. Eddy's book or teachings, but I have seen some results of them which compelled both honor and respect, and I believe that all are agreed that a reasonable way of judging a tree is by its fruit. Nothing could have been finer than the way of her going and its reception by the multitude whose Leader and loved teacher she has been.

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