Article July 30, 1910 Issue

Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, Founder of Christian Science,...

Troy (N. Y.) Press

Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, Founder of Christian Science, and author of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," enters upon her ninetieth year today, having been born July 16, 1821. Despite all newspaper gossip to the contrary, she is still the active and actual Leader of the great and growing religious movement she originated, no important action being taken by the authorities of the monster Mother Church in Boston (of which all others are branches) without her suggestion or sanction. Mrs. Eddy emphasizes the fact that she will have no individual successor; that her book, with the Bible, must be the sole standard of faith, and the church government must inhere in the official body of the church.

In her early forties Mrs. Eddy was broken down physically but wonderfully bright mentally, and her future seemed dark indeed. Today no woman in the world is better known, and so eminent a critic as Mark Twain, in a work adverse to her faith, declared his conviction that in future centuries her fame would be greater than that of any other person of this age. Myriads of Scientists feel and hope that this prediction will be verified. At any rate, friends and enemies alike know that her success to date is phenomenal. It is a familiar story, which needs not to be recounted here.

This is a birthday editorial, but it strikes a dissonant note. Mrs. Eddy believes that marking the progress of time, celebrating or dwelling upon the anniversaries of people's births, is a foolish habit, and one adapted to facilitate decrepitude—an enfeebling consciousness of old age. In a word, she is convinced that if birthday observances, presents, and special attentions of all kinds were discarded, and as little thought as possible given to the matter, people generally would retain their youth, health, and happiness much longer than they do in the existing order of things. She would make any reference to age or birthdays, excepting where something important required it, unfashionable. Her theory is corroborated conspicuously in her own case.

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