Article November 18, 1911 Issue

An article in your paper on "Freak Religions," in which...

Frederick Dixon—Calcutta, India.

Empire

An article in your paper on "Freak Religions," in which Christian Science is mentioned, has just been brought to my attention. As in it you ask a question which has caused a good deal of interest lately in the press, I think your readers may be glad to learn how Christian Scientists view the matter referred to. The question resolves itself into this, Now that Mrs. Eddy has passed away will Christian Science pass away, too? I may say at once that nobody with any knowledge whatever of the Christian Science movement would have the slightest difficulty in returning an absolute negative. For the last twenty years Mrs. Eddy's days were spent in the seclusion of her house at Concord, from whence she moved to another house on the outskirts of Boston. Here, surrounded by a few helpers, whose devotion to her will some day become historic, she passed her time in entire seclusion, working for the cause of Christian Science. Nobody will ever know her work during those years for the establishment of the cause throughout the world. It constituted one of the most marvelous instances of selfless surrender to divine Principle which humanity has ever seen.

Mrs. Eddy's very method of working, however, withdrew her physical personality from the movement, and her labors were devoted very largely to teaching Christian Scientists that the demonstration of Truth rested on the understanding of Principle and not of person. "What went ye out for to see?'" she asks in a little pamphlet known as "Personal Contagion." "A person or a Principle? Whichever it be determines the right or the wrong of this following." And a little later in the same pamphlet she says, "There was never a religion or philosophy lost to the centuries except by sinking its divine Principle in personality. May all Christian Scientists ponder this fact and give their talents and loving hearts free scope only in the right direction!" It was because Mrs. Eddy builded in this way, on Principle and not on personality, that the Christian Science movement is rolling steadily today across the world, establishing its churches and its meetings whereever it reaches, not on a basis of belief in a person, but on the basis of that understanding, described by Jesus the Christ himself as the knowledge of the truth which would make the world free; and because it is so established its teaching is capable of demonstration in the way he demanded when he said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."

During all the years of Mrs. Eddy's retirement the executive work of the movement was entrusted to those in whose wisdom and understanding of Principle she herself had the highest confidence. They were not, as many foolish people thought, engaged in merely registering her decisions; they were engaged in working out through their own understanding of Principle the problems which came daily to them for their decision. She was always the head of the movement; always there to give her advice when asked; always there to offer the kindest and keenest criticism of what was accomplished. At the same time she was careful not to dwarf the initiative of those who were responsible for the executive work by keeping them in leading-strings. With them it lay to plan, with them it lay to execute, conscious that their work was to understand the Principle she was endeavoring to teach them, and by acting in accordance with that Principle to fulfil, not her demands, but the demands of Truth. The unity of the Christian Science movement, which will prevent its ever being overcome by disruption, is based on a common understanding of divine Principle and not on the following of individual leaders with varying degrees of spiritual perception. In the fact that there is no human leader of the movement the world saw its downfall. It is precisely because Mrs. Eddy so fully understood divine Principle as to leave the movement to the guidance of Truth and not to the guidance of men, that its stability is today assured.

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