Article February 18, 1911 Issue

The life of Mary Baker Eddy has come to a close

Rock Island (Ill.) Union

The life of Mary Baker Eddy has come to a close. She was no ordinary person. Whatever may be your belief, or whether you make any religious professions or not, you must admit that she has accomplished great things, and her accomplishments have resulted in good. The facts—the proof of these two propositions—are apparent to all. Christian Science was "discovered" by her. She was its fountainhead, and today, thirty-one years after the first church was chartered, there are over a million adherents. That is proof sufficient of the first statement. The hundreds of men and women that are known by you, who have become better, morally and physically, after becoming adherents of that faith, is ample proof of the second proposition.

This world is filled with people of different religious beliefs and sentiments. With few exceptions the belief of one sect, church, or denomination, does not encroach upon that of another. Religious tolerance of the beliefs of others has come to be accepted by every form of worship. Indeed, the churches are even tolerant of those who make no professions of faith at all. And every form of religious organization of the present day has for one of its tenets the bettering of the condition, morally and socially, of its people.

After her discovery, Mrs. Eddy permitted nothing to stand in the way of its promulgation. Her life was given ever to it. Her friendships were with those who became its converts and who adhered to its doctrines. She guarded and protected it during the struggling years when its adherents were few and those few needs must tread in the "straight and narrow way" to prevent its being confounded with mesmerism and other so-called "fallacies," which would have been fatal to it. Her sole purpose was to keep it uncontaminated by anything else, and to build it strictly upon the basis she had made plain in her book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Naturally, as it developed and as its growth became phenomenal, there were those who sought to profit, personally, by the organization, and this she would not tolerate. That faith which was to bring, in her belief, relief to suffering and a salvation to the souls of many, must not be prostituted. She herself had sacrificed all for it, and others must at least refrain from diverting it from its good offices.

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Mrs. Eddy was a wonderful woman