d, to build an annex.
In the late spring of 1906 the enormous addition to the Mother
Church--the "excelsior extension," as Mrs. Eddy calls it--was
completed, and it was dedicated at the annual communion, June 10, of
that year. The original building was in the form of a cross, so Mrs.
Eddy had the new addition built with a dome to represent a crown--a
combination which is happier in its symbolism than in its
architectural results. The auditorium is capable of holding five
thousand people; the walls are decorated with texts signed "Jesus, the
Christ" and "Mary Baker G. Eddy"--these names standing side by side.
According to the belief of Mrs. Eddy's followers, every signal victory
of Christian Science is apt to beget "chemicalization"; that is, it
stirs up "error" and "mortal mind"--which terms include everything
that is hostile to Christian Science--and makes them ugly and
revengeful. The forces of evil--that curious, non-existent evil
which, in spite of its nihility, makes Mrs. Eddy so much trouble--were
naturally aroused by the dedication of the great church building in
1906, and within a year Mrs. Eddy's son brought a suit in equity which
caused her annoyance and anxiety.
_Suit Brought by Mrs. Eddy's Son_
Among the mistakes of Mrs. Eddy's early life must certainly be
accounted her indifference to her only child, George Washington
Glover. Mrs. Eddy's first husband died six months after their
marriage, and the son was not born until three months after his
father's death--a circumstance which, it would seem, might have
peculiarly endeared him to his mother. When he was a baby, living with
Mrs. Glover in his aunt's house, his mother's indifference to him was
such as to cause comment in her family and indignation on the part of
her father, Mark Baker. The symptoms of serious nervous disorder so
conspicuous in Mrs. Eddy's young womanhood--the exaggerated hysteria,
the anaesthesia, the mania for being rocked and swung--are sometimes
accompanied by a lack of maternal feeling, and the absence of it in
Mrs. Eddy must be considered, like her lack of the sense of smell, a
defect of constitution rather than a vice of character.
Mrs. Eddy has stated that she sent her child away because her second
husband, Dr. Patterson, would not permit her to keep George with her.
But although Mrs. Eddy was not married to Dr. Patterson until 1853, in
1851 she sent the child to live with Mrs. Russell Cheney, a woman who
had attended Mrs
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