er place any Reader, at home or
abroad, by a mere letter of dismissal, over her signature, and without
furnishing any reason for it, to either the congregation or the Reader.

Thus she has as absolute control over all Branch Churches as she has
over the Supreme Church. This power exceeds the Pope's.

In simple truth, she is the only absolute sovereign in all Christendom.
The authority of the other sovereigns has limits, hers has none, none
whatever. And her yoke does not fret, does not offend. Many of the
subjects of the other monarchs feel their yoke, and are restive under
it; their loyalty is insincere. It is not so with this one's human
property; their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere, enthusiastic.
The sentiment which they feel for her is one which goes out in sheer
perfection to no other occupant of a throne; for it is love, pure from
doubt, envy, exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has no
spot--that form of love, strong, great, uplifting, limitless, whose vast
proportions are compassable by no word but one, the prodigious word,
Worship. And it is not as a human being that her subjects worship her,
but as a supernatural one, a divine one, one who has comradeship with
God, and speaks by His voice.

Mrs. Eddy has herself created all these personal grandeurs and
autocracies--with others which I have not (in this article) mentioned.
They place her upon an Alpine solitude and supremacy of power and
spectacular show not hitherto attained by any other self-seeking
enslaver disguised in the Christian name, and they persuade me that,
although she may regard "self-deification as blasphemous," she is as
fond of it as I am of pie.

She knows about "Our Mother's Room" in the Supreme Church in
Boston--above referred to--for she has been in it. In a recently
published North American Review article, I quoted a lady as saying Mrs.
Eddy's portrait could be seen there in a shrine, lit by always-burning
lights, and that C.S. disciples came and worshiped it. That remark hurt
the feelings of more than one Scientist. They said it was not true, and
asked me to correct it. I comply with pleasure. Whether the portrait was
there four years ago or not, it is not there now, for I have
inquired. The only object in the shrine now, and lit by electrics--and
worshiped--is an oil-portrait of the horse-hair chair Mrs. Eddy used
to sit in when she was writing Science and Health! It seems to me that
adulation has struck bottom, here.