ent; it recognizes Jesus as the teacher and guide to
salvation; the forgiveness of sin by God, and affirms the power of truth
over error, and the need of living faith at the moment to realize the
possibilities of the divine life. The entire membership of Christian
Scientists throughout the world now exceeds 200,000 people. The church
in Boston was organized by Mrs. Eddy, and the first meeting held on
April 19, 1879. It opened with twenty-six members, and within fifteen
years it has grown to its present impressive proportions, and has now
its own magnificent church building, costing over $200,000, and entirely
paid for when its consecration service on January 6 shall be celebrated.
This is certainly a very remarkable retrospect.

Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this denomination and discoverer of
Christian Science, as they term her work in affirming the present
application of the principles asserted by Jesus, is a most interesting
personality. At the risk of colloquialism, I am tempted to "begin at the
beginning" of my own knowledge of Mrs. Eddy, and take, as the point of
departure, my first meeting with her and the subsequent development of
some degree of familiarity with the work of her life which that meeting
inaugurated for me.

MRS. EDDY.

It was during some year in the early '80's that I became aware--from
that close contact with public feeling resulting from editorial work in
daily journalism--that the Boston atmosphere was largely thrilled and
pervaded by a new and increasing interest in the dominance of mind over
matter, and that the central figure in all this agitation was Mrs. Eddy.
To a note which I wrote her, begging the favor of an interview for press
use, she most kindly replied, naming an evening on which she would
receive me. At the hour named I rang the bell at a spacious house on
Columbus avenue, and I was hardly more than seated before Mrs. Eddy
entered the room. She impressed me as singularly graceful and winning in
bearing and manner, and with great claim to personal beauty. Her figure
was tall, slender, and as flexible in movement as that of a Delsarte
disciple; her face, framed in dark hair and lighted by luminous blue
eyes, had the transparency and rose-flush of tint so often seen in New
England, and she was magnetic, earnest, impassioned. No photographs can
do the least justice to Mrs. Eddy, as her beautiful complexion and
changeful expression cannot thus be reproduced. At once one woul