inner experiences which alone are significant.

Mary Baker was the daughter of Mark and Abigail (Ambrose) Baker, and was born in Concord, N.H., somewhere in the early decade of 1820-'30. At the time I met her she must have been some sixty years of age, yet she had the coloring and the elastic bearing of a woman of thirty, and this, she told me, was due to the principles of Christian Science. On her father's side Mrs. Eddy came from Scotch and English ancestry, and Hannah Moore was a relative of her grandmother. Deacon Ambrose, her maternal grandfather, was known as a "godly man," and her mother was a religious enthusiast, a saintly and consecrated character. One of her brothers, Albert Baker, graduated at Dartmouth and achieved eminence as a lawyer.

MRS. EDDY AS A CHILD.

As a child Mary Baker saw visions and dreamed dreams. When eight years of age she began, like Jeanne d'Arc, to hear "voices," and for a year she heard her name called distinctly, and would often run to her mother questioning if she were wanted. One night the mother related to her the story of Samuel, and bade her, if she heard the voice again to reply as he did: "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." The call came, but the little maid was afraid and did not reply. This caused her tears of remorse and she prayed for forgiveness, and promised to reply if the call came again. It came, and she answered as her mother had bidden her, and after that it ceased.

These experiences, of which Catholic biographies are full, and which history not unfrequently emphasizes, certainly offer food for meditation. Theodore Parker related that when he was a lad at work in a field one day on his father's farm at Lexington, an old man with a snowy beard suddenly appeared at his side, and walked with him as he worked, giving him high counsel and serious thought. All inquiry in the neighborhood as to whence the stranger came or whither he went was fruitless; no one else had seen him, and Mr. Parker always believed, so a friend has told me, that his visitor was a spiritual form from another world. It is certainly true that many and many persons, whose life has been destined to more than ordinary achievement, have had experiences of voices or visions in their early youth.

At an early age Miss Baker was married to Colonel Glover, of Charleston, S.C., who lived only a year. She returned to her father's home—in 1844—and from that time until 1866 no special record is to be made.

In 1866, while living in Lynn, Mass., Mrs. Eddy (then Mrs. Glover) met with a severe accident and her case was pronounced hopeless by the physicians. There came a Sunday morning when her pastor came to bid her good-by before proceeding to his morning service as there was no probability that she would be alive at its close. During this time she suddenly became aware of a divine illumination and ministration. She requested those with her to withdraw, and reluctantly they did so, believing her delirious. Soon, to their bewilderment and fright, she walked into the adjoining room, "and they thought I had died, and that it was my apparition," she said.

THE PRINCIPLE OF DIVINE HEALING.

From that hour dated her conviction of the principle of divine healing, and that it is as true to-day as it was in the days when Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth. "I felt that the divine spirit had wrought a miracle," she said, in reference to this experience. "How, I could not tell, but later I found it to be in perfect scientific accord with the divine law." From 1866-'69, Mrs. Eddy withdrew from the world to meditate, to pray, to search the Scriptures.

"During this time," she said, in reply to my questions, "the Bible was my only text-book. It answered my questions as to the process by which I was restored to health; it came to me with a new meaning, and suddenly I apprehended the spiritual meaning of the teaching of Jesus and the principle and the law involved in spiritual science and metaphysical healing—in a word—Christian science."

Mrs. Eddy came to perceive that Christ's healing was not miraculous, but was simply a natural fulfilment of divine law—a law as operative in the world to-day as it was nineteen hundred years ago. "Divine science is begotten of spirituality," she says, "since only the 'pure in heart' can see God."

In writing of this experience, Mrs. Eddy has said:

I had learned that thought must be spiritualized in order to apprehend Spirit. It must become honest unselfish, and pure, in order to have the least understanding of God in Divine Science. The first must become last. Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to a perception of and dependence on spiritual things. For spirit to be supreme in demonstration, it must be supreme in our affections, and we must be clad with divine power. I had learned that mind reconstructed the body and that nothing else could. All science is a revelation.

Through homeopathy, too, Mrs. Eddy became convinced of the principle of mind healing, discovering that the more attenuated the drug, the more potent was its effects.

In 1877 Mrs. Glover married Dr. Asa Gilbert Eddy, of Londonderry, Vermont, a physician who had come into sympathy with her own views, and who was the first to place "Christian Scientist," on the sign at his door. Dr. Eddy died in 1882, a year after her founding of the "Metaphysical College" in Boston, in which he taught.

The work in the Metaphysical College lasted nine years, and it was closed (in 1889) in the very zenith of its prosperity as Mrs. Eddy felt it essential to the deeper foundation of her religious work to retire from active contact with the world. To this college came hundreds and hundreds of students, from Europe as well as this country. I was present at the class lectures now and then by Mrs. Eddy's kind invitation, and such earnestness of attention as was given to her morning talks by the men and women present I never saw equalled.

MRS. EDDY'S PERSONALITY.

On the evening that I first met Mrs. Eddy by her hospitable courtesy, I went to her peculiarly fatigued. I came away in a state of exhilaration and energy that made me feel I could have walked any conceivable distance. I have met Mrs. Eddy many times since then, and always with this experience repeated.

Several years ago Mrs. Eddy removed from Columbus to Commonwealth avenue, where, just beyond Massachusetts avenue, at the entrance to the Back Bay Park, she bought one of the most beautiful residences in Boston. The interior is one of the utmost taste and luxury, and the house is now occupied by Judge and Mrs. Hanna, who are the editors of the Christian Science Journal, a monthly publication, and to whose courtesy I am much indebted for some of the data of this paper. "It is a pleasure to give any information for The Inter-Ocean," remarked Mrs. Hanna, "for it is the great daily that is so fair and so just in its attitude toward all questions."

The increasing demands of the public on Mrs. Eddy have been, it may be, one factor in her removal to Concord, N.H., where she has a beautiful residence, called Pleasant View. Her health is excellent, and although her hair is white, she retains in a great degree her energy and power; she takes a daily walk and drives in the afternoon. She personally attends to a vast correspondence; superintends the church in Boston, and is engaged on further writings on Christian Science. In every sense she is the recognized head of the Christian Science Church. At the same time it is her most earnest aim to eliminate the element of personality from the faith. "On this point, Mrs. Eddy feels very strongly," said a gentleman