It is evident that she made disciples fast, and that
their belief in her and in the authenticity of her
heavenly ambassadorship was not of the lukewarm and
half-way sort, but was profoundly earnest and sincere.
Her book was issued from the press in 1875, it began
its work of convert-making, and within six years she
had successfully launched a new Religion and a new
system of healing, and was teaching them to crowds
of eager students in a College of her own, at prices
so extraordinary that we are almost compelled to accept
her statement (no, her guarded intimation) that the
rates were arranged on high, since a mere human being
unacquainted with commerce and accustomed to think
in pennies could hardly put up such a hand as that
without supernatural help.
From this stage onward—Mrs. Eddy being
what she was—the rest of the development—stages
would follow naturally and inevitably.
But if she had been anybody else, there would have
been a different arrangement of them, with different
results. Being the extraordinary person she
was, she realized her position and its possibilities;
realized the possibilities, and had the daring to
use them for all they were worth.
We have seen what her methods were after she passed
the stage where her divine ambassadorship was granted
its executer in the hearts and minds of her followers;
we have seen how steady and fearless and calculated
and orderly was her march thenceforth from conquest
to conquest; we have seen her strike dead, without
hesitancy, any hostile or questionable force that
rose in her path: first, the horde of pretenders
that sprang up and tried to take her Science and its
market away from her—she crushed them,
she obliterated them; when her own National Christian
Science Association became great in numbers and influence,
and loosely and dangerously garrulous, and began to
expound the doctrines according to its own uninspired
notions, she took up her sponge without a tremor of
fear and wiped that Association out; when she perceived
that the preachers in her pulpits were becoming afflicted
with doctrine-tinkering, she recognized the danger
of it, and did not hesitate nor temporize, but promptly
dismissed the whole of them in a day, and abolished
their office permanently; we have seen that, as fast
as her power grew, she was competent to take the measure
of it, and that as fast as its expansion suggested
to her gradually awakening native ambition a higher
step she took it; and so, by this evolutionary process,
we have seen the gross money-lust relegated to second
place, and the lust of empire and glory rise above
it. A splendid dream; and by force of the qualities
born in her she is making it come true.
These qualities—and the capacities growing
out of them by the nurturing influences of training,
observation, and experience seem to be clearly indicated
by the character of her career and its achievements.
They seem to be:
