Page:Pulpit and Press.djvu/43



Completion of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston — “Our Prayer in Stone” — Description of the Most Unique Structure in Any City — A Beautiful Temple and Its Furnishings — Mrs. Eddy's Work and Her Influence Boston, Mass., December 28. — Special Correspondence, — The “great awakening” of the time of Jonathan Edwards has been paralleled during the last decade by a wave of idealism that has swept over the country, manifesting itself under several different aspects and under various names, but each having the common identity of spiritual demand. This movement, under the guise of Christian Science, and ingenuously calling out a closer inquiry into Oriental philosophy, prefigures itself to us as one of the most potent factors in the social evolution of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. History shows the curious fact that the closing years of every century are years of more intense life, manifested in unrest or in aspiration, and scholars of special research, like Prof. Max Muller, assert that the end of a cycle, as is the latter part of the present century, is marked by peculiar intimations of man's immortal life.