Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/263

Rh philosophic students of history declare that no such period of freedom and pure democracy was ever experienced in the world’s history as was enjoyed in the United States from about 1870 to 1880. What was to come after in the despotism of trusts and the menace of great wealth in the hands of a few was not yet dreamed of. America felt young, happy, and virtuous. A revived industrialism, following the disastrous waste of the Civil War, made the consciouness of the people buoyant. No one thought of criticizing democracy. Only that little group of transcendentalists in New England, known as the Brook Farm colony, had ever ventured to raise the warning cry of the danger of a mechanical society plunging ahead to materialism. And the seeds of that social experiment had not yielded its harvest of socialism.

But Mary Baker had the nature of a true seer. No more than the great Way-shower of Palestine would she have dreamed of leading a few followers into a community to make a stand against the trend of the world. Like Him, she knew the truth must be sown broadcast. But the seed must first be grown in the little garden plot among her earliest students. Renan has said that Jesus could not possibly have had a knowledge of Plato or of Buddha or of Zoroaster; yet He was aware, by the subtle sympathy of humanity, of the elements of the great philosophic speculations of His age. It is possible that even a scholar like Renan may be mistaken in his judgment as to how the seer of God becomes possessed of the needs of his time. Mary Baker