Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/301



HE development of machinations usually has the result of clearing the atmosphere. The hostile plot related in the previous chapter operated in this manner. Its workings were like a chemical precipitation. Mrs. Eddy’s spiritual genius was resisting the encroachments of the little group around her and preparing to deal with the larger needs of a great spiritual movement.

She foresaw the future prophetically, and that the hour had struck for a new movement in the history of human rationalism. In less than twenty-five years the century would close, and in the opening of the twentieth century a new era of mental life awaited humanity. Mrs. Eddy realized this; she desired to prepare for it, to have in readiness processes of amelioration for the miseries of an age more or less in the bondage of fear, an operative organization by which humanity might lay hold of the new hope which should thrill it. Christian Science must go forward, it must be presented to the world beyond this little city of Lynn, it must be organized.

To trace in any great movement, as Lecky the historian of rationalism has pointed out, the part which belongs to the individual and the part which belongs to general causes is an extremely delicate