Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/314

272 they would more faithfully obey her instructions in appreciation of her Christian leadership.

Thus Mrs. Eddy preserved the organization of her church and she had already laid the foundation for the college of instruction she purposed to establish in Boston. The Massachusetts Metaphysical College was the name she selected for that institution, which she organized in January, 1881, six months before the struggle in her church. She drew up an agreement with six students to teach pathology, ontology, therapeutics, moral science, metaphysics, and their application to the treatment of diseases, and for these purposes the college organization received a charter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Mrs. Eddy was named president and the six students directors.

To thoroughly understand the force of Mrs. Eddy’s character it is only necessary to view the difficulties of the situation in which she was placed when she perfected these two basic organizations. She had been so pressed for money that she had been obliged to go upon her knees and cleanse her own floors, she had had to make over the garments she wore to present a faultless appearance of good taste to the public; she had protected her husband by her own energetic conference with counsel and witnesses in a conspiracy to charge him with murder; she had seen her oldest and most trusted women students plot against her and desert her; she had lectured and taught, and sent out missionaries to the North, South, and West; she had sent Mrs. Choate as a precursor to Boston.