Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/324



ITH the death of her husband Mrs. Eddy suffered a severe blow, having lost a devoted co-worker and friend in whom she had found great satisfaction through a most exalted human relationship. A new chapter now opens in her life, a period of worldly activity in the cause of religion. She becomes the founder and the organizer, the teacher and promulgator of Christian Science and in this character transcends her former self as the kind hostess and sympathetic friend. Girlhood, widowhood, wifehood vanish, are swallowed up, in a complex but unified individuality which reveals her preeminently as the founder, Mary Baker Eddy.

The most cynical critics of this illustrious woman have made the comment that she is never so commanding a figure as when she bestirs herself in the face of calamity. Although these critics have essayed to portray her in the sad moment of her bereavement as a woman prostrated, hysterical, and exhausted, afraid to go out of her house and afraid to stay in it when in the quiet upper chamber the mortal remains of her husband lay draped for the grave, the events of those days will not harmonize with such a characterization.

Mrs. Eddy was self-controlled in the face of her