Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/350

306 she certainly did not correctly apprehend the doctrine, as she revealed her understanding of it in an article written for the Woman’s Journal, a magazine devoted to woman’s suffrage and conducted by Miss Alice Stone Blackwell. Mrs. Eddy replied to her article in the Christian Science Journal, kindly pointing out the difference between hypnosis and her own teaching. It is interesting to note that Miss Blackwell was herself a contributor to the Christian Science Journal on the subject of suffrage in April, 1887.

In printing the article on suffrage in her journal, in frequent references to the educational advancement of women, and in reviewing books on diverse subjects, Mrs. Eddy revealed a broad interest in woman’s work all over the world. She likewise maintained an active, alert interest in the sermons and public speeches of eminent men, and either herself or through her editors reviewed philosophic treatises that came from the press.

Of Madame Blavatsky and theosophy she had somewhat to say and printed an article which, while it radically disagreed with theosophic occultism, gave the Russian woman credit for broad scholarship. On the other hand, in a review of a publication on George Eliot’s essays and verse by Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, Mrs. Eddy praises Miss Cleveland for her felicity as an editor and in a genuine outburst of sincere appreciation of the great English novelist declares her womanly and heroic with firm, unfaltering adherence to honest conviction and conscientious reasonableness. “Her metaphysics purge