Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/327



THE MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE ORGANISED—DEATH OF ASA GILBERT EDDY—MRS. EDDY'S BELIEF THAT HE WAS MENTALLY ASSASSINATED—ENTRANCE OF CALVIN A. FRYE

organisation of the Christian Science Church in August, 1879, seems to have suggested the organisation of another institution, which, in the history of the Christian Science movement, is second in importance only to the Church itself. The Massachusetts Metaphysical College was chartered January 31, 1881, and between that date and 1889, when it closed, about four thousand persons studied Christian Science in this institution, and to-day many practising healers have the degree of C.S.B., C.S.D., or D.S.D. from Mrs. Eddy's college.

The college was organised something more than a year before Mrs. Eddy removed permanently to Boston, and was, in the beginning, one of the experiments by which she strove to rehabilitate herself in Lynn. Its charter was issued under an act passed in 1874, an act so loose in its requirements, resulting in the chartering of so many dubious institutions and the granting of so many misleading diplomas, that, in 1883,