Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/359

Rh even when it had to be helped along a little, and in the Journal for April, 1885, she cries: "Must history repeat itself, and religious intolerance, arrayed against the rights of man, again deluge the earth in blood?" In the Journal we find that in March of the same year, Mrs. Eddy was permitted to speak at a religious meeting held at Tremont Temple, and there to reply to a letter by the Rev. A. J. Gordon denouncing Christian Science, and that she gloriously vindicated her church.

Mrs. Eddy was now president of the "Massachusetts Metaphysical College," editor of the Christian Science Journal, president of the Christian Scientists' Association, and pastor of the First Church of Christ (Scientist). To the latter office her students had ordained her, without the aid of the clergy, in 1881, and her official letters and press communications were now usually signed "Reverend Mary Baker G. Eddy." Her classes now numbered from fifteen to twenty-five students each. The course of instruction took only three weeks, which, with a class of twenty-five, would mean that Mrs. Eddy's fees for that period of time amounted to $7,500. It is safe to say, however, that at least one-fourth of her students were admitted at a discount and paid only $200 each. Men and women of intelligence and some experience of the world began to frequent her college. Among these were Dr. J. W. Winkley, then a Unitarian minister, who had a church at Revere; Mrs. Emma Hopkins, Mrs. Ursula Gestefeld of Chicago; Mrs. Augusta Stetson, then an elocutionist in Somerville, Boston; Mrs. Ellen Brown Linscott; Mrs. Josephine Woodbury and her husband; the Rev. J. H. Wiggin, and the Rev. Frank E. Mason.

To understand the early growth of Christian Science in