Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/396

344 spiritual idea. And what of her child? Man is spiritual, man is mental. Woman was the first in this day to recognise this and the other facts it includes. As a result of her communion we have Christian Science.

You may ask why this child did not come in human form, as did the child of old. Because that was not necessary. . . . As this age is more mental than former ages, so the appearance of the idea of Truth is more mental.

From the first year of its establishment, the Christian Science Journal insisted, as indeed Mrs. Eddy's own writings insist, upon making for her a place among the characters of sacred history. In November, 1885, we find the following outburst:

What a triumphant career is this for a woman! Can it be anything less than the "tabernacle of God with men" the fulfilment of the vision of the lonely seer on the Isle of Patmos—the "wonder in heaven," delivering the child which shall rule all nations? How dare we say to the contrary, that she is God-sent to the world, as much as any character of Sacred Writ?

Mrs. Eddy herself wrote that the following verse from the Apocalypse "has special reference to the present age":

"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." Mrs. Eddy says that the child which this woman bore was Christian Science. In the Mother Church at Boston there is a resplendent window representing this star-crowned woman.

These comparisons did not stop with the Virgin Mary and the star-crowned woman. Throughout the first ten years of the Journal there is a running parallel between Mrs. Eddy and Jesus Christ. This comparison was continually heard from the pulpits of Christian Science churches. The Rev. George B. Day, "M.A., C.S.B.," in a sermon delivered before the