Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/456

400 which she now held the mortgage, securing for $5,000 a piece of real estate which three years before had sold for $10,763.50,—and which since then had almost doubled in value,—and the members of the Boston church had lost all equity in the property upon which they had paid $5,800.

Since Mrs. Eddy intended ultimately to give this land back to the church, why, the reader may ask, did she not come forward when the payments ran behind, and satisfy the mortgage, leaving the property unincumbered in the hands of the organisation which had already paid on it more than half the purchase price? The reason seems to have been that there were still in that body persons of whom Mrs. Eddy did not feel sure; members who might be elected to office, might have too active a part in the church government, and might even incite a new rebellion like that of 1888. Her plan now was to give this building-site to the Boston church directors under such conditions as would forever do away with congregational self-government, and would place the church wholly under the control of such trustees as she should appoint.

Mrs. Eddy was aiming at (1) the entire personal ownership of the site of the Boston church, (2) perpetual personal control of the church which should be reared upon it, (3) making the Boston church not merely a local church and the home of the Boston congregation, but a church universal, the "Mother Church" of Christian Science the world over, with Mrs. Eddy installed as its visible head. And a seemingly insignificant real-estate transaction was actually the means of accomplishing this important end.

Up to this time Mrs. Eddy's name had been kept out of the