Several years ago Mrs. Eddy removed from Columbus to Commonwealth avenue, where, just beyond Massachusetts avenue, at the entrance to the Back Bay Park, she bought one of the most beautiful residences in Boston.  The interior is one of the utmost taste and luxury, and the house is now occupied by Judge and Mrs. Hanna, who are the editors of the Christian Science Journal, a monthly publication, and to whose courtesy I am much indebted for some of the data of this paper.  “It is a pleasure to give any information for The Inter-Ocean,” remarked Mrs. Hanna, “for it is the great daily that is so fair and so just in its attitude toward all questions.”

The increasing demands of the public on Mrs. Eddy have been, it may be, one factor in her removal to Concord, N.H., where she has a beautiful residence, called Pleasant View.  Her health is excellent, and although her hair is white, she retains in a great degree her energy and power; she takes a daily walk and drives in the afternoon.  She personally attends to a vast correspondence; superintends the church in Boston, and is engaged on further writings on Christian Science.  In every sense she is the recognized head of the Christian Science Church.  At the same time it is her most earnest aim to eliminate the element of personality from the faith.  “On this point, Mrs. Eddy feels very strongly,” said a gentleman to me on Christmas eve, as I sat in the beautiful drawing room, where Judge and Mrs. Hanna, Miss Elsie Lincoln, the soprano for the choir of the new church, and one or two other friends were gathered.

“Mother feels very strongly,” he continued, “the danger and the misfortune of a church depending on any one personality.  It is difficult not to centre too closely around a highly gifted personality.”

THE FIRST ASSOCIATION.

The first Christian Scientist Association was organized on July 4, 1876, by seven persons, including Mrs. Eddy.  In April, 1879, the church was founded with twenty-six members, and its charter obtained the following June.  Mrs. Eddy had preached in other parishes for five years before being ordained in this church, which ceremony took place in 1881.

The first edition of Mrs. Eddy’s book, SCIENCE AND HEALTH, was issued in 1875.  During these succeeding twenty years it has been greatly revised and enlarged, and it is now in its ninety-first edition.  It consists of fourteen chapters, whose titles are as follows:  “Science, Theology, Medicine,” “Physiology,” “Footsteps of Truth,” “Creation,” “Science of Being,” “Christian Science and Spiritualism,” “Marriage,” “Animal Magnetism,” “Some Objections Answered,” “Prayer,” “Atonement and Eucharist,” “Christian Science Practice,” “Teaching Christian Science,” “Recapitulation.”  Key to the Scriptures, Genesis, Apocalypse, and Glossary.

The Christian Scientists do not accept the belief we call spiritualism.  They believe those who have passed the change of death are in so entirely different a plane of consciousness that between the embodied and disembodied there is no possibility of communication.