Perhaps I am putting the tandem arrangement too far away; perhaps five years might be nearer the mark than fifty; for a Viennese lady told me last night that in the Christian Science Mosque in Boston she noticed some things which seem to me to promise a shortening of the interval; on one side there was a display of texts from the New Testament, signed with the Saviour’s initials, ‘J.C.;’ and on the opposite side a display of texts from the ‘little book’ signed—­with the author’s mere initials?  No—­signed with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy’s name in full.  Perhaps the Angel of the Apocalypse likes this kind of piracy.  I made this remark lightly to a Christian Scientist this morning, but he did not receive it lightly, but said it was jesting upon holy things; he said there was no piracy, for the angel did not compose the book, he only brought it—­’God composed it.’  I could have retorted that it was a case of piracy just the same; that the displayed texts should be signed with the Author’s initials, and that to sign them with the translator’s train of names was another case of ‘jesting upon holy things.’  However, I did not say these things, for this Scientist was a large person, and although by his own doctrine we have no substance, but are fictions and unrealities, I knew he could hit me an imaginary blow which would furnish me an imaginary pain which could last me a week.  The lady said that in that Mosque there were two pulpits; in one of them was a man with the Former Bible, in the other a woman with Mrs. Eddy’s apocalyptic Annex; and from these books the man and the woman were reading verse and verse about: 

’Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection with the text-book of Christian Science, “Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,” by Mary Baker G. Eddy.  These are our only preachers.  They are the word of God.’—­Christian Science Journal, October 1898.

Are these things picturesque?  The Viennese lady told me that in a chapel of the Mosque there was a picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before it burns a never-extinguished light.  Is that picturesque?  How long do you think it will be before the Christian Scientist will be worshipping that image and praying to it?  How long do you think it will be before it is claimed that Mrs. Eddy is a Redeemer, a Christ, or Christ’s equal?  Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as ‘Our Mother.’  How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the Throne beside the Virgin—­and later a step higher?  First, Mary the Virgin and Mary the Matron; later, with a change of Precedence, Mary the Matron and Mary the Virgin.  Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his brushes; the new Renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in altar-canvases—­a thousand times as much as the Popes and their Church ever spent on the Old Masters; for their riches were as poverty as compared with what is going to pour into the treasure-chest