The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 23

by Sibyl Wilbur

CHAPTER XXIII

LIFT UP THY GATES

OF Mrs. Eddy’s daily life it is no longer possible to speak in the present tense as it was happily one’s privilege to do at the time of writing the chapter of this book, “The Leader in Retirement.” Mrs. Eddy has since then passed beyond the veil which an all-wise Providence wraps around our period of mortal living, sheltering His children from the burden of a too great knowledge and the splendor of a too glorious vision. Her acts are no longer subject to mortal inspection. But of the time intervening between January 26, 1908, when she took up her residence at Chestnut Hill, and that evening of December 3, 1910, when she gently and silently withdrew from the theatre of the world’s activity, a period of nearly three years, it is possible to speak briefly and simply.

Her suite of rooms at Chestnut Hill had been arranged almost exactly like the rooms she used at Pleasant View, save for the fact that in this larger house she retained for herself a private sitting-room beside her study. The suite was in the southeast corner of the mansion and was therefore sunny, and commanded a view of Brookline reservoir, adjacent well kept estates on the Old Orchard road, and a distant view of the Blue Hills. The house being in the midst of twelve acres was secluded; the landscape architecture of Brookline is world famous and Chestnut Hill towered above a vista which fell away from the rear of the mansion in beautiful gradations. The bay window of Mrs. Eddy’s study was encircled by a balcony which extended under the windows of her bedroom. Access to this was had through French windows opening like doors and here Mrs. Eddy was accustomed to walk to refresh herself for the renewal of her work. In summer her own grounds and the adjacent estates became a veritable paradise of lawn and shrubbery, of flowers, birds, and bees. Mrs. Eddy’s grounds were like an Italian garden falling in terraces to the beautiful flower court.

The interior of her study and bedroom were kept much as at Pleasant View. The bedroom was most simple, having a three-quarter bed of walnut and a bureau and dressing-table of the same wood. In the study her flat-topped desk stood in front of the bay-window, her easy chair behind it. She could turn in this chair to a small book-case which held the books most often required, she could look out over the hills, or, turning in the opposite direction she could command a view of the driveway and the gates which opened on Beacon street. It became more and more her habit to sit here looking out at those gates. After coming to Boston she took her usual daily drive around the reservoir and through the charming country roads and boulevards. At Chestnut Hill she resisted the idea that she must drive or be reported ill, and claimed for herself the privilege of respecting her business claims or considering the welfare of her horses in inclement weather. Nevertheless her drives were an almost invariable custom with her for an hour after luncheon. On these outings she was usually accompanied by Mrs. Sargent, who has said that she was pleased at the sight of little children in the care of their nurses whom they often passed, and would kiss her hand to them and smile at their return of her salute. She regarded them, trooping along under the care of their nurse-maids, as her little colony of neighbors whose innocent looks and ways made the roads and gardens populous with tender ideas.

Mrs. Eddy’s daily routine continued about the same at Chestnut Hill as it had been at Concord. Her household was increased by several members, which the larger house gave opportunity for accommodating and the larger needs of her affairs made necessary. Adam H. Dickey was now her secretary, and the assisting secretaries were Irving C. Tomlinson and W. R. Rathvon. Mr. Frye remained in the capacity in which he had been so long employed, and Mrs. Rathvon assisted Mrs. Sargent. Various members of the household were summoned from time to time to Mrs. Eddy’s study for conversation, and these hours with their Leader became sacred opportunities to each one, as day after day melted into eternity. Also at regular intervals she received members of her larger household, the officers of The Mother Church, who waited upon her for that contact of mind which should hold their course true in the voyage of experience which devolved upon each.

It was in the days toward the end of her earthly pilgrimage that Mrs. Eddy grew accustomed to sit after her evening meal with chair turned toward the vista before her home. She looked long at the drive, watching for the light to come in the electric globes on either side of the iron gates. She would sit here far into the twilight and evening until the stars twinkled in the night sky above the lights at the gate. So she would often in silence commune with the thoughts which filled her consciousness, sometimes reaching out her hand to the tiny electric light which rested on her desk and pressing its button illuminate a page of her Bible or “Science and Health.”

On the first day of December, she declared her wish to take her usual drive, and this proved to be her last drive. This was Thursday, a pleasant day, and all the bright, frosty beauty of early winter lay over the wooded country, the balsam of the evergreens faintly perfuming the air. Mr. Frye and Mrs. Sargent accompanied Mrs. Eddy on the drive, and were observant of the heavenly smile with which she surveyed the distant hills before stepping into the carriage. On the drive she passed her little neighbors as usual, lifting her hand slightly to them as she passed each merry group, the smile deepening in her eyes and settling faintly about her lips. When she had reached home she rested for a while in her study and then asked Mrs. Sargent to bring her pencil and tablet. On the tablet she wrote:

“God is my Life.”

Her message seemed written for the world, for though she spoke to her family after that, these were her last written words.

It was apparent to those who were used to her habits of living that she was withdrawing from them minute by minute after this drive. On Thursday evening she had her supper in her bedchamber. On Friday she arose and was dressed, and remained for almost the usual hours in her study, but did no writing. She retired to her bed that night not to rise again in this world. Members of her household watched with her and she spoke with them, assuring them she felt no pain. She was conscious that her students were opening their minds to the realization of Life; this conscious thought was, as it had been for fifty years, her great and only physician. As one falling asleep, at a quarter before eleven o’clock, Saturday night, she ceased to breathe, passing out of earth consciousness.

In compliance with laws of Massachusetts which require that a medical examiner shall issue a death certificate where there has been no physician in charge at the hour of physical dissolution, Dr. George L. West of Newton Centre, medical examiner for the district, was summoned early Sunday morning. Dr. West, after the usual investigation, pronounced death due to natural causes and issued the customary certificate.

In the New York Herald for December 5, the unusual experience of the medical examiner is described in these words:

The request to Dr. West that he go to the magnificent home of Mrs. Eddy in Chestnut Hill and view the body with the idea of granting a certificate of death was received about nine o’clock in the morning from Edward F. Woods, an alderman of Newton Centre, and Dr. West departed at once for the house in Brookline. On reaching there Dr. West was ushered at once into an upper front room in which on the bed, and clad in a heavy white robe, was the body of the Leader of the Christian Science cult. There were several persons in the room at the time, and several others were observed moving about other parts of the house by Dr. West as he entered and as he left. They were members of the Christian Science faith.

“To me it merely was the performance of a perfunctory duty,” said Dr. West in comment. “Although, had I realized at the moment that I was in the presence of the body of a woman who had ruled thousands for many years, I might have been impressed with the importance of the official service I was performing. What struck me most as I looked into the dead face was its extraordinary beauty. She must have been a beautiful child, a beautiful maiden, and extraordinarily beautiful when in the full flower of womanhood. There still were substantial traces of beauty left in the white face reposing on the pillow. Time indeed had laid its hand lightly on her all through the years. Wrinkles there were, of course, but they were not the wrinkles that come with age, after a life fraught with the cares of a home, of the bringing up of children, or of a thousand and one things that arise in the life of the ordinary woman to furrow her brow. The wrinkles that she bore looked more as if some one had been playing a little prank, and as if they might be brushed away with the gentle smoothing of a hand. They did not seem to belong amid those features. The entire countenance bore a placid, serene expression, which could not have been sweeter had the woman fallen away in sleep in the midst of pleasant thoughts. I do not recall ever seeing in death before a face which bore such a beautifully tranquil expression.”

The news of the passing from earth life of their Leader was given to the congregation of the Mother Church a little before twelve o’clock on Sunday, December 4, and at about the same hour telegrams were sent to the Christian Science publication committees throughout the world and a statement of what had passed at Chestnut Hill was given to the associated press and local press representatives. Calvin Frye sent a personal telegram Sunday morning to George W. Glover, Lead, South Dakota, as follows:

I regret to inform you that your mother passed quietly away late Saturday night after a few days’ illness. Funeral arrangements will be delayed until we are advised whether you or any of your family will be present and when we may expect you.

By reason of the lateness of the hour on Saturday when the great change transpired it was not necessary, indeed not possible, to give the information to the press before it was given to the Church. Christian Scientists, therefore, all over the world received the news from their readers’ lips. The attendants at the Mother Church were informed at the morning service, elsewhere the news was given out at afternoon or evening services. In Boston the morning services were conducted as usual. There is seldom any break in the formality of the Sunday worship, and on the morning of December 4, 1910, there was none until just before the pronunciation of the benediction. Then the first reader, Judge Clifford P. Smith, paused impressively after reciting “the scientific statement of being,”^[1] and the reading of its correlative scripture, I John, Chapter III, verses 1, 2, and 3, which are:

Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

Those who had already bowed their heads for the benediction lifted them as the reader, refraining from pronouncing it, began to deliver his message, and they received it in calmness to the close, after which there was no display of emotion beyond the fact that many eyes filled with tears. The message was given in these words:

I shall now read part of a letter written by our revered Leader and reprinted on page 135 of “Miscellaneous Writings”:

“My Beloved Students, — You may be looking to see me in my accustomed place with you, but this you must no longer expect. When I retired from the field of labor it was a departure socially, publicly, and finally from the routine of such material modes as society and our societies demand. Rumors are rumors, nothing more. I am still with you in the field of battle, taking forward marches, broader and higher views, and with the hope that you will follow. All our thoughts should be given to the absolute demonstration of Christian Science. You can well afford to give me up since you have in my last revised editions of ‘Science and Health’ your teacher and guide.”

Although these lines were written years ago, they are true to-day, and will continue to be true. But it has now become my duty to announce that Mrs. Eddy passed from our sight last night at 10.45 o’clock, at her home in Chestnut Hill.

After the pronunciation of the benediction the congregation seemed held in an awesome spell, as the top crest of a wave seems to hang before it breaks. A flood of music from the great organ seemed to release the suspension, the recessional being a Toccata of Bach’s which filled the church with radiant tone color, like a burst of triumphant celestial voices. The solo had been the comforting Twenty-fourth Psalm, phrases of which seemed yet to circle under the vast dome, or sink into the hearts of the devotional hearers:

Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
And be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord,
Or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!

On Thursday morning, December 8, services of interment were held at Chestnut Hill. All the world seemed covered with white snow. It was a bright, cold day and the sun gave to the snow a brilliance which made it appear a sacred, radiant carpet. About fifty guests, among whom were the members of Mrs. Eddy’s family, her personal students of Boston, the members of her household, and the officers of the Mother Church, also a few distinguished jurists and statesmen, assembled in the parlors of the house. They sat in silence from about a quarter before eleven until the hour struck, after which Judge Smith read the Ninety-first Psalm, and portions of St. John, thirteenth and fourteenth chapters, also passages from “Science and Health.” Mrs. Carol Hoyt Powers, the second reader of the Mother Church, read Mrs. Eddy’s poem, “Mother’s Evening Prayer,” and Our Lord’s prayer was recited by all. A procession then formed to pass the bier, a ceremony which was performed with deliberation and consideration for the earnest desire of each one present to gaze upon the features of the departed Leader.

Sunshine filtered through the partly drawn white shades and rose-colored draperies of the drawing-room, especially in the southeast corner of the second drawing-room where in the bay-window on a catafalque stood the bronze casket, a sheaf of pink roses across its foot. Enshrined therein was a pallid, waxen figure, like a perfect model or masque of life, the gray hair brushed from the white brow whereon seemed written in memorable expressiveness the word “Principle.” The figure was clothed in a simple white silk gown over which was wrapped a shawl of white lace, stretching from throat to feet, as though loving hands had wound this mortal clay with yards of filmy, fine-spun fabric as a last tribute of tenderness.

When all had passed in slow defile, the bearers closed the casket and lifted it to their shoulders. They bore it out through the wide hall, walking after a group of distinguished men who had been especially singled out for the honorary escort. These loving students, some elderly and white-haired, some in the full prime of stalwart manhood, walked proudly with their burden, tears unheeded bathing their faces. At the sight of these men escorting the bearers, a white-haired jurist, a former governor of the Commonwealth, one of the foremost journalists of the United States, and of these gifted men of the Church from London, New York, Chicago, with that body lifted high among them, the wonder of the life which had animated that clay irresistibly swept the consciousness of all. That life, lived for forty years in the mountains of New Hampshire, which had come out of its hill refuge with God to a strenuous active life in the world for half a century, and but yesterday laid down its burden at ninety years, had well demonstrated that its Principle was Life and Love.

The casket was placed in a tomb of steel and cement at Mt. Auburn, near Boston, where it was sealed, and guarded until the seal was inviolable. Here rest the ashes of the mortal garment of Mary Baker Eddy, near the shores of Lake Halcyon, tall English poplars rearing their plumy heads above it, and here is raised a memorial which shall mark an epoch in the progress of the world.

But it is well to be reminded that in Mt. Auburn does not rest the real life and being of this great Leader. From the Atlantic to the Pacific the Press of the great cities of America lifted the voice of tribute to her influence and work in the uplifting of the human race. No newspaper of importance in the civilized world failed to pay editorial homage.

As there was, following the interment of Mrs. Eddy, a widespread query as to whether Christian Scientists believed that Mrs. Eddy would return to this world, and whether there was some mystic doctrine involved in the placing of a guard at her tomb, it is well to record here the statement which Alfred Farlow gave to the world, and which was entirely based on Mrs. Eddy’s own words. Mr. Farlow said:

There was no mysticism or supernaturalism in the minds of the persons who placed the guards at the entrance of Mrs. Eddy’s tomb. It was done for the usual reasons. Many years ago Mrs. Eddy caused to be published the following statement:

“A despatch is given to me calling for an answer, Am I the second Christ?”

“Even the question shocks me. What I am is for God to declare in His infinite mercy. As it is I claim nothing more than what I am, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science, and the blessing it has been to mankind which eternity unfolds.

“My books and teachings maintain but one conclusion and statement of the Christ and the deification of mortals. … There was, is, and ever can be but one God, one Jesus of Nazareth. Whoever in any age expresses most of the spirit of truth and love, the principle of God’s idea, has most of the spirit of Christ.

“If Christian Scientists find in my writings, teachings, and example, a greater degree of this spirit than in others, they can justly declare it. But to think or speak of me in any manner as a Christ is sacrilegious. Such a statement would not only be false, but the absolute antipode of Christian Science, and would savor more of heathenism than of my doctrines.”

Mr. Farlow continues:

While absolute Christian Science teaches that all is Spirit and Spirit’s manifestation it does not ignore the relative fact — the temporal and false appearance — that in our present immature condition we have more or less of a misconception of creation which will improve and eventually disappear as we advance spiritually and that eventually we will be able to see all things as God sees them in all their spirituality and perfection.

While Christian Scientists believe the Scriptural teaching that the time will come when there will be no more death, they take the common-sense view that centuries may pass meanwhile before this exalted spiritual estate is reached.

Christian Scientists believe the Scriptural teaching concerning the resurrection, that it means a putting off of mortality and a putting on of immortality. In other words a gradual spiritual growth wherein the individual makes a transition from a material condition to a spiritual condition.

They believe that the resurrection begins in this life and continues here or hereafter until perfection is attained. This is the belief that they entertain concerning Mrs. Eddy. They do not look for her return to this world.

But Mrs. Eddy taught immortality of the individual consciousness, and immortality is everywhere the underlying spiritual significance of her writings. Before her individual form fades from our vision in the lovelier realms of a more etherealized condition, it may be well to fix her thought of the future life in her own words. She has said:

Truth demonstrated is eternal Life.

1. See page 275.