Why
condos? In London it was converted into a relatively high-brow concert
venue which, I might add, I've been too, and more than once.
The Inspiration Behind Christian Science
“When I was about eight
years old, I repeatedly heard a voice, calling me distinctly by name
. . . I thought this was my mother’s voice, and sometimes went to her,
beseeching her to tell me what she wanted. Her answer was always,
‘Nothing, child! What do you mean?’ . . . One day, when my cousin,
Mehitable Huntoon, was visiting us, and I sat in a little chair by her
side, in the same room with grandmother,—the call again came, so loud
that Mehitable heard it.”
Young Mary Baker continued to be
susceptible to spirit influence, as Sibyl Wilbur notes in her
church-approved biography: “Mary Baker’s spiritual experiences continued
to be grave and unusual, as had been her ‘Voices.’” But in order to
appreciate the nature of these experiences it is necessary to understand
the circumstances at that time.
“There are people living who remember very
distinctly the spiritism craze in Tilton, and who witnessed
Mrs. Glover’s manifestations of mediumship. One elderly woman recalls a
night spent with Mrs. Glover when her rest was constantly disturbed by
the strange rappings and by Mary’s frequent announcements of the
‘appearance’ of different spirits as they came and went.”
“Mrs. Glover
told us, as we were gathered there, that, because of her superior
spiritual quality, and because of the purity of her life, she could only
be controlled in the spirit world by one of the apostles and by Jesus
Christ. When she went into the trance state and gave her communications
to members of the circle, these communications were said by Mrs. Glover
to come, through her as a medium, from the spirit of one of the apostles
or of Jesus Christ.”
“Mrs. Patterson conceived
and put into practise an admirable though harmless hoax. One day, as
Mrs. Crosby has described it, while they sat together at opposite sides
of a table in the big nursery, Mrs. Patterson suddenly leaned back in
her chair, shivered from head to foot, closed her eyes, and began to
talk in a deep, sepulchral voice. The voice purported to be Albert
Baker’s [Mary’s deceased brother] . . . Mrs. Patterson expected
Mrs. Crosby would shortly recognize the pretense and laugh with her over
it. Not so. . . . [Therefore] Mrs. Patterson, with a gaiety which she
has rarely indulged, continued the hoax. She pretended to go into
another ‘trance’ the following day.”
“There is
one simple subject to which we will allude; the current opinion that we
must be a Spiritualist or medium . . . But we never were a Spiritualist;
and never were, and never could be, and never admitted we were a
medium. We have explained to the class calling themselves Spiritualists
how their signs and wonders were wrought, and have illustrated by doing
them; but at the same time have said, This is not the work of spirits
and I am not a medium.”
“Man
is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other
material elements. . . . Man is spiritual and perfect . . . he must be
so understood in Christian Science. . . . Man is incapable of sin,
sickness, and death. The real man cannot depart from holiness . . . In
divine Science, God and the real man are inseparable as divine
Principle.” “In reality man never dies.”
“To
the five corporeal senses, man appears to be matter and mind united;
but Christian Science reveals man as the idea of God, and declares the
corporeal senses to be mortal and erring illusions. Divine Science shows
it to be impossible that a material body, though interwoven with
matter’s highest stratum, misnamed mind, should be man.”
