WOMAN'S CAUSE*

“The test of civilization is the estimate of woman," said George William Curtis; and these closing days of this century present many proofs of the truthfulness of this utterance.

The present is certainly woman's hour in a larger, purer, sense than that of any previous epoch of human history. It is especially pregnant with evidence of her coming emancipation from all that limits her mental growth, and her position in the world socially, civilly, and religiously. Through clouds of bigotry, literalism, custom and selfishness we get inspiring glimpses of that glorified hour when woman will stand in the world for what she is, and for what the All-Father meant her to be.

For centuries she has almost unaided fought her own battles, won her victories in the closet, alone with her God, and has become the happy possessor of enlarged privileges and greater possibilities, only as the thought of the race has been exalted and spiritualized, by the influx of light and purity from on High.

While for ages woman has been steadily ascending to her rightful place as man's co-equal in all the walks of life, yet what is so widely known in all parts of the world at the present time as "Woman's Movement," is the outgrowth of the last quarter of the century, in a peculiar and marked way. In Christendom the "Woman's Movement" dominates all other questions that involve individual, social, moral and spiritual freedom. Truly says a well-known author, "The Mother-heart of God will never be known to the world until translated into terms of speech by mother-hearted women. Law and Love will never balance in the realm of grace until a woman's hand shall hold the scales." Our nineteenth century civilization will find that its last quarter has given birth to two vital forces that have already begun to evolve a better state of things. The first is a system of religion that can be truly called scientifically spiritual. The second, the great idea that

Woman's work for the ages has been essentially religious and ethical. She has touched the chords of the harp of human existence to those higher harmonies of Soul, wherein dogma, human intellect and mere speculation have no part. She has given and continues to give to the world the idea of God as Love. In the hours of humanity's greatest need, woman has always voiced the great Mother-Heart of God, in words at once firm, loving, compassionate, and exalted.

It was through Miriam that Israel caught some of the highest notes of its great prophetic Scriptures; Deborah filled the high office of Judge in Israel, with great power. And from the trusting prayer of Hannah came Samuel, to be the saviour of a down-trodden people. Esther delivered her kindred; and through woman's compassion and devotion, Moses was saved to Israel. Elizabeth's child of promise "the greatest born among women," prepared the way for the world's Saviour. The Virgin Mary, "blessed among women," gave to a suffering world its Redeemer. She guarded the tender infant days of that Holy Child; in her maternal arms he rested, and as he "grew and waxed strong in Spirit, and in favour with God and man,"' she never forsook him, but lovingly, meekly followed him with a mother's heart to the foot of the cross, where amidst the shadows of the crucifixion, the Son gave her into the tender care of the loving disciple. To Mary of Bethany Jesus gave some of the sublimest truths of his ministry. To the woman at the well, he preached one of his grandest discourses. To Mary Magdalene came the glory of regeneration and the new birth, after which she followed her Master more closely than all others, seeing him first after the resurrection. To woman came the great privilege of first proclaiming the "Gospel of the Resurrection." Faithful women followed the Nazarene Teacher and his disciples, ministering to them of their substance. From their time to ours, a noble army of consecrated women in every age and clime, has uplifted mankind in ministry of devotion, purity, and goodness. In art, social reform, literature, and at the fireside, countless thousands have ministered to the human race.

Our own land in the last century has been blessed in a wonderful degree in all the walks of life, by the works of noble women. Who has sung of the Pilgrim's landing, with the sublimity of Mrs. Hemans, in her famous poem, "The Breaking Waves Dashed High"? Who has risen to greater heights of religious fervor, among the poets, than Lucy Lareom, Adelaide Proctor, and Alice and Phoebe Gary? It took the noble humanity and fiery eloquence of Garrison and Phillips, and the breath of human equality and justice of Lowell and Whittier's anti-slavery poems to picture the awful inhumanity of slavery, and to inaugurate its destruction. While to Harriet Beecher Stowe was given the task of portraying in her famous and pathetic book the crushing of maternal affection born of the system. She spoke for thousands of slave mothers whose hearts were wrung with the loss of those, who by the law of humanity, were their own. What voices rose higher, or whose efforts counted for more in that great struggle for human equality, than those of Lucretia Mott and Lydia Maria Child? Christendom's favorite hymn, "Nearer My God To Thee," is a woman's gift to the world. Through the untiring work of a few devoted women, foremost among them being Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale, to-day thirty-three nations in time of battle, mutually agree to protect and to make absolutely neutral ground that portion of their battle fields occupied by the Red Cross Society, in its ministry to the wounded. The philanthropic work of Dorothy Dix ranks with the highest, in the line of social reform in public charity institutions. With Frances E. Willard's great work for Temperance, and for a purer social life, the disinterested effort of her distinguished co-laborer, Lady Somerset, and of the long devotion of Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony, to the cause of equal suffrage, we are all acquainted. Mary Livermore has graced the lecture platform and preached from the pulpit with the quiet dignity and simplicity born of deep religious conviction and high aim. The work of Julia Ward Howe for humanity, and especially for the great truth that there should be but "one moral standard for man and woman," has been a telling factor in the direction of social reform.

The work of this noble army of women, to which could be added scores whose names cannot herein be mentioned for lack of space, proves that woman's heart has ever cried out for freedom and goodness, and that she never has spared nor ever will spare, a single effort to establish the reign of true manhood and womanhood, with one moral standard for both, to the end that the Religion of Jesus Christ rule the world, with all the purity, equality and grandeur that this religion includes.

To the work of Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, the "Cause of Woman" owes endless homage and gratitude. To her, in a larger sense than to any other woman, does humanity owe everlasting thankfulness. To praise her work is not to take away one iota of the lustre that surrounds the work of the noble and consecrated women referred to; but it is to add glory to the sex which she so grandly represents. Truly can it be said that her characteristics are pre-eminently those of a great spiritual Reformer and Teacher. Meekness, to which is allied spiritual might, patience, moral courage, unchanging purpose, a modesty akin to selflessness, and a lofty optimism, which amidst storms of misrepresentation and materialism, has held bravely to the great fact of the eternal supremacy and reality of Good as the One-God, and of evil's unreality,— these have been her conspicuous characteristics from the inception of her labors, as the Founder of the great Christian Science Movement.

Looking backward we halt at the year 1866. The great struggle that had brought about the end of human slavery on the American continent was just at its close, when in the old Bay State, that center of religious growth, liberalism and freedom, one brave woman stepped out of the beaten path of traditional theology, medicine and popular scientific systems, and rising above the mists of materialistic codes, announced in tones at once Scriptural, and Christian, logical and metaphysical, the great truth that Mind is Causation and that the so-called miracles of early Christianity were not supernatural, but divinely natural, and capable of perpetual demonstration in all ages.

For years Boston had been the center of America's intellectual and religious life, and the world of thought had become used to being startled by the voices that this new world's Athens from time to time sent forth. From out its liberty loving atmosphere had sounded the stentorian voices of Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison in behalf of a nation in the chains of slavery. Born of its broad and ever-widening love of liberty in the deep things of the Spirit, came forth the lofty strains of Channing, whose exalted thought and pulpit eloquence, more than that of any other single liberal Christian worker, brought about the great liberal movement, that raised high the standard of rational religion, and entered its powerful protest against form, dogma, mysticism and literalism in Christianity. From Massachusetts and Boston went forth the aspiring transcendentalism of Emerson, the anti-slavery and spiritual poems and writings of Whittier and Lowell, the tender and noble poems of Henry and Samuel Longfellow, great poets of humanity; and the much-loved prose and poetry of Dr. Holmes. Here too A. Bronson Alcott sent forth as leaven in the great world of thought, the sweet discoveries of his pure nature, and lastly can be mentioned the many contributions of Louis Agassiz to modern knowledge. So it would seem as if it were in the divine and natural order, that in this foremost center of religious activity, in the freest land of the globe, the voice of the Founder of the great spiritual movement known as Christian Science should first be heard. From Puritan parents, Mrs. Eddy inherited that natural love of freedom that so conspicuously marks all her writings and work. Her chief desire had always been to bring freedom to all who were in bondage to sin and disease, and we have but to turn to the results of the Movement, born of her self-sacrificing labors to witness the fulfilment of her long cherished desire. Her voice was raised, the message fresh from the hands of God went forth, the blessed discovery of the Truth that had so long existed unseen in the very midst of men, ushered in with signs following," was given to a hungry world sorely in need of health, of scientific religion, and of Christly grace.

Did an army rush forth to accept the message of this, lone brave woman? Did a host advance— recognize the teaching of this new herald as Christian and Scientific? Did tile pulpits of liberal Massachusetts accord it the welcome due to "tidings of great joy"? Did its press grasp the holy import of the teaching, or see in it the Gospel of the Nazarene? Not so in any general sense. It was as of old, the "light shining in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not." True, certain noble minds at once discerned its Christian character, and some saw its marked originality. But apart from the recognition of a few thinkers, the teaching of Christian Science, although attended with wonderful evidences of its divine origin in the healing of all types of disease, was misunderstood and looked upon as antagonistic to true Christianity.

Meanwhile the Founder of Christian Science went on with her divine mission. She knew the divinity and scientific nature of her discovery. She had received orders higher than any within the grasp of man to issue, and through the help of that Infinite Father and Mother God, who never forsakes, she went in and out among the sinful, the sick and the sorrowing, breaking the bread of Life, explaining the Scriptures, aglow with the holy enthusiasm that is born of a divine certainty; healing all manner of disease, and meekly rising above the opposition that so many times tested the brave heart almost to its limit of endurance. Little by little her efforts began to bear fruit. Here and there some earnest longing heart would respond to the pure teaching of the consecrated worker. Before long, spiritually minded men and women began to recognize, that there existed in her teachings something that they needed, and that popular religion and church gave not. In some instances these people came, like the disciples of old, from the humblest walks of life, bearing no university diplomas, but possessing those higher credentials, spiritual aspiration, honesty of purpose and willingness to leave time-honored theories. Again, came men and women from the highest intellectual circles, and from the leading walks of social and philanthropic work, and, with a common discernment, saw in Christian Science a demonstrable Religion, and the true interpretation of the life of Christ. All this time the healing of the sick went on, which led thousands to its acceptance as a Religion. Thus the Movement went on from strength to strength, till to-day it numbers hundreds of thousands of followers, and it can be truly said that it is the Truth which known, maketh free.

It is well here to say, that Christian Science counts not its strength from a numerical standpoint, but from the power it has among men as a quickener of spiritual discernment; a healer of disease, a reformer of the depraved and vicious; a purifier of social, moral and business methods a saviour of men from the miasma of materialism, skepticism and "science falsely so-called," and a deliverer from the awful dogma of eternal punishment.

It is always a delight to dwell upon the wonderful growth of the Movement during the last few years; to write of its influence, as shown in the great Congress of the Parliament of Religions in Chicago; to tell of the gathering together of its 6000 representatives in Boston in January, 1895, to witness the dedication of the Mother Church in that city, as a testimonial to the loved Founder; to note the fair and cordial reception given the subject by the Press, and to witness the way in which the encyclopedias, dictionaries and historical works of the hour are writing the life of the founder, and the history of the Movement; to detail the widespread healing of disease the world over, and to rejoice at the reformation of the sinner by its exalted teaching. But to return to the especial theme of this article.

The work of Rev. Mary Baker Eddy is rounded and symmetrical. The religious system which she has founded and developed bears the imprint of a divinely guided hand. She has sanctified the word "Science" by wedding it to that of "Christian," and in Christian Science as a code of law incorporating within itself Science, Theology and Medicine, we can truly say, she has welded with the hammer of metaphysics upon the anvil of revelation, the three great Sciences, and using them not as three diverse systems, but as one, she has proved the existence of but one God, or Mind, with but one governing  spiritual law, ruling the whole creation, including man. A certain Judge, after reading her great work, "Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures," said: "The wisdom and logic of that book is not the product of a man's mind, nor of a woman's, but of Divinity."

The work of Mrs. Eddy has opened to woman in the ministry of Christian Science, the two noblest of all avocations, philanthropy and medicine. Through the understanding of Christian Science men and women, by one and the same method, can reform the sinner and heal the sick. In her recent reconstruction of the order of public services in the Churches of Christ, Scientist, throughout the world, she has placed woman by the side of man in the pulpit as co-worker and co-equal. This is the first instance of such a step in the history of Christendom. What Christian thinkers have for years said should be done, she has done. She has revealed simultaneously with "the new man" in God's own image "the new woman."

By years of patient toil she has formed a system of religious and medical instruction that has already become a boon to thousands of mothers, because of its demonstrable power to strengthen moral character, and instil a natural love of the pure and good in the minds of children, and because of the freedom that it brings to families, inasmuch as it heals all manner of disease, destroys the fear of parents, and thus becomes the ever-present friend, the Guardian Angel, in the home.

Mrs. Eddy's work has given dignity to womanhood, made it synonymous with that grace of graces, spiritual discernment, and has given in words sublime and marvelous, a glimpse of the resurrection state, and of the reflections of the Fatherhood and Motherhood of God.

A. Bronson Alcott's words to Mrs. Eddy in the early days of her work were timely and beautiful. He wrote: "The profound truths which you announce, sustained by the immortal life, give to your work the seal of inspiration;— reaffirm in modern phrase the Christian revelations. In times like these, so sunk in sensualism, I hail with joy your voice, speaking an assured word for God and immortality, and my joy is heightened that these words are of woman's divinings."

As the warm gulf-stream flows on its course year after year, changing the conditions of vast stretches of territory,— a beautiful type of the great current of Spiritual Truth that has come down through the centuries, illuming the hearts of men, and giving birth to heavenly aspiration,— so the life and inspired teachings of the Founder of Christian Science can be well termed an "eddy" that like those so common along our New England coast, runs directly contrary to the main stream of worldly ways and means, materialistic systems and dogmas, but once the vessel of our lives and hopes enters into it, it is borne along by the tide of the Divine Law of Love, to the port of Salvation, wherein we cast anchor safe within the harbor bar, secure in the eternal haven,— at one with Good.

*Copyrighted by the author, Carol Norton. Published by permission.