Her Unflagging commitment—no vacations, no weekend days off, nights often spent praying about problems she saw in the movement—for a period lasting more than four decades has probably been matched by only a handful of other individuals. Most of them were likely either as devoted to a religious goal as she was or engaged in scientific research that was for them equally engrossing....
As part of her Calvinist heritage, Mrs. Eddy had a strong sense of purpose. It was inconceivable to her that a person who seriously undertook the study of Christian Science would not soon learn that he needed to apply it to every aspect of living. The details of her manner of living during the last two decades of a very long life, however, are of less importance than the example she gave of total commitment to an idea and letting that idea carry one as far as it could....
Four centuries before the time of Jesus, Plato had written, "The life that is unexamined is not worth living." The conditions under which people in the industrial democracies live are so different today than they were even at the end of Mrs. Eddy's lifetime that it is as difficult for us to fully understand the culture of that day as it would be for them to understand ours. The general level of wealth, and abundance of leisure-time activities, the availability of travel and the opportunity to personally experience other cultures around the world, the pace of change, the challenge of change in an individual's own career—these are only some of the elements that affect one's outlook differently today.
