In the late spring of 1906 the enormous addition to the Mother Church—the "excelsior extension," as Mrs. Eddy calls it—was completed, and it was dedicated at the annual communion, June 10, of that year. The original building was in the form of a cross, so Mrs. Eddy had the new addition built with a dome to represent a crown—a combination which is happier in its symbolism than in its architectural results. The auditorium is capable of holding five thousand people; the walls are decorated with texts signed "Jesus, the Christ" and "Mary Baker G. Eddy"—these names standing side by side.
According to the belief of Mrs. Eddy's followers, every signal victory of Christian Science is apt to beget "chemicalization"; that is, it stirs up "error" and "mortal mind"—which terms include everything that is hostile to Christian Science—and makes them ugly and revengeful. The forces of evil—that curious, non-existent evil which, in spite of its nihility, makes Mrs. Eddy so much trouble—were naturally aroused by the dedication of the great church building in 1906, and within a year Mrs. Eddy's son brought a suit in equity which caused her annoyance and anxiety.
Suit Brought by Mrs. Eddy's Son
Among the mistakes of Mrs. Eddy's early life must certainly be accounted her indifference to her only child, George Washington Glover. Mrs. Eddy's first husband died six months after their marriage, and the son was not born until three months after his father's death—a circumstance which, it would seem, might have peculiarly endeared him to his mother. When he was a baby, living with Mrs. Glover in his aunt's house, his mother's indifference to him was such as to cause comment in her family and indignation on the part of her father, Mark Baker. The symptoms of serious nervous disorder so conspicuous in Mrs. Eddy's young womanhood—the exaggerated hysteria, the anaesthesia, the mania for being rocked and swung—are sometimes accompanied by a lack of maternal feeling, and the absence of it in Mrs. Eddy must be considered, like her lack of the sense of smell, a defect of constitution rather than a vice of character.
Mrs. Eddy has stated that she sent her child away because her second husband, Dr. Patterson, would not permit her to keep George with her. But although Mrs. Eddy was not married to Dr. Patterson until 1853, in 1851 she sent the child to live with Mrs. Russell Cheney, a woman who had attended Mrs. Eddy at the boy's birth. George lived with the Cheneys at North Groton, New Hampshire, from the time he was seven years old until he was thirteen. During the greater part of this time his mother, then Mrs. Patterson, was living in the same town. When George was thirteen the Cheneys moved to Enterprise, Minnesota, and took him with them. Mrs. Eddy did not see her son again for twenty-three years. She wrote some verses about him, but certainly made no effort to go to him, or to have him come to her. On the whole, her separation from him seems to have caused her no real distress. The boy received absolutely no education, and he was kept hard at work in the fields until he ran away and joined the army, in which he served with an excellent record.
After he went West with the Cheneys in 1857, George Glover did not see his mother again until 1879. He was then living in Minnesota, a man of thirty-five, when he received a telegram from Mrs. Eddy, dated from Lynn, and asking him to meet her immediately in Cincinnati. This was the time when Mrs. Eddy believed that mesmerism was overwhelming her in Lynn; that every stranger she met in the streets, and even inanimate objects, were hostile to her, and that she must "flee" from the hypnotists (Kennedy and Spofford) to save her cause and her life. Unable to find any trace of his mother in Cincinnati, George Glover telegraphed to the Chief of Police in Lynn. Some days later he received another telegram from his mother, directing him to meet her in Boston. He went to Boston, and found that Mrs. Eddy and her husband, Asa G. Eddy, had left Lynn for a time and were staying in Boston at the house of Mrs. Clara Choate. Glover remained in Boston for some time and then returned to his home in the West.
THE MOTHER CHURCH IN BOSTON
THE ORIGINAL BUILDING, AT THE RIGHT, IS IN THE FORM OF A CROSS, AND THE IMMENSE "ANNEX," WITH ITS DOME, IS SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT A CROWN, THE TWO BUILDINGS THUS FORMING THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SEAL—THE CROSS AND CROWN
George Glover's longest stay in Boston was in 1888, when he brought his family and spent the winter in Chelsea. His relations with his mother were then of a friendly but very formal nature. In the autumn, when he first proposed going to Boston, his plan was to spend a few months with his mother. Mrs. Eddy, however, wrote him that she had no room for him in her house and positively forbade him to come. Mrs. Eddy's letter reads as follows: