Mrs. Eddy Rediviva

Those orthodox Christian Scientists who read the New York World were vexed to discover great spaces in one of that newspaper's last week's editions given over to Mrs. Augusta E. Stetson. To orthodox Christian Scientists Mrs. Stetson, for 35 years the close friend and co-worker of Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy, has been a renegade, a pariah. In 1909 they expelled her from their church, because they, considered her extensions of their Leader's teachings subversive to those theories. Since then she has been a many-barbed thorn in their flesh, and lately, since radio broadcasting has become an agency of heterodox persuasiveness, she has operated WHAP from Manhattan* to their vexation.

Mrs. Stetson is 82 years old and from her startling statements to which the World gave publicity, it was difficult to determine whether a shrewd reporter was playing with a senile woman or whether a shrewd octogenarienne was playing with a gull reporter. A general observation it is that, if a woman who has been active, able and dominant in her middle years, as Mrs. Stetson, Mrs. Annie Besant (Theosophist), Mrs. McPherson/- retains sanity after her climacteric, then she will retain sharp intelligence and aggressive will until a very old age.

Mrs. Stetson's declarations of last week include:

1) She will never die a physical death.

2) Mrs. Eddy will shortly return to earth and in the flesh. (Mrs. Eddy--never predicted that.)

3) "Mrs. Eddy was the feminine embodiment of Christ, or the spiritualization of Eve." (Mrs. Eddy made no such declaration in any of her published writings.)

4) Mrs. Stetson believes herself the embodiment of "John, the beloved disciple."

5) She speaks of John's "stupendous revelation of the coming final unfoldment of the great problem of being, the rise and fall of the dragon, the second appearing of Christ as 'a woman clothed with the sun' (Mrs. Eddy), who should bring forth a manchild, . . .*

"Belasco Collar"

At Stony Brook, N. Y., where ministers held a conference last week, the Rev. A. C. Robertson of Louisville, Ky., denounced the conventionalized clothing that clergymen affect. Said he: "I feel like flinging a brick at a reporter when he refers to me as a 'gentleman of the cloth.' A preacher should dress and act so that no one suspects he is a minister and should avoid the 'Belasco collar.' "/-

*Complaints before the Federal Radio Commission call WHAP "the most virulent agency for anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish propaganda of the country." Mrs. Stetson's secretary and director of WHAP, one Franklin Ford, calls it "America's Protestant Broadcasting Station." Other heterodox stations are Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson's KFSG at Los Angeles, Judge Joseph Frederick Rutherford's WBBR at Manhattan, Wilbur Glenn Voliva's WCBD at Zion City, Ill.

/-It is noteworthy that husbands have apparently had little influence on these women's lives.

*This approximates the idea of incarnation included in the theosophical melange of beliefs. Mrs. Eddy had a son, George W. Glover, by her first husband. When the boy was nine years old, she was invalid and unable to prevent his being sent to the west by Dr. Patterson, her second husband. Thirty years later she met her son. He was a worldling, father of a family, unamenable to her teachings. Christian Scientists profess not to know his later history. If living, he is now 83 years old.

/-David Belasco, theatrical producer, affects the priestly collar and garb. He was born a Jew; was educated by a Catholic priest; belongs to the Jewish Theatrical Guild, the Central Synagogue (Manhattan), and the Episcopal Actors Guild.