CSEC LIBRARY -- A Biographical Sketch of Judge Hanna

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A Biographical Sketch of Judge Hanna
   A reader sent us the following manuscript. This biographical sketch provides valuable insights into Judge Hanna's life. Though the author did not know Judge Hanna personally, he did know some of his pupils and he had access to many of his papers. Our copy does not include the original footnotes.

   Judge Septimus J. Hanna was one of the two primary pillars in Mary Baker Eddy's founding of The Mother Church. Mrs. Eddy called Judge Hanna and his close friend, Ira O. Knapp: "my two witnesses." Judge Hanna shared with Ira Knapp the basic spiritual vision of Mary Baker Eddy.

   Mr. Knapp was the first to declare during class instruction with Mrs. Eddy: "Thou art the Woman!" of Revelation 12. His declaration paralleled Peter's saying to Jesus: "Thou art the Christ!" Mrs. Eddy thereafter gave Mr. Knapp sole title to the land, including the rock, on which The Mother Church was built, he giving it back to her and she to himself and 3 others as the Christian Science Board of Directors. She made Ira Knapp the original Chairman of the Board of Directors and of the Bible Lesson Committee. She thus made Ira Knapp the "type representing the true nature of the gift; a type morally and spiritually inalienable...taxing" the faith of Christian Scientists. His successors on the Board must be "firm and consistent believer(s) in the doctrines of Christian Science" set forth in the 71st and subsequent editions of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. The 71st edition index referred to Mrs. Eddy as the Woman of Rev. 12. See Ret. 51:1; Mis. 139:23 to 141:6; Man. 128:1 to 130:last line; S&H 71st Ed., Index, "Author...clear sense needed of her real position," "clear and correct sense of its idea [Principle's]."

   The number of tasks Mrs. Eddy gave Judge Hanna, many of them simultaneously, is staggering. No one before or since performed so many. They began when Mrs. Eddy called Judge Hanna to Boston to edit The Christian Science Journal in October, 1892. Noting her own place in the Kingdom of Heaven and describing qualifications needed by one she might appoint to the Pulpit of The Mother Church, Mrs. Eddy wrote Judge Hanna, Feb. 24, 1893:

   My place is difficult. The personal Mrs. Eddy is pliant as wax; the impersonal impregnable to wind and wave. In the spiritual altitude of the latter, I stand alone. None can see from my standpoint there. Jesus said, or rather implied, that a Christian Scientist is not a 'reed shaken with the wind' (is not an unreliable man, no matter what the influence may be) any more than he is one in 'soft raiment' i.e. a king or a tyrant. The Boston pulpit needs just the right man, and one 'who is more than a prophet.' Such an one would hear and obey the divine order, no matter if he could not stand face to face with the Father; he would obey without it. 'Blessed is he who having not seen believes,'—believes my report without halting or taking his own movements.       With love,
   (signed) M.B. Eddy

   A year later Mrs. Eddy appointed Judge Hanna Pastor of The Mother Church. And in 1895 First Reader, a new office, replacing that of Pastor. He served simultaneously as Editor and Pastor or First Reader until 1902. No one else but Mrs. Eddy ever held that combination of offices. And as the original First Reader, he served 7 years. All others, only 3. During the same period, Mrs. Eddy had Judge Hanna also serve from time to time as a member of the Christian Science Board of Directors, Trustee of the Christian Science Publishing Society, forerunner of the Committee on Publication (answering newspaper criticism and preparing biographies of her), counselor on legal problems and legislative activity in all states, collator of the By-Laws and author of the Historical Sketch in the Manual of The Mother Church, member of the Bible Lesson Committee and author of the Explanatory Note in The Christian Science Quarterly, writer of The History of Christian Science and various magazine and encyclopedia articles on Christian Science or Mary Baker Eddy. And with any time left, at Mrs. Eddy's request, he lectured on Christian Science in New England. She also appointed him original Vice President of the Board of Education and one of its teachers the first year. Mrs. Eddy once wrote to him: "No other writer suits me as you do."

   Judge Hanna was born July 29, 1844 in Spring Mills, Pennsylvania. At 18, he interrupted his study of law under a tutor to join the Union Army in the Civil War. He was commissioned Captain of Infantry. In 1866 he finished his law course and was admitted to the Bar in Illinois where he settled after the War. Then he moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to help form the law firm of Sapp, Lyman, and Hanna. It became a leading law firm in the state.

   At 23, Judge Hanna was appointed Judge of the County Court. Thereafter he held such posts as: City Attorney, Deputy U.S. District Attorney, and Registrar of the U.S. Land Office. He also developed a large law office in Chicago, Illinois.

   He married Camilla Turley of Council Bluffs, daughter of a prominent inventor, on September 21, 1869.

   When Camilla's family read in the newspaper that a woman in Boston was healing the sick like Jesus did, they became interested in Christian Science. Since Camilla suffered from a medically incurable disease, they ordered a copy of the woman's book, Science and Health, and sent it to Judge and Mrs. Hanna. Reading the book, Mrs. Hanna was quickly healed. That was in 1886. Judge Hanna then began to study the book himself, becoming convinced that the woman was the Second Coming of Christ, precisely as prophesied in the Bible. [see Revelation 12; Isaiah 54; Matt. 13:33]

   Mrs. Eddy confirmed his concept of her at their first meeting at her home in Boston in 1890. Afterwards he wrote her, describing his impressions of her as having a duality of character, as did Jesus. She answered: "You have caught me perfectly."

   Because of his spiritual vision of her and his consequent usefulness to her, she often wrote as she did on one occasion: "God has given you to me."

   Judge Hanna began corresponding with Mrs. Eddy in 1887. The Hannas had left Colorado, where he had gone to improve his health, for Scranton, Pennsylvania. There they had taken up the public practice of Christian Science. Both Hannas had remarkable success in healing. ...

   Not until some time after he began editing The Christian Science Journal did Mrs. Eddy give him class instruction, then only with Mrs. Hanna and him in private sessions in Mrs. Eddy's home. In 1898 Mrs. Eddy included both the Hannas in her last class and gave each of them the degree of CSD.

   Among the things about which he wrote to Mrs. Eddy was his proposal to start an academic school for children, based on the Principle of Christian Science. Although our Leader approved the idea, she replied to say the project would be unwise because of the opposition to Christian Science which, at the time, she knew the field was not advanced enough to meet. She told Judge Hanna to discourage others from starting such schools then.

   Another question was whether to be active in politics. While Judge Hanna was still practising in Scranton, June, 1892, the Pennsylvania Prohibition Party met there. Members pressed Judge Hanna to address them as a Christian Scientist. The speech so thrilled the delegates they wanted to nominate him for President of the United States. He declined but after the November election in which the Prohibition Party elected a Congressman in Pennsylvania, its first, and made other significant gains, party officials credited Judge Hanna's speech for the wave of enthusiasm that carried them to success. Right after the June convention, Judge Hanna wrote Mrs. Eddy about working in politics as a recognized Christian Science practitioner. She answered: "There is more present good done by being in the midst of error and neutralizing the old with the new. The old bottle of dishonesty in politicians needs emptying, and it needs your purpose poured into it....It will be a great strain on your Christliness, but if you take it up as a cross, and bear it meekly, God will direct and sustain all such endeavors." She referred to "occasionally working among politicians."

   But Mrs. Eddy called Judge Hanna to much higher service. In the fall of 1892 she appointed him Editor of The Christian Science Journal with Mrs. Hanna as Assistant Editor. They, of course, then moved to Boston, beginning an unending career for him as an official of The Mother Church.

   Adding to his numerous other assignments, Mrs. Eddy asked Judge Hanna to start a weekly periodical while also editing the Journal. Issued in 1898, the weekly was named The Christian Science Sentinel. And Judge Hanna's title was changed to Editor in Chief.

   To Mrs. Eddy, Judge Hanna could bear the strain with grace and love in Christ and he met every crisis in triumph, with her help. But when Josephine Woodbury, a renegade student of Mrs. Eddy's, sued her Leader for the purpose of destroying her and The Mother Church, the unrelenting mental malpractice against Judge Hanna took its toll. Known as one of Mrs. Eddy's staunchest supporters, with an unyielding vision of her spiritual leadership, he was targeted by hatred. A claim of illness, which Mrs. Eddy attributed to the mental malpractice of Woodbury, forced Judge Hanna to resign. Many times Mrs. Eddy refused his resignation. Finally in a long letter filled with pathos, he begged her to let him leave. She finally assented but immediately appointed him to the Board of Lectureship, with a circuit away from Boston. He would be out of the line of Woodbury's fire. That was June, 1902. But so unhappy was she with the new Editor-in-Chief, Mr. McLellan, that in 1903 she reappointed Judge Hanna, to take up the editorship again, with the promise that he would not also have to be First Reader. Yet he had to tell her he was not completely healed. He had to decline. Her reply expressed her deep gratitude for what he had meant to her but she agreed with his decision under the circumstances. He located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, then in Pasadena, California. But he continued to serve as Lecturer until 1913. And he was Vice President and later President of the Board of Education of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College until his passing in July, 1921, at the age of 77. He also performed many unpublicized tasks for Mrs. Eddy.

   Because of Judge Hanna's steadfast understanding of Mary Baker Eddy as "the spiritual idea of God's motherhood" (S&H 562:3), Judge Hanna remains a target of the enemy. Within certain circles of the enemy of the spiritual idea of Mary Baker Eddy, Judge Hanna has been maligned and misrepresented almost as much as his Leader.

   One opponent of the spiritual idea of Mary Baker Eddy, Robert Peel, in [The Years of Authority] distorts or outright reverses the truth of nearly every statement he makes about Judge Hanna. First of all, one is astounded that Mr. Peel, who claims to be a Christian Scientist, presumes to sit in judgment on, and destructively criticize, his God-chosen Leader. She, Science and Health identifies as God's messenger, "with any abuse of the mission an impossibility" (S&H 455:17; Conc. 141:messenger). Second, to one familiar with the life of Judge Hanna, Mr. Peel's judgments of him are as preposterous as the slander against Mrs. Eddy. Despite voluminous footnotes giving an air of authority to [The Years of Authority], Mr. Peel has cleverly switched the order of letters; quoted out of context; omitted key sentences; copied as Mrs. Eddy's matter never proven to be hers; and laid out bald lies.

   Notable Lie 1:

   That Mrs. Eddy forced Judge Hanna to resign presumably because during the time of the Woodbury suit he wrote that Mrs. Eddy was the Woman of Revelation 12, when such statements would aid Woodbury. As shown above, she needed him. She let him resign only after a series of letters imploring her to let him leave to restore his health. Furthermore, she approved thoroughly an editorial Judge Hanna prepared before the Woodbury suit, proving by Bible citations that Mrs. Eddy was the Woman. Before it went to press with her approval, rumblings of the as yet unknown intentions of Woodbury reached him; and he, not Mrs. Eddy, decided the time was not ripe for publication of the editorial. So he withheld it. Mrs. Eddy wrote him at one time: "I never feel that you make a mistake." He was the first editor ever, under Mrs. Eddy, never to become disloyal. His vision of her was founded on the Rock, not flesh and blood. Immediately after appointing Judge Hanna to lecture, she wrote him in 1902 to "open the eyes" of the people to see her as "that idea on earth that has best and clearest reflected the divine Principle." Mr. Kimball wrongly told newsmen the Woman was ideas (pl).

   Notable Lie 2:

   That Mrs. Eddy sent Judge Hanna to the West because she did not consider him cultured enough to lecture in Boston and the East. Now Mr. Peel knows that claim is not true. Upon the recommendation of Mrs. Eddy, the Victoria Institute of Great Britain had elected Judge Hanna as an associate member in 1896. And does Mr. Peel really believe that she deliberately had an uncultured man in the Boston Pulpit and as First Reader of The Mother Church and Editor of the Christian Science periodicals for 7 years! Does Mr. Peel believe the circuit assigned to Judge Hanna was an area of the uncultured! According to the Christian Science Sentinel, the tour included major centers of learning like Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Louis (where Robert Peel later taught in a college). And at the end of the tour, Judge Hanna lectured, at Mrs. Eddy's rejoicing, in The Mother Church. This, Mr. Peel ought to know, is in Boston. Later Mrs. Eddy appointed Judge Hanna to lecture in Great Britain, hardly a country lacking culture. The old lie that Mrs. Eddy was unhappy with Judge Hanna started with a blunder by Edward Kimball. Mrs. Eddy wrote to him to help her find a successor to Judge Hanna. Mr. Kimball misinterpreted her, believing Mrs. Eddy was firing Judge Hanna. She had said that he was ill. But as Judge Hanna's practitioner she could not detail the case. Though Mr. Kimball realized his mistake, the enemy to this day industriously circulates the lie. The tactic: to dethrone Mrs. Eddy by discrediting those who herald her throne. And she does say she has one. (Mis. 388:14) After 1902 Judge Hanna progressed to new service and recognition for Mrs. Eddy. In 1903 she called on Judge Hanna alone for her character reference in the news media. (My 304:1, 8) For the Annual Meeting of 1906, Judge Hanna was chosen to read the telegram to Mrs. Eddy heralding the completion of The Mother Church Extension. (My 44 to 46)

   She employed him as Vice President of the Board of Education to maintain the correctness and purity of Christian Science teaching in the Board of Education and in the field. Some of the pupils taught by Edward Kimball were proliferating falsities such as: spiritual body organs, no true humanhood, every one the Christ, Mrs. Eddy the Leader only because she climbed the mountain first, God not really appointing her, etc. The dissension in the movement came to a critical pass. Mrs. Eddy had Judge Hanna try to correct Edward Kimball but he parried the attempts. Mrs. Eddy then organized the General Association of Teachers. She had Judge Hanna address it on the subject: The Christianity of Christian Science. Finally she forced Mr. Kimball to retire as the teacher, after 4 years ... [words missing from manuscript] ... of the Board of Education, 1904, abolished normal class teaching for three years, and in 1907 appointed Judge Hanna to be the first teacher of the Board of Education for the new system. In it but one class would be taught every three years. [Note: Mrs. Eddy appointed Eugene H. Greene to teach a Normal class in 1906.] In 1909, Mr. Kimball called on Mrs. Eddy for the last time. In their last visit, she had tried but failed, to heal him of the desire to succeed her. Now it was the peak of the succession campaign launched by Mrs. Stetson. Mrs. Eddy refused to see Mr. Kimball. Shocked, in a few days he died. Mrs. Eddy was reluctant to write for the periodicals a requiem for him. Waiting, some of his students whom she had called to Boston (they would be retaught under her influence as officers and servants in her home), expressed concern for a split in the movement. Why did their Leader not praise Edward Kimball at his death, as she had Joseph Armstrong? Adam Dickey, her secretary and one of Mr. Kimball's former pupils, kept pressuring her to issue a statement. At last he asked if he could write something for her. She assented. Mr. Dickey then took from Mrs. Eddy's table the beginning of an essay, "There Is No Death." She had written it while working for herself, but put it aside. He added to it a paragraph he had written praising his former teacher, Edward Kimball. The first paragraph of the article in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, 297:11ff, is the beginning of an essay by Mrs. Eddy. The second paragraph is solely Mr. Dickey's. When Mr. Dickey presented the article for her approval, she commented: Well, it is not what I would have said, but if it will make the students happy, send it. [Note: this may simply be Mr. Dickey's account of Mrs. Eddy's response; see Two Schools, Appendix A.] . . .

   After the article went to press Mr. Dickey wrote to Judge Hanna confessing how he had pressured Mrs. Eddy into approving the paragraph he wrote about Mr. Kimball to prevent further dissension in the field.

   In 1910 Judge Hanna foiled a plot by some former students of Mr. Kimball's. They would continue the long standing desire that students at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair had aroused in Mr. Kimball: to succeed Mary Baker Eddy as Leader.

   In 1910, motivated by the false belief that Mrs. Eddy must die or be decrepit, Wm. R. Rathvon, her Assistant Secretary and former Kimball student, composed a secret plan to depose Mrs. Eddy and replace her with an executive committee. He recruited 2 other Kimball pupils: Clifford Smith, First Reader of The Mother Church, and Archibald McLellan, then Chairman of the Christian Science Board of Directors. ...The 3 planned to tell Mrs. Eddy they would commit her to an asylum if she did not sign their proposed new By-Law: It would give an executive committee of 3 power to lead, supervise the Board of Directors, and make or change any By-Laws as it saw fit. Only [parts] of the plot are confessed: Permanency of The Mother Church, 1972, 7-9; Peel, Vol. 3, 346. And the three conspirators continued in office after Mrs. Eddy left, Rathvon becoming a Director. The 3 had tried to enlist Judge Hanna in their plan. He promptly retorted: If you do not go immediately to Mother [Mrs. Eddy] and confess this plot, I will! They refused, saying the execution of their plan was too advanced to stop. Judge Hanna told Mrs. Eddy. Shortly after Ira Knapp heard the scheme, he passed on. Mrs. Eddy then said: I have lost my buffer on the Board. Then, refusing to assent to the conspiracy against her, she took various actions to end her service on earth and purposely [allowed herself to pass on] Dec. 3, 1910. She thus prevented being forced to give leadership of The Mother Church (with power to change the Manual or By-Laws) to anyone else, stopped the tactic of certain of her staff to place her in an asylum and so gain a legal wardship over her.

   Mrs. Eddy gave many solid evidences of being free of the claim of senility and many times had risen from death.* She told Calvin Frye to tell her students after she was gone that her problem was not old age but a peculiar attack of malicious animal magnetism she could not defeat (other than by passing on and leaving a body). As President of The Mother Church in 1917, Calvin Frye did actually say to the Annual Meeting that Mrs. Eddy told him to tell her followers that she suffered from a peculiar form of M.A.M., not old age. How far would Calvin Frye go? Would he tell what he knew of the mental malpractice in her official family? Within a short time, after beginning to tell the story, Calvin Frye was found dead. Yet Mrs. Eddy had accomplished her goal in 1910. She froze the Manual as a rod of iron. With a dead body evident in 1910, a court could not make Mrs. Eddy a ward, nor declare her, if she had ascended, a missing person. This would give the court or others power to lead the Cause for 7 years until she was declared dead or found. The Mother Church now for all time must be administered exactly as she outlined, with no changes, or nullifcations, all to be guarded by officers and members studying the Manual and watching as required by Article I. [Note: Mrs. Eddy said, "In time its (the Church's) present rules of service and present rulership will advance nearer perfection." (My 342:31) Also, she wrote: "Despite the prosperity of my church, it was learned that material organization has its value and peril, and that organization is requisite only in the earliest periods in Christian history. After this material form of cohesion and fellowship has accomplished its end, continued organization retards spiritual growth, and should be laid off,—even as the corporeal organization deemed requisite in the first stages of mortal existence is finally laid off, in order to gain spiritual freedom and supremacy." (Ret 45:5, emphasis added)]

   *Note for [statement above]: Mrs. Eddy had Laura Sargent keep photographs showing Mrs. Eddy at one hour weak and old but within a short time as strong and young, demonstrating her ability to manifest life and strength physically. To the end she proved to her staff most of the time, strength and quickness of wit. She took her daily drive as late as three days before her passing. Nearly to the last she had sent orders to her Church over her own handwriting. So indeed her problem was not old age. As for the last enemy death: she long ago, and many times since, had met and conquered that old serpent. In 1866, she not only rose from her death bed but appeared suddenly through the closed door. She then had been able to visit the next plane and meet with her mother before returning to this one. [see Mis 385:9-387:6] Later in the presence of Ira and Bliss Knapp, Mrs. Eddy looked into the hereafter and described what Flavia Knapp was doing in another plane. In 1881 [Mrs. Eddy] appeared to ... Julia Bartlett and others to be on the Mt. of Transfiguration and later appeared in shining garment as she descended the stairs at Pleasant View. At Red Rock at the time she wrote "Christ My Refuge" she walked on the water to the shore from the Rock isolated at sea by the incoming tide. At another time, when Calvin Frye entered her study, he saw her ascended in midair. She had told Clara Shannon and Adam Dickey that when God had called her by name when she was 8 years old, He had lifted her little body into the air three times. In 1901, Clara Shannon also reports, that at the height of the Woodbury Trial and while Mrs. Eddy was preparing the Message for 1901, Mrs. Eddy passed on. Mrs. Eddy brought herself back to this plane while Clara Shannon was shouting: "The author of Science and Health cannot die!" To Calvin Hill and others Mrs. Eddy said that when she discovered Science she had complete dominion over matter and death, was monarch over all she surveyed, but came back to this world to save us. Mrs. Eddy no more died in 1910 than she did in 1866. But in perfect harmony with Daniel's dates, in 1911 her work took on a new form, hidden to materialists and spiritualists alike, but everlasting to spiritual sense: To, as the spiritual idea of God's motherhood, lead her Church out of the claims of mental science [variant teaching] into the realm of Christian Science, separating the tares from the wheat for the final harvest.

   But Mrs. Eddy plainly labeled the conspirators: To Judge Hanna, she called them a "cabal." To Ira Knapp she wrote that they were a "triumvirate." The last words she wrote were: "God is my Life." But the second to the last words were: "A combination of sinners that was fast is all that could injure me." ...

  ... Mrs. Eddy ... had taken special care to develop and educate Bliss Knapp... She often called on him as practitioner. He helped her during her last illness and the passing. She told him: "Take care of Boston." In at least 3 letters she wrote of his mission finally being recognized: to uphold her as "the mother bird." (Mis. 137:14; 253:27) To the Directors she wrote that she not only approved Judge Hanna to succeed her as President of the Board of Education of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College as required by the By-Law but also that the appointment, as implied by the By-Law, would last as long as he remained on earth.

   Of all the assignments she gave Judge Hanna, the above was the greatest. For it involved the charge to safeguard the teaching of Christian Science against all error by keeping before the field "that idea on earth that has best and clearest reflected divine Principle," "its highest visible idea," the one "God appoints to the highest service," the teacher who under God "cannot mistake," who cannot abuse the mission, "a messenger ... one who is spiritually near Himself." (S&H 560 and 455) See one and messenger exclusively under Mary Baker Eddy in Concordance.

   In 1907 Mrs. Eddy made her seventh and final major revision of Science and Health, the same year she appointed Judge Hanna to teach the Normal class in the new plan of the Board of Education. After he taught the class of 1907, he was visiting Mrs. Eddy in her home when she suddenly said: "My students do not understand the Third Question and Answer," meaning the Third Question and Answer in the chapter of Science and Health called Recapitulation. From this teachers instruct their Primary classes. He took that as a hint for himself, he said, to see from the new version [of Science and Health] that he understood the Third Answer better, then to see that the field also did.

   Admitting that the grammar in the Answer puzzled him considerably, he meticulously researched and analyzed the subject not only in the entire Bible and all of Mrs. Eddy's current writings but also in all the preceding editions of Science and Health! He understood Mrs. Eddy's basic concept of Christ Jesus, as he showed in one of his first editorials, which with others, had her enthusiastic approval. But he did not, until after his study, understand what Mrs. Eddy meant in the 1907 Third Question and Answer.

   After two years of close and thorough study, it came to him, like a wave of Light, he writes, that the idea, so at one with Principle that, though it forms a dual subject [and] Mrs. Eddy uses a singular verb, is Christ Jesus. Elsewhere Mrs. Eddy has written: "Principle and its idea, man, are coexistent." But in the Third Answer she says, "Principle and its idea is one," then says man reflects this idea one with Principle. So man is an idea secondary to the idea, Christ, as expressed in S&H. (465:16ff; 520:9; 467:29-3; 512:21-24)

   Judge Hanna summed up his study in a Brief, like that used by a lawyer in stating his case. He read it to Mrs. Eddy. She said: Now my students will understand. In 1916 the Christian Science Sentinel published a summary of it in the article, Jesus the Christ, April 1 issue.

   Mrs. Eddy deeply appreciated Judge Hanna's grasp of her Science and its demonstration without let up. On February 19, 1910 she had her Assistant Secretary, Mr. Rathvon, write Judge Hanna: "Your recent letter was handed Mrs. Eddy this afternoon and read by her with manifest pleasure. As she handed it back to me, she said, 'Give him my love, and tell him, I thank God, and I thank him that his work as represented to me in the letters just read is worthy of the name of Christian Science, and that one student at least has found it so.'" [see the Christian Science Sentinel, March 5, 1910, p. 531: Letters to Our Leader] Shortly before she passed on, Mrs. Eddy told Laura Sargent that Judge Hanna had done more for the cause than any other student in the field. Judge Hanna passed on in July 1921 after testifying for the Directors in the Litigation. Though he left a body for burying, he did "die in the Lord...grown so far toward the stature of manhood in Christ Jesus...ready for a spiritual transfiguration..." (Un 2:20) For days before he passed on, he talked of what he was literally seeing of Truth as his transfiguration approached. Mrs. Hanna carefully recorded his sayings during this period. At one point Bliss Knapp visited him, and Judge Hanna said plainly that the time had come for his departure, that the new world he was experiencing was far more wonderful than even the highest concepts of Truth that we could imagine on this plane.

   Here is the Brief embodying his vision of Christ Jesus — manifest in the manhood of Jesus of Nazareth and the womanhood of Mary Baker Eddy, God's Two Witnesses, everlasting, the one Christ with two manifestations, male and female, forever. (Dan. 10:4-6; 12:5-7; Zech. 4; Rev. 11; Jer. 23:6; 33:19; Mic. 5:1-3; Jer. 31:22; My. 347:1; Mis. 105:20; S&H xi:9-24; 117:29-9; 131:13-18; 132:14-16, 20-24; 565:6-22; 534:24-1; 562:3-7)

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