"armed with power girt for the hour"

Peel has a couple of “Interlude” chapters in his book Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Authority (YoA).

There is a lot about armament, war and peace, and American expansionism at the turn of the 20^th century. the Philippines, Cuba, and Hawaii were all in its sights. Hawaii was “annexed” and eventually became a state, but there was war over the Philippines and Cuba, both of which eventually re-gained their independence.

The story has always been rather hazy for me. The Philippines and Cuba are so far away from each other – and there was no Panama Canal* at that time. I looked up a bit of history of the Philippines.My research suggests that Indonesians came to the islands around 3,000 BC, Malays 200 BC, and also “waves of Chinese”. Islam arrived via Borneo in the late 14^th century, while the 16^th century brought Spanish invaders. After the defeat of Spain by the USA, the Philippines was ceded to the USA. Then came World War II, General MacArthur, the end of the war, and independence in 1945.

[*Ed. Wikipedia has this interesting note: "A small flow of European immigrants came with the opening of the Suez Canal, (mid nineteenth century) which cut the travel time between Europe and the Philippines by half. New ideas about government and society, which the friars and colonial authorities found dangerous, quickly found their way into the Philippines, notably through the Freemasons, who along with others, spread the ideals of the American, French and other revolutions, including Spanish liberalism...In December, 1898, the Treaty of Paris (1898) was signed, ending the Spanish–American War and selling the Philippines to the United States for $20 million. With this treaty, Spanish rule in the Philippines formally ended...On February 4, 1899, the Philippine–American War began with the Battle of Manila (1899) between Americans forces and the nascent Philippine Republic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Philippines_(1521%E2%80%931898]

Cuba's history is somewhat dizzying: Columbus claimed it for Spain in 1492; it was a protectorate of the USA in 1898; and gained its independence in 1902, although Guantanamo Bay was leased to the USA! And what a chequered time it has had since then.

I like this quote from Mary Baker Eddy: “But if our nation's rights or honor were seized, every citizen would be a soldier and woman would be armed with power girt for the hour” (YoA, page 134).** I like to think that there need not be a single material weapon in the conflict.

[**Ed. The original appeared in the Boston Herald, March  1898, and is now available in Mary Baker Eddy's Miscellany p. 277 under the title Peace and War: Other Ways than our Own.] 

Hey! I have always read “citizen” as standing for the male members of the race. Not so in 2018. But what about 1900? In the course of my delving, I found a very interesting fact from the Australian point of view. I researched the question: “When did citizenship start in the US?” and found the following quoted on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services web site: "The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Alien Contract Labor laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain laborers from immigrating to the Unites States." [https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/our-history/agency-history/early-american-immigration-policies.]

And on page 138 (YoA), a very telling point is made: “For Mrs. Eddy, the healing of the individual was still the basis on which the healing of the nations must rest . . .when that (i.e. individual healing) has taken hold of mankind...the other will in time follow as a necessary sequence.”

How important is the healing of the individual!

We are indebted to Peel for his sharing of the experience of Mrs. Conger in China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. Mrs Conger could see China standing up for itself.

Note 29 (see page 421) has an interesting comment, quoted from the book, A Century of Christian Science Healing, (possibly written by Peel as editor of that book): 

“Whether a Christian Scientist participates in the social battles of our day as a liberal or a conservative, a fighter or a reconciler, a partisan or an independent, a private or a general, his ultimate purpose is to heal. Yet most Christian Scientists would probably agree that up to now only a small fraction of the healing dynamic of their religion has been utilized in relation to the urgent collective problems facing the world.”

Joyce Voysey