Early feminist Goldstein drew on Christian Science for inspiration

Goldstein must have soon glimpsed the possibilities for an enlarged sense of God as all-encompassing goodness and Love, and would have been striving to be led by a more spiritual sense of everyone she had to deal with reflecting that one divine Mind. In Eddy's words, this understanding "… unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself;' annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, - whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes…" and, indeed, can bring healing to every department of life.

Healer, public speaker, teacher, author, businesswoman, church founder, innovative theologian and "scientific" thinker, Mary Baker Eddy is found alongside Benjamin Franklin and 98 others in the list of the "100 Most Influential Americans for All Time." And her primary book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, has been designated by the US National Women's book Association as one of the 75 books written by American women whose words have changed the world.

Those words certainly changed Vida Goldstein's life. After several years abroad, she returned to Australia to take up the full-time practice of Christian Science healing and provide spiritual treatment through prayer – prayer that results in healing, including the resolution of relationship or financial difficulties, physical cure, and transformed lives.

To some this might have seemed like stepping back from the fray, but Goldstein would have seen it as taking the stand for equal rights to an even higher level - to the place where we each have the right to recognise our divine rights as equally valued sons and daughters of the Divine.