Article July 25, 1908 Issue

If all thinkers were to accept the dictum of Miss Reed,...

Frederick Dixon—Belfast, Ire.

Northern Whig

If all thinkers were to accept the dictum of Miss Reed, in her address on Christian Science before the Pan-Anglican Congress, that it was unnecessary to know anything of the person or works of the founder of a new movement before discussing it, the art of criticism would be in a parlous condition. This critic herself seems to have had some haunting doubt on the subject, for she at once proceeded to describe Mrs. Eddy as "neurotic and erratic." Will you therefore permit me to say, as one who does know Mrs. Eddy and who is acquainted with her works, that it would have been difficult if the critic had hunted the Oxford dictionary from end to end to discover any two adjectives less suitable. So far from being neurotic, Mrs. Eddy is one of the sweetest and calmest of women; so far from being erratic, she is one of the most exact and acute reasoners, and regularly disposes of a day's work which would appal the average business man.

The history of the Christian Science movement is in itself the most crushing answer to such a suggestion. In the brief period of forty years the Christian Science movement has been spread round the entire world under the direction of one whom we are asked to believe is "erratic," and has been magnificently organized by one whom we are asked to believe is "neurotic." During that time the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," written by Mrs. Eddy, has had an enormous and unprecedented sale, while there has gathered around her a very large body of cultivated men and women.

A clergyman from Boston supported this critic by professing to believe that Christian Science was regarded in America with "amused toleration," but surely he did not hope to be taken seriously. He himself lives within the shadow of the dome of The Mother Church of Christian Science, which towers over the roofs of Boston, and any Sunday or any Wednesday he may see that great church, with a seating capacity of upwards of five thousand, crowded with an earnest congregation. Nor does it matter where you travel from Boston, whether it be to Alaska and Stockholm in the North, whether it be through Italy to the Transvaal and Australia in the South, whether it be westward over the prairie to the Pacific slope, or eastward through Europe and India to the coasts of China, you will find Christian Science meetings and Christian Science workers wherever you go.

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