Article June 4, 1910 Issue

The writer of the short notice in your issue of the 16th...

Frederick Dixon—London, England.

Nation

The writer of the short notice in your issue of the 16th inst., of Miss Milmine's life of Mrs. Eddy makes an illuminating remark. He says that it is difficult to understand from the picture drawn the fascination exerted by the subject. It certainly is most difficult to understand. The writer depicts Mrs. Eddy—the terms are those selected by the reviewer—as "selfish,"—yet Mrs. Eddy is known in her own neighborhood as one of the most charitable of citizens. When, not long since, after a residence of nineteen years in Concord, she moved to Boston, the mover of the farewell address, carried unanimously by the city council, spoke in these terms: "It is quite unnecessary for me to prompt your memory of the countless deeds of charity and her endless gifts. Neither is it necessary for me to call your attention to her innumerable donations to the more unfortunate ones in our midst." "Fickle,"—yet she is surrounded by workers, inside and outside her household, who have lived no terms of intimacy and the deepest affection for her for a quarter of a century. "Unlearned,"—yet the Christian Science movement contains thousands of men successful in business and well known at the bar, in the army and navy, and in artistic, literary, and scientific circles, who have found their greatest intellectual and spiritual stimulus in her teaching.

Is it any wonder that Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton, himself not a Christian Scientist, but one of the most distinguished of American medical men, who was brought in contact a little time ago with Mrs. Eddy in a law case into which she had been forced, wrote to her afterward: "It is the lot of every one who is in earnest in this life to have rivals and sometimes calumniators, and your have certainly had your share." "Suspicious,"—yet she has conceived a form of church government, the most democratic in the world, in which every congregation holds and disposes of its own church property, makes its own by-laws, and governs itself literally for the congregation, by the congregation. So suspicious is she that no member of the church is permitted even to make a complaint to her about another member. "Unscrupulous,"—yet the entire organization of the Christian Science movement is, under her instructions, scrupulous to the last extent of the rights and feelings of those who do not agree with it. "Quick to make and unmake favorites the moment she suspects want of obedience,"—yet she never interferes in the government of churches, but on the contrary leaves the entire movement free to work out its own salvation. No wonder that a great New York paper, absolutely unconnected with Christian Science, lately wrote, "The public is tired of the hue and cry against Christian Science, and is not a little sympathetic with the dignified lady who presides over the councils of that church."

The fact is that the book in question is the outcome of the reminiscences of people not merely without sympathy for, but burdened with prejudice and actual antagonism against, Christian Science. The only witnesses who have not been called are those who know Mrs. Eddy intimately, and have worked beside her for years. Without exception the testimony of these is absent. The original publishers claim that the greatest care has been taken to ensure correctness, yet they ignored the offer of the committee on publication in Boston to correct errors in the letterpress, and though Mrs. Eddy is by far the best-known woman in America, published as a picture of her a picture of another person. Biography is one of the most difficult of literary undertakings. Biographies of contemporaries, while the battle is still being joined over their teaching, are the most difficult forms of portraiture not to get out of focus. Imagine a biography of Charles I. written by Hugh Peters, or of Cromwell written by Laud! The true biography of Mrs. Eddy is being written daily in the healing of sorrow and sickness and sin all over the world. The Archbishop of York, speaking not long ago, though disagreeing with the theology of Christian Science, bore generous testimony to the lives of Christian Scientists. Those lives they have learned to live by reading Mrs. Eddy's books, and in the words of Jesus, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit."

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