Editorial February 11, 1911 Issue

TWENTIETH CENTURY MAGAZINE

Editor

Our readers will be interested to note that, beginning with the February number, the Twentieth Century Magazine is to publish a series of articles on the life and work of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, under the title, "The Founder of Christian Science." The trend and purpose of the articles is fully set forth in the following editorial note by the writer, B. O. Flower, which accompanies Part I. in the February number:

"In this outline sketch of the Founder of Christian Science, it is the purpose of the writer merely to give the American people a brief, fair, and trustworthy account of the life of one of the most remarkable women of modern times; a sketch that shall be free from the slander and calumny born of prejudice, the sinister constructions placed upon perfectly natural incidents, and the distorted and exaggerated statements introduced for the purpose of pandering to popular prejudice, which have marked so many of the sensational articles dealing with the Founder of Christian Science which have appeared during the past twenty-five years.

The writer is not himself a Christian Scientist, and before making any personal investigations he had shared much of the general prejudice due to the long and persistent attacks against Mrs. Eddy and her teachings. But having many friends who had been cured by Christian Science, after failure to receive relief through orthodox medical channels, he was led to make a study of both the life and teachings of Mrs. Eddy, and though prepared to find such gross exaggerations and misrepresentations as are the common lot of all pioneers and reformers who promulgate religious thought that is at variance with the conventional ideas of the time, he was not prepared for the amazing exhibitions of slander, calumny, and gross distortion of facts which he encountered in this investigation.

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