Article November 25, 1916 Issue

In two different departments of the Boston Transcript...

Judge Clifford P. Smith

Boston (Mass.) Transcript

In two different departments of the Boston Transcript were references to Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, which must have escaped the usual scrutiny of its responsible editors. In one of these departments Mrs. Eddy was referred to as "Mother Eddy," although it is well known, I believe, that she objected to this prefix and it is not used by Christian Scientists.

In the other department to which I have referred, the Transcript quoted a statement from a certain unreliable life of Mrs. Eddy to the effect that the Rev. Mr. Wiggin was joint author with her of the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." This canard has been refuted frequently. It rests upon a story, not told by Mr. Wiggin himself, to the effect that Mrs. Eddy employed him as a literary expert to criticize the manuscript of Science and Health when she was preparing a new edition of this book, and that he found the manuscript in such illiterate form that he had to revise it from beginning to end.

The author of this story admits, what could not be denied, that Mr. Wiggin was not employed by Mrs. Eddy for any purpose until the fall of 1885. Now Science and Health had been published for ten years at that time, and it had passed through fourteen or fifteen editions of one thousand copies each. It can be seen, however, by any reader, that these editions did not need any such polishing as the fiction in question implies, and that the changes made in the next revision of Science and Health were not different in kind or degree from the changes made at the several other times when Mrs. Eddy revised this book. In short, the editions of Science and Health from first to last constitute a series of documents which attest Mrs. Eddy's sole authorship beyond question.

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In two different departments of the Boston Transcript...

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