Article May 31, 1924 Issue

The many persons now living who knew Mrs. Eddy intimately...

Willard Joseph Welch, Committee on Publication for the State of lowa,—Centerville

Lowegian & Citizen

The many persons now living who knew Mrs. Eddy intimately testify that she was the most refined of ladies in her personal habits, dress, speech, and housekeeping. She was a New England woman of excellent family, unusually well educated for her generation, and highly honored in her community both before and after she became the justly renowned Leader of the Christian Science movement. In her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the Christian Science textbook, she says on page 383, "We need a clean body and a clean mind,—a body rendered pure by Mind as well as washed by water." On the same page she goes on to say that uncleanliness of body or surroundings shows a "mind, which is symbolized, and not chafed, by its surroundings" and that "the mind must be clean to keep the body in proper condition." On page 413 of the same book she writes, "I insist on bodily cleanliness within and without," and declares, "I am not patient with a speck of dirt."

It is a fact that Mrs. Eddy teaches that washing the body is simply for the purpose of keeping it clean, and cannot impart true health, which is gained only by right understanding of God and of His loving care for His children. Jesus declared, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." It is the purification of thought expressed in true prayer and right living that cleanses from the beliefs of sickness and sin. While cleanliness and godliness have always been inseparable, the mere cleansing of the outside of the platter does not bring peace or health. The Christian should be clean and orderly, but the cleansing merely of externals is not enough. In one of her beautiful poems (Poems, p. 75) Mrs. Eddy says:—

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