Article March 19, 1927 Issue

Kindly allow me to make a statement in your columns...

Judge Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts,—Iowa

Centerville Daily Iowegian & Citizen

Kindly allow me to make a statement in your columns with reference to a letter from the Centerville Ministerial Association which you published recently. As I am informed, the Rev. Dr. Charles R. Brown, who is now Dean of the Divinity School in Yale University, studied theology in Boston University, beginning February, 1887. At that time Mary Baker Eddy was the pastor of the church which she founded, and occasionally delivered addresses or sermons at its meetings, which were then held in Chickering Hall. Usually, however, the sermons for this church were delivered by its assistant pastor, because Mrs. Eddy had other duties. During the year from February 1, 1887, Mrs. Eddy delivered six sermons, and afterward she spoke about as frequently until personal teaching in this church was finally discontinued. Therefore, while Dean Brown was in Boston, he may have heard Mrs. Eddy deliver a few public sermons such as anyone in Boston could have heard, and such as anyone may now read on pages 161–202 of her "Miscellaneous Writings."

Dean Brown is the author of a book entitled "Faith and Health," containing a paragraph, extending from page 76 to page 78, which has been construed by many readers to mean that he was a pupil in Christian Science of Mrs. Eddy. On December 28, 1926, I sent a letter to Dean Brown which apprised him that readers of the paragraph in question were misconstruing it in this manner. In the same letter, I informed him that the Rev. Dr. Swaim had made an assertion to this effect in your columns on November 23, 1926. In Dean Brown's reply to me, dated December 31, 1926, he made the following explicit statement: "I have never stated either publicly or privately that I studied under Mrs. Eddy."

What the Centerville Ministerial Association have quoted from Dean Brown in your issue of January 4 is part of the paragraph extending from page 76 to page 78 of the book in question and part of another statement. Furthermore, when quoting from this paragraph, they omitted a sentence which is essential to its meaning and occurs between two of the sentences which they quoted. The sentence thus omitted contains the statement by Dean Brown that he had two men, not Mrs. Eddy, for his "personal instructors."

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