Article April 7, 1928 Issue

I am sorry your contributor, "Vindex," has made it...

Miss Florence Louise Carrington, Committee on Publication for Barbados, British West Indies,—Bridgetown

Agricultural Reporter

I am sorry your contributor, "Vindex," has made it necessary for me to ask you to insert another correction. In "The Life of Mary Baker Eddy" by Sibyl Wilbur (obtainable at the local Christian Science Reading Room) there will be found an accurate account of a case brought by Mrs. Eddy in the United States Circuit Court of Boston to protect her copyrights. The defendant filed an answer alleging that Mrs. Eddy's works had been copied from manuscripts originally composed by Phineas P. Quimby; but as he was unable to present any evidence of this, the seal of the United States Court was put upon her rights as an author, and her copyrights were thus protected against infringement.

Dr. Lyman P. Powell, a former president of Hobart College, after carefully examining the Quimby manuscripts, stated in the Cambridge History of American Literature, "As a whole this system described in 'Science and Health,' is hers [Mrs. Eddy's] and nothing that can ever happen will make it less than hers." It is very wrong to speak of Mrs. Eddy as "the Fourth Person in the Christian Science Godhead." Christian Scientists regard Mrs. Eddy as their Leader; the Bible which they use at their church services is the authorized King James Version, and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy is a commentary. On page ix of the Preface to this book, Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy speaks of herself as "a willing disciple at the heavenly gate, waiting for the Mind of Christ."

It may interest your readers to read the observations of certain individuals in widely different walks of life. Dr. Drummond Shiels, Member of Parliament for one of the divisions of Edinburgh, in a speech in the House of Commons in a debate on "Unqualified Medical Practice," said: "Some of the most remarkable cases I know of, wonderful cures, have been in connection with Christian Science, which I have seen myself and known." In July, 1926, in the London Congregational Quarterly, there was an article by the Rev. Archibald Jackson, a Congreational minister, in which he said: "Many healings, not only of functional but of organic disease, are well authenticated in Christian Science practice, and it is a notable fact that these people are much more buoyant and happy in their faith than the general average of Christian believers." And Mark Twain, who once wrote ridiculing Christian Science, later said, as recorded in the third volume of his biography by Albert Bigelow Paine, "Christian Science is humanity's boon." Speaking of Mrs. Eddy, he further said: "She has organized and made available a healing principle that for two thousand years has never been employed, except as the merest kind of the guesswork. She is the benefactor of the age."

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