Article November 20, 1976 Issue

Letters to the Press

From Christian Science Committees on Publication

Robert W. Newell

Oroville Mercury

Oroville Mercury
Oroville, California

The charge that Mary Baker Eddy plagiarized thirty-three pages from a document by Lieber (Letters to the Editor April 5) has an interesting history, though it is too long to tell here. (One professor used to assign the unraveling of the mystery to his college classes.) Actually, scholars and researchers have long since refuted the claim, and the alleged "document"—itself but twelve pages long—was concluded to have been plagiarized from Mrs. Eddy, not the other way around. For details, see Ordeal by Concordance by Conrad Moehlman, Longmans, Green and Company, 1955; and, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery by Robert Peel, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.

When brief quotes from Mrs. Eddy are examined in their full context, her views are strikingly different from the mind-curists of her day. The mind-curists were often the first to recognize the difference. George Quimby, son of the mental healer with whom Mrs. Eddy's teachings are sometimes confused, wrote in 1908 that he believed Mrs. Eddy had "landed in prayer cure, pure and simple." Of his father's system, he added: "There were no prayers, there was no asking assistance from God or any other divinity."

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