Editors' Note: From earliest days misrepresentations of Christian Science teachings have been circulated by critics. More recently these have reached a crescendo in a broad-scale attempt to brand Christian Science a "non-Christian cult. " We feel these questions and answers on key points, prepared by the Committee on Publication, will be of interest to our readers and inquirers. We present them in line with the purpose our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, assigned this publication, "to hold guard over Truth, Life, and Love,"^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 353.} and in the spirit of her words, "A lie left to itself is not so soon destroyed as it is with the help of truth-telling." ^{Ibid., p. 130.}

Question: Mrs. Eddy claimed to be the Discoverer of Christian Science, but many writers repeat that she was actually indebted for it to Phineas P. Quimby.

Answer: This has been said—but not by scholars who have investigated the matter fully. A thorough examination of the historical facts on this subject can be found in two recent scholarly works. ^{Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, The Years of Trial, The Years of Authority (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966, 1971, 1977) and Stephen Gottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)} These and other carefully researched studies show that there is a categorical difference between the basic Christianity of Mrs. Eddy's teachings and Quimby's views, which were rooted in mesmerism. In Christian Science, healing is a phase of Christian salvation, and it results from a wholehearted turning to God as the one infinite, divine Mind. Quimby, on the other hand, saw healing as the result of what we today call mental suggestion—as a matter of psychological manipulation rather than of spiritual rebirth.

Even Quimby's son, who strongly resented Mrs. Eddy, acknowledged the crucial difference between her and and his father when he wrote, "The religion which she teaches certainly is hers, for which I cannot be too thankful; for I should be loath to go down into my grave feeling that my father was in any way connected with 'Christian Science.'"  ^{Quoted in Gottschalk, p. 136 .}

Question: Mrs. Eddy said that her discovery of Christian Science occurred as a result of her healing from the effects of a fall on the ice in 1866. What about the charge that she invented or exaggerated the account of this experience?

Answer: The historical evidence for her account of this event rests on far more than one person's word! Actually, the known details of the incident come from a variety of sources, including a newspaper report, other witnesses (not Christian Scientists), and a letter from that same period. Two days after the fall, to cite one piece of evidence, the local newspaper reporting the accident described her condition as "critical." Neighbors and friends were called to help; her minister was sent for; and her husband, who was away on business, was also sent for by telegram. Many years later the physician involved did make several statements downplaying the whole thing, but at the time of the accident, according to the newspaper report, he "found her injuries to be internal, and of a very serious nature." ^{Quoted in Peel, Discovery, p. 195 .}

Question: It has also been said that Mrs. Eddy plagiarized parts of Science and Health and many of its key ideas from an essay on Hegel's philosophy by a nineteenth-century political scientist named Francis Lieber.

Answer: This particular charge is no longer even arguable. It has long been exposed as a complete fraud perpetrated in an attempt to blackmail The Mother Church in the 1930's. As far back as 1955, a book by a prominent Baptist scholar ^{Conrad Henry Moehlman, Ordeal by Concordance (New York: Longmans Green & Co., 1955) .} demonstrated on the basis of internal evidence that the document upon which the charge was based was a forgery from a later period and that it would not even have been seen by Mrs. Eddy much less used by her.

A more recent study by a scholar from Johns Hopkins University ^{Thomas C. Johnsen, "Historical Consensus and Christian Science," The New England Quarterly, March 1980} documents the whole sorry story of this forgery: who perpetrated it, why, and when. This study also shows how the charge has been exploited by writers who merely assumed that it was true without checking. The fact that so fraudulent a charge has been repeated as indisputable truth in dozens of fundamentalist tracts and books recalls the statement in Science and Health: "To suppose that persecution for righteousness' sake belongs to the past, and that Christianity to-day is at peace with the world because it is honored by sects and societies, is to mistake the very nature of religion. Error repeats itself. The trials encountered by prophet, disciple, and apostle, 'of whom the world was not worthy,' await, in some form, every pioneer of truth." ^{Science and Health, p. 28.}

Christian Scientists are Christians and love true Christianity wherever it is found. They recognize and can respond deeply to the Christian spirit expressed by fundamentalists, evangelicals, Roman Catholics, or those of no formal religious persuasion.

At the same time, however, Christian Scientists know the validity and depth of their own Christian roots. It was the purpose of Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, to free thought to respond to the ever-present Christ that made the life of Jesus unique in the history of mankind. She was appalled at the overlay of centuries of so-called orthodoxy that smothered the freshness and power of the actual Christian message and claimed exclusively to represent Christianity. Christian Science came out from legalism and pietism and broke with superficial religiosity.

It is, of course, the lives of Christian Scientists that must bear ultimate witness to the fresh vision of Christianity that Christian Science represents. Our Master himself said, "By their fruits ye shall know them." ^{Matt. 7:20.} That is the sacred test of discipleship.