the sick and establishing Christianity be adopted that is found to give
the most health and to make the best Christians; science will then have a
fair field, in which case we are assured of its triumph over all opinions
and beliefs. Sickness and sin have ever had their doctors; but the
question is, Have they become less because of them? The longevity of our
antediluvians would say, No! and the criminal records of today utter
their voices little in favor of such a conclusion. Not that we would
deny to Caesar the things that are his, but that we ask for the things
that belong to Truth; and safely affirm, from the demonstrations we have
been able to make, that the science of man understood would have
eradicated sin, sickness, and death, in a less period than six thousand
years. We find great difficulties in starting this work right. Some
shockingly false claims are already made to a metaphysical practice;
mesmerism, its very antipodes, is one of them. Hitherto we have never,
in a single instance of our discovery, found the slightest resemblance
between mesmerism and metaphysics. No especial idiosyncrasy is requisite
to acquire a knowledge of metaphysical healing; spiritual sense is more
important to its discernment than the intellect; and those who would
learn this science without a high moral standard of thought and action,
will fail to understand it until they go up higher. Owing to our
explanations constantly vibrating between the same points, an irksome
repetition of words must occur; also the use of capital letters, genders,
and technicalities peculiar to the science. Variety of language, or
beauty of diction, must give place to close analysis and unembellished
thought. “Hoping all things, enduring all things,” to do good to our
enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to bear to the sorrowing and
the sick consolation and healing, we commit these pages to posterity.
MARY BAKER G. EDDY.
APPENDIX B
The Gospel narratives bear brief testimony even to the life of our great
Master. His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon, silenced portraiture.
Writers, less wise than the Apostles, essayed in the Apocryphal New
Testament, a legendary and traditional history of the early life of
Jesus. But Saint Paul summarized the character of Jesus as the model of
Christianity, in these words: “Consider Him who endured such
contradictions of sinners against Himself. Who for the joy that was set
before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at
the right hand of the throne of God.”
It may be that the mortal life battle still wages, and must continue till
its involved errors are vanquished by victory-bringing Science; but this
triumph will come! God is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and
Being. The real man is not of the dust, nor is he ever created through
the flesh; for his father and mother are the one Spirit, and his brethren
are all the children of one parent, the eternal Good.
Any kind of literary composition was excessively difficult for Mrs. Eddy.
She found it grinding hard work to dig out anything to say. She
realized, at the above stage in her life, that with all her trouble she
had not been able to scratch together even material enough for a child’s
Autobiography, and also that what she had secured was in the main not
valuable, not important, considering the age and the fame of the person
she was writing about; and so it occurred to her to attempt, in that
paragraph, to excuse the meagreness and poor quality of the feast she was
spreading, by letting on that she could do ever so much better if she
wanted to, but was under constraint of Divine etiquette. To feed with
more than a few indifferent crumbs a plebeian appetite for personal
details about Personages in her class was not the correct thing, and she
blandly points out that there is Precedent for this reserve. When Mrs.
Eddy tries to be artful –in literature –it is generally after the
manner of the ostrich; and with the ostrich’s luck. Please try to find
the connection between the two paragraphs.–M. T.
APPENDIX C
The following is the spiritual signification of the Lord’s Prayer: