Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/346

318 capitalization, in order to express the “new tongue,” has well-nigh constituted a new style of language. In almost every case where Mr. Wiggin added words, I have erased them in my revisions.

Mr. Wiggin was not my proofreader for my book “Miscellaneous Writings,” and for only two of my books. I especially employed him on “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," because at that date some critics declared that my book was as ungrammatical as it was misleading. I availed myself of the name of the former proofreader for the University Press, Cambridge, to defend my grammatical construction, and confidently awaited the years to declare the moral and spiritual effect upon the age of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.”

I invited Mr. Wiggin to visit one of my classes in the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, and he consented on condition that I should not ask him any questions. I agreed not to question him just so long as he refrained from questioning me. He held himself well in check until I began my attack on agnosticism. As I proceeded, Mr. Wiggin manifested more and more agitation, until he could control himself no longer and, addressing me, burst out with:

“How do you know that there ever was such a man as Christ Jesus?”

He would have continued with a long argument, framed from his ample fund of historical knowledge, but I stopped him.

“Now, Mr. Wiggin,” I said, “you have broken our agreement. I do not find my authority for Christian Science in history, but in revelation. If there had never