Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/258

216 of the chapters, enlarged the explanation in certain passages, curtailed it in others, altered the sequence of sentences, struck out unnecessary illustration to make room for the irresistible enforcement of the declaration of her doctrine, certain critics have said that the original work has disappeared in the book that stands to-day, and a brilliant satirist went so far as to say that “Science and Health” was the product of another mind than Mary Baker Eddy’s.

Because of the supreme audacity and unscrupulous wickedness of such an assertion, this first edition is indeed a “precious volume.” It holds, like the Grail, that receptacle in which the wine was given to the disciples, the verities of Christian Science. Was ever a book so attacked as this? First, this famous critic declared it absurd; second, that its ideas were not original; third, that “every single detail of it was conceived and performed by another.” Witness the three different standpoints of the satirical assailant. First, the book is absurd; the critic could n’t understand it; he would “rather saw wood” than to try, for he did not find the work of analyzing it easy. Second, maybe she who claimed to be author did write it, but the ideas are not original, for the great idea of this book, “the thing back of it,” the critic came to see, is “wholly gracious and beautiful; the power, through loving mercifulness and compassion, to heal fleshly ills and pains and griefs.” And he did not see how such an idea could possibly interest the accredited author. He did not see!