Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/285

Rh The student Arens, who argued what was called at the time the “Ipswich Witchcraft case,” had been received for instruction by Mrs. Eddy in the fall of 1877. He was a cabinet-maker of Lynn, an energetic, ambitious young man, and when he came into Christian Science he found Mrs. Eddy’s affairs in that languishing and entangled state to which Daniel Spofford had brought them. He wished to show his personal force, to push the sale of the book, and to realize for the cause of the book and the young society funds that would put life into its circulation and thus permit of a broader scope of activity. His efforts were more vigorous than well-advised, and two years later Mrs. Eddy wrote thus of his activity in her affairs:

“In the interests of truth we ought to say that never a lawsuit has entered into our history voluntarily. We have suffered great losses and direct injustice rather than go to law, for we have always considered a lawsuit of two evils the greater. About two years ago the persuasions of a student awakened our convictions that we might be doing wrong in permitting students to break their obligations with us. … The student who argued this point to us so convincingly offered to take the notes and collect them, without any participation of ours. We trusted him with the whole affair, doing only what he told us, for we were utterly ignorant of legal proceedings. It was alleged indirectly in the Newburyport Herald that we caused a bill to be filed in the Supreme Court to restrain a student of ours from practising mesmerism. That statement was utterly false. It