Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/311

Rh money, and the appearance of hypocrisy, cannot longer submit to such leadership. Therefore, without aught of hatred, revenge, or petty spite in our hearts, from a sense of duty alone, to her, the cause, and ourselves, do most respectfully withdraw our names from the Christian Science Association and Church of Christ, Scientist.

This document, dated October 21, 1881, was signed by eight protesting students whose names need not be commemorated here. Their statement is interesting because of a state of consciousness presented to view.

Examining the charges summed up in this statement, it can readily be seen how the fresh impetus at work in Mrs. Eddy's mind had wrought upon these narrow-visioned artisans. The Boston lectures had seemed to take the work beyond their sphere; the influx of new students from beyond Lynn had detached the teacher's attention from their immediate concerns; the necessity to provide funds for propaganda had put an end to the easygoing communistic methods of the primitive movement; and above all, Mrs. Eddy had commanded an implicit obedience from her later students and they had yielded it. Mr. Choate went to Portland where she sent him to teach, heal, and lecture, Mr. Buswell went on a similar errand to Cincinnati, Joseph Morton was sent to New York. These were the signs of a burgeoning of the work which alarmed the first students, and some of them retaliated, as has been shown, by malediction.

Had Mrs. Eddy been the virago and the avaricious hypocrite that they in their suspicion and