Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/368

324 meat desired was intellectual divertissement; not only that, they would handle the things of God with more careless ease and roll the jewels of the temple upon the street for the delectation of the curious.

Thus it was that a group of rebels had coalesced within the Christian Scientist Association. They were not without examples for their dereliction. The group of students who departed from the church in Lynn had preceded them by about ten years and gone their ways into the inviting world of freedom. Mrs. Plunkett, Mrs. Hopkins, Mrs. Gestafeld had emulated Kennedy, Spofford, and Arens. But these examples were not edifying as solutions of the problem of finding happiness by returning to intellectual speculation after avowing allegiance to a spiritual ideal. Therefore this new group of Christian Science deserters would find a more plausible reason for their conduct.

In order that they might manage their departure without the shame of expulsion they took advantage of the absence of Mrs. Eddy and the secretary, William B. Johnson, to possess themselves of the Association’s books. These they placed in a lawyer’s hands and notified Mrs. Eddy on her return from Chicago that the books would not be surrendered until they had received an honorable dismissal from the Association. Expulsion, they felt, would be dishonorable, carrying with it the implication of unworthiness.

While the unmannerly abstraction of the Association’s books was the modus operandi of their rebellion, the casus belli announced was the Corner