Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/184

146 In rendering a decision in favour of Tuttle and Stanley, Judge Choate said:

Upon a careful examination I do not find any instructions given by her nor any explanations of her "science" or "method of healing" which appear intelligible to ordinary comprehension, or which could in any way be of value in fitting the Defendant as a competent and successful practitioner of any intelligible art or method of healing the sick, and I am of opinion that the consideration for the agreement has wholly failed, and I so find.

Within a few weeks after her first class was organised, Mrs. Glover raised her tuition fee to three hundred dollars, which price was never afterward changed. Concerning her reasons for fixing upon this sum, Mrs. Eddy says:

When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction in Christian Science Mind-healing, I could think of no financial equivalent for an impartation of a knowledge of that divine power which heals; but I was led to name three hundred dollars as the price for each pupil in one course of lessons at my college, a startling sum for tuition lasting barely three weeks. This amount greatly troubled me. I shrank from asking it, but was finally led, by a strange providence, to accept this fee. God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the wisdom of this decision; and I beg disinterested people to ask my loyal students if they consider three hundred dollars any real equivalent for my instruction during twelve half-days, or even in half as many lessons.

In 1888 Mrs. Eddy reduced the course of twelve lessons to seven, but the tuition fee still remained three hundred dollars. In the Christian Science Journal for December, 1888, she published the following notice:

Having reached a place in teaching where my students in Christian Science are taught more during seven lessons in the primary class than they were formerly in twelve, and taught all that is profitable at one time, hereafter the primary class will include seven lessons only. As this number of lessons is of more value than twice this number in times past, no change is made in the price of tuition, three hundred dollars. Mary Baker G. Eddy.