Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/325

Rh there is an error in belief there regarding Mrs. Eddy which they find hard to overcome.

Mrs. Eddy at last despaired of conquering the prejudice that had arisen in Lynn against her and her religion. While she attributed this to the influence of the mesmerists, her seceding students attributed it to the unpleasant notoriety given her by her lawsuits and her quarrels with her followers. Whether these lawsuits were really discreditable to Mrs. Eddy or not, they were generally considered to be so in Lynn. People did not stop to discover whether they arose on reasonable grounds. The general public caught only the obvious paradox that here were a group of people teaching a new religion and professing to overcome sin and bodily disease through their superior realisation of Divine love, and that they were constantly quarrelling and bickering among themselves, accusing each other of fraud, dishonesty, witchcraft, bad temper, greed of money, hypocrisy, and finally of a conspiracy to murder. Unquestionably Mrs. Eddy, as the accepted messenger of God, was more severely criticised for her part in these altercations than if she had appeared before the courts merely as a citizen of Lynn, and this criticism had much to do with the cloud of suspicion and distrust which hung over the Church when, in the early part of the winter of 1882, Mrs. Eddy left Lynn forever behind her and went to Boston.

Mrs. Eddy's departure from Lynn was distinctly in the nature of a retreat. A neutral field had become pronouncedly hostile; her oldest friends and most ardent workers had left her. Science and Health had been through three editions, but less than four thousand copies of the book had been sold.