Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/404

350 as her own? Mrs. Ursula Gestefeld of Chicago, who had been a student in the class Mrs. Eddy taught in that city in April, 1884, and who was one of the most intelligent and able persons ever associated with the Christian Science movement, in 1888 wrote a book which she called A Statement of Christian Science, adding upon the title-page that it was "An Explanation of Science and Health," and giving Mrs. Eddy all possible credit as the originator of the basic ideas of her book. Mrs. Gestefeld's work was an intelligent and intelligible presentation of the fundamental ideas contained in Science and Health, without Mrs. Eddy's disregard of logic and order, and free from her confusing and tawdry rhetoric. Any natural scientist would have welcomed such a clear and careful statement of his ideas. But Mrs. Eddy branded Mrs. Gestefeld as a "mesmerist" of the most dangerous variety, and had her expelled from the Chicago church. The Journal declared that the "metaphysics" of Mrs. Gestefeld's book "crawled on its belly instead of soaring in the upper air," and bade her beware, as "only the pure in heart should see God." Mrs. Gestefeld then published a pamphlet, Jesuitism in Christian Science, in which she explained her position and said that if Science and Health merely contained Mrs. Eddy's personal impressions, if it were a work of the fancy or imagination, then she had a right to object to its being used as the basis of another book. But if Mrs. Eddy's work announced the discovery of a principle and a universal truth, she could no more keep other people from writing and thinking upon it than she could keep people from affirming that twice two are four. But, with Mrs. Eddy, obtaining recognition for her truth was always secondary to