Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/497

Rh depravity of her dupes. As she received this science from Dr. Quimby it meant simply the healing of bodily ills through a lively reliance on the wholeness and order of the Infinite Mind, as clearly perceived and practically demonstrated by a simple and modest love of one's kind. What she has "founded" is a commercial system, monumental in its proportions, but already tottering to its fall.

This certainly was strong language from one who had taught Christian Science for ten years, who had often been compared to John, the beloved disciple, and who had leaned upon the bosom of her Teacher. Mrs. Woodbury's article appeared the 1st of May, and during that same month her husband, Frank Woodbury, died. This, to many of Mrs. Eddy's faithful retainers, seemed like a direct judgment upon the apostate.

Mrs. Woodbury might have known that Mrs. Eddy would have the last word, and that it would be no gentle one. In her annual message to the Mother Church, read before the congregation at the June communion service, a few weeks after Mr. Woodbury's death, Mrs. Eddy indulged in certain vivid rhetoric which Mrs. Woodbury and her friends believed referred directly to Mrs. Woodbury; to her efforts to get back into the church; to her alleged practice of malicious animal magnetism; and to her widowhood. The address was not only read aloud in the church, but was published in the Christian Science Sentinel and in the Boston Herald. Mrs. Woodbury, accordingly, brought a suit for criminal libel against Mrs. Eddy.

The case came to trial in the following June, when Boston was full of Christian Scientists who had come to attend the June communion. Mrs. Woodbury lost her suit because such Christian Scientists as were summoned as witnesses testified that they had not understood Mrs. Eddy's denunciation to refer