Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/529

Rh attempts to control and to injure persons by mental means, this being utterly contrary to the teachings of Christian Science."

It is interesting to note that, in dealing with the case of Mrs. Stetson, Mrs. Eddy once again resorted to the faithful weapon which had never failed her in all her executions of the past — the time-worn charge of mental malpractice.

Her pastors having been satisfactorily dealt with, the next danger Mrs. Eddy saw lay in her teachers and "academies." Mrs. Eddy had found, of course, that a great many Christian Scientists wished to make their living out of their new religion; that possibility, indeed, was one of the most effective advantages which Christian Science had to offer over other religions. In the early days of the church, while Mrs. Eddy was still instructing classes in Christian Science at her "college," teaching was a much more remunerative business than healing. Mrs. Eddy charged each student $300 for a primary course of seven lessons, and the various Christian Science "institutes" and "academies" about the country charged from $100 to $200 per student. So long as Mrs. Eddy was herself teaching and never took patients, she could not well forbid other teachers to do likewise. But after she retired to Concord, she took the teachers in hand. Mrs. Eddy knew that Christian Science was propagated and that converts were made, not through doctrine, but through cures. She had found that out in the beginning, when Richard Kennedy's cures brought her her first success. She knew, too, that teaching Christian Science was a much easier profession than healing by it, and that the teacher risked no encounter with the law. Since teaching was both