Georgine Milmine

“ While even in the very latest edition of Science and Health the flavour of Mrs. Eddy lingers on every page, like a dominating strain of blood that cannot be bred out, the book has been rearranged and retouched by so many hands that the personal element has been greatly moderated. In the old files of the Journal, however, we seem to get Mrs. Eddy with singular directness and to come into very intimate contact with her. When she is angry one can fairly hear the voice behind the type, and when she bestows royal favours one can see the smile at the other end of the copy. ”

“ The medical profession constantly harped on the idea of sickness; Quimby constantly harped on the idea of health. The doctor told the patient that disease was inevitable, man's natural inheritance; Quimby told him that disease was merely an "error," that it was created, "not by God, but by man," and that health was the true and scientific state. "The idea that a beneficent God had anything to do with disease," said Quimby, "is superstition." "Disease," reads another of his manuscripts, "is false reasoning. True scientific wisdom is health and happiness. False reasoning is sickness and death." ”

“ Eddy suddenly left Boston, driven from home, so she declared, by malicious mesmerism. The fear of it had for a long time completely dominated her, and it was now interfering seriously with her work in the college and church. She spent her time in talking about it; in treating and fighting against it, and in discovering and thwarting imaginary plots. She felt it reaching out to her, not only from her enemies, but from her most trusted students and friends. ”

“ I want quiet and Christian life alone with God, when I can find intervals for a little rest. You are not what I had hoped to find you, and I am changed. The world, the flesh and evil I am at war with, and if any one comes to me it must be to help me and not to hinder me in this warfare. If you will stay away from me until I get through with my public labour then I will send for you and hope to then have a home to take you to.
As it now is, I have none, and you will injure me by coming to Boston at this time more than I have room to state in a letter. ”

“ On the contrary, she sat almost constantly at her desk, writing press notices and newspaper interviews upon the subject of her husband's death. Mrs. Eddy, indeed, is never so commanding a figure as when she bestirs herself in the face of calamity. She gave way to fear and dread only in the short intervals when she laid aside her driven pen for rest, and her best energies were concentrated upon how she should present to the public this misfortune which, if wrongly understood, might be used as an effective argument against Christian Science, and might retard her advancement in a new field. ”

“ When he was accused of curing disease through Beelzebub or ignorance, he said, If I cast out devils or disease through Beelzebub or ignorance, my kingdom or science cannot stand, but if I cast out devils or disease through a science or law, then my kingdom or law will stand, for it is not of this world. When others cast out disease they cured by ignorance, or Beelzebub, and there was no science in the cure, although an effect was produced, but not knowing the cause, the world was none the wiser for their cures. ”

“ Eddy soon made it known to him, however, that he was to be a teacher in her college, and she duly installed him as professor of obstetrics. [1] She took great comfort in Dr. Foster's presence in the house and began to feel that from him she might hope for the unquestioning obedience and perpetual adoration she was always seeking. She loved to amaze and astonish; when her students ceased to "wonder," she was usually through with them. Each of her favourites gave her, as it were, a new lease of life; with each one her interest in everything quickened. ”

“ Eddy was weaving her spell about a new favourite that she was at her best, and it was then that she most believed in herself. But she could never stop with enchanting, merely. She must altogether absorb the new candidate; he must have nothing left in him which was not from her. If she came upon one insoluble atom hidden away anywhere in the marrow of his bones, she experienced a revulsion and flung him contemptuously aside.
Dr. Foster had been in the house but a little while when Mrs. Eddy told him she foresaw that the relation between them must be a very close one. ”

“ We have been so influenced, however, by the Adam belief that we have lost sight of our true inheritance.
The immediate outlook for the sons of error is not encouraging, for we are told that "error will continue for seven thousand years, from the time of Adam, its origin. At the expiration of this period Truth will be generally comprehended, and science roll back the darkness that now hides the eternal sunshine and lift the curtain on Paradise, where earth produces at the command of Intelligence, and Soul, instead of sense, govern man." ”

“ At length we learned that while fasting increased the desire for food, it spared none of the sufferings occasioned by partaking of it, and what to do next, having already exhausted the medicine men, was a question. After years of suffering, when we made up our mind to die, our doctors kindly assuring us this was our only alternative, our eyes were suddenly opened, and we learned suffering is self-imposed, a belief, and not truth. That God never made men sick; and all our fasting for penance or health is not acceptable to Wisdom because it is not the science in which Soul governs sense. ”

“ Eddy further says of her Science and her ministry:
Above the fogs of sense and storms of passion, Christian Science and its Art will rise triumphant; ignorance, envy, and hatred—earth's harmless thunder pluck not their heaven-born wings. Angels, with overtures, hold charge over both, and announce their principle and idea. ”

“ If Mrs. Eddy were going to adopt any one, why not one of her trusted and tried rather than a comparative stranger? From the day of his installation as the son of the house, Foster Eddy felt that Mrs. Eddy's cabinet was jealous of his influence over her, of her affection for him, of his musical accomplishments and his winning manners, and of his efforts to bring sunshine into his new home.
Mr. Frye went his silent, inscrutable way, keeping a wary eye upon the new favourite. Frye was little about the house in those days. ”

“ Do not Scientists make a mistake in conveying the impression, or, what is the same thing, letting an impression go uncorrected, that those in Science are never sick, that they never have any ailments or troubles to contend with? There is no Scientist who at all times is wholly exempt from aches and pains or from trials of some kind. Neither pride of knowledge nor practice nor the good of the cause require that Scientists disguise or withhold these facts. ”

“ Glover's students experienced this in a very slight degree, and some not at all, but such as were imaginative and emotional, and especially those who had something of the mystic in their natures, came out of her class room to find that for them the world had changed. They lived by a new set of values; the colour seemed to fade out of the physical world about them; men and women became shadow-like, and their own humanity grew pale. ”

“ While she certainly cherished a vague, half-formulated plan to go out into the world some day and teach the Quimby doctrine, her imperative need was to control the immediate situation; to be the commanding figure in the lodge, the sewing-circle, the family gathering. The one thing she could not endure was to be thought like other people. She must be something besides plain Mrs. Glover,—invalid, poetess, healer, propagandist, guest; she must be exceptional at any cost. ”

“ Quimby had not aimed to give his system a religious tone, but he dealt with the same problems that religion has tried to solve, and he believed that the severe doctrines of the churches overlooked the real solution of man's destiny, and did incalculable damage in the world by spreading fear and the belief that man was naturally born to sin. His own theory, it will be remembered, was that man had had these beliefs of sin and fear and disease so borne in upon him and impressed upon him that he was spiritually weakened and made impotent by an overruling conviction of his own unworthiness. ”

“ The Christian Science faith has, from the beginning, owed its growth to its radical principle that sickness of soul and body are delusions which can be dispelled at will, and that the natural state of the human creature is characterised by health, happiness, and goodness. The message which Mrs. Eddy brought to Lynn was substantially that God is not only all-good, all-powerful, and all-present, but that there is nothing but God in all the Universe; that evil is a non-existent thing, a sinister legend which has been handed down from generation to generation until it has become a fixed belief. ”

“ Eddy's stimulating example. Whatever the more conservative school of mental healers might have to say for themselves, or even for Mr. Quimby, it was Mrs. Eddy who had brought mental healing out of comparative obscurity, who had built up a strong organisation to advertise and push it, and who had sent out scores of missionaries and healers to establish it. It was as a religion, not as a way of thinking or a manner of living, that the new idea could be made to take hold, and Mrs. Eddy had seen this when the mental scientists had not. ”

“ I want you to be good and happy in being good for you never can be happy without it. I rebuke error only to destroy it not to harm you, but to do you good. Whenever a straying student returns to duty, stops his evil practice or sin against the Holy Ghost, I am ready to say, "neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more." ”