Christian Science -- Controversial literature; Eddy, Mary Baker, 1821-1910
I do not find this analyzing work easy, I would rather saw wood; and a
person can never tell whether he has added up a Science and Health sum
right or not, anyway, after all his trouble. Neither can he easily find
out whether the texts are still on the market or have been discarded
from the Book; for two hundred and fifty-eight editions of it have been
issued, and no two editions seem to be alike. The annual changes--in
technical terminology; in matter and wording; in transpositions of
chapters and verses; in leaving out old chapters and verses and putting
in new ones--seem to be next to innumerable, and as there is no index,
there is no way to find a thing one wants without reading the book
through. If ever I inspire a Bible-Annex I will not rush at it in a
half-digested, helter-skelter way and have to put in thirty-eight years
trying to get some of it the way I want it, I will sit down and think it
out and know what it is I want to say before I begin. An inspirer cannot
inspire for Mrs. Eddy and keep his reputation. I have never seen such
slipshod work, bar the ten that interpreted for the home market the
“sell all thou hast.” I have quoted one “spiritual” rendering of the
Lord's Prayer, I have seen one other one, and am told there are
five more. Yet the inspirer of Mrs. Eddy the new Infallible casts a
complacent critical stone at the other Infallible for being unable to
make up its mind about such things. Science and Health, edition 1899,
page 33:
“The decisions, by vote of Church Councils, as to what should and
should not be considered Holy Writ, the manifest mistakes in the ancient
versions: the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament
and the three hundred thousand in the New--these facts show how a mortal
and material sense stole into the divine record, darkening, to some
extent, the inspired pages with its own hue.”
To some extent, yes--speaking cautiously. But it is nothing, really
nothing; Mrs. Eddy is only a little way behind, and if her inspirer
lives to get her Annex to suit him that Catholic record will have to “go
'way back and set down,” as the ballad says. Listen to the boastful song
of Mrs. Eddy's organ, the Christian Science Journal for March, 1902,
about that year's revamping and half-soling of Science and Health,
whose official name is the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and who is now
the Official Pastor and Infallible and Unerring Guide of every Christian
Science church in the two hemispheres, hear Simple Simon that met the
pieman brag of the Infallible's fallibility:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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