I have called certain of Mrs. Eddy’s representations lies, and the word “lie” is a very disagreeable word. It is bad enough to have to use it in characterization of the utterances of a man; but it is still worse to apply it in all its brutality to a woman. I have endeavored to find another word, meaning precisely the same thing, that isn’t so intrinsically offensive; but there is no other word that suits my purpose and the occasion as does this word “lie,” and so I am compelled to adhere to it, even at the risk of being charged with lack of gallantry in my attitude toward a woman. Gallantry really has nothing to do with my undertaking. Truth and lies are sexless, and the only question is, has Mrs. Eddy told the truth? But further word about lies. There are some lies that are not so bad as other lies, and there have been lies that have called forth commendation. I recall in that wonderful story, Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” the incident of the lie told by the Sister Superior of the convent in order to save from the brutal grasp of the law incarnate, as represented by Javert, the sublime personality of the transformed ex-convict, and Hugo’s beautiful eulogy of that lie and that woman: “Oh, holy woman, it is many years since you were upon this earth; you have rejoined in the light you sister, the virgins, and your brothers, the angels; may that falsehood be placed to your credit in Paradise!” There are lies arising merely out of a tactful wish to spare people’s feelings, and there are the little white lies of social life that nobody especially reprobates; but there are lies that are intrinsically of an infamous character, and I can conceive of no falsehood more infamous than that which, proceeding from a wholly mercenary motive, is deliberately planned and put forth in order to alienate people from a religion in which is the hope of salvation and immortality, and from a scientific medical system in which is the hope of bodily health and life. These are the precise kind of lies of which this woman is most prolific, and which she distributes most lavishly. The passage I am now to quote is taken from a communication signed by Mrs. Eddy and published by her in the New York _Sun_ for December 16, 1898, and it contains the boldest and wickedest of these most bold and most wicked lies. In this letter Mrs. Eddy said: “I challenge the world to disprove what I hereby declare. After my discovery of Christian Science, I healed consumption in its last stages, that the M.D.’s, by verdict of the stethoscope and the schools, declared incurable, the lungs being mostly consumed. I healed malignant tubercular diphtheria and carious bones that could be dented by the finger, saving them when the surgeon’s instruments were lying on the table ready for their amputation. I have healed at one visit a cancer that had so eaten the flesh of the neck as to expose the jugular vein so that it stood out like a cord.”