kissed the Book, I am
sure. There is no keeping up with her erratic testimony. As soon as you
have got her share of the authorship nailed where you half hope and half
believe it will stay and cannot be joggled loose any more, she joggles
it loose again--or seems to; you cannot be sure, for her habit of
dealing in meaningless metaphors instead of in plain, straightforward
statistics, makes it nearly always impossible to tell just what it
is she is trying to say. She was definite when she claimed both the
language and the ideas of the book. That seemed to settle the matter.
It seemed to distribute the percentages of credit with precision between
the collaborators: ninety-two per cent. to Mrs. Eddy, who did all the
work, and eight per cent. to the Deity, who furnished the inspiration
not enough of it to damage the copyright in a country closed against
Foreigners, and yet plenty to advertise the book and market it at famine
rates. Then Mrs. Eddy does not keep still, but fetches around and comes
forward and testifies again. It is most injudicious. For she resorts to
metaphor this time, and it makes trouble, for she seems to reverse the
percentages and claim only the eight per cent. for her self. I quote
from Mr. Peabody's book (Eddyism, or Christian Science. Boston: 15 Court
Square, price twenty-five cents):

"Speaking of this book, Mrs. Eddy, in January last (1901) said: 'I
should blush to write of Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,
as I have, were it of human origin, and I, apart from God, its author;
but as I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of Heaven in
divine metaphysics, I cannot be supermodest of the Christian Science
text-book."'

Mr. Peabody's comment:

"Nothing could be plainer than that. Here is a distinct avowal that the
book entitled Science and Health was the work of Almighty God."

It does seem to amount to that. She was only a "scribe." Confound the
word, it is just a confusion, it has no determinable meaning there, it
leaves us in the air. A scribe is merely a person who writes. He may be
a copyist, he may be an amanuensis, he may be a writer of originals, and
furnish both the language and the ideas. As usual with Mrs. Eddy, the
connection affords no help--"echoing" throws no light upon "scribe." A
rock can reflect an echo, a wall can do it, a mountain can do it, many
things can do it, but a scribe can't. A scribe that could reflect
an echo could get over thirty dollars a week in a si