it went a threat, of the infliction, in
case of disobedience, of the most dreaded punishment that has a place
in the Church's list of penalties for transgressions of Mrs. Eddy's
edicts--excommunication:

"If a member of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, shall fail to
obey this injunction, it will render him liable to lose his membership
in this Church. MARY BAKER EDDY."

It is the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition.

None but accepted and well established gods can venture an affront like
that and do it with confidence. But the human race will take anything
from that class. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race; knows it better than
any mere human being has known it in a thousand centuries. My confidence
in her human-beingship is getting shaken, my confidence in her godship
is stiffening.

SEVEN HUNDRED PER CENT.

A Scientist out West has visited a bookseller--with intent to find fault
with me--and has brought away the information that the price at which
Mrs. Eddy sells Science and Health is not an unusually high one for the
size and make of the book. That is true. But in the book-trade--that
profit-devourer unknown to Mrs. Eddy's book--a three-dollar book that
is made for thirty-five or forty cents in large editions is put at
three dollars because the publisher has to pay author, middleman, and
advertising, and if the price were much below three the profit accruing
would not pay him fairly for his time and labor. At the same time, if
he could get ten dollars for the book he would take it, and his morals
would not fall under criticism.

But if he were an inspired person commissioned by the Deity to receive
and print and spread broadcast among sorrowing and suffering and poor
men a precious message of healing and cheer and salvation, he would have
to do as Bible Societies do--sell the book at a pinched margin above
cost to such as could pay, and give it free to all that couldn't; and
his name would be praised. But if he sold it at seven hundred per cent.
profit and put the money in his pocket, his name would be mocked and
derided. Just as Mrs. Eddy's is. And most justifiably, as it seems to
me.

The complete Bible contains one million words. The New Testament by
itself contains two hundred and forty thousand words.

My '84 edition of Science and Health contains one hundred and twenty
thousand words--just half as many as the New Testament.

Science and Health has since been so inflated by later inspirations t