into the dreams of sleep.

They believe it is a Christianity that is in the New Testament; that
it has always been there, that in the drift of ages it was lost through
disuse and neglect, and that this benefactor has found it and given it
back to men, turning the night of life into day, its terrors into myths,
its lamentations into songs of emancipation and rejoicing.

There we have Mrs. Eddy as her followers see her. She has lifted
them out of grief and care and doubt and fear, and made their lives
beautiful; she found them wandering forlorn in a wintry wilderness, and
has led them to a tropic paradise like that of which the poet sings:

"O, islands there are on the face of the deep
Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep."

To ask them to examine with a microscope the character of such a
benefactor; to ask them to examine it at all; to ask them to look at a
blemish which another person believes he has found in it--well, in their
place could you do it? Would you do it? Wouldn't you be ashamed to do
it? If a tramp had rescued your child from fire and death, and saved its
mother's heart from breaking, could you see his rags? Could you smell
his breath? Mrs. Eddy has done more than that for these people.

They are prejudiced witnesses. To the credit of human nature it is not
possible that they should be otherwise. They sincerely believe that
Mrs. Eddy's character is pure and perfect and beautiful, and her history
without stain or blot or blemish. But that does not settle it. They
sincerely believe she did not borrow the Great Idea from Quimby, but hit
upon it herself. It may be so, and it could be so. Let it go--there
is no way to settle it. They believe she carried away no Quimby
manuscripts. Let that go, too--there is no way to settle it. They
believe that she, and not another, built the Religion upon the book, and
organized it. I believe it, too.

Finally, they believe that she philosophized Christian Science,
explained it, systematized it, and wrote it all out with her own hand in
the book Science and Health.

I am not able to believe that. Let us draw the line there. The known
and undisputed products of her pen are a formidable witness against
her. They do seem to me to prove, quite clearly and conclusively, that
writing, upon even simple subjects, is a difficult labor for her: that
she has never been able to write anything above third-rate English; that
she is weak in the matter of gram