" . . . its written expression increases in perfection
under the guidance of the great Master.”
Page 43.
It is an error. Not even in those advantageous
circumstances can increase be added to perfection.
“Evil is not mastered by evil; it can only be
overcome with Good. This brings out the nothingness
of evil, and the eternal Somethingness vindicates
the Divine Principle and improves the race of Adam.”
Page 76.
This is too extraneous for me. That is the trouble
with Mrs. Eddy when she sets out to explain an over-large
exhibit: the minute you think the light is bursting
upon you the candle goes out and your mind begins to
wander.
“No one else can drain the cup which I have
drunk to the dregs, as the discoverer and teacher
of Christian Science” Page 47.
That is saying we cannot empty an empty cup.
We knew it before; and we know she meant to tell
us that that particular cup is going to remain empty.
That is, we think that that was the idea, but we cannot
be sure. She has a perfectly astonishing talent
for putting words together in such a way as to make
successful inquiry into their intention impossible.
She generally makes us uneasy when she begins to tune
up on her fine-writing timbrel. It carries me
back to her Plague-Spot and Poetry days, and I just
dread those:
“Into mortal mind’s material obliquity
I gazed and stood abashed. Blanched was the cheek
of pride. My heart bent low before the omnipotence
of Spirit, and a tint of humility soft as the heart
of a moonbeam mantled the earth. Bethlehem and
Bethany, Gethsemane and Calvary, spoke to my chastened
sense as by the tearful lips of a babe.”
Page 48.
The heart of a moonbeam is a pretty enough Friendship’s-Album
expression —let it pass, though I do think
the figure a little strained; but humility has no
tint, humility has no complexion, and if it had it
could not mantle the earth. A moonbeam might—I
do not know—but she did not say it was
the moonbeam. But let it go, I cannot decide
it, she mixes me up so. A babe hasn’t
“tearful lips,” it’s its eyes.
You find none of Mrs. Eddy’s kind of English
in Science and Health—not a line of it.
Setting aside title-page, index, etc., the little
Autobiography begins on page 7 and ends on page 130.
My quotations are from the first forty pages.
They seem to me to prove the presence of the ’prentice
hand. The style of the forty pages is loose
and feeble and ’prentice-like. The movement
of the narrative is not orderly and sequential, but
rambles around, and skips forward and back and here
and there and yonder, ’prentice-fashion.
Many a journeyman has broken up his narrative and
skipped about and rambled around, but he did it for
a purpose, for an advantage; there was art in it,
and points to be scored by it; the observant reader
perceived the game, and enjoyed it and respected it,
if it was well played. But Mrs. Eddy’s
performance was without intention, and destitute of
art. She could score no points by it on those
terms, and almost any reader can see that her work
was the uncalculated puttering of a novice.
