194 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



surprised to find that the good and the tender and 

 the true, which illumine so many of its pages, have 

 been taken from the New Testament. Indeed one 

 might say of " Health and Science " what was said 

 by a wit of another book : " There is much that is 

 new in it, and much that is true ; only what is new 

 is not true, and what is true is not new." Mrs. 

 Eddy bottles the wine of Christ and sells it under 

 her own label. The metaphysics in the book were 

 made long ago in Germany. And the stories of the 

 miracles would astonish all of us were we not 

 familiar with what is going on at Lourdes, and 

 Sainte Anne d'Auray, and a dozen other places. 

 According to Mrs. Eddy and her school, matter is 

 not; Berkeley also said there was no such thing 

 as matter, and the wits retorted that in that case it 

 did not matter what he said. I have met many 

 Christian Scientists, and I have noted that matter 

 is not when, and when only, there is nothing really 

 serious the matter. If the child of a woman pro- 

 fessing Christian Science happens to be bitten by a 

 rattlesnake, you will find that she sends hot-foot for 

 the nearest doctor, and the antidote he prescribes is 

 administered promptly. There is a profane story 

 about a man tormented by toothache ; the sufferer 

 was assured by a Christian Scientist (the name 

 challenges a smile, because Christian Science is 

 endorsed by neither orthodox Christians nor men of 

 science) that he was the victim of his imagination, 

 that if he would sit still and allow his mind to 

 dwell upon the true substance of life, what has 

 been wrongly termed the idealities, weening it from 

 the trivial shadow, his throbbing molar, he would 



