A LAST WORD ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, 

 MIND-CURE AND ALLIED METHODS OF 

 TREATMENT. 



[Read before the Albany Institute, December 17, 1889.] 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen — Mrs. Mary Baker 

 Glover Eddy's book entitled " Science and Health " is the Bible of the 

 so-called Christian Scientists. It had its genesis in the mind of Mrs. 

 Eddy in 1866, so she claims, and made its exodus from the press in 

 1875. It has now reached its forty-third edition. It may seem a need- 

 less task, and a task suited to one who perhaps has little to do, to un- 

 dertake at this late day any explanation of the creed of Christian 

 Science or its methods of curing disease. It purports to be at once a 

 philosophy, a religion, and a system of healing. Mrs. Eddy is the 

 self-styled inspired apostle of the doctrine, the divine agent through 

 which this last revelation was made. An insight into its inner or so- 

 called esoteric doctrines may best be obtained, if it can be obtained at 

 all, from Mrs. Eddy's own words. Out of her own mouth she shall 

 be justified or condemned. The following few pages are therefore 

 given to such verbatim quotations from her book as may best serve to 

 render less obscure this most obscure subject. I do not feel called 

 upon here to criticize Mrs. Eddy's style of writing, so diffuse, weak 

 and obscure, nor to apologize for her bad English or other faults. 

 It is hoped that the passages quoted will not be incomprehensible to 

 the audience, and that the effort required to grasp the ideas concealed 

 in so much obscure verbiage will not be too tedious. In reading the 

 extracts I bespeak the indulgence of such as may be already familiar 

 with the book, and if little interest is felt in the extracts themselves, 

 I beg attention to the deductions made from them. 



Mrs. Eddy says: " In the year 1866 I discovered metaphysical heal- 

 ing, and named it Christian Science. The principle thereof is divine 

 and apodictical,* governing all; and it reveals the grand verity that 



