ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



13 



mucli good, and we are feeling more prosperous, which will 

 open the way to our receiving more. Since the treatments 

 our chickens have laid better, the food goes farther and our 

 whole living seems easier." 



I rather think Professor Lionel Beale more than once suggested 

 that some of the metaphysical questions should be made the 

 subject of discussion among us, and I think w^e might follow 

 the example of the Eoyal Institution in publishing in a small 

 volume some of the addresses, and perhaps the discussions, 

 which have been delivered here by our own distinguished 

 members. I am sure it would be useful, as in the case of the 

 Royal Institution their volume was useful in dissipating the 

 fog of Science falsely so called, and we have not heard much of 

 table turning since the little instrument Professor Faraday 

 invented which put an end to the supposed communication of 

 thought and replies from the dead by knocks on a table. This 

 invention was not so much to prevent intentional fraud as to 

 prevent the unconscious movement of the table by persons who 

 were sincerely under the impression that the table itself moved 

 while without meaning it they were themselves responsible for 

 the movement. 



Xow there is much need for careful investigation and clear 

 thought at the present time. 



It will be observed that Mr. Ladd's description of Christian 

 Science includes truly " Christian Beliefs and Conceptions." 



If Mr. Ladd means, as he probably does, that in Mrs. Eddy's 

 book there is a mixture of much silly and terribly profane 

 sentences mixed up with Christian truth in words, one can 

 heartily agree, but without this qualification it is hardly possible 

 to say that there is any Christianity at all in it. 



Some scriptural quotations and even the professed belief of 

 the writer herself are so disfigured by what is added, that while 

 one recognises from time to time a Christian truth there, it is 

 followed by an addition or interpretation by the author wdiich 

 makes one shudder by the profanity with which sacred w^ords 

 are put together with such hideous nonsense. 



This renders it difficult to give examples since one does not 

 like to quote what one cannot read without pain, but one or two 

 may suffice. At page 218 she says, "They that wait upon the 

 Lord shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not 

 faint." The writer seems to have had a dim suspicion of her 

 own profaneness, for she says, " the meaning of that passage is 

 not perverted by applying it literally to moments of fatigue, for 

 the moral and physical are as one in their results. 



