Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/261

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FIRST EDITION OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH
219

worked on the book Mother Webster called Mrs. Glover’s “Bible” when rustics of Amesbury gapingly watched to see her walk upon the Merrimac River? Who else was it that prepared the prospectus that George Clark carried to a Boston printer and had rejected? Who else was it that wrote the manuscripts the student Stanley contended for and thought he was wronged because he could not possess? Who else was it that prepared that closing chapter on animal magnetism and carried it to the printer? Who else was it wrote the scientific statement of being?

Internal evidence or higher criticism will not divorce this work from its author Mary Baker Eddy any more than it will divorce the fourth gospel from St. John. The first edition of “Science and Health,” which the critics of that day fell upon with ironic glee, stands as the model of the finished structure of to-day. It was written under the severest hardships and was revised painstakingly in the midst of the multitudinous duties of a leader. It has been plagiarized and pirated from, vilified and burlesqued, but it will stand.