you put into printing. . . . Now dear student you can work as your teacher has done before you, unselfishly, as you wish to and gain the reward of such labour; meantime you can be fitting yourself for a higher plane of action and its reward."
The above letters, with their refrain of dread, seem anomalous from one who had discovered the secret of health and happiness. Although she absolutely denied the influence of heredity, Mrs. Eddy told her students that she had a congenital susceptibility to assume the mental and physical ills of others. She felt that such a state was incompatible with a full realisation of the principles of Christian Science, and in the first edition of Science and Health she says of Christ:
He bore their sins in his own person; that is, he felt the suffering their error brought, and through this consciousness destroyed error. Had the Master utterly conquered the belief of Life in matter, he would not have felt their infirmities; he had not yet risen to this his final demonstration.[1]
Mrs. Eddy believed that she herself in time overcame this weakness, and says in the edition of 1881:
In years past we suffered greatly for the sick when healing them, but even that is all over now, and we cannot suffer for them. But when we did suffer in belief, our joy was so great in removing others sufferings that we bore ours cheerfully and willingly. This self-sacrificing love has never left us, but grows stronger every year of our earth life.[2]
Malicious mesmerism, an important addition to Mrs. Eddy's Science, was developed gradually, almost by chance. Even the most haphazard philosopher is likely at some time to have to account for the element of evil, but Mrs. Eddy came to do so purely through the exigencies of circumstances, and was quite unconscious that she was repeating history. She added to her
- ↑ Science and Health (1875), p. 130.
- ↑ Science and Health (1881), chapter vi. p. 38.
