primary class. As many of her normal graduates were now teaching primary classes in Christian Science, but not normal classes, this ruling would have the effect of debarring students, who wished to take more than a primary course, from any institution but Mrs. Eddy's. Mrs. Eddy's primary classes would be filled at the expense of the classes of her followers. So generally was this order criticised, that Mrs. Eddy felt obliged to modify it.
Mrs. Eddy, having faithfully taught her students how to detect malicious animal magnetism in others, was now openly charged with teaching and practising it herself. In Science and Health,[1] and in her classes, she had taught her students how to make a vigorous defence against the black art of the malpractitioners, but she had always indignantly denied the charge of being a mesmerist herself. The very accusation, the Journal said, was due to the malicious work of Kennedy and Arens.[2]
It seems, however, to have been Mrs. Eddy's action in the Corner case which brought all this dissatisfaction to a head. In the spring of 1888 Mrs. Abby H. Corner of West Medford, Mass., a student of Mrs. Eddy's and a member of the Christian Scientists' Association, attended her own daughter in childbirth, with the result that the mother and baby died. Mrs. Corner
- ↑ "They (the malpractitioners) know," she writes in Science and Health, Vol. I, page 244, 1885 edition, "as well as we, it is morally impossible for Science to produce sickness, but science makes sin punish itself. They should have fear for their own lives in their attempts to kill us. God is Supreme, and the penalties of their sins they cannot escape. Turning the attention of the sick to us for the benefit they may receive from us, is another milder species of malpractice that is not safe, for if we feel their sufferings, not knowing the individual, we shall defend ourself, and the result is dangerous to the intruder."
In Science and Health, page 174, 1884 edition, this warning is given: "In warfare with error we attack with intent to kill, as the wounded or cornered beast turns on its assailant."
- ↑ "I never touched in thought personalities, though well aware that K. and A. (Kennedy and Arens) of Boston, and some of their co-adjutors do mentally attack people in this way, making them believe that she who exposes their crimes (Mrs. Eddy) is doing it." Christian Science Journal, July, 1885.
