Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/453

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HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
397

of that book always in small capitals. Mr. Nixon felt that the Journal should be the magazine of Christian Science rather than Mrs. Eddy's personal organ, and had rashly attempted to persuade her that it would be more dignified in her to keep her own name a little more in the background, especially when so many of her enemies were asserting that Christian Science was nothing but a glorification of Mrs. Eddy's "personality." On this point she says to Mr. Nixon, in a letter dated June 30, 1890:

Those who are trying to frighten you over using my name at suitable intervals and who are crying out personality are the very ones that persist in their purpose to keep my personality before the public through abusing it and to harness it to all the faults of other personalities and make it responsible for them. But neither of these efforts disposes of personality nor handle it on the rule our Master taught nor deal with mortal personality scientifically.

In the same letter she reproves him for having omitted her appellation of "Reverend" when referring to her in the Journal.

Among Mrs. Eddy's letters to her publisher, Mr. Nixon, is this rather amusing one:

July 14 1890. 

385 Commonwealth Ave. 

My dear Student

Many thanks for your copy of Brotherham's translation of the New Testament  But I cannot see the merit in it that Mr. Bailey attaches to it in his long notice in the Journal. The language is decaying as fast as that of Irving's Pickwick Papers  I prefer the common version for all scriptural quotations to that.

Most truly and affectionately,

M. B. G. Eddy. 

Having divested herself of her responsibilities as editor and teacher, Mrs. Eddy further protected herself from the im-