Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/494

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436
LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

differences with Mrs. Eddy in a pamphlet modestly entitled War in Heaven. In this book her criticism of Mrs. Eddy is courteous and respectful enough to suggest that she may still have hoped for reinstatement. But Mrs. Eddy had by this time become convinced that never, since the days of Kennedy, had there been such a mesmerist as Mrs. Woodbury. Indeed, Mrs. Eddy was not alone in accrediting Mrs. Woodbury with a strange hypnotic power. Some of Mrs. Woodbury's own students were confident that if they displeased her she had power to bring upon them sickness, insanity, and disaster. They whispered tales about Robert W. Rowe of Augusta, Me., who had disobeyed and died. Whether Mrs. Eddy really believed that the woman was possessed of some diabolical power, or whether she saw that Mrs. Woodbury's adventurous temperament would bring ridicule upon Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy was determined to be rid of her, and lost no opportunity to discredit her. The two women had it back and forth for several years, and in April, 1899, Mrs. Woodbury published in the American Register, Paris, a poem which attacked Christian Science and which ended with these significant lines:

Is the Dame that seemed august
A Doll stuffed with sawdust,
And must we believe that the Doll stuffed herself?

Mrs. Woodbury finally crossed the Rubicon by publishing in the Arena, May, 1899, an exposure of Mrs. Eddy and her methods.

In this attack Mrs. Woodbury satirically touched upon Mrs. Eddy's conviction that she is the star-crowned woman of the Apocalypse, and then took up the Quimby controversy, pro-