Last Move

The gambit of the Christian Science Parent Church was to charge that Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy used anesthetics. It was a familiar move and the Christian Science Mother (Boston) Church quietly answered that Mrs. Eddy did not "at any time after she became a Christian Scientist either use a drug or allow one to be used for her except as she employed in a few instances an anesthetic for the purpose of temporary relief from extreme pain." (TIME, Feb. 4).

The Parent Church followed the gambit by charging that the Mother Church was responsible for many stupid tragic deaths, cited that of one Walter J. Kline. who died under the care of a Christian Science nurse.* The Mother Church answered that the Kline nurse was not a duly accredited Christian Science nurse said: "There is nothing in the teaching of Christian Science which should keep a patient from having whatever physical care he needs and the best of it."

There the chess-like battle which began again this winter between the Mother Church and the Parent Church, insurgent offspring, rested until last week. Then the Parent Church moved again. It was not a checkmate. But it was a startling, troubling move.

The Parent Church charged that Mrs. Eddy as an author had plagiarized from Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, the Rev. Hugh Blair, Swiss Philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel. Sample parallels were:

Mrs. Eddy

"The man of integrity is one who makes it his constant rule to follow the road of duty, according as Truth and the voice of his conscience point it out to him."

Blair

"The man of integrity . . . is one who makes it his constant rule to follow the road of duty, according as the Word of God and the voice of his conscience point it out to him."

"This time-world flutters in my thoughts as an unread shadow . . ."

Carlyle

"This Time-world . . . only flutters as an unreal shadow."

"A small group of wise thinkers is better than a wilderness of dullards . . . "

Ruskin

"A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools . . . "

Last week the Mother Church's answering move was to say that the parallels "merely indicated her [Mrs. Eddy's] familiarity with the writings of great men . . . Mrs. Eddy has been accused many times. . . . Hers [Mrs. Annie C. Bill's] is a small church while we have 2,300 branches. . . ."

Said Mrs. Annie C. Bill, Parent Church leader: ". . . the implication that the truth found in Science and Health was wholly the discovery of Mary Baker Eddy must be withdrawn. This does not mean that I have in the slightest degree lost confidence in Christian Science. A dis- tinction must be made between the medium through which truth reaches the world and the truth itself. The truth I stand by."

*Christian Scientist Kline died from a carbuncle in his neck which was allowes fatally to spread, deepen.