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Every religion partakes of the nature of its founder, until this religion is mixed with that of another and its character lost, as happened to the religion of Christ when it was launched by Paul and was finally fused with Paganism by the Roman Emperor, Constantine.

Christian Science is as yet the lengthened shadow of Mary Baker Eddy. Her own immediate, personal pupils are still teaching, and her life and characteristics impressed upon them are given out to each and all. Every phase of life is solved by answering the question, “What would Mrs. Eddy do?” Mrs. Eddy’s ideas about dress, housekeeping, business, food, health, the management of servants, the care of children–all are blended into a composite, and this composite is the Christian Scientist as we see and know him.

The fact that Mrs. Eddy was methodical, industrious, economical, persevering, courageous, hopeful, helpful, neat in her attire and smiling, makes all Christian Scientists exactly so. She did not play cards and indulge in the manifold silliness of so-called good society, and neither do they. Indeed, that one thing which has been referred to as “the plaster-of-Paris smile,” the one feature in Christian Science to which many good people object, is the direct legacy of Mrs. Eddy to her pupils. “Science and Health” says nothing about it; no edict has been put forth recommending it; but all good Christian Scientists take it on–the smile that refuses to vacate the premises. And to some it is certainly very becoming. Mrs. Eddy’s self-reliant, silent, smiling personality has given the key to conduct for the hundreds of thousands of people who love her and revere her memory.

Mrs. Eddy was a rare good listener. She did not argue. Once upon a time, indeed, she was guilty of waving the red flag of wordy warfare; but the passing of the years brought her wisdom, and then her only answer to impatience was the quiet smile. As for eating, her table always had enough, but it stopped short of surfeit; the service was dainty, and all these things are now seen in the homes of Christian Scientists. Always in the home of a good Christian Scientist the bathroom is as complete as the library, and both are models of good housekeeping, seemingly always in order for the inspection committee.

Mrs. Eddy did not say much about hot water, soap and clean towels; but the idea, regardless of the non-existence of matter, is fixed in the consciousness of every Christian Scientist that absolute bodily cleanliness, fresh linen and fresh air are not only next to godliness, but elements of it. All of which you could never work out of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” in a lifetime of study, any more than you could mine and smelt the Westminster Catechism out of the Bible.

The vital truths of right living come to us as a precious heritage from the character of this great woman. She, herself, perhaps may not have known this; but before she wrote her book and formulated her religion, she lived her life. Her book was an endeavor to explain her life, and as her life grew better, stronger and more refined, she changed her book. Her book reacted on her life, and the person who got the most good out of “Science and Health” was Mary Baker Eddy herself.

“Science and Health” is mystical and beautifully human. The author’s oar often fails to catch the water. For instance, she tries to show that animal magnetism, spiritualism, mental science, theosophy, agnosticism, pantheism and infidelity are all bad things and opposed to the science of “true being.”

This statement presupposes that animal magnetism, infidelity, theosophy and agnosticism are specific entities or things, whereas they are only labels that are clapped quite indiscriminately on empty casks or full ones; and the contents of the casks may be sea-water or wine, and are really unknown to both mortal and divine mind, whatever these things are. Theosophists like Annie Besant, Spiritualists like Alfred Russel Wallace, Agnostics like Huxley and Ingersoll, are very noble and beautiful people. They are good neighbors and useful citizens.