g actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value
of their testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science
they do as Mrs. Fuller did: they do not use their own language, but the
book's; they pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave you to
find out later that they were not originating, but merely quoting;
they seem to know the volume by heart, and to revere it as they would
a Bible--another Bible, perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was
written under the mental desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel
sure that none but the membership of that Degree can discover meanings
in it. When you read it you seem to be listening to a lively and
aggressive and oracular speech delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech
whose spirit you get but not the particulars; or, to change the figure,
you seem to be listening to a vigorous instrument which is making a
noise which it thinks is a tune, but which, to persons not members of
the band, is only the martial tooting of a trombone, and merrily stirs
the soul through the noise, but does not convey a meaning.

The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of
a heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than
human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior,
and so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting
anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence,
and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all,
it thunders out the startling words, "I have Proved" so and so. It takes
the Pope and all the great guns of his Church in battery assembled to
authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single
unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and
study and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all
that: she finds the whole Bible in an unclarified audition, and at small
expense of time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from
lid to lid, reorganizes and improves the meanings, then authoritatively
settles and establishes them with formulas which you cannot tell from
"Let there be light!" and "Here you have it!" It is the first time since
the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space
with such placid and complacent confidence and command.

[January, 1903. The first reading of any book whose terminology is
new and strange is nearly sure to lea