Mrs. Eddy should not be blamed for her limitations.

Many people who are great in certain lines labor under the hallucination
that they are also great in others. Matthew Arnold was a great writer,
and he also thought he was a great orator.

But when he spoke, his words simply fell over the footlights into the
orchestra and died there. He could not reach the front row. Most
comedians want to play Hamlet, and all of us have heard girls attempt to
sing who thought they could sing, and who were encouraged in the
hallucination by their immediate kinsfolk.

Mrs. Eddy thought she could write, and unfortunately she was
corroborated in her error by the applause of people who, not being able
to read her book, kindly attributed the inability to their own
limitations and not to hers, being prompted in this by the suggestion
oft repeated by Mrs. Eddy, herself. The resemblance of Mrs. Eddy's
thought to that of Jesus was never noticed until Mrs. Eddy first
explained the matter. Mrs. Eddy was by no means insane. Swedenborg was a
civil engineer and a mathematician. He wrote forty books that are nearly
as opaque as "Science and Health." If you write stupidly enough, some
one will surely throw up his cap and cry "Great!" And others will follow
the example and take up the shout, because it is much easier, as Doctor
Johnson affirmed, to praise a book than to read and understand it. The
custom of reading to a congregation in a dead or foreign language, which
the listeners do not understand, has never caused any general protest
from the listeners. The scoffers are the only ones who have ever noticed
the incongruity, and they do not count, since they probably would not
attend, anyway.

Next to reading from a book written in the dead language, is to read
from a book that is unintelligible. To listen to such makes no tax upon
the intellect, and with the right accessories is soporific, restful,
pleasing and to be commended. If it does not supply an idea, it at least
imparts a feeling. Mrs. Eddy's success in literature arose from the
extreme muddiness of her thinking and her opacity in expression.

If she had written fairly well, her mediocrity would have been apparent
to every one; but writing absolutely without rhyme or reason, we bow
before her supreme assurance. The strongest element in men is
inertia--we agree rather than fight about it. We want health--and health
is what Mrs. Eddy gives to us--therefore, "Science and Health with Key
to