principle of modern science.

This craze seized certain discontented young women who studied
"Science and Health" under the tutorage of its author, and they soon
became too transcendental to perform the useful duties of life,
posing as teachers of the "utterly utter." It monopolized the feeble
intellects of some farmers' boys, who at once began to try to get a
lazy living by sitting beside sick women with their hands over their
eyes, ostensibly engaged in prayer, but really endeavoring to prey
upon the weak minded.

Some superstitious people who had been long under the care of a
regular physician, and who were just at the turning point of receiving
benefit therefrom, took an "Eddy sitting" and jumped to the conclusion
that said mummery affected a miraculous cure.

As a drowning man clutching at a straw, I confess that I accepted
the offer of treatments, made by a pleasant lady "Christian science"
doctor. I found it tolerably agreeable to sit by her side, holding her
soft hand while she assumed an attitude of supplication, but my malady
was in nowise benefited thereby. This amiable lady finally loaned me a
copy of their sacred book called "Science and Health," expressing the
opinion that a careful reading thereof would renew my youth and make
me a believer in their modern Eleusinian mysteries forever.

I read this preposterous book with all the earnestness and
prayerfulness of which I was capable; but found it to be a
heterogeneous conglomeration of words--mere words, a hodge podge of
all the exploded philosophical, religious, and scientific heresies of
the past ages, so cunningly jumbled that the gullible, unable to
find any meaning to it, conclude that it is too profound for their
comprehension, and unwilling to acknowledge the fact for fear of being
called ignorant, solemnly pronounce it to be great.

One quotation will reveal the utter nothingness of this book, from the
sale of which "Pope Eddy" is said to have realized, a half-million
dollars. Says this modern goddess: "The word Adam is from the Hebrew
Adamah, signifying the red color of the ground, dust, nothingness.
Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads a dam or
obstruction. This suggests the thought of something fluid, of mortal
mind in solution."

Like all the other humbugs of superstition, this new doctrine seems
to me to contain but a single drop of truth submerged in an ocean of
folly. Mary Baker G. Eddy, the great high priestess, cla