Abstract

The Christian Science Censor: II. "Obnoxious Books"

Mary Baker Eddy was a tragic figure. Proclaiming the omnipotence of all-embracing Divine Love, she was perpetually tormented by the "claim" of physical disease and the fear of "malicious animal magnetism," and her last years were passed within the deep shadows. Building her whole system on publicity, she was obliged to conceal from the public and from her own followers many of the facts of her own life. In the spring of 1904 Mrs. Eddy learned that Fleming H. Revell and Company, who in 1903 had published a volume of Christian Science poems, were issuing a virulent attack on Mrs. Eddy and her distinctive doctrine written by one of her most implacable enemies, and that an inquirer for the poems had been sold the hostile book. Thereupon she penned the celebrated by-law forbidding church members to patronize booksellers or publishers who have obnoxious books for sale.