Educated students

Julie's piece about the court case against Gilbert Eddy and the newspaper which stirred the matter up had me thinking about "FAKE NEWS".

Nothing is new under the sun they say, though the ways of disseminating Fake News (lies published as fact) have changed enormously since the 1880's. I find that the typewriter was first invented in 1860's, and went on to a lot of improvements. So the person/s who invented the Fake News/Lie would probably have had the story typed and given to a newspaper. The newspaper, after 1884, would have a linotype machine which would set type in slugs of about 4 inches (24 or 25 m's, my printer husband says) in length for the main copy; headings would have been set by hand, i.e. one small piece of metal with a letter impressed on it at a time. Newspaper printing would have the pages of type set into a form from which a stereotype was taken. This allowed for printing on a rotary press. Once printed, the pages would have to be collated and folded, and the finished product had not left the newspaper house yet! This was not a quick method - quite a while from conception to reception by the public. To-day the whole process can be done by one person, on their phone, to access perhaps millions – in seconds.

[I have slowed up in my reading of this book, because we will continue with it for a while. There has been a lot happening at Redcliffe's Christian Science Society lately. Yesterday I had lunch in the Reading Room/Sunday School. Very nice too. It was in between Maryl Walters' lecture and her ecumenical workshop.]

Page 183 has an “illuminating reminiscence” re social reform:

Mrs. Eddy was very appreciative of my voluntary welfare work and in a serious talk I had with her one of the many evenings she invited me to speak with her, she admitted when I said the other half of Christian Science would demand human brotherhood practically applied in every relation of life. But she said the first thing is to implant firmly in human consciousness the Power of God to heal sickness,sorrow, etc. When that has taken hold of mankind, the other will in time follow as a necessary sequence. (Alzire Chevaillier)

Here us something I would like to have heard: Mrs. Eddy's spiritual interpretation of the sea. See page 184. There is no explanation.

It is well to realise that the piece Taking Offence (Mis. 223:24) is not from Mrs. Eddy's pen. She prefaced it in the Journal with “Somebody has written these wise words”.*

Hints to editors on page 186: Mr. Wiggin was expected to correct syntax rather than diction in his work on Mrs. Eddy's books. This included fixing: a dangling participle; a misplaced subjunctive; a pronoun without visible antecedent; an unwieldy sentence or overloaded paragraph. How fascinating!

On page 190 we find that Wiggin saw that opposition to Christian Science came from learned professions in a similar fashion to the opposition in Jesus' day from priests and rabbis.

Ah! I say. I see something of Peel's arguments which seem to indicate that he felt the same opposition in his professional environment and wished so much to counteract it.

He points out on page 194 that Mrs. Eddy appreciated and wished to see “teachers who are educated by the schools of learning first, next by me.” And Note 24 (p. 357) quotes her letter to Mrs. Larminie, “I see the need of educating students in common branches before we can fill the important posts of our Cause.”

How grateful we can be for those who, to-day, are educated to fill the important posts; the Board of Directors, the Editors, the teachers, all the way to branch church workers – Readers, Librarians in Reading Rooms, etc.

Joyce Voysey

*Ed. Readers might be interested to check out what The Mary Baker Eddy Library has to say on this matter: http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/the-authorship-of-taking-offense/

It seems the matter of authorship has never been satisfactorily settled.