I love this passage which starts at the bottom of page 231 of Robert Peel’s Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (2nd edition):
Mrs.
Eddy, in fact, had her feet very firmly on the ground. When students gave abstruse metaphysical
answers to questions which demanded simple common sense, she soon brought them
down to earth. If a young couple had no
place to leave a child while they were studying, she would tell them cheerfully
to bring the child along, and in at least one case she taught an entire class
with a delighted little girl sitting on her lap. When the summer heat caused a certain amount
of restiveness in one of her classes, Mrs. Eddy asked dryly, “Shall we move to
some cooler part of the city, or shall we remain and make our own atmosphere.”
Regarding social reform, Alzire Chevaillier wrote (top of page 247):
Mrs.
Eddy was very appreciative of my voluntary welfare work & 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 that 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.
On page 252 Peel sort of defines syntax, when discussing Mr. Wiggin’s corrections to Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Peel writes:
In
general, the ambiguities [for readers] lay in the area of syntax rather than
diction—in the dangling participle, the misplaced subjunctive, a pronoun
without visible antecedent, an unwieldy sentence or overloaded paragraph.
Joyce Voysey
Ed. It may be
of interest to readers that Science & Health was first published 150
years ago this year.
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