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THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NE S S PHOGGY PHRASING
her little trick. In one place, after quoting a particularly fine specimen of this type of expression, he remarks, “ Quite Christian Scientifically foggy in its phrasing.” He saw that foggy phras ing was an essential part of Mrs Eddy’s non-sense science. By inventing her non-sense language by which she ar bitrarily reads into perfectly familiar English words any meaning which may suit her fancy, she reduced foggy phras ing to a science. This enabled her to write in riddles which only those who have made a careful study of this con-, fusing language can decipher. The river of water of truth which proceed e d out of the throne of Christian Science, its queen designed to filter through obscurity so that its waters would always remain roily, and thus conceal how shallow it is. And here again this scheme has worked. A most common thing is to hear uneducated persons who have tried to read Science and Health say, “ It is too deep for me.” Its teaching is not deep; it is the shal lowest kind of pretence. But where waters are kept roily it is hard to tell how deep these waters are. It is ask ing the skeptical reader a great deal, to believe there is so much duplicity back of all this non-sense science..— Biblical Review. FAITHLESS FATHERS A minister related the following: “ A mechanic, whom I had visited, and urged to the great duty of family prayer, entered my study, and burst into tears. ‘ You re member that girl, sir?’ said he. ‘ She was my only child. She died suddenly this morning. I hope she has gone to God; but, if so, she can tell Him, what now breaks my heart, that she never :heard a prayer from her father’s lips. Oh that she was with me but for one day again.’ ” How many of our readers would, be com pelled to make the same admission?
|ROM the immediate family of IJames Henry Wiggin, the ex- Unitarian minister who acted Ias literary expert for Mrs.
Mary Baker Eddy, Rev. A. C. Wycoff received this hitherto unpublished story • which explains the bewildering ambig uity in Mrs. Eddy’s writings. After he had waded through the tangled mass of manuscript which Mrs. Eddy left with him to revise for the sixteenth edition of Science and Health, he said to her: “ I can translate your sentences into good English, but not into good sense, as there is no sense in them.” This offer suited her exactly, and she en gaged him on the spot. After he had been working as her literary adviser and reviser he discovered that what he had ignorantly assumed to be an irre mediable defect in her book was in real ity one of its distinctive merits. Good English she wanted, but “ good sense” would not have served her purpose. Some years later in a letter to an old college chum, commenting upon this peculiarity, Mr. JiTiggin makes this statement: “ As for clearness * * * the truth is she does not care to have her para graphs clear, and delights in so express ing herself that her words may have various readings and meanings. Real ly, that is one of the tricks of the trade. You know sibyls have always been thus oracular, to “ keep the word of promise to the ear, and break it to the hope.” (Milmine’s Life of Mrs. Eddy, Mc Clure’s Magazine, Oct., 1907). This assertion, that with Mrs. Eddy ambiguity was “ one of the tricks of the trade,” when it comes from her person al literary reviser is of highest value. But this information is not necessary. Any close student of Science and Health and Mrs. Eddy soon makes this dis covery. She did not fool Mark Twain's keen literary sense. He soon detected
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