REASON #1: Mrs. Eddy’s “terrible fall” wasn’t that terrible
Mrs. Eddy exaggerated the claims of her “terrible fall” in 1866. Gardner writes,
Mrs. Eddy’s claim that Dr. Cushing told her that her spinal problem was incurable and that she had but three days to live was another of her fibs. On January 2, 1907, the Union of Springfield, Massachusetts, published a long, notarized affidavit by Dr. Cushing in which he stoutly denied having told Mrs. Eddy any such things. The statement was reprinted in a series of fourteen sensational articles about Mrs. Eddy that ran in McClure’s magazine in 1907 and 1908. Before giving this affidavit, let me digress with some remarks about this series, which aroused enormous excitement when it appeared. The articles were revised and expanded in 1909 as a book titled The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science by Georgine Milmine. It was the first major attack on Mrs. Eddy, and the primary source for all later unauthorized biographies, including these chapters.[1]
Even friendly biographers like Gillian Gill stated,
As Dr. Cushing recalled, Mrs. Patterson [Mary Baker Eddy] had indeed suffered some kind of concussion and was semihysterical, complaining of severe pain in her head and neck. But there had never been any suggestion on his part that her injury was so serious as to induce paralysis or death.[2]
Kenneth Boa writes,
This story is more than a little suspect, however, since the physician in question denied under oath that he pronounced her to be in dangerous physical condition. He also said she visited him four times later in 1866 to receive medical treatments. Furthermore, a pupil of the late P.P. Quimby received a letter from her two weeks after her fall saying that she had not yet recovered.[3]
REASON #2: Mrs. Eddy plagiarized her ideas from others
Mrs. Eddy stated that her discovery of Christian Science was unique. In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy wrote,
In the year 1866, I discovered the Science of Metaphysical Healing, and named it Christian Science. God had been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing. No human pen or tongue taught me the science contained in this book and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures)
However, despite this claim, critics have noticed clear plagiarisms of her work from others who wrote before her. Gardner writes,
It is not a coincidence that 1866, the year Quimby died, was the very year Mrs. Eddy finally decided was the year God had revealed to her the mighty truth of Christian Science, a truth that had not been given to mankind since the time of Christ.[4]
Mrs. Eddy was not the first to use the term [Christian Science]. As early as 1854 a minister named William Adams titled his book The Elements of Christian Science. Quimby himself used the term in an 1863 paper, although he preferred to call his theology ‘Christ Science.’[5]
Few Christian Scientists realize that Mrs. Eddy’s writings… also bristle with plagiarisms. Quite aside from what she stole from Quimby’s papers, and from early books on mind healing, she copied shamelessly, often word for word, from John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Kingsley, Swiss critic Henri Amiel, and from other authors… not once did she credit her sources or even suggest to readers that she was cribbing.[6]
Gardner cites these plagiarisms side by side with the stolen works in chapter nine of his book The Healing Revelations of Mary Baker Eddy.[7]
https://www.evidenceunseen.com/worl...-philosophical-critique-of-christian-science/
