“Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity.  The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops the world.  Meekness heightens immortal attributes, only by removing the dust that dims them.  Goodness reveals another scene and another self seemingly rolled up in shades, but brought to light by the evolutions of advancing thought, whereby we discern the power of Truth and Love to heal the sick.

“Pride is ignorance; those assume most who have the least wisdom or experience; and they steal from their neighbor, because they have so little of their own.”—­Miscellaneous Writings, page 1, and six lines at top of page 2.

It is not believable that the hand that wrote those clumsy and affected sentences wrote the smooth English of Science and Health.

CHAPTER IV

It is often said in print that Mrs. Eddy claims that God was the Author of Science and Health.  Mr. Peabody states in his pamphlet that “she says not she but God was the Author.”  I cannot find that in her autobiography she makes this transference of the authorship, but I think that in it she definitely claims that she did her work under His inspiration—­definitely for her; for as a rule she is not a very definite person, even when she seems to be trying her best to be clear and positive.  Speaking of the early days when her Science was beginning to unfold itself and gather form in her mind, she says (Autobiography, page 43): 

“The divine hand led me into a new world of light and Life, a fresh universe—­old to God, but new to His ‘little one.’”

She being His little one, as I understand it.

The divine hand led her.  It seems to mean “God inspired me”; but when a person uses metaphors instead of statistics—­and that is Mrs. Eddy’s common fashion—­one cannot always feel sure about the intention.

[Page 56.] “Even the Scripture gave no direct interpretation of the Scientific basis for demonstrating the spiritual Principle of healing, until our Heavenly Father saw fit, through the Key to the Scriptures, in Science and Health, to unlock this ‘mystery of godliness.’”

Another baffling metaphor.  If she had used plain forecastle English, and said “God wrote the Key and I put it in my book”; or if she had said “God furnished me the solution of the mystery and I put it on paper”; or if she had said “God did it all,” then we should understand; but her phrase is open to any and all of those translations, and is a Key which unlocks nothing—­for us.  However, it seems to at least mean “God inspired me,” if nothing more.

There was personal and intimate communion, at any rate we get that much out of the riddles.  The connection extended to business, after the establishment of the teaching and healing industry.

[Page 71.] “When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction,” etc.  Further down:  “God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the wisdom of this decision.”