We helped him in the esteem of the public by our writings, but never knew of his stating orally or in writing that he treated his patients mentally; never heard him give any directions to that effect; and have it from one of his patients, who now asserts that he was the founder of mental healing, that he never revealed to anyone his method.  We refer to these facts simply to refute the calumnies and false claims of our enemies, that we are preferring dishonest claims to the discovery and founding at this period of Metaphysical Healing or Christian Science.

The Science and laws of a purely mental healing and their method of application through spiritual power alone, else a mental argument against disease, are our own discovery at this date.  True, the Principle is divine and eternal, but the application of it to heal the sick had been lost sight of, and required to be again spiritually discerned and its science discovered, that man might retain it through the understanding.  Since our discovery in 1866 of the divine science of Christian Healing, we have labored with tongue and pen to found this system.  In this endeavor every obstacle has been thrown in our path that the envy and revenge of a few disaffected students could devise.  The superstition and ignorance of even this period have not failed to contribute their mite towards misjudging us, while its Christian advancement and scientific research have helped sustain our feeble efforts.

Since our first Edition of Science and Health, published in 1875, two of the aforesaid students have plagiarized and pirated our works.  In the issues of E. J. A., almost exclusively ours, were thirteen paragraphs, without credit, taken verbatim from our books.

Not one of our printed works was ever copied or abstracted from the published or from the unpublished writings of anyone.  Throughout our publications of Metaphysical Healing or Christian Science, when writing or dictating them, we have given ourselves to contemplation wholly apart from the observation of the material senses:  to look upon a copy would have distracted our thoughts from the subject before us.  We were seldom able to copy our own compositions, and have employed an amanuensis for the last six years.  Every work that we have had published has been extemporaneously written; and out of fifty lectures and sermons that we have delivered the last year, forty-four have been extemporaneous.  We have distributed many of our unpublished manuscripts; loaned to one of our youngest students, R. K--------y, between three and four hundred pages, of which we were sole author—­giving him liberty to copy but not to publish them.

Leaning on the sustaining Infinite with loving trust, the trials of to-day grow brief, and to-morrow is big with blessings.