I am owing you an apology for not answering your favor of March 31, stEditorial Note: This letter is not extant. earlier than I do. But I have this to say for myself, that when I received your letter, in which you say "I have gotten up this M. C. S. A. for you, and the love of the causeEditorial Note: The cause of Christian Science" I was inadvertently As Written: inadvertantly led to the idea that some document was to reach me through the P. O. and I waited to see what was to come till I was called from home to be gone some timeAs Written:sometime, & upon my return found myself too busy in getting ready for my own Universalist State Convention to leave me the opportunity to think of anything else but that. And now as soon as the time is afforded me I am writing you my acknowledgment, and desire that you shall understand, that I have ever been grateful for the favor you tendered me when you were in Chicago, and always borne testimony to your wonder-working gifts, and your beautiful accomplishments. I think I wrote you before, that the sermon I preached on returning to my people, and was sent you by another, was not meant for publication; and when given to the press had to be very much curtailed to make space for it. And now to give you, lest I did not do it before, only a single paragraph which was suppressed, I quote the following from my manuscript.
"I must confess that I am obliged to regard Mrs Eddy, from a somewhat large & close acquaintance with her, as a very superior & extraordinary woman, one of the most remarkable with whom I have ever met in my life. There was the greatest purity of thought in her teaching; and a spirituality & religious fervor marked her whole course in the treatment of her subject. She seemed perfectly sincere, and inspired everyoneAs Written:every one with the idea of her being thoroughly in earnest. It is this that gives to her largely, her success. She asked nobody to cater to her thought, or to concede anything to her,, faster than they understood it. The conduct she evinced in her class showed her possessed of nothing but contempt for all ninnys, whom she never failed to score with her piercing logic, till they hid their faces for very shame".
I have always stood to this; and have believed that evil is not one of the eternal verities; that it is not absolute; that it is temporary at least; not an ultimate thing, but transient, designed to work out universal & everlasting good. With me it is a means to a higher end; a course of training, education, growth, preparatory to something better. There is no evil that is only evil, and that continually, forever & ever, out of whichh no good is to come. In God's idea, or tho't; in his meaning all is good. We are now in the progressive stages of God's work, & in the presence of perpetual change & succession, or transition; coming & going in ceaseless transmigration, and all I dare claim is that the real reality of everything, the absolute & eternal, is good; & will most surely work good to all God's creatures.
But because I could go no farther than this; I with some others, have been tabooed as a rank enemy of your general movement. I am not disposed to deny that you have something important to say to the world, that you have "a message from God", as your remark is; but in saying this let me say that I am very open & tolerant of all opinions, so far as the truth will allow me to be; and it did seem to me at one time that you were drawing the lines altogether too close in the management of your Journal, and in the condemnation of everyoneAs Written:every one who could not endorse all you had to say. I let the Journal expire, because I had matter that suited my thought better, and I could not well afford to take so many papers as were coming to me at the time. You ask me "If I will not meet this one request of my Teacher", and I do not understand to what you are referring. I do pray that your whole life may be richly crowned & honored by the divine blessing, in the realization & fulfilment of all reasonable anticipations of joy success & happiness.