Mrs. Eddy named her great discovery Christian Science, and in all she writes is seen not only the aspiration, spirituality, and love which long centuries have ascribed to devout Christianity, but also an absolutely correct statement of demonstrable Science. This unity of love and truth governs even her poetic writings, and must be understood before anything like a right estimate of them can be made. In religious poetry, for the most part, what may be termed the heart element has always predominated, and when poetry has sought to be metaphysical or theological it has usually ceased to be poetry. Thus for the critic Mrs. Eddy's achievement in poetry stands alone. Her poems speak straight to the heart with the simplicity of pure lyric art, or rouse fainting hope with a lofty clarion, yet they match her most careful prose in their exact statement of divine Principle.
To tell the beauty of these hymns is beyond the power of mere criticism. They are their own praise, their own proof of a supreme and unique literary achievement. Yet they were written in the midst of an enormous activity, during the years when she was declaring, teaching, and establishing Christian Science and its world-wide organization. Her poems and hymns were interludes, as it were, in these long labors. They are known and loved wherever the English language is known; and internal evidence hints that most of them were written under stress, to give comfort, warning, inspiration. It is indeed this expression of the actual need of the hour, either on her own part or that of her church, that gives Mrs. Eddy's hymns their wonderful vitality. They express herself,—aspiration, abnegation, struggle, victory, unselfish love; the sorrowing and triumphing Leader, the friend of humanity, the mother of her flock. They are such deep self-revealings as perhaps never were yet trusted to the pages of autobiography. Touching what may be read between these lines, the most reverent and tender words must fall silent.
"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is of course Mrs. Eddy's greatest book. Of her mere literary power, her command of the grand style, as critics love to name truly noble writings, her brilliant and forceful sententiousness, clean and clear, one could write at length. But there is one peculiar element of her style which may be touched on here, for it is especially characteristic of her poetry. Every word of hers is used for its exact and full value. No one can understand her writings who does not give to her simplest word or her most stately phrase its definite and also most forceful meaning. Even her poetry has no flowery hyperbole, no vaguely impassioned or cloudily metaphysical line. Direct, simple, with hardly a word of more than two syllables, her poems take the reader back to days when words meant what they said, and yea was yea. The spiritual realities made clear by English words in their best estate, not reduced to rags by heedless use,—these things are what the reader of Mrs. Eddy's hymns and poems must seek, as well as readers of her prose.
