Seeking information on the metaphysical science of Mind Healing, a reporter for the Inter-Ocean of August 1st, tells us how he stumbled on E. J. Arens, who happened to be where said reporter went to interview another person. Mr. Arens, it was said, does not call himself a Christian Scientist nor a metaphysician, a reticence which is very proper; and all the more so because his reported description of Christian Science shows that he does not understand it, or else that he likes to treat it with burlesque; and to protest against which is our only reason for giving him this notice. This is about all the reporter could learn from Mr. Arens, what he further said being 'beyond the reporter's depth"; so that he retired at the first opportunity.
Had the reporter consulted some other people, he could have learned more about that gentleman; that he received his first uplift and available instruction from Dr. Asa G. Eddy; and that Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science thereafter became so acceptable to him and so impressed him as a beneficent power and agency, that, in the exercise of that goodness which, he says, is so necessary in mental healing, he stole some of her most characteristic published writings, that he might spread them as widely as possible as his own; that he desisted from this active benevolence only after he was made to pay a fine of one hundred and thirteen dollars and nine cents for his plagiarism, and threatened with a penalty of ten thousand dollars on further proceeding in the same course; and that all this is duly certified by the Record of the Circuit Court of the U. S. for Boston, Sept. 27, 1883.
