I Do Not Claim to be unprejudiced about Mary Baker Eddy, or to view her with cool objectivity. From the moment I began to read about her she fascinated me, and although she and I appeared to have little or nothing in common, she came to command my respect, my admiration, and even my affection. I wish, with surprising passion, that I could have met her, particularly in her last years.
One of the most salient points about Mrs. Eddy's life is that she was constantly under attack, often in court of law, and as this biography developed I noticed myself increasingly taking the position of her defense attorney, responding to a wide array of substantial charges brought by many, often talented, attorneys who represented a large group of interested parties. The defense counsel is expected to be informed, intelligent, and talented, and to observe due process; his or her job is not to make judgments or suggest sentences but to argue the client's case and represent the client's interests before the court. Correctly defining the legal issues, marshalling the evidence, responding as logically and carefully as possible to the prosecution's case, establishing the network of relationships, events, and interests that led to the charges being filed are all part of the defense counsel's brief, but so too is using rhetoric and sympathetic identification to appeal to the judge and jury on behalf of the client.
In this biography I try to lay out what could be called the prosecution's case as fairly as possible, but then I present a defense counsel's brief which I leave to the reader to judge.
