"Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws." -- Robert Peel
Historian and journalist Robert Peel (1909-1992) was a significant ecumenical figure in Christian Science, best known for writing his church's definitive three-volume authorized biography of its founder, Mary Baker Eddy. He also wrote studies of Christian Science's most well-known feature: spiritual healing.
An alumnus of Harvard University, Peel studied with the preeminent authority on American Puritanism, Perry Miller, and his detailed scholarship did much to correct historical misimpressions and bridge the gap with traditional Christianity. Reversing several historic stereotypes and setting its subject against the kind of intellectual backdrop Miller had specialized in, the trilogy drew unusual acclaim.
During his later years, because of his familiarity with Christian Science's early history, he foresaw and spoke out against the church's trend toward growth through marketing and promotionalism rather than through its traditional emphasis on its healing theology, which placed him at odds with top church executives during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
He was also a prime contributor to other works on which his name did not necessarily appear, an author of numerous articles in Christian Science periodicals, and a part-time unlisted Christian Science practitioner.
"But after this natural burst of indignation, no man of sense, courage, or prudence will waste his time or his strength in retrospective reproaches or repinings.""No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion.""On the Wednesday evening - that is, the day I saw her Majesty on this particular point - I had the opportunity of conferring with all those whom I proposed to submit to her Majesty as Ministers.""Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.""The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.""The Reform Bill has destroyed the ancient conduits and strainers, and brings Public Opinion to act upon the government with the rapid, turbulent, and uncertain violence of a flood!""There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics."