← catalogue

Christian Science

by Mark Twain · English · Gutenberg #3187 · 365,897 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Christian Science
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Christian Science

Author: Mark Twain


        
Release date: September 16, 2004 [eBook #3187]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3187

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ***



Produced by David Widger





CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

by Mark Twain




PREFACE

Book I of this volume occupies a quarter or a third of the volume,
and consists of matter written about four years ago, but not hitherto
published in book form. It contained errors of judgment and of fact. I
have now corrected these to the best of my ability and later knowledge.


Book II was written at the beginning of 1903, and has not until
now appeared in any form. In it my purpose has been to present a
character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own acts and words
solely, not from hearsay and rumor; and to explain the nature and scope
of her Monarchy, as revealed in the Laws by which she governs it, and
which she wrote herself.

MARK TWAIN

NEW YORK. January, 1907.





BOOK I CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

     “It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that
     a Voice has gone crashing through space with such
     placid and complacent confidence and command.”



CHAPTER I

VIENNA 1899.

This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the
Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and
broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was
found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the
nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed
farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning
little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored
flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room,
separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the
front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the
manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring
that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables
a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

There was a village a mile away, and a horse doctor lived there, but
there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly
a surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was
summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and
could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time, and
she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter,
there was no hurry, she would give me “absent treatment” now, and come
in the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and
comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. I
thought there must be some mistake.

“Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?”

“Yes.”

“And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?”

“Yes.”

“And struck another one and bounced again?”

“Yes.”

“And struck another one and bounced yet again?”

“Yes.”

“And broke the boulders?”

“Yes.”

“That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you
tell her I got hurt, too?”

“I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now
but an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your
scalp-lock to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you
to look like a hat-rack.”

“And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was
nothing the matter with me?”

“Those were her words.”

“I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with
sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or did
she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to
the aid of abstract science the confirmations of personal experience?”

“Bitte?”

It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's vocabulary; she
couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked
for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket
to pile my legs in; but I could not have any of these things.

“Why?”

“She said you would need nothing at all.”

“But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain.”

“She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention
to them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such
things as hunger and thirst and pain.''

“She does does she?”

“It is what she said.”

“Does she seem to be in full and functionable possession of her
intellectual plant, such as it is?”

“Bitte?”

“Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?”

“Tie her up?”

“There, good-night, run along, you are a good girl, but your mental
Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my
delusions.”




CHAPTER II

It was a night of anguish, of course--at least, I supposed it was, for
it had all the symptoms of it--but it passed at last, and the Christian
Scientist came, and I was glad She was middle-aged, and large and bony,
and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak
and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I was
eager to get to business and find relief, but she was distressingly
deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries one
by one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand, and hung the
articles up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out
of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it
without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity but without
passion:

“Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its
dumb servants.”

I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she
detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative
tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no
use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so
that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence,
she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I
felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms.

“One does not feel,” she explained; “there is no such thing as
feeling: therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent is a
contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the
mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it.”

“But if it hurts, just the same--”

“It doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of
reality. Pain is unreal; hence, pain cannot hurt.”

In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of shooing the illusion
of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said
“Ouch!” and went tranquilly on with her talk. “You should never allow
yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how
you are feeling; you should never concede that you are ill, nor permit
others to talk about disease or pain or death or similar nonexistences
in your presence. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its
empty imaginings.” Just at that point the Stuben-madchen trod on the
cat's tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I asked, with
caution:

“Is a cat's opinion about pain valuable?”

“A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from mind only; the lower
animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without
mind, opinion is impossible.”

“She merely imagined she felt a pain--the cat?”

“She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is an effect of mind; without
mind, there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination.”

“Then she had a real pain?”

“I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain.”

“It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with
the cat. Because, there being no such thing as a real pain, and she not
being able to imagine an imaginary one, it would seem that God in His
pity has compensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion
usable when her tail is trodden on which, for the moment, joins cat and
Christian in one common brotherhood of--”

She broke in with an irritated--

“Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty
and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an
injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognize and confess that
there is no such thing as disease or pain or death.”

“I am full of imaginary tortures,” I said, “but I do not think I could
be any more uncomfortable if they were real ones. What must I do to get
rid of them?”

“There is no occasion to get rid of them since they do not exist. They
are illusions propagated by matter, and matter has no existence; there
is no such thing as matter.”

“It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive; it
seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on
it.”

“Explain.”

“Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter
propagate things?”

In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were
any such thing as a smile.

“It is quite simple,” she said; “the fundamental propositions of
Christian Science explain it, and they are summarized in the four
following self-evident propositions: 1. God is All in all. 2. God is
good. Good is Mind 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter 4. Life,
God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.

“There--now you see.”

It seemed nebulous; it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty
in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions I said, with
some hesitancy:

“Does--does it explain?”

“Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will do it.”

With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backwards.

“Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omnipotent God life matter
is nothing all being Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is
God. There do you understand now?

“It--it--well, it is plainer than it was before; still--”

“Well?”

“Could you try it some more ways?”

“As many as you like; it always means the same. Interchanged in any way
you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it
means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble
it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it
was before. It was a marvelous mind that produced it. As a mental tour
de force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete,
and the occult.”

“It seems to be a corker.”

I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it.

“A what?”

“A--wonderful structure--combination, so to speak, of profound
thoughts--unthinkable ones--um--”

“It is true. Read backward, or forward, or perpendicularly, or at any
given angle, these four propositions will always be found to agree in
statement and proof.”

“Ah--proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree; they agree
with--with--anyway, they agree; I noticed that; but what is it they
prove I mean, in particular?”

“Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove:

“1. GOD--Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do you get
that?”

“I--well, I seem to. Go on, please.”

“2. MAN--God's universal idea, individual, perfect, eternal. Is it
clear?”

“It--I think so. Continue.”

“3. IDEA--An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. There
it is--the whole sublime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell. Do
you find a weak place in it anywhere?”

“Well--no; it seems strong.”

“Very well There is more. Those three constitute the Scientific
Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have the Scientific Definition
of Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST DEGREE: Depravity I. Physical-Passions and
appetites, fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge,
sin, disease, death.”

“Phantasms, madam--unrealities, as I understand it.”

“Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing. I. Moral-Honesty,
affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?”

“Crystal.”

“THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. I. Spiritual-Faith, wisdom, power,
purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and
co-ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this
Third Degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal
mind disappears.”

“Not earlier?”

“No, not until the teaching and preparation for the Third Degree are
completed.”

“It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian
Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship,
as I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the
processes of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains
of mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about
to further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and
disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting; go
on, please.”

“Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal mind disappears.
Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses as
to make this scriptural testimony true in our hearts, 'the last shall
be first and the first shall be last,' that God and His idea may be to
us--what divinity really is, and must of necessity be all-inclusive.”

“It is beautiful. And with what exhaustive exactness your choice and
arrangement of words confirm and establish what you have claimed for
the powers and functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably
produce only temporary absence of mind; it is reserved to the Third to
make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the
Second could have a kind of meaning--a sort of deceptive semblance of
it--whereas it is only under the magic of the Third that that defect
would disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that
contributes another remarkable specialty to Christian Science--viz.,
ease and flow and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and
smoothness. There must be a special reason for this?”

“Yes--God--all, all--God, good God, non-Matter, Matteration, Spirit,
Bones, Truth.”

“That explains it.”

“There is nothing in Christian Science that is not explicable; for God
is one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and may be one of a series,
one of many, as an individual man, individual horse; whereas God is one,
not one of a series, but one alone and without an equal.”

“These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does
Christian Science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality
to incidental deflection?”

“Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body--as
astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar
system--and makes body tributary to the Mind. As it is the earth which
is in motion, While the sun is at rest, though in viewing the sun rise
one finds it impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising, so
the body is but the humble servant of the restful Mind, though it seems
otherwise to finite sense; but we shall never understand this while we
admit that soul is in body, or mind in matter, and that man is included
in non-intelligence. Soul is God, unchangeable and eternal; and man
coexists with and reflects Soul, for the All-in-all is the Altogether,
and the Altogether embraces the All-one, Soul-Mind, Mind-Soul, Love,
Spirit, Bones, Liver, one of a series, alone and without an equal.”

“What is the origin of Christian Science? Is it a gift of God, or did it
just happen?”

“In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say, its powers are from
Him, but the credit of the discovery of the powers and what they are for
is due to an American lady.”

“Indeed? When did this occur?”

“In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and disease and death
disappeared from the earth to return no more forever. That is, the
fancies for which those terms stand disappeared. The things themselves
had never existed; therefore, as soon as it was perceived that there
were no such things, they were easily banished. The history and nature
of the great discovery are set down in the book here, and--”

“Did the lady write the book?”

“Yes, she wrote it all, herself. The title is Science and Health, with
Key to the Scriptures--for she explains the Scriptures; they were not
understood before. Not even by the twelve Disciples. She begins thus--I
will read it to you.”

But she had forgotten to bring her glasses.

“Well, it is no matter,” she said. “I remember the words--indeed, all
Christian Scientists know the book by heart; it is necessary in our
practice. We should otherwise make mistakes and do harm. She begins
thus: 'In the year 1866 I discovered the Science of Metaphysical
Healing, and named it Christian Science.' And She says quite
beautifully, I think--'Through Christian Science, religion and medicine
are inspired with a diviner nature and essence, fresh pinions are
given to faith and understanding, and thoughts acquaint themselves
intelligently with God.' Her very words.”

“It is elegant. And it is a fine thought, too--marrying religion to
medicine, instead of medicine to the undertaker in the old way; for
religion and medicine properly belong together, they being the basis of
all spiritual and physical health. What kind of medicine do you give for
the ordinary diseases, such as--”

“We never give medicine in any circumstances whatever! We--”

“But, madam, it says--”

“I don't care what it says, and I don't wish to talk about it.”

“I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the mention seemed in some
way inconsistent, and--”

“There are no inconsistencies in Christian Science. The thing is
impossible, for the Science is absolute. It cannot be otherwise, since
it proceeds directly from the All-in-all and the Everything-in-Which,
also Soul, Bones, Truth, one of a series, alone and without equal. It is
Mathematics purified from material dross and made spiritual.”

“I can see that, but--”

“It rests upon the immovable basis of an Apodictical Principle.”

The word flattened itself against my mind in trying to get in, and
disordered me a little, and before I could inquire into its pertinency,
she was already throwing the needed light:

“This Apodictical Principle is the absolute Principle of Scientific
Mind-healing, the sovereign Omnipotence which delivers the children of
men from pain, disease, decay, and every ill that flesh is heir to.”

“Surely not every ill, every decay?”

“Every one; there are no exceptions; there is no such thing as decay--it
is an unreality, it has no existence.”

“But without your glasses your failing eyesight does not permit you
to--”

“My eyesight cannot fail; nothing can fail; the Mind is master, and the
Mind permits no retrogression.”

She was under the inspiration of the Third Degree, therefore there could
be no profit in continuing this part of the subject. I shifted to other
ground and inquired further concerning the Discoverer of the Science.

“Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or after long study and
calculation, like America?”

“The comparisons are not respectful, since they refer to
trivialities--but let it pass. I will answer in the Discoverer's own
words: 'God had been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the
reception of a final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific
Mind-healing.'”

“Many years. How many?”

“Eighteen centuries!”

“All--God, God--good, good--God, Truth, Bones, Liver, one of a series,
alone and without equal--it is amazing!”

“You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the truth This American lady,
our revered and sacred Founder, is distinctly referred to, and her
coming prophesied, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse; she could
not have been more plainly indicated by St. John without actually
mentioning her name.”

“How strange, how wonderful!”

“I will quote her own words, from her Key to the Scriptures: 'The
twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in
connection with this nineteenth century.' There--do you note that?
Think--note it well.”


“But--what does it mean?”

“Listen, and you will know. I quote her inspired words again: 'In the
opening of the Sixth Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam,
there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the
present age. Thus:

“'Revelation xii. I. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven--a
woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her
head a crown of twelve stars.'

“That is our Head, our Chief, our Discoverer of Christian
Science--nothing can be plainer, nothing surer. And note this:

“'Revelation xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she
had a place prepared of God.'

“That is Boston. I recognize it, madam. These are sublime things, and
impressive; I never understood these passages before; please go on with
the--with the--proofs.”

“Very well. Listen:

“'And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a
cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the
sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he held in his hand a little
book.'

“A little book, merely a little book--could words be modester? Yet how
stupendous its importance! Do you know what book that was?”

“Was it--”

“I hold it in my hand--Christian Science!”

“Love, Livers, Lights, Bones, Truth, Kidneys, one of a series, alone and
without equal--it is beyond imagination for wonder!”

“Hear our Founder's eloquent words: 'Then will a voice from harmony cry,
“Go and take the little book: take it and eat it up, and it shall make
thy belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.”
 Mortal, obey the heavenly evangel. Take up Divine Science. Read it from
beginning to end. Study it, ponder it. It will be, indeed, sweet at its
first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find
its digestion bitter.' You now know the history of our dear and holy
Science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its
discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go, now; but give
yourself no uneasiness--I will give you absent treatment from now till I
go to bed.”




CHAPTER III

Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent
treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and
disappearing from view. The good work took a brisk start, now, and went
on swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this way
and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every minute
or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of
a fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and
gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three
hours, and then stopped--the connections had all been made. All except
dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees,
neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their
sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as
good as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor.

I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in
the head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the
hands of a woman whom I did not know, and whose ability to successfully
treat mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified
by the fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the
first, along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of
relief; and, indeed, the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more
and more bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention
from food and drink.

The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional
interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic--in
fact, quite horsy--and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment,
but it was not in his line, so, out of delicacy, I did not press it.
He looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general
condition were favorable to energetic measures; therefore he would give
me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in
the head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat
and would know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said
a dipperful of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with
turpentine and axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of
me in twenty-four hours, or so interest me in other ways as to make me
forget they were on the premises. He administered my first dose himself,
then took his leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I
pleased and in any quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more, and
did not care for food.

I took up the Christian Science book and read half of it, then took a
dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences
were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and
grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of
the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could
note the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the
drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and
could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others
were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash
and an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the
Apodictical Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that.
The finish was reached at last, the evolutions were complete, and a
fine success, but I think that this result could have been achieved with
fewer materials. I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of
the stomach-ache into the botts, but I think one could develop the blind
staggers out of the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers
produced in this way would be of a better quality and more lasting than
any produced by the artificial processes of the horse-doctor.

For of all the strange and frantic and incomprehensible and
uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely
this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence
and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often
compel the effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to
have any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they
understand the book; I know this, for I have talked with them; but in
all cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such
things as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world;
nothing actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value
of their testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science
they do as Mrs. Fuller did: they do not use their own language, but the
book's; they pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave you to
find out later that they were not originating, but merely quoting;
they seem to know the volume by heart, and to revere it as they would
a Bible--another Bible, perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was
written under the mental desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel
sure that none but the membership of that Degree can discover meanings
in it. When you read it you seem to be listening to a lively and
aggressive and oracular speech delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech
whose spirit you get but not the particulars; or, to change the figure,
you seem to be listening to a vigorous instrument which is making a
noise which it thinks is a tune, but which, to persons not members of
the band, is only the martial tooting of a trombone, and merrily stirs
the soul through the noise, but does not convey a meaning.

The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of
a heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than
human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior,
and so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting
anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence,
and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all,
it thunders out the startling words, “I have Proved” so and so. It takes
the Pope and all the great guns of his Church in battery assembled to
authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single
unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and
study and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all
that: she finds the whole Bible in an unclarified audition, and at small
expense of time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from
lid to lid, reorganizes and improves the meanings, then authoritatively
settles and establishes them with formulas which you cannot tell from
“Let there be light!” and “Here you have it!” It is the first time since
the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space
with such placid and complacent confidence and command.

[January, 1903. The first reading of any book whose terminology is
new and strange is nearly sure to leave the reader in a bewildered and
sarcastic state of mind. But now that, during the past two months,
I have, by diligence gained a fair acquaintanceship with Science and
Health technicalities, I no longer find the bulk of that work hard to
understand.--M. T.]

P.S. The wisdom harvested from the foregoing thoughts has already done
me a service and saved me a sorrow. Nearly a month ago there came to me
from one of the universities a tract by Dr. Edward Anthony Spitzka on
the “Encephalic Anatomy of the Races.” I judged that my opinion was
desired by the university, and I was greatly pleased with this attention
and wrote and said I would furnish it as soon as I could. That night
I put my plodding and disheartening Christian Science mining aside and
took hold of the matter. I wrote an eager chapter, and was expecting to
finish my opinion the next day, but was called away for a week, and my
mind was soon charged with other interests. It was not until to-day,
after the lapse of nearly a month, that I happened upon my Encephalic
chapter again. Meantime, the new wisdom had come to me, and I read it
with shame. I recognized that I had entered upon that work in far from
the right temper--far from the respectful and judicial spirit which was
its due of reverence. I had begun upon it with the following paragraph
for fuel:

“FISSURES OF THE PARIETAL AND OCCIPITAL LOBES (LATERAL SURFACE).--The
Postcentral Fissural Complex--In this hemicerebrum, the postcentral and
subcentral are combined to form a continuous fissure, attaining a length
of 8.5 cm. Dorsally, the fissure bifurcates, embracing the gyre
indented by the caudal limb of the paracentral. The caudal limb of the
postcentral is joined by a transparietal piece. In all, five additional
rami spring from the combined fissure. A vadum separates it from the
parietal; another from the central.”

It humiliates me, now, to see how angry I got over that; and how
scornful. I said that the style was disgraceful; that it was labored and
tumultuous, and in places violent, that the treatment was involved and
erratic, and almost, as a rule, bewildering; that to lack of simplicity
was added a lack of vocabulary; that there was quite too much feeling
shown; that if I had a dog that would get so excited and incoherent over
a tranquil subject like Encephalic Anatomy I would not pay his tax; and
at that point I got excited myself and spoke bitterly of these mongrel
insanities, and said a person might as well try to understand Science
and Health.

[I know, now, where the trouble was, and am glad of the interruption
that saved me from sending my verdict to the university. It makes me
cold to think what those people might have thought of me.--M. T.]




CHAPTER IV

No one doubts--certainly not I--that the mind exercises a powerful
influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the
interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack,
the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the
hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in
their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of
that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know
that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the
doctor will make the bread pill effective.

Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look
like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the
royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman
have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could
he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure
that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance,
but the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and
remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a
saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if
the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy a
farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as
a faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to
her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, “Have
faith--it is all that is necessary,” and they went away well of their
ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult
powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several
times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was
the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in
this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients.
He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma,
but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work
is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria
there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire
from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand
of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year
to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no
religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in
his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it
is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power
issuing from himself.

Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of
curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in
the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the
Mind Cure the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and
the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles
with the same old, powerful instrument--the patient's imagination.
Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give
that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from
the ways of the others.

They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the
Faith Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good,
since they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines
if he wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure
every conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental
forces alone. There would seem to be an element of danger here. It has
the look of claiming too much, I think. Public confidence would probably
be increased if less were claimed.

The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my stomach-ache and my
cold; but the horse-doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian
Science claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone
and confine itself to surgery. There it would have everything its own
way.

The horse-doctor charged me thirty kreutzers, and I paid him; in fact,
I doubled it and gave him a shilling. Mrs. Fuller brought in an itemized
bill for a crate of broken bones mended in two hundred and thirty-four
places--one dollar per fracture.

“Nothing exists but Mind?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “All else is substanceless, all else is
imaginary.”

I gave her an imaginary check, and now she is suing me for substantial
dollars. It looks inconsistent.




CHAPTER V

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to
each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple
many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties
and obscurities now.

Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there,
are nevertheless, no doubt, insane in one or two particulars. I think
we must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded.
I think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that, as
regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are
really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all
accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are
outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the
sun gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that six
times six are thirty-six, that two from ten leaves eight; that eight
and seven are fifteen. These are, perhaps, the only things we are agreed
about; but, although they are so few, they are of inestimable value,
because they make an infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts
them him we know to be substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the
working essentials, sane. Whoever disputes a single one of them him we
know to be wholly insane, and qualified for the asylum.

Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled
to go at large. But that is concession enough. We cannot go any further
than that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man
is insane--just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was.
We know exactly where to put our finger upon his insanity: it is where
his opinion differs from ours.

That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful
and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any
question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious
matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the
Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am
spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because
you never can prove anything to a lunatic--for that is a part of his
insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane,
for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are
insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the Republicans and
Mugwumps know it. All the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats
and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of
opinion our adversaries are insane. When I look around me, I am often
troubled to see how many people are mad. To mention only a few:

The Atheist, The Theosophists, The Infidel, The Swedenborgians, The
Agnostic, The Shakers, The Baptist, The Millerites, The Methodist, The
Mormons, The Christian Scientist, The Laurence Oliphant Harrisites, The
Catholic, and the 115 Christian sects, the Presbyterian excepted,
The Grand Lama's people, The Monarchists, The Imperialists, The 72
Mohammedan sects, The Democrats, The Republicans (but not the
Mugwumps), The Buddhist, The Blavatsky-Buddhist, The Mind-Curists, The
Faith-Curists, The Nationalist, The Mental Scientists, The Confucian,
The Spiritualist, The Allopaths, The 2000 East Indian sects, The
Homeopaths, The Electropaths, The Peculiar People, The--

But there's no end to the list; there are millions of them! And all
insane; each in his own way; insane as to his pet fad or opinion,
but otherwise sane and rational. This should move us to be charitable
towards one another's lunacies. I recognize that in his special belief
the Christian Scientist is insane, because he does not believe as I
do; but I hail him as my mate and fellow, because I am as insane as he
insane from his point of view, and his point of view is as authoritative
as mine and worth as much. That is to say, worth a brass farthing. Upon
a great religious or political question, the opinion of the dullest head
in the world is worth the same as the opinion of the brightest head in
the world--a brass farthing. How do we arrive at this? It is simple.
The affirmative opinion of a stupid man is neutralized by the negative
opinion of his stupid neighbor no decision is reached; the affirmative
opinion of the intellectual giant Gladstone is neutralized by the
negative opinion of the intellectual giant Newman--no decision is
reached. Opinions that prove nothing are, of course, without value any
but a dead person knows that much. This obliges us to admit the truth
of the unpalatable proposition just mentioned above--that, in disputed
matters political and religious, one man's opinion is worth no more than
his peer's, and hence it followers that no man's opinion possesses any
real value. It is a humbling thought, but there is no way to get around
it: all opinions upon these great subjects are brass-farthing opinions.

It is a mere plain, simple fact--as clear and as certain as that eight
and seven make fifteen. And by it we recognize that we are all insane,
as concerns those matters. If we were sane, we should all see a
political or religious doctrine alike; there would be no dispute: it
would be a case of eight and seven--just as it is in heaven, where all
are sane and none insane. There there is but one religion, one belief;
the harmony is perfect; there is never a discordant note.

Under protection of these preliminaries, I suppose I may now repeat
without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane. I mean him
no discourtesy, and I am not charging--nor even imagining--that he
is insaner than the rest of the human race. I think he is more
picturesquely insane than some of us. At the same time, I am quite sure
that in one important and splendid particular he is much saner than is
the vast bulk of the race.

Why is he insane? I told you before: it is because his opinions are not
ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the
only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It
is merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more
interesting than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his “little
book”; the “little book” exposed in the sky eighteen centuries ago by
the flaming angel of the Apocalypse, and handed down in our day to Mrs.
Mary Baker G. Eddy, of New Hampshire, and translated by her, word for
word, into English (with help of a polisher), and now published and
distributed in hundreds of editions by her at a clear profit per volume,
above cost, of seven hundred per cent.!--a profit which distinctly
belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it if he
can; a “little book” which the C.S. very frequently calls by just that
name, and always enclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin
exultantly in mind; a “little book” which “explains” and reconstructs
and new-paints and decorates the Bible, and puts a mansard roof on it
and a lightning-rod and all the other modern improvements; a “little
book” which for the present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and
be friendly to it, and within half a century will hitch the Bible in the
rear and thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming
great march of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of
the planet.




CHAPTER VI

“Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection with the
text-book of Christian Science, Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures, by Mary Baker G. Eddy. These are our only preachers. They
are the word of God.” “Christian Science Journal”, October, 1898.

Is that picturesque? A lady has told me that in a chapel of the Mosque
in Boston there is a picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before it
burns a never-extinguished light. Is that picturesque? How long do you
think it will be before the Christian Scientist will be worshipping that
picture or image and praying to it? How long do you think it will
be before it is claimed that Mrs. Eddy is a Redeemer, a Christ, and
Christ's equal? Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as
“Our Mother.”

How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the Throne
beside the Virgin--and, later, a step higher? First, Mary the Virgin and
Mary the Matron; later, with a change of precedence, Mary the Matron
and Mary the Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his
brushes; the new Renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in
altar-canvases--a thousand times as much as the Popes and their Church
ever spent on the Old Masters; for their riches were poverty as
compared with what is going to pour into the treasure-chest of the
Christian-Scientist Papacy by-and-by, let us not doubt it. We will
examine the financial outlook presently and see what it promises. A
favorite subject of the new Old Master will be the first verse of the
twelfth chapter of Revelation--a verse which Mrs. Eddy says (in her
Annex to the Scriptures) has “one distinctive feature which has special
reference to the present age”--and to her, as is rather pointedly
indicated:

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the
sun, and the moon under her feet,” etc.

The woman clothed with the sun will be a portrait of Mrs. Eddy.

Is it insanity to believe that Christian-Scientism is destined to make
the most formidable show that any new religion has made in the world
since the birth and spread of Mohammedanism, and that within a century
from now it may stand second to Rome only, in numbers and power in
Christendom?

If this is a wild dream it will not be easy to prove it so just yet, I
think. There seems argument that it may come true. The Christian-Science
“boom,” proper, is not yet five years old; yet already it has two
hundred and fifty churches.

It has its start, you see, and it is a phenomenally good one. Moreover,
it is latterly spreading with a constantly accelerating swiftness. It
has a better chance to grow and prosper and achieve permanency than any
other existing “ism”; for it has more to offer than any other. The past
teaches us that in order to succeed, a movement like this must not be
a mere philosophy, it must be a religion; also, that it must not claim
entire originality, but content itself with passing for an improvement
on an existing religion, and show its hand later, when strong and
prosperous--like Mohammedanism.

Next, there must be money--and plenty of it.

Next, the power and authority and capital must be concentrated in the
grip of a small and irresponsible clique, with nobody outside privileged
to ask questions or find fault.

Next, as before remarked, it must bait its hook with some new and
attractive advantages over the baits offered by its competitors. A new
movement equipped with some of these endowments--like spiritualism, for
instance may count upon a considerable success; a new movement equipped
with the bulk of them--like Mohammedanism, for instance--may count upon
a widely extended conquest. Mormonism had all the requisites but one it
had nothing new and nothing valuable to bait with. Spiritualism lacked
the important detail of concentration of money and authority in the
hands of an irresponsible clique.

The above equipment is excellent, admirable, powerful, but not perfect.
There is yet another detail which is worth the whole of it put together
and more; a detail which has never been joined (in the beginning of
a religious movement) to a supremely good working equipment since the
world began, until now: a new personage to worship. Christianity had
the Saviour, but at first and for generations it lacked money and
concentrated power. In Mrs. Eddy, Christian Science possesses the new
personage for worship, and in addition--here in the very beginning--a
working equipment that has not a flaw in it. In the beginning,
Mohammedanism had no money; and it has never had anything to offer its
client but heaven--nothing here below that was valuable. In addition to
heaven hereafter, Christian Science has present health and a cheerful
spirit to offer; and in comparison with this bribe all other this-world
bribes are poor and cheap. You recognize that this estimate is
admissible, do you not?

To whom does Bellamy's “Nationalism” appeal? Necessarily to the few:
people who read and dream, and are compassionate, and troubled for the
poor and the hard-driven. To whom does Spiritualism appeal? Necessarily
to the few; its “boom” has lasted for half a century, and I believe it
claims short of four millions of adherents in America. Who are attracted
by Swedenborgianism and some of the other fine and delicate “isms”? The
few again: educated people, sensitively organized, with superior mental
endowments, who seek lofty planes of thought and find their contentment
there. And who are attracted by Christian Science? There is no limit;
its field is horizonless; its appeal is as universal as is the appeal
of Christianity itself. It appeals to the rich, the poor, the high, the
low, the cultured, the ignorant, the gifted, the stupid, the modest,
the vain, the wise, the silly, the soldier, the civilian, the hero, the
coward, the idler, the worker, the godly, the godless, the freeman, the
slave, the adult, the child; they who are ailing in body or mind,
they who have friends that are ailing in body or mind. To mass it in a
phrase, its clientage is the Human Race. Will it march? I think so.

Remember its principal great offer: to rid the Race of pain and disease.
Can it do so? In large measure, yes. How much of the pain and disease in
the world is created by the imaginations of the sufferers, and then kept
alive by those same imaginations? Four-fifths? Not anything short of
that, I should think. Can Christian Science banish that four-fifths? I
think so. Can any other (organized) force do it? None that I know of.
Would this be a new world when that was accomplished? And a pleasanter
one--for us well people, as well as for those fussy and fretting sick
ones? Would it seem as if there was not as much gloomy weather as there
used to be? I think so.

In the mean time, would the Scientist kill off a good many patients? I
think so. More than get killed off now by the legalized methods? I will
take up that question presently.

At present, I wish to ask you to examine some of the Scientist's
performances, as registered in his magazine, The Christian Science
Journal--October number, 1898. First, a Baptist clergyman gives us this
true picture of “the average orthodox Christian”--and he could have
added that it is a true picture of the average (civilized) human being:

“He is a worried and fretted and fearful man; afraid of himself and his
propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid of treading on serpents
or drinking deadly things.”

Then he gives us this contrast:

“The average Christian Scientist has put all anxiety and fretting under
his feet. He does have a victory over fear and care that is not achieved
by the average orthodox Christian.”

He has put all anxiety and fretting under his feet. What proportion of
your earnings or income would you be willing to pay for that frame of
mind, year in, year out? It really outvalues any price that can be put
upon it. Where can you purchase it, at any outlay of any sort, in any
Church or out of it, except the Scientist's?

Well, it is the anxiety and fretting about colds, and fevers, and
draughts, and getting our feet wet, and about forbidden food eaten in
terror of indigestion, that brings on the cold and the fever and the
indigestion and the most of our other ailments; and so, if the Science
can banish that anxiety from the world I think it can reduce the world's
disease and pain about four-fifths.

In this October number many of the redeemed testify and give thanks;
and not coldly, but with passionate gratitude. As a rule they seem
drunk with health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of it, the
unspeakable glory and splendor of it, after a long, sober spell spent in
inventing imaginary diseases and concreting them with doctor-stuff.
The first witness testifies that when “this most beautiful Truth first
dawned on him” he had “nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to”; that
those he did not have he thought he had--and this made the tale about
complete. What was the natural result? Why, he was a dump-pit “for all
the doctors, druggists, and patent medicines of the country.” Christian
Science came to his help, and “the old sick conditions passed away,” and
along with them the “dismal forebodings” which he had been accustomed
to employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a healthy and cheerful
man, now, and astonished.

But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have
been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he
watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and
compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human
invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing
imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against sub-sequent
applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, “I
am well! I am sound!--sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound,
perfectly well! I have no pain; there's no such thing as pain! I have no
disease; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind; all
is Mind, All-Good Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a series,
ante and pass the buck!”

I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it
doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to
the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was
used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from
unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every
purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely
that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious
spirit a powerful reinforcement in his case.

The second witness testifies that the Science banished “an old organic
trouble,” which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs
and the knife for seven years.

He calls it his “claim.” A surface-miner would think it was not
his claim at all, but the property of the doctor and his pal the
surgeon--for he would be misled by that word, which is Christian-Science
slang for “ailment.” The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him
there is no such thing, and he will not use the hateful word. All that
happens to him is that upon his attention an imaginary disturbance
sometimes obtrudes itself which claims to be an ailment but isn't.

This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has now gone over to the
new sect. He was “almost blind and deaf.” He was treated by the C. S.
method, and “when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually.” Saw
spiritually? It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable; but this C. S. magazine
is poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.

The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims:

Indigestion, Rheumatism, Catarrh, Chalky deposits in Shoulder-joints,
Arm-joints, Hand-joints, Insomnia, Atrophy of the muscles of Arms.
Shoulders, Stiffness of all those joints, Excruciating pains most of the
time.

These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but “I never realized any physical relief from that source.”
 After thirty years of torture, he went to a Christian Scientist and took
an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later, he “began
to eat like a well man.” Then “the claims vanished--some at once, others
more gradually”; finally, “they have almost entirely disappeared.”
 And--a thing which is of still greater value--he is now “contented and
happy.” That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist
Church specialty. And, indeed, one may go further and assert with
little or no exaggeration that it is a Christian-Science monopoly. With
thirty-one years' effort, the Methodist Church had not succeeded in
furnishing it to this harassed soldier.

And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims,
declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the
praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is
cured; and St. Vitus's dance is made a pastime. Even without a fiddle.
And now and then an interesting new addition to the Science slang
appears on the page. We have “demonstrations over chilblains” and such
things. It seems to be a curtailed way of saying “demonstrations of
the power of Christian-Science Truth over the fiction which masquerades
under the name of Chilblains.” The children, as well as the adults,
share in the blessings of the Science. “Through the study of the 'little
book' they are learning how to be healthful, peaceful, and wise.”
 Sometimes they are cured of their little claims by the professional
healer, and sometimes more advanced children say over the formula and
cure themselves.

A little Far-Western girl of nine, equipped with an adult vocabulary,
states her age and says, “I thought I would write a demonstration to
you.” She had a claim, derived from getting flung over a pony's head and
landed on a rockpile. She saved herself from disaster by remembering to
say “God is All” while she was in the air. I couldn't have done it.
I shouldn't even have thought of it. I should have been too excited.
Nothing but Christian Science could have enabled that child to do that
calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came
down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it;
but the intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim
resulting was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and
shut. At school “it hurt pretty badly--that is, it seemed to.” So “I was
excused, and went down to the basement and said, 'Now I am depending on
mamma instead of God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma.'” No
doubt this would have answered; but, to make sure, she added Mrs. Eddy
to the team and recited “the Scientific Statement of Being,” which
is one of the principal incantations, I judge. Then “I felt my eye
opening.” Why, dear, it would have opened an oyster. I think it is one
of the touchingest things in child-history, that pious little rat down
cellar pumping away at the Scientific Statement of Being.

There is a page about another good child--little Gordon. Little Gordon
“came into the world without the assistance of surgery or anaesthetics.”
 He was a “demonstration.” A painless one; therefore, his coming evoked
“joy and thankfulness to God and the Discoverer of Christian Science.”
 It is a noticeable feature of this literature--the so frequent linking
together of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles.
When little Gordon was two years old, “he was playing horse on the bed,
where I had left my 'little book.' I noticed him stop in his play, take
the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about
for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there.”
 This pious act filled the mother “with such a train of thought as I had
never experienced before. I thought of the sweet mother of long ago
who kept things in her heart,” etc. It is a bold comparison; however,
unconscious profanations are about as common in the mouths of the lay
member ship of the new Church as are frank and open ones in the mouths
of its consecrated chiefs.

Some days later, the family library--Christian-Science books--was lying
in a deep-seated window. This was another chance for the holy child to
show off. He left his play and went there and pushed all the books to
one side, except the Annex “It he took in both hands, slowly raised
it to his lips, then removed it carefully, and seated himself in the
window.” It had seemed to the mother too wonderful to be true, that
first time; but now she was convinced that “neither imagination nor
accident had anything to do with it.” Later, little Gordon let the
author of his being see him do it. After that he did it frequently;
probably every time anybody was looking. I would rather have that child
than a chromo. If this tale has any object, it is to intimate that the
inspired book was supernaturally able to convey a sense of its sacred
and awful character to this innocent little creature, without
the intervention of outside aids. The magazine is not edited with
high-priced discretion. The editor has a “claim,” and he ought to get it
treated.

Among other witnesses there is one who had a “jumping toothache,”
 which several times tempted her to “believe that there was sensation in
matter, but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth.” She would
not allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him
punch and drill and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its
ulcerations, and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and
she wouldn't once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it
didn't, and I have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that
her Christian Science faith did her better service than she could have
gotten out of cocaine.

There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by
an accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of
the other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered
any real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon.

Also, there is an account of the restoration to perfect health, in
a single night, of a fatally injured horse, by the application of
Christian Science. I can stand a good deal, but I recognize that the ice
is getting thin, here. That horse had as many as fifty claims; how
could he demonstrate over them? Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good,
Good-Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down but Nine, Set them up on
the Other Alley? Could he intone the Scientific Statement of Being?
Now, could he? Wouldn't it give him a relapse? Let us draw the line at
horses. Horses and furniture.

There is plenty of other testimonies in the magazine, but these quoted
samples will answer. They show the kind of trade the Science is driving.
Now we come back to the question, Does the Science kill a patient here
and there and now and then? We must concede it. Does it compensate
for this? I am persuaded that it can make a plausible showing in that
direction. For instance: when it lays its hand upon a soldier who has
suffered thirty years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body
and mind, what is the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think:
that it has restored to life a subject who had essentially died ten
deaths a year for thirty years, and each of them a long and painful one.
But for its interference that man in the three years which have since
elapsed, would have essentially died thirty times more. There are
thousands of young people in the land who are now ready to enter upon a
life-long death similar to that man's. Every time the Science
captures one of these and secures to him life-long immunity from
imagination-manufactured disease, it may plausibly claim that in his
person it has saved three hundred lives. Meantime, it will kill a man
every now and then. But no matter, it will still be ahead on the credit
side.

[NOTE.--I have received several letters (two from educated and
ostensibly intelligent persons), which contained, in substance, this
protest: “I don't object to men and women chancing their lives with
these people, but it is a burning shame that the law should allow them
to trust their helpless little children in their deadly hands.” Isn't it
touching? Isn't it deep? Isn't it modest? It is as if the person said:
“I know that to a parent his child is the core of his heart, the apple
of his eye, a possession so dear, so precious that he will trust its
life in no hands but those which he believes, with all his soul, to be
the very best and the very safest, but it is a burning shame that the
law does not require him to come to me to ask what kind of healer I will
allow him to call.” The public is merely a multiplied “me.”--M.T.]




CHAPTER VII

“We consciously declare that Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures, was foretold, as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in
Revelation x. She is the 'mighty angel,' or God's highest thought to
this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the
Bible in the 'little book open' (verse 2). Thus we prove that Christian
Science is the second coming of Christ-Truth-Spirit.”--Lecture by Dr.
George Tomkins, D.D. C.S.

There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the
divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the
present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she
has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following
as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshiped, and
we must expect this feeling to spread, territorially, and also to deepen
in intensity.

Particularly after her death; for then, as any one can foresee,
Eddy-Worship will be taught in the Sunday-schools and pulpits of the
cult. Already whatever she puts her trade-mark on, though it be only
a memorial-spoon, is holy and is eagerly and gratefully bought by the
disciple, and becomes a fetish in his house. I say bought, for the
Boston Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; everything it has
is for sale. And the terms are cash; and not only cash, but cash in
advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual
Dollar, but a real one. From end to end of the Christian Science
literature not a single (material) thing in the world is conceded to be
real, except the Dollar. But all through and through its advertisements
that reality is eagerly and persistently recognized.

The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways; the Christian-Science
Mother-Church and Bargain-Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of
spiritual wares to the faithful, and always on the one condition--cash,
cash in advance. The Angel of the Apocalypse could not go there and get
a copy of his own pirated book on credit. Many, many precious Christian
Science things are to be had there for cash: Bible Lessons; Church
Manual; C. S. Hymnal; History of the building of the Mother-Church; lot
of Sermons; Communion Hymn, “Saw Ye My Saviour,” by Mrs. Eddy, half a
dollar a copy, “words used by special permission of Mrs. Eddy.” Also we
have Mrs. Eddy's and the Angel's little Blue-Annex in eight styles
of binding at eight kinds of war-prices; among these a sweet thing in
“levant, divinity circuit, leather lined to edge, round corners, gold
edge, silk sewed, each, prepaid, $6,” and if you take a million you get
them a shilling cheaper--that is to say, “prepaid, $5.75.” Also we
have Mrs. Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings, at 'andsome big prices, the
divinity-circuit style heading the exertions, shilling discount where
you take an edition Next comes Christ and Christmas, by the fertile Mrs.
Eddy--a poem--would God I could see it!--price $3, cash in advance. Then
follow five more books by Mrs. Eddy, at highwayman's rates, some of
them in “leatherette covers,” some of them in “pebble cloth,” with
divinity-circuit, compensation-balance, twin-screw, and the other modern
improvements; and at the same bargain-counter can be had The Christian
Science Journal.

Christian-Science literary discharges are a monopoly of the
Mother-Church Headquarters Factory in Boston; none genuine without the
trade-mark of the Trust. You must apply there and not elsewhere.

One hundred dollars for it. And I have a case among my statistics where
the student had a three weeks' course and paid three hundred for it.

The Trust does love the Dollar, when it isn't a spiritual one.

In order to force the sale of Mrs Eddy's Bible-Annex, no healer,
Metaphysical-College-bred or other, is allowed to practice the game
unless he possesses a copy of that book. That means a large and
constantly augmenting income for the Trust. No C.S. family would
consider itself loyal or pious or pain-proof without an Annex or two in
the house. That means an income for the Trust, in the near future, of
millions; not thousands-millions a year.

No member, young or old, of a branch Christian-Scientist church can
acquire and retain membership in the Mother-Church unless he pay
“capitation tax” (of “not less than a dollar,” say the By-Laws) to the
Boston Trust every year. That means an income for the Trust, in the near
future, of--let us venture to say--millions more per year.

It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in 1920 there will be ten
million Christian Scientists, and three millions in Great Britain;
that these figures will be trebled in 1930; that in America in 1920
the Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1930 politically
formidable, and in 1940 the governing power in the Republic--to remain
that, permanently. And I think it a reasonable guess that the Trust
(which is already in our day pretty brusque in its ways) will then be
the most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical politico-religious
master that has dominated a people since the palmy days of the
Inquisition. And a stronger master than the strongest of bygone times,
because this one will have a financial strength not dreamed of by any
predecessor; as effective a concentration of irresponsible power as any
predecessor has had; in the railway, the telegraph, and the subsidized
newspaper, better facilities for watching and managing his empire
than any predecessor has had; and, after a generation or two, he will
probably divide Christendom with the Catholic Church.

The Roman Church has a perfect organization, and it has an effective
centralization of power--but not of its cash. Its multitude of Bishops
are rich, but their riches remain in large measure in their own hands.
They collect from two hundred millions of people, but they keep the
bulk of the result at home. The Boston Pope of by-and-by will draw his
dollar-a-head capitation-tax from three hundred millions of the human
race, and the Annex and the rest of his book-shop stock will fetch in as
much more; and his Metaphysical Colleges, the annual Pilgrimage to Mrs.
Eddy's tomb, from all over the world-admission, the Christian-Science
Dollar (payable in advance)--purchases of consecrated glass beads,
candles, memorial spoons, aureoled chrome-portraits and bogus autographs
of Mrs. Eddy; cash offerings at her shrine no crutches of cured cripples
received, and no imitations of miraculously restored broken legs and
necks allowed to be hung up except when made out of the Holy Metal
and proved by fire-assay; cash for miracles worked at the tomb: these
money-sources, with a thousand to be yet invented and ambushed upon the
devotee, will bring the annual increment well up above a billion. And
nobody but the Trust will have the handling of it. In that day, the
Trust will monopolize the manufacture and sale of the Old and New
Testaments as well as the Annex, and raise their price to Annex rates,
and compel the devotee to buy (for even to-day a healer has to have the
Annex and the Scriptures or he is not allowed to work the game), and
that will bring several hundred million dollars more. In those days, the
Trust will have an income approaching five million dollars a day, and
no expenses to be taken out of it; no taxes to pay, and no charities
to support. That last detail should not be lightly passed over by the
reader; it is well entitled to attention.

No charities to support. No, nor even to contribute to. One searches in
vain the Trust's advertisements and the utterances of its organs for
any suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged
prisoners, hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions,
libraries, old people's homes, or any other object that appeals to a
human being's purse through his heart.

I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and otherwise, and
have not yet got upon the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent
upon any worthy object. Nothing makes a Scientist so uncomfortable as to
ask him if he knows of a case where Christian Science has spent money
on a benevolence, either among its own adherents or elsewhere. He is
obliged to say “No” And then one discovers that the person questioned
has been asked the question many times before, and that it is getting to
be a sore subject with him. Why a sore subject? Because he has written
his chiefs and asked with high confidence for an answer that will
confound these questioners--and the chiefs did not reply. He has written
again, and then again--not with confidence, but humbly, now--and has
begged for defensive ammunition in the voice of supplication. A reply
does at last come to this effect: “We must have faith in Our Mother, and
rest content in the conviction that whatever She does with the money
it is in accordance with orders from Heaven, for She does no act of any
kind without first 'demonstrating over' it.”

That settles it--as far as the disciple is concerned. His mind
is satisfied with that answer; he gets down his Annex and does an
incantation or two, and that mesmerizes his spirit and puts that to
sleep--brings it peace. Peace and comfort and joy, until some inquirer
punctures the old sore again.

Through friends in America I asked some questions, and in some cases
got definite and informing answers; in other cases the answers were not
definite and not valuable. To the question, “Does any of the money go to
charities?” the answer from an authoritative source was: “No, not in
the sense usually conveyed by this word.” (The italics are mine.) That
answer is cautious. But definite, I think--utterly and unassailably
definite--although quite Christian-Scientifically foggy in its phrasing.
Christian-Science testimony is generally foggy, generally diffuse,
generally garrulous. The writer was aware that the first word in his
phrase answered the question which I was asking, but he could not help
adding nine dark words. Meaningless ones, unless explained by him. It is
quite likely, as intimated by him, that Christian Science has invented
a new class of objects to apply the word “charity” to, but without an
explanation we cannot know what they are. We quite easily and naturally
and confidently guess that they are in all cases objects which will
return five hundred per cent. on the Trust's investment in them,
but guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this case, a sort
of nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we know of the
Trust's trade principles and its sly and furtive and shifty ways.

Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands its business. The Trust does
not give itself away. It defeats all the attempts of us impertinents to
get at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our diligence, we have
not been able to get it to confess what it does with the money. It does
not even let its own disciples find out. All it says is, that the matter
has been “demonstrated over.” Now and then a lay Scientist says, with
a grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously rich, but he stops
there; as to whether any of the money goes to other charities or not,
he is obliged to admit that he does not know. However, the Trust is
composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture that if it
had a charity on its list which it was proud of, we should soon hear of
it.

“Without money and without price.” Those used to be the terms. Mrs.
Eddy's Annex cancels them. The motto of Christian Science is, “The
laborer is worthy of his hire.” And now that it has been “demonstrated
over,” we find its spiritual meaning to be, “Do anything and everything
your hand may find to do; and charge cash for it, and collect the money
in advance.” The Scientist has on his tongue's end a cut-and-dried,
Boston-supplied set of rather lean arguments, whose function is to show
that it is a Heaven-commanded duty to do this, and that the croupiers of
the game have no choice but to obey.

The Trust seems to be a reincarnation. Exodus xxxii. 4.

I have no reverence for the Trust, but I am not lacking in reverence for
the sincerities of the lay membership of the new Church. There is every
evidence that the lay members are entirely sincere in their faith, and
I think sincerity is always entitled to honor and respect, let the
inspiration of the sincerity be what it may. Zeal and sincerity can
carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and
sword, and I believe that the new religion will conquer the half of
Christendom in a hundred years. I am not intending this as a compliment
to the human race; I am merely stating an opinion. And yet I think that
perhaps it is a compliment to the race. I keep in mind that saying of
an orthodox preacher--quoted further back. He conceded that this new
Christianity frees its possessor's life from frets, fears, vexations,
bitterness, and all sorts of imagination-propagated maladies and pains,
and fills his world with sunshine and his heart with gladness. If
Christian Science, with this stupendous equipment--and final salvation
added--cannot win half the Christian globe, I must be badly mistaken in
the make-up of the human race.

I think the Trust will be handed down like the other Papacy, and will
always know how to handle its limitless cash. It will press the button;
the zeal, the energy, the sincerity, the enthusiasm of its countless
vassals will do the rest.




CHAPTER VIII

The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make
it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had
it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man is most
likely to use only the mischievous half of the force--the half which
invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them; and if he is
one of these--very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the
beneficent half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal
or help that man, two imaginations are required: his own and some
outsider's. The outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the
healing-power that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. I
think it is not so, at all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and
that is the main thing. The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable;
so valuable that it may fairly be likened to the essential work
performed by the engineer when he handles the throttle and turns on the
steam; the actual power is lodged exclusively in the engine, but if
the engine were left alone it would never start of itself. Whether the
engineer be named Jim, or Bob, or Tom, it is all one--his services are
necessary, and he is entitled to such wage as he can get you to pay.
Whether he be named Christian Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind
Curist, or King's-Evil Expert, or Hypnotist, it is all one; he is merely
the Engineer; he simply turns on the same old steam and the engine does
the whole work.

The Christian-Scientist engineer drives exactly the same trade as the
other engineers, yet he out-prospers the whole of them put together.

Is it because he has captured the takingest name? I think that that is
only a small part of it. I think that the secret of his high prosperity
lies elsewhere.

The Christian Scientist has organized the business. Now that was
certainly a gigantic idea. Electricity, in limitless volume, has
existed in the air and the rocks and the earth and everywhere since
time began--and was going to waste all the while. In our time we have
organized that scattered and wandering force and set it to work,
and backed the business with capital, and concentrated it in few and
competent hands, and the results are as we see.

The Christian Scientist has taken a force which has been lying idle in
every member of the human race since time began, and has organized it,
and backed the business with capital, and concentrated it at Boston
headquarters in the hands of a small and very competent Trust, and there
are results.

Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is going to extend its
commerce wide in the earth. I think that if the business were conducted
in the loose and disconnected fashion customary with such things, it
would achieve but little more than the modest prosperity usually secured
by unorganized great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe that
so long as this one remains compactly organized and closely concentrated
in a Trust, the spread of its dominion will continue.




CHAPTER IX

Four years ago I wrote the preceding chapters. I was assured by the wise
that Christian Science was a fleeting craze and would soon perish. This
prompt and all-competent stripe of prophet is always to be had in the
market at ground-floor rates. He does not stop to load, or consider, or
take aim, but lets fly just as he stands. Facts are nothing to him, he
has no use for such things; he works wholly by inspiration. And so, when
he is asked why he considers a new movement a passing fad and quickly
perishable, he finds himself unprepared with a reason and is more or
less embarrassed. For a moment. Only for a moment. Then he waylays the
first spectre of a reason that goes flitting through the desert places
of his mind, and is at once serene again and ready for conflict. Serene
and confident. Yet he should not be so, since he has had no chance
to examine his catch, and cannot know whether it is going to help his
contention or damage it.

The impromptu reason furnished by the early prophets of whom I have
spoken was this:

“There is nothing to Christian Science; there is nothing about it
that appeals to the intellect; its market will be restricted to the
unintelligent, the mentally inferior, the people who do not think.”

They called that a reason why the cult would not flourish and endure. It
seems the equivalent of saying:

“There is no money in tinware; there is nothing about it that appeals to
the rich; its market will be restricted to the poor.”

It is like bringing forward the best reason in the world why Christian
Science should flourish and live, and then blandly offering it as a
reason why it should sicken and die.

That reason was furnished me by the complacent and unfrightened
prophets four years ago, and it has been furnished me again to-day. If
conversions to new religions or to old ones were in any considerable
degree achieved through the intellect, the aforesaid reason would be
sound and sufficient, no doubt; the inquirer into Christian Science
might go away unconvinced and unconverted. But we all know that
conversions are seldom made in that way; that such a thing as a serious
and painstaking and fairly competent inquiry into the claims of a
religion or of a political dogma is a rare occurrence; and that the
vast mass of men and women are far from being capable of making such
an examination. They are not capable, for the reason that their minds,
howsoever good they may be, are not trained for such examinations. The
mind not trained for that work is no more competent to do it than
are lawyers and farmers competent to make successful clothes without
learning the tailor's trade. There are seventy-five million men and
women among us who do not know how to cut out and make a dress-suit, and
they would not think of trying; yet they all think they can competently
think out a political or religious scheme without any apprenticeship to
the business, and many of them believe they have actually worked that
miracle. But, indeed, the truth is, almost all the men and women of our
nation or of any other get their religion and their politics where they
get their astronomy--entirely at second hand. Being untrained, they are
no more able to intelligently examine a dogma or a policy than they are
to calculate an eclipse.

Men are usually competent thinkers along the lines of their specialized
training only. Within these limits alone are their opinions and
judgments valuable; outside of these limits they grope and are
lost--usually without knowing it. In a church assemblage of five hundred
persons, there will be a man or two whose trained minds can seize upon
each detail of a great manufacturing scheme and recognize its value
or its lack of value promptly; and can pass the details in intelligent
review, section by section, and finally as a whole, and then deliver a
verdict upon the scheme which cannot be flippantly set aside nor easily
answered. And there will be one or two other men there who can do the
same thing with a great and complicated educational project; and one
or two others who can do the like with a large scheme for applying
electricity in a new and unheard-of way; and one or two others who can
do it with a showy scheme for revolutionizing the scientific world's
accepted notions regarding geology. And so on, and so on. But the
manufacturing experts will not be competent to examine the educational
scheme intelligently, and their opinion about it would not be valuable;
neither of these two groups will be able to understand and pass upon the
electrical scheme; none of these three batches of experts will be able
to understand and pass upon the geological revolution; and probably not
one man in the entire lot will be competent to examine, capably, the
intricacies of a political or religious scheme, new or old, and deliver
a judgment upon it which any one need regard as precious.

There you have the top crust. There will be four hundred and
seventy-five men and women present who can draw upon their training and
deliver incontrovertible judgments concerning cheese, and leather,
and cattle, and hardware, and soap, and tar, and candles, and patent
medicines, and dreams, and apparitions, and garden trucks, and cats, and
baby food, and warts, and hymns, and time-tables, and freight-rates, and
summer resorts, and whiskey, and law, and surgery, and dentistry, and
blacksmithing, and shoemaking, and dancing, and Huyler's candy, and
mathematics, and dog fights, and obstetrics, and music, and sausages,
and dry goods, and molasses, and railroad stocks, and horses, and
literature, and labor unions, and vegetables, and morals, and lamb's
fries, and etiquette, and agriculture. And not ten among the five
hundred--let their minds be ever so good and bright--will be competent,
by grace of the requisite specialized mental training, to take hold of a
complex abstraction of any kind and make head or tail of it.

The whole five hundred are thinkers, and they are all capable
thinkers--but only within the narrow limits of their specialized
trainings. Four hundred and ninety of them cannot competently examine
either a religious plan or a political one. A scattering few of them do
examine both--that is, they think they do. With results as precious as
when I examine the nebular theory and explain it to myself.

If the four hundred and ninety got their religion through their minds,
and by weighed and measured detail, Christian Science would not be a
scary apparition. But they don't; they get a little of it through their
minds, more of it through their feelings, and the overwhelming bulk of
it through their environment.

Environment is the chief thing to be considered when one is proposing to
predict the future of Christian Science. It is not the ability to reason
that makes the Presbyterian, or the Baptist, or the Methodist, or the
Catholic, or the Mohammedan, or the Buddhist, or the Mormon; it is
environment. If religions were got by reasoning, we should have the
extraordinary spectacle of an American family with a Presbyterian in it,
and a Baptist, a Methodist, a Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, and
a Mormon. A Presbyterian family does not produce Catholic families
or other religious brands, it produces its own kind; and not
by intellectual processes, but by association. And so also with
Mohammedanism, the cult which in our day is spreading with the sweep of
a world-conflagration through the Orient, that native home of profound
thought and of subtle intellectual fence, that fertile womb whence has
sprung every great religion that exists. Including our own; for with all
our brains we cannot invent a religion and market it.

The language of my quoted prophets recurs to us now, and we wonder to
think how small a space in the world the mighty Mohammedan Church would
be occupying now, if a successful trade in its line of goods had been
conditioned upon an exhibit that would “appeal to the intellect” instead
of to “the unintelligent, the mentally inferior, the people who do not
think.”

The Christian Science Church, like the Mohammedan Church, makes no
embarrassing appeal to the intellect, has no occasion to do it, and can
get along quite well without it.

Provided. Provided what? That it can secure that thing which is
worth two or three hundred thousand times more than an “appeal to the
intellect”--an environment. Can it get that? Will it be a menace
to regular Christianity if it gets that? Is it time for regular
Christianity to get alarmed? Or shall regular Christianity smile a smile
and turn over and take another nap? Won't it be wise and proper for
regular Christianity to do the old way, Me customary way, the historical
way--lock the stable-door after the horse is gone? Just as Protestantism
has smiled and nodded this long time (while the alert and diligent
Catholic was slipping in and capturing the public schools), and is now
beginning to hunt around for the key when it is too late?

Will Christian Science get a chance to show its wares? It has already
secured that chance. Will it flourish and spread and prosper if it
shall create for itself the one thing essential to those conditions--an
environment? It has already created an environment. There are families
of Christian Scientists in every community in America, and each family
is a factory; each family turns out a Christian Science product at the
customary intervals, and contributes it to the Cause in the only way
in which contributions of recruits to Churches are ever made on a large
scale--by the puissant forces of personal contact and association.
Each family is an agency for the Cause, and makes converts among the
neighbors, and starts some more factories.

Four years ago there were six Christian Scientists in a certain town
that I am acquainted with; a year ago there were two hundred and fifty
there; they have built a church, and its membership now numbers four
hundred. This has all been quietly done; done without frenzied revivals,
without uniforms, brass bands, street parades, corner oratory, or any of
the other customary persuasions to a godly life. Christian Science, like
Mohammedanism, is “restricted” to the “unintelligent, the people who
do not think.” There lies the danger. It makes Christian Science
formidable. It is “restricted” to ninety-nine one-hundredths of the
human race, and must be reckoned with by regular Christianity. And will
be, as soon as it is too late.






BOOK II

“There were remarkable things about the stranger called the
Man--Mystery-things so very extraordinary that they monopolized
attention and made all of him seem extraordinary; but this was not so,
the most of his qualities being of the common, every-day size and like
anybody else's. It was curious. He was of the ordinary stature, and had
the ordinary aspects; yet in him were hidden such strange contradictions
and disproportions! He was majestically fearless and heroic; he had
the strength of thirty men and the daring of thirty thousand; handling
armies, organizing states, administering governments--these were
pastimes to him; he publicly and ostentatiously accepted the human race
at its own valuation--as demigods--and privately and successfully dealt
with it at quite another and juster valuation--as children and slaves;
his ambitions were stupendous, and his dreams had no commerce with the
humble plain, but moved with the cloud-rack among the snow-summits.
These features of him were, indeed, extraordinary, but the rest of
him was ordinary and usual. He was so mean-minded, in the matter of
jealousy, that it was thought he was descended from a god; he was vain
in little ways, and had a pride in trivialities; he doted on ballads
about moonshine and bruised hearts; in education he was deficient, he
was indifferent to literature, and knew nothing of art; he was dumb upon
all subjects but one, indifferent to all except that one--the Nebular
Theory. Upon that one his flow of words was full and free, he was a
geyser. The official astronomers disputed his facts and deeded his
views, and said that he had invented both, they not being findable in
any of the books. But many of the laity, who wanted their nebulosities
fresh, admired his doctrine and adopted it, and it attained to great
prosperity in spite of the hostility of the experts.”--The Legend of the
Man-Mystery, ch. i.




CHAPTER I

JANUARY, 1903. When we do not know a public man personally, we guess him
out by the facts of his career. When it is Washington, we all arrive
at about one and the same result. We agree that his words and his acts
clearly interpret his character to us, and that they never leave us in
doubt as to the motives whence the words and acts proceeded. It is the
same with Joan of Arc, it is the same with two or three or five or six
others among the immortals. But in the matter of motives and of a few
details of character we agree to disagree upon Napoleon, Cromwell, and
all the rest; and to this list we must add Mrs. Eddy. I think we can
peacefully agree as to two or three extraordinary features of her
make-up, but not upon the other features of it. We cannot peacefully
agree as to her motives, therefore her character must remain crooked to
some of us and straight to the others.

No matter, she is interesting enough without an amicable agreement. In
several ways she is the most interesting woman that ever lived, and the
most extraordinary. The same may be said of her career, and the same
may be said of its chief result. She started from nothing. Her enemies
charge that she surreptitiously took from Quimby a peculiar system of
healing which was mind-cure with a Biblical basis. She and her friends
deny that she took anything from him. This is a matter which we
can discuss by-and-by. Whether she took it or invented it, it
was--materially--a sawdust mine when she got it, and she has turned it
into a Klondike; its spiritual dock had next to no custom, if any at
all: from it she has launched a world-religion which has now six hundred
and sixty-three churches, and she charters a new one every four days.
When we do not know a person--and also when we do--we have to judge his
size by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the
achievements of others in his special line of business--there is no
other way. Measured by this standard, it is thirteen hundred years
since the world has produced any one who could reach up to Mrs. Eddy's
waistbelt.

Figuratively speaking, Mrs. Eddy is already as tall as the Eiffel tower.
She is adding surprisingly to her stature every day. It is quite within
the probabilities that a century hence she will be the most imposing
figure that has cast its shadow across the globe since the inauguration
of our era. I grant that after saying these strong things, it is
necessary that I offer some details calculated to satisfactorily
demonstrate the proportions which I have claimed for her. I will do that
presently; but before exhibiting the matured sequoia gigantea, I believe
it will be best to exhibit the sprout from which it sprang. It may save
the reader from making miscalculations. The person who imagines that a
Big Tree sprout is bigger than other kinds of sprouts is quite mistaken.
It is the ordinary thing; it makes no show, it compels no notice, it
hasn't a detectible quality in it that entitles it to attention, or
suggests the future giant its sap is suckling. That is the kind of
sprout Mrs. Eddy was.

From her childhood days up to where she was running a half-century a
close race and gaining on it, she was most humanly commonplace.

She is the witness I am drawing this from. She has revealed it in her
autobiography not intentionally, of course--I am not claiming that. An
autobiography is the most treacherous thing there is. It lets out
every secret its author is trying to keep; it lets the truth shine
unobstructed through every harmless little deception he tries to play;
it pitilessly exposes him as a tin hero worshipping himself as Big Metal
every time he tries to do the modest-unconsciousness act before the
reader. This is not guessing; I am speaking from autobiographical
personal experience; I was never able to refrain from mentioning, with
a studied casualness that could deceive none but the most incautious
reader, that an ancestor of mine was sent ambassador to Spain by Charles
I., nor that in a remote branch of my family there exists a claimant
to an earldom, nor that an uncle of mine used to own a dog that was
descended from the dog that was in the Ark; and at the same time I was
never able to persuade myself to call a gibbet by its right name when
accounting for other ancestors of mine, but always spoke of it as the
“platform”--puerilely intimating that they were out lecturing when it
happened.

It is Mrs. Eddy over again. As regards her minor half, she is as
commonplace as the rest of us. Vain of trivial things all the first half
of her life, and still vain of them at seventy and recording them with
naive satisfaction--even rescuing some early rhymes of hers of the sort
that we all scribble in the innocent days of our youth--rescuing them
and printing them without pity or apology, just as the weakest and
commonest of us do in our gray age. More--she still frankly admires
them; and in her introduction of them profanely confers upon them the
holy name of “poetry.” Sample:

     “And laud the land whose talents rock
     The cradle of her power,
     And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock
     From erudition's bower.”

     “Minerva's silver sandals still
     Are loosed and not effete.”

You note it is not a shade above the thing which all human beings churn
out in their youth.

You would not think that in a little wee primer--for that is what the
Autobiography is--a person with a tumultuous career of seventy years
behind her could find room for two or three pages of padding of this
kind, but such is the case. She evidently puts narrative together with
difficulty and is not at home in it, and is glad to have something
ready-made to fill in with. Another sample:

     “Here fame-honored Hickory rears his bold form,
     And bears a brave breast to the lightning and storm,
     While Palm, Bay, and Laurel in classical glee,
     Chase Tulip, Magnolia, and fragrant Fringe-tree.”

Vivid? You can fairly see those trees galloping around. That she
could still treasure up, and print, and manifestly admire those Poems,
indicates that the most daring and masculine and masterful woman that
has appeared in the earth in centuries has the same soft, girly-girly
places in her that the rest of us have.

When it comes to selecting her ancestors she is still human, natural,
vain, commonplace--as commonplace as I am myself when I am sorting
ancestors for my autobiography. She combs out some creditable Scots, and
labels them and sets them aside for use, not overlooking the one to whom
Sir William Wallace gave “a heavy sword encased in a brass scabbard,”
 and naively explaining which Sir William Wallace it was, lest we get
the wrong one by the hassock; this is the one “from whose patriotism
and bravery comes that heart-stirring air, 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace
bled.'” Hannah More was related to her ancestors. She explains who
Hannah More was.

Whenever a person informs us who Sir William Wallace was, or who wrote
“Hamlet,” or where the Declaration of Independence was fought, it fills
us with a suspicion wellnigh amounting to conviction, that that person
would not suspect us of being so empty of knowledge if he wasn't
suffering from the same “claim” himself. Then we turn to page 20 of the
Autobiography and happen upon this passage, and that hasty suspicion
stands rebuked:

“I gained book-knowledge with far less labor than is usually requisite.
At ten years of age I was as familiar with Lindley Murray's Grammar as
with the Westminster Catechism; and the latter I had to repeat every
Sunday. My favorite studies were Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral
Science. From my brother Albert I received lessons in the ancient
tongues, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.”

You catch your breath in astonishment, and feel again and still again
the pang of that rebuke. But then your eye falls upon the next sentence
but one, and the pain passes away and you set up the suspicion again
with evil satisfaction:

“After my discovery of Christian Science, most of the knowledge I had
gleaned from school-books vanished like a dream.”

That disappearance accounts for much in her miscellaneous writings. As I
was saying, she handles her “ancestral shadows,” as she calls them, just
as I do mine. It is remarkable. When she runs across “a relative of my
Grandfather Baker, General Henry Knox, of Revolutionary fame,” she sets
him down; when she finds another good one, “the late Sir John Macneill,
in the line of my Grandfather Baker's family,” she sets him down, and
remembers that he “was prominent in British politics, and at one time
held the position of ambassador to Persia”; when she discovers that her
grandparents “were likewise connected with Captain John Lovewell, whose
gallant leadership and death in the Indian troubles of 1722-25 caused
that prolonged contest to be known historically as Lovewell's War,”
 she sets the Captain down; when it turns out that a cousin of her
grandmother “was John Macneill, the New Hampshire general, who fought at
Lundy's Lane and won distinction in 1814 at the battle of Chippewa,”
 she catalogues the General. (And tells where Chippewa was.) And then she
skips all her platform people; never mentions one of them. It shows that
she is just as human as any of us.

Yet, after all, there is something very touching in her pride in these
worthy small-fry, and something large and fine in her modesty in not
caring to remember that their kinship to her can confer no distinction
upon her, whereas her mere mention of their names has conferred upon
them a faceless earthly immortality.




CHAPTER II

When she wrote this little biography her great life-work had already
been achieved, she was become renowned; to multitudes of reverent
disciples she was a sacred personage, a familiar of God, and His
inspired channel of communication with the human race. Also, to them
these following things were facts, and not doubted:

She had written a Bible in middle age, and had published it; she had
recast it, enlarged it, and published it again; she had not stopped
there, but had enlarged it further, polished its phrasing, improved
its form, and published it yet again. It was at last become a compact,
grammatical, dignified, and workman-like body of literature. This was
good training, persistent training; and in all arts it is training that
brings the art to perfection. We are now confronted with one of the most
teasing and baffling riddles of Mrs. Eddy's history--a riddle which may
be formulated thus:

How is it that a primitive literary gun which began as a hundred-yard
flint-lock smooth-bore muzzle-loader, and in the course of forty years
has acquired one notable improvement after another--percussion cap;
fixed cartridge; rifled barrel; efficiency at half a mile how is it that
such a gun, sufficiently good on an elephant hunt (Christian Science)
from the beginning, and growing better and better all the time during
forty years, has always collapsed back to its original flint-lock
estate the moment the huntress trained it on any other creature than an
elephant?

Something more than a generation ago Mrs. Eddy went out with her
flint-lock on the rabbit range; and this was a part of the result:

“After his decease, and a severe casualty deemed fatal by skilful
physicians, we discovered that the Principle of all healing and the law
that governs it is God, a divine Principle, and a spiritual not material
law, and regained health.”--Preface to Science and Health, first
revision, 1883.

N.B. Not from the book itself; from the Preface.

You will notice the awkwardness of that English. If you should carry
that paragraph up to the Supreme Court of the United States in order
to find out for good and all whether the fatal casualty happened to the
dead man--as the paragraph almost asserts--or to some person or persons
not even hinted at in the paragraph, the Supreme Court would be obliged
to say that the evidence established nothing with certainty except that
there had been a casualty--victim not known.

The context thinks it explains who the victim was, but it does nothing
of the kind. It furnishes some guessing-material of a sort which enables
you to infer that it was “we” that suffered the mentioned injury, but if
you should carry the language to a court you would not be able to prove
that it necessarily meant that. “We” are Mrs. Eddy; a funny little
affectation. She replaced it later with the more dignified third person.

The quoted paragraph is from Mrs. Eddy's preface to the first revision
of Science and Health (1883). Sixty-four pages further along--in the
body of the book (the elephant-range), she went out with that same
flint-lock and got this following result. Its English is very nearly
as straight and clean and competent as is the English of the latest
revision of Science and Health after the gun has been improved from
smooth-bore musket up to globe-sighted, long distance rifle:

“Man controlled by his Maker has no physical suffering. His body is
harmonious, his days are multiplying instead of diminishing, he is
journeying towards Life instead of death, and bringing out the new man
and crucifying the old affections, cutting them off in every material
direction until he learns the utter supremacy of Spirit and yields
obedience thereto.”

In the latest revision of Science and Health (1902), the perfected
gun furnishes the following. The English is clean, compact, dignified,
almost perfect. But it is observable that it is not prominently better
than it is in the above paragraph, which was a product of the primitive
flint-lock:

“How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life and
hastening to death, and at the same time we are communing with
immortality? If the departed are in rapport with mortality, or matter,
they are not spiritual, but must still be mortal, sinful, suffering,
and dying. Then wherefore look to them--even were communication
possible--for proofs of immortality and accept them as oracles?”
 --Edition of 1902, page 78.

With the above paragraphs compare these that follow. It is Mrs. Eddy
writing--after a good long twenty years of pen-practice. Compare also
with the alleged Poems already quoted. The prominent characteristic of
the Poems is affectation, artificiality; their makeup is a complacent
and pretentious outpour of false figures and fine writing, in the
sophomoric style. The same qualities and the same style will be found,
unchanged, unbettered, in these following paragraphs--after a lapse of
more than fifty years, and after--as aforesaid--long literary training.
The italics are mine:

1. “What plague spot or bacilli were [sic] gnawing [sic] at the heart of
this metropolis... and bringing it [the heart] on bended knee? Why, it
was an institute that had entered its vitals--that, among other things,
taught games,” et cetera.--C.S. Journal, p. 670, article entitled “A
Narrative--by Mary Baker G. Eddy.”

2. “Parks sprang up [sic]... electric-cars run [sic] merrily through
several streets, concrete sidewalks and macadamized roads dotted [sic]
the place,” et cetera.--Ibid.

3. “Shorn [sic] of its suburbs it had indeed little left to admire, save
to [sic] such as fancy a skeleton above ground breathing [sic] slowly
through a barren [sic] breast.”--Ibid.

This is not English--I mean, grown-up English. But it is
fifteen-year-old English, and has not grown a month since the same
mind produced the Poems. The standard of the Poems and of the
plague-spot-and-bacilli effort is exactly the same. It is most strange
that the same intellect that worded the simple and self-contained and
clean-cut paragraph beginning with “How unreasonable is the belief,”
 should in the very same lustrum discharge upon the world such a verbal
chaos as the utterance concerning that plague-spot or bacilli which
were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on
bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing
slowly through a barren breast.

The immense contrast between the legitimate English of Science and
Health and the bastard English of Mrs. Eddy's miscellaneous work, and
between the maturity of the one diction and the juvenility of the other,
suggests--compels--the question, Are there two guns? It would seem so.
Is there a poor, foolish, old, scattering flint-lock for rabbit, and a
long-range, centre-driving, up-to-date Mauser-magazine for elephant?
It looks like it. For it is observable that in Science and Health (the
elephant-ground) the practice was good at the start and has remained so,
and that the practice in the miscellaneous, outside, small-game field
was very bad at the start and was never less bad at any later time.

I wish to say that of Mrs. Eddy I am not requiring perfect English,
but only good English. No one can write perfect English and keep it
up through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done. It was
approached in the “well of English undefiled”; it has been approached
in Mrs. Eddy's Annex to that Book; it has been approached in several
English grammars; I have even approached it myself; but none of us has
made port.

Now, the English of Science and Health is good. In passages to be found
in Mrs. Eddy's Autobiography (on pages 53, 57, 101, and 113), and on
page 6 of her squalid preface to Science and Health, first revision, she
seems to me to claim the whole and sole authorship of the book. That
she wrote the Autobiography, and that preface, and the Poems, and the
Plague-spot-Bacilli, we are not permitted to doubt. Indeed, we know she
wrote them. But the very certainty that she wrote these things compels
a doubt that she wrote Science and Health. She is guilty of little
awkwardnesses of expression in the Autobiography which a practiced pen
would hardly allow to go uncorrected in even a hasty private letter,
and could not dream of passing by uncorrected in passages intended for
print. But she passes them placidly by; as placidly as if she did not
suspect that they were offenses against third-class English. I think
that that placidity was born of that very unawareness, so to speak. I
will cite a few instances from the Autobiography. The italics are mine:

“I remember reading in my childhood certain manuscripts containing
Scriptural Sonnets, besides other verses and enigmas,” etc. Page 7.

[On page 27.] “Many pale cripples went into the Church leaning on
crutches who came out carrying them on their shoulders.”

It is awkward, because at the first glance it seems to say that the
cripples went in leaning on crutches which went out carrying the
cripples on their shoulders. It would have cost her no trouble to
put her “who” after her “cripples.” I blame her a little; I think her
proof-reader should have been shot. We may let her capital C pass, but
it is another awkwardness, for she is talking about a building, not
about a religious society.

“Marriage and Parentage” [Chapter-heading. Page 30]. You imagine that
she is going to begin a talk about her marriage and finish with
some account of her father and mother. And so you will be deceived.
“Marriage” was right, but “Parentage” was not the best word for the rest
of the record. It refers to the birth of her own child. After a certain
period of time “my babe was born.” Marriage and Motherhood--Marriage and
Maternity--Marriage and Product--Marriage and Dividend--either of these
would have fitted the facts and made the matter clear.

“Without my knowledge he was appointed a guardian.” Page 32.

She is speaking of her child. She means that a guardian for her child
was appointed, but that isn't what she says.

“If spiritual conclusions are separated from their premises, the
nexus is lost, and the argument with its rightful conclusions, becomes
correspondingly obscure.” Page 34.

We shall never know why she put the word “correspondingly” in
there. Any fine, large word would have answered just as well:
psychosuperintangibly--electroincandescently--oligarcheologically--
sanchrosynchro-stereoptically--any of these would have answered,
any of these would have filled the void.

“His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon silenced portraiture.” Page 34.

Yet she says she forgot everything she knew, when she discovered
Christian Science. I realize that noumenon is a daisy; and I will not
deny that I shall use it whenever I am in a company which I think I can
embarrass with it; but, at the same time, I think it is out of place
among friends in an autobiography. There, I think a person ought not
to have anything up his sleeve. It undermines confidence. But my
dissatisfaction with the quoted passage is not on account of noumenon;
it is on account of the misuse of the word “silenced.” You cannot
silence portraiture with a noumenon; if portraiture should make a noise,
a way could be found to silence it, but even then it could not be done
with a noumenon. Not even with a brick, some authorities think.

“It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages,” etc. Page 35.

That is clumsy. Battles do not wage, battles are waged. Mrs. Eddy has
one very curious and interesting peculiarity: whenever she notices that
she is chortling along without saying anything, she pulls up with a
sudden “God is over us all,” or some other sounding irrelevancy, and for
the moment it seems to light up the whole district; then, before you can
recover from the shock, she goes flitting pleasantly and meaninglessly
along again, and you hurry hopefully after her, thinking you are going
to get something this time; but as soon as she has led you far enough
away from her turkey lot she takes to a tree. Whenever she discovers
that she is getting pretty disconnected, she couples-up with an
ostentatious “But” which has nothing to do with anything that went
before or is to come after, then she hitches some empties to the
train-unrelated verses from the Bible, usually--and steams out of sight
and leaves you wondering how she did that clever thing. For striking
instances, see bottom paragraph on page 34 and the paragraph on page
35 of her Autobiography. She has a purpose--a deep and dark and artful
purpose--in what she is saying in the first paragraph, and you guess
what it is, but that is due to your own talent, not hers; she has
made it as obscure as language could do it. The other paragraph has
no meaning and no discoverable intention. It is merely one of her
God-over-alls. I cannot spare room for it in this place.

“I beheld with ineffable awe our great Master's marvelous skill in
demanding neither obedience to hygienic laws nor,” etc. Page 41.

The word is loosely chosen-skill. She probably meant judgment,
intuition, penetration, or wisdom.

“Naturally, my first jottings were but efforts to express in feeble
diction Truth's ultimate.” Page 42.

One understands what she means, but she should have been able to say
what she meant--at any time before she discovered Christian Science and
forgot everything she knew--and after it, too. If she had put “feeble”
 in front of “efforts” and then left out “in” and “diction,” she would
have scored.

“... its written expression increases in perfection under the guidance
of the great Master.” Page 43.

It is an error. Not even in those advantageous circumstances can
increase be added to perfection.

“Evil is not mastered by evil; it can only be overcome with Good.
This brings out the nothingness of evil, and the eternal Somethingness
vindicates the Divine Principle and improves the race of Adam.” Page 76.

This is too extraneous for me. That is the trouble with Mrs. Eddy when
she sets out to explain an over-large exhibit: the minute you think the
light is bursting upon you the candle goes out and your mind begins to
wander.

“No one else can drain the cup which I have drunk to the dregs, as the
discoverer and teacher of Christian Science” Page 47.

That is saying we cannot empty an empty cup. We knew it before; and we
know she meant to tell us that that particular cup is going to remain
empty. That is, we think that that was the idea, but we cannot be sure.
She has a perfectly astonishing talent for putting words together
in such a way as to make successful inquiry into their intention
impossible.

She generally makes us uneasy when she begins to tune up on her
fine-writing timbrel. It carries me back to her Plague-Spot and Poetry
days, and I just dread those:

“Into mortal mind's material obliquity I gazed and stood abashed.
Blanched was the cheek of pride. My heart bent low before the
omnipotence of Spirit, and a tint of humility soft as the heart of
a moonbeam mantled the earth. Bethlehem and Bethany, Gethsemane and
Calvary, spoke to my chastened sense as by the tearful lips of a babe.”
 Page 48.

The heart of a moonbeam is a pretty enough Friendship's-Album
expression--let it pass, though I do think the figure a little strained;
but humility has no tint, humility has no complexion, and if it had it
could not mantle the earth. A moonbeam might--I do not know--but she
did not say it was the moonbeam. But let it go, I cannot decide it, she
mixes me up so. A babe hasn't “tearful lips,” it's its eyes. You find
none of Mrs. Eddy's kind of English in Science and Health--not a line of
it.




CHAPTER III

Setting aside title-page, index, etc., the little Autobiography begins
on page 7 and ends on page 130. My quotations are from the first forty
pages. They seem to me to prove the presence of the 'prentice hand. The
style of the forty pages is loose and feeble and 'prentice-like. The
movement of the narrative is not orderly and sequential, but rambles
around, and skips forward and back and here and there and yonder,
'prentice-fashion. Many a journeyman has broken up his narrative and
skipped about and rambled around, but he did it for a purpose, for
an advantage; there was art in it, and points to be scored by it; the
observant reader perceived the game, and enjoyed it and respected it, if
it was well played. But Mrs. Eddy's performance was without intention,
and destitute of art. She could score no points by it on those terms,
and almost any reader can see that her work was the uncalculated
puttering of a novice.

In the above paragraph I have described the first third of the booklet.
That third being completed, Mrs. Eddy leaves the rabbit-range,
crosses the frontier, and steps out upon her far-spreading big-game
territory--Christian Science and there is an instant change! The style
smartly improves; and the clumsy little technical offenses disappear. In
these two-thirds of the booklet I find only one such offence, and it has
the look of being a printer's error.

I leave the riddle with the reader. Perhaps he can explain how it is
that a person-trained or untrained--who on the one day can write nothing
better than Plague-Spot-Bacilli and feeble and stumbling and wandering
personal history littered with false figures and obscurities and
technical blunders, can on the next day sit down and write fluently,
smoothly, compactly, capably, and confidently on a great big thundering
subject, and do it as easily and comfortably as a whale paddles around
the globe.

As for me, I have scribbled so much in fifty years that I have become
saturated with convictions of one sort and another concerning a
scribbler's limitations; and these are so strong that when I am familiar
with a literary person's work I feel perfectly sure that I know enough
about his limitations to know what he can not do. If Mr. Howells should
pretend to me that he wrote the Plague-Spot Bacilli rhapsody, I should
receive the statement courteously; but I should know it for a--well, for
a perversion. If the late Josh Billings should rise up and tell me that
he wrote Herbert Spencer's philosophies; I should answer and say that
the spelling casts a doubt upon his claim. If the late Jonathan Edwards
should rise up and tell me he wrote Mr. Dooley's books, I should answer
and say that the marked difference between his style and Dooley's is
argument against the soundness of his statement. You see how much I
think of circumstantial evidence. In literary matters--in my belief--it
is often better than any person's word, better than any shady
character's oath. It is difficult for me to believe that the same hand
that wrote the Plague-Spot-Bacilli and the first third of the little
Eddy biography wrote also Science and Health. Indeed, it is more than
difficult, it is impossible.

Largely speaking, I have read acres of what purported to be Mrs. Eddy's
writings, in the past two months. I cannot know, but I am convinced,
that the circumstantial evidence shows that her actual share in the
work of composing and phrasing these things was so slight as to be
inconsequential. Where she puts her literary foot down, her trail
across her paid polisher's page is as plain as the elephant's in a
Sunday-school procession. Her verbal output, when left undoctored by
her clerks, is quite unmistakable It always exhibits the strongly
distinctive features observable in the virgin passages from her pen
already quoted by me:

Desert vacancy, as regards thought. Self-complacency. Puerility.
Sentimentality. Affectations of scholarly learning. Lust after eloquent
and flowery expression. Repetition of pet poetic picturesquenesses.
Confused and wandering statement. Metaphor gone insane. Meaningless
words, used because they are pretty, or showy, or unusual. Sorrowful
attempts at the epigrammatic. Destitution of originality.

The fat volume called Miscellaneous Writings of Mrs. Eddy contains
several hundred pages. Of the five hundred and fifty-four pages of prose
in it I find ten lines, on page 319, to be Mrs. Eddy's; also about a
page of the preface or “Prospectus”; also about fifteen pages scattered
along through the book. If she wrote any of the rest of the prose, it
was rewritten after her by another hand. Here I will insert two-thirds
of her page of the prospectus. It is evident that whenever, under the
inspiration of the Deity, she turns out a book, she is always allowed to
do some of the preface. I wonder why that is? It always mars the work.
I think it is done in humorous malice I think the clerks like to see
her give herself away. They know she will, her stock of usable materials
being limited and her procedure in employing them always the same,
substantially. They know that when the initiated come upon her first
erudite allusion, or upon any one of her other stage-properties, they
can shut their eyes and tell what will follow. She usually throws off
an easy remark all sodden with Greek or Hebrew or Latin learning; she
usually has a person watching for a star--she can seldom get away
from that poetic idea--sometimes it is a Chaldee, sometimes a Walking
Delegate, sometimes an entire stranger, but be he what he may, he is
generally there when the train is ready to move, and has his pass in his
hat-band; she generally has a Being with a Dome on him, or some other
cover that is unusual and out of the fashion; she likes to fire off a
Scripture-verse where it will make the handsomest noise and come nearest
to breaking the connection; she often throws out a Forefelt, or a
Foresplendor, or a Foreslander where it will have a fine nautical
foreto'gallant sound and make the sentence sing; after which she is
nearly sure to throw discretion away and take to her deadly passion,
Intoxicated Metaphor. At such a time the Mrs. Eddy that does not
hesitate is lost:

“The ancient Greek looked longingly for the Olympiad. The Chaldee
watched the appearing of a star; to him no higher destiny dawned on the
dome of being than that foreshadowed by signs in the heavens. The meek
Nazarene, the scoffed of all scoffers, said, 'Ye can discern the face
of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?'--for He
forefelt and foresaw the ordeal of a perfect Christianity, hated by
sinners.

“To kindle all minds with a gleam of gratitude, the new idea that comes
welling up from infinite Truth needs to be understood. The seer of this
age should be a sage.

“Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity. The
mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes
of dissolving self, and drops the world. Meekness heightens immortal
attributes, only by removing the dust that dims them. Goodness reveals
another scene and another self seemingly rolled up in shades, but
brought to light by the evolutions of advancing thought, whereby we
discern the power of Truth and Love to heal the sick.

“Pride is ignorance; those assume most who have the least wisdom or
experience; and they steal from their neighbor, because they have so
little of their own.”--Miscellaneous Writings, page 1, and six lines at
top of page 2.

It is not believable that the hand that wrote those clumsy and affected
sentences wrote the smooth English of Science and Health.




CHAPTER IV

It is often said in print that Mrs. Eddy claims that God was the Author
of Science and Health. Mr. Peabody states in his pamphlet that “she says
not she but God was the Author.” I cannot find that in her autobiography
she makes this transference of the authorship, but I think that in
it she definitely claims that she did her work under His
inspiration--definitely for her; for as a rule she is not a very
definite person, even when she seems to be trying her best to be clear
and positive. Speaking of the early days when her Science was beginning
to unfold itself and gather form in her mind, she says (Autobiography,
page 43):

“The divine hand led me into a new world of light and Life, a fresh
universe--old to God, but new to His 'little one.'”

She being His little one, as I understand it.

The divine hand led her. It seems to mean “God inspired me”; but when
a person uses metaphors instead of statistics--and that is Mrs. Eddy's
common fashion--one cannot always feel sure about the intention.

[Page 56.] “Even the Scripture gave no direct interpretation of the
Scientific basis for demonstrating the spiritual Principle of healing,
until our Heavenly Father saw fit, through the Key to the Scriptures, in
Science and Health, to unlock this 'mystery of godliness.'”

Another baffling metaphor. If she had used plain forecastle English,
and said “God wrote the Key and I put it in my book”; or if she had said
“God furnished me the solution of the mystery and I put it on paper”;
or if she had said “God did it all,” then we should understand; but her
phrase is open to any and all of those translations, and is a Key
which unlocks nothing--for us. However, it seems to at least mean “God
inspired me,” if nothing more.

There was personal and intimate communion, at any rate we get that
much out of the riddles. The connection extended to business, after the
establishment of the teaching and healing industry.

[Page 71.] “When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction,” etc.
Further down: “God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the wisdom
of this decision.”

She was not able to think of a “financial equivalent”--meaning a
pecuniary equivalent--for her “instruction in Christian Science
Mind-healing.” In this emergency she was “led” to charge three hundred
dollars for a term of “twelve half-days.” She does not say who led her,
she only says that the amount greatly troubled her. I think it means
that the price was suggested from above, “led” being a theological term
identical with our commercial phrase “personally conducted.” She “shrank
from asking it, but was finally led, by a strange providence, to accept
this fee.” “Providence” is another theological term. Two leds and
a providence, taken together, make a pretty strong argument for
inspiration. I think that these statistics make it clear that the price
was arranged above. This view is constructively supported by the fact,
already quoted, that God afterwards approved, “in multitudinous
ways,” her wisdom in accepting the mentioned fee. “Multitudinous
ways”--multitudinous encoring--suggests enthusiasm. Business enthusiasm.
And it suggests nearness. God's nearness to his “little one.” Nearness,
and a watchful personal interest. A warm, palpitating, Standard-Oil
interest, so to speak. All this indicates inspiration. We may assume,
then, two inspirations: one for the book, the other for the business.

The evidence for inspiration is further augmented by the testimony of
Rev. George Tomkins, D.D., already quoted, that Mrs. Eddy and her book
were foretold in Revelation, and that Mrs. Eddy “is God's brightest
thought to this age, giving us the spiritual interpretation of the Bible
in the 'little book'” of the Angel.

I am aware that it is not Mr. Tomkins that is speaking, but Mrs. Eddy.
The commissioned lecturers of the Christian Science Church have to be
members of the Board of Lectureship. (By-laws Sec. 2, p. 70.) The Board
of Lectureship is selected by the Board of Directors of the Church.
(By-laws, Sec. 3, p. 70.) The Board of Directors of the Church is the
property of Mrs. Eddy. (By-laws, p. 22.) Mr. Tomkins did not make that
statement without authorization from headquarters. He necessarily got it
from the Board of Directors, the Board of Directors from Mrs. Eddy, Mrs.
Eddy from the Deity. Mr. Tomkins would have been turned down by that
procession if his remarks had been unsatisfactory to it.

It may be that there is evidence somewhere--as has been claimed--that
Mrs. Eddy has charged upon the Deity the verbal authorship of Science
and Health. But if she ever made the charge, she has withdrawn it (as it
seems to me), and in the most formal and unqualified; of all ways. See
Autobiography, page 57:

“When the demand for this book increased... the copyright was infringed.
I entered a suit at Law, and my copyright was protected.”

Thus it is plain that she did not plead that the Deity was the (verbal)
Author; for if she had done that, she would have lost her case--and with
rude promptness. It was in the old days before the Berne Convention and
before the passage of our amended law of 1891, and the court would have
quoted the following stern clause from the existing statute and frowned
her out of the place:

“No Foreigner can acquire copyright in the United States.”

To sum up. The evidence before me indicates three things:

1. That Mrs. Eddy claims the verbal author ship for herself. 2. That she
denies it to the Deity. 3. That--in her belief--she wrote the book under
the inspiration of the Deity, but furnished the language herself.

In one place in the Autobiography she claims both the language and
the ideas; but when this witness is testifying, one must draw the line
somewhere, or she will prove both sides of her case-nine sides, if
desired.

It is too true. Much too true. Many, many times too true. She is a most
trying witness--the most trying witness that ever kissed the Book, I am
sure. There is no keeping up with her erratic testimony. As soon as you
have got her share of the authorship nailed where you half hope and half
believe it will stay and cannot be joggled loose any more, she joggles
it loose again--or seems to; you cannot be sure, for her habit of
dealing in meaningless metaphors instead of in plain, straightforward
statistics, makes it nearly always impossible to tell just what it
is she is trying to say. She was definite when she claimed both the
language and the ideas of the book. That seemed to settle the matter.
It seemed to distribute the percentages of credit with precision between
the collaborators: ninety-two per cent. to Mrs. Eddy, who did all the
work, and eight per cent. to the Deity, who furnished the inspiration
not enough of it to damage the copyright in a country closed against
Foreigners, and yet plenty to advertise the book and market it at famine
rates. Then Mrs. Eddy does not keep still, but fetches around and comes
forward and testifies again. It is most injudicious. For she resorts to
metaphor this time, and it makes trouble, for she seems to reverse the
percentages and claim only the eight per cent. for her self. I quote
from Mr. Peabody's book (Eddyism, or Christian Science. Boston: 15 Court
Square, price twenty-five cents):

“Speaking of this book, Mrs. Eddy, in January last (1901) said: 'I
should blush to write of Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,
as I have, were it of human origin, and I, apart from God, its author;
but as I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of Heaven in
divine metaphysics, I cannot be supermodest of the Christian Science
text-book.”'

Mr. Peabody's comment:

“Nothing could be plainer than that. Here is a distinct avowal that the
book entitled Science and Health was the work of Almighty God.”

It does seem to amount to that. She was only a “scribe.” Confound the
word, it is just a confusion, it has no determinable meaning there, it
leaves us in the air. A scribe is merely a person who writes. He may be
a copyist, he may be an amanuensis, he may be a writer of originals, and
furnish both the language and the ideas. As usual with Mrs. Eddy, the
connection affords no help--“echoing” throws no light upon “scribe.” A
rock can reflect an echo, a wall can do it, a mountain can do it, many
things can do it, but a scribe can't. A scribe that could reflect
an echo could get over thirty dollars a week in a side-show. Many
impresarios would rather have him than a cow with four tails. If we
allow that this present scribe was setting down the “harmonies of
Heaven”--and certainly that seems to have been the case then there was
only one way to do it that I can think of: listen to the music and put
down the notes one after another as they fell. In that case Mrs.
Eddy did not invent the tune, she only entered it on paper. Therefore
dropping the metaphor--she was merely an amanuensis, and furnished
neither the language of Science and Health nor the ideas. It reduces her
to eight per cent. (and the dividends on that and the rest).

Is that it? We shall never know. For Mrs. Eddy is liable to testify
again at any time. But until she does it, I think we must conclude
that the Deity was Author of the whole book, and Mrs. Eddy merely His
telephone and stenographer. Granting this, her claim as the Voice of God
stands-for the present--justified and established.




POSTSCRIPT

I overlooked something. It appears that there was more of that utterance
than Mr. Peabody has quoted in the above paragraph. It will be found
in Mrs. Eddy's organ, the Christian Science Journal (January, 1901) and
reads as follows:

“It was not myself... which dictated Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures.”

That is certainly clear enough. The words which I have removed from that
important sentence explain Who it was that did the dictating. It was
done by

“the divine power of Truth and Love, infinitely above me.”

Certainly that is definite. At last, through her personal testimony,
we have a sure grip upon the following vital facts, and they settle the
authorship of Science and Health beyond peradventure:

1. Mrs. Eddy furnished “the ideas and the language.” 2. God furnished
the ideas and the language.

It is a great comfort to have the matter authoritatively settled.




CHAPTER V

It is hard to locate her, she shifts about so much. She is a shining
drop of quicksilver which you put your finger on and it isn't there.
There is a paragraph in the Autobiography (page 96) which places in
seemingly darkly significant procession three Personages:

1. The Virgin Mary 2. Jesus of Nazareth. 3. Mrs. Eddy.

This is the paragraph referred to:

“No person can take the individual place of the Virgin Mary. No person
can compass or fulfil the individual mission of Jesus of Nazareth.
No person can take the place of the author of Science and Health, the
discoverer and founder of Christian Science. Each individual must fill
his own niche in time and eternity.”

I have read it many times, but I still cannot be sure that I rightly
understand it. If the Saviour's name had been placed first and the
Virgin Mary's second and Mrs. Eddy's third, I should draw the inference
that a descending scale from First Importance to Second Importance and
then to Small Importance was indicated; but to place the Virgin first,
the Saviour second, and Mrs. Eddy third, seems to turn the scale the
other way and make it an ascending scale of Importances, with Mrs. Eddy
ranking the other two and holding first place.

I think that that was perhaps the intention, but none but a seasoned
Christian Scientist can examine a literary animal of Mrs. Eddy's
creation and tell which end of it the tail is on. She is easily the most
baffling and bewildering writer in the literary trade.

Eddy is a commonplace name, and would have an unimpressive aspect in the
list of the reformed Holy Family. She has thought of that. In the book
of By-laws written by her--“impelled by a power not one's own”--there is
a paragraph which explains how and when her disciples came to confer a
title upon her; and this explanation is followed by a warning as to what
will happen to any female Scientist who shall desecrate it:

“The title of Mother. Therefore if a student of Christian Science shall
apply this title, either to herself or to others, except as the term for
kinship according to the flesh, it shall be regarded by the Church as an
indication of disrespect for their Pastor Emeritus, and unfitness to be
a member of the Mother-Church.”

She is the Pastor Emeritus.

While the quoted paragraph about the Procession seems to indicate that
Mrs. Eddy is expecting to occupy the First Place in it, that expectation
is not definitely avowed. In an earlier utterance of hers she is
clearer--clearer, and does not claim the first place all to herself, but
only the half of it. I quote from Mr. Peabody's book again:

“In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her
property, and published by her, it was claimed for her, and with her
sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made
to establish the claim.

“Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf that she
herself was the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus.”

In her Miscellaneous Writings (using her once favorite “We” for “I”) she
says that “While we entertain decided views... and shall express them as
duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine origin,”
 etc.

Our divine origin. It suggests Equal again. It is inferable, then,
that in the near by-and-by the new Church will officially rank the Holy
Family in the following order:

1. Jesus of Nazareth.--1. Our Mother. 2. The Virgin Mary.




SUMMARY

I am not playing with Christian Science and its founder, I am examining
them; and I am doing it because of the interest I feel in the inquiry.
My results may seem inadequate to the reader, but they have for me
clarified a muddle and brought a sort of order out of a chaos, and so I
value them.

My readings of Mrs. Eddy's uninspired miscellaneous literary efforts
have convinced me of several things:

1. That she did not write Science and Health. 2. That the Deity did (or
did not) write it. 3. That She thinks She wrote it. 4. That She believes
She wrote it under the Deity's inspiration. 5. That She believes She is
a Member of the Holy Family. 6. That She believes She is the equal of
the Head of it.

Finally, I think She is now entitled to the capital S--on her own
evidence.




CHAPTER VI

Thus far we have a part of Mrs. Eddy's portrait. Not made of fictions,
surmises, reports, rumors, innuendoes, dropped by her enemies; no, she
has furnished all of the materials herself, and laid them on the canvas,
under my general superintendence and direction. As far as she has gone
with it, it is the presentation of a complacent, commonplace, illiterate
New England woman who “forgot everything she knew” when she discovered
her discovery, then wrote a Bible in good English under the inspiration
of God, and climbed up it to the supremest summit of earthly grandeur
attainable by man--where she sits serene to-day, beloved and worshiped
by a multitude of human beings of as good average intelligence as is
possessed by those that march under the banner of any competing cult.
This is not intended to flatter the competing cults, it is merely a
statement of cold fact.

That a commonplace person should go climbing aloft and become a god or
a half-god or a quarter-god and be worshiped by men and women of average
intelligence, is nothing. It has happened a million times, it will
happen a hundred million more. It has been millions of years since the
first of these supernaturals appeared, and by the time the last one in
that inconceivably remote future shall have performed his solemn little
high-jinks on the stage and closed the business, there will be enough
of them accumulated in the museum on the Other Side to start a heaven of
their own-and jam it.

Each in his turn those little supernaturals of our by-gone ages and
aeons joined the monster procession of his predecessors and marched
horizonward, disappeared, and was forgotten. They changed nothing,
they built nothing, they left nothing behind them to remember them by,
nothing to hold their disciples together, nothing to solidify their work
and enable it to defy the assaults of time and the weather. They passed,
and left a vacancy. They made one fatal mistake; they all made it,
each in his turn: they failed to organize their forces, they failed to
centralize their strength, they failed to provide a fresh Bible and a
sure and perpetual cash income for business, and often they failed to
provide a new and accepted Divine Personage to worship.

Mrs. Eddy is not of that small fry. The materials that go to the
making of the rest of her portrait will prove it. She will furnish them
herself:

She published her book. She copyrighted it. She copyrights everything.
If she should say, “Good-morning; how do you do?” she would copyright
it; for she is a careful person, and knows the value of small things.

She began to teach her Science, she began to heal, she began to gather
converts to her new religion--fervent, sincere, devoted, grateful
people. A year or two later she organized her first Christian Science
“Association,” with six of her disciples on the roster.

She continued to teach and heal. She was charging nothing, she says,
although she was very poor. She taught and healed gratis four years
altogether, she says.

Then, in 1879-81 she was become strong enough, and well enough
established, to venture a couple of impressively important moves. The
first of these moves was to aggrandize the “Association” to a “Church.”
 Brave? It is the right name for it, I think. The former name suggests
nothing, invited no remark, no criticism, no inquiry, no hostility; the
new name invited them all. She must have made this intrepid venture on
her own motion. She could have had no important advisers at that early
day. If we accept it as her own idea and her own act--and I think we
must--we have one key to her character. And it will explain subsequent
acts of hers that would merely stun us and stupefy us without it. Shall
we call it courage? Or shall we call it recklessness? Courage observes;
reflects; calculates; surveys the whole situation; counts the cost,
estimates the odds, makes up its mind; then goes at the enterprise
resolute to win or perish. Recklessness does not reflect, it plunges
fearlessly in with a hurrah, and takes the risks, whatever they may be,
regardless of expense. Recklessness often fails, Mrs. Eddy has never
failed--from the point of view of her followers. The point of view of
other people is naturally not a matter of weighty importance to her.

The new Church was not born loose-jointed and featureless, but had a
defined plan, a definite character, definite aims, and a name which was
a challenge, and defied all comers. It was “a Mind-healing Church.” It
was “without a creed.” Its name, “The Church of Christ, Scientist.”

Mrs. Eddy could not copyright her Church, but she chartered it, which
was the same thing and relieved the pain. It had twenty-six charter
members. Mrs. Eddy was at once installed as its pastor.

The other venture, above referred to, was Mrs. Eddy's Massachusetts
Metaphysical College, in which was taught “the pathology of spiritual
power.” She could not copyright it, but she got it chartered. For
faculty it had herself, her husband of the period (Dr. Eddy), and her
adopted son, Dr. Foster-Eddy. The college term was “barely three
weeks,” she says. Again she was bold, brave, rash, reckless--choose for
yourself--for she not only began to charge the student, but charged him
a hundred dollars a week for the enlightenments. And got it? some may
ask. Easily. Pupils flocked from far and near. They came by the hundred.
Presently the term was cut down nearly half, but the price remained as
before. To be exact, the term-cut was to seven lessons--price,
three hundred dollars. The college “yielded a large income.” This is
believable. In seven years Mrs. Eddy taught, as she avers, over four
thousand students in it. (Preface to 1902 edition of Science and
Health.) Three hundred times four thousand is--but perhaps you can
cipher it yourself. I could do it ordinarily, but I fell down yesterday
and hurt my leg. Cipher it; you will see that it is a grand sum for a
woman to earn in seven years. Yet that was not all she got out of her
college in the seven.

At the time that she was charging the primary student three hundred
dollars for twelve lessons she was not content with this tidy
assessment, but had other ways of plundering him. By advertisement she
offered him privileges whereby he could add eighteen lessons to his
store for five hundred dollars more. That is to say, he could get a
total of thirty lessons in her college for eight hundred dollars.

Four thousand times eight hundred is--but it is a difficult sum for a
cripple who has not been “demonstrated over” to cipher; let it go.
She taught “over” four thousand students in seven years. “Over” is not
definite, but it probably represents a non-paying surplus of learners
over and above the paying four thousand. Charity students, doubtless. I
think that as interesting an advertisement as has been printed since the
romantic old days of the other buccaneers is this one from the Christian
Science Journal for September, 1886:


“MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE

“Rev. MARY BAKER G. EDDY, PRESIDENT

“571 Columbus Avenue, Boston

“The collegiate course in Christian Science metaphysical healing
includes twelve lessons. Tuition, three hundred dollars.

“Course in metaphysical obstetrics includes six daily lectures, and is
open only to students from this college. Tuition, one hundred dollars.

“Class in theology, open (like the above) to graduates, receives six
additional lectures on the Scriptures, and summary of the principle and
practice of Christian Science, two hundred dollars.

“Normal class is open to those who have taken the first course at this
college; six daily lectures complete the Normal course. Tuition, two
hundred dollars.

“No invalids, and only persons of good moral character, are accepted
as students. All students are subject to examination and rejection; and
they are liable to leave the class if found unfit to remain in it.

“A limited number of clergymen received free of charge.

“Largest discount to indigent students, one hundred dollars on the first
course.

“No deduction on the others.

“Husband and wife, entered together, three hundred dollars.

“Tuition for all strictly in advance.”

There it is--the horse-leech's daughter alive again, after a
three-century vacation. Fifty or sixty hours' lecturing for eight
hundred dollars.

I was in error as to one matter: there are no charity students.
Gratis-taught clergymen must not be placed under that head; they are
merely an advertisement. Pauper students can get into the infant class
on a two-third rate (cash in advance), but not even an archangel can get
into the rest of the game at anything short of par, cash down. For it is
“in the spirit of Christ's charity, as one who is joyful to hear healing
to the sick” that Mrs. Eddy is working the game. She sends the healing
to them outside. She cannot bear it to them inside the college, for the
reason that she does not allow a sick candidate to get in. It is true
that this smells of inconsistency, but that is nothing; Mrs. Eddy
would not be Mrs. Eddy if she should ever chance to be consistent about
anything two days running.

Except in the matter of the Dollar. The Dollar, and appetite for power
and notoriety. English must also be added; she is always consistent,
she is always Mrs. Eddy, in her English: it is always and consistently
confused and crippled and poor. She wrote the Advertisement; her
literary trade-marks are there. When she says all “students” are subject
to examination, she does not mean students, she means candidates for
that lofty place When she says students are “liable” to leave the class
if found unfit to remain in it, she does not mean that if they find
themselves unfit, or be found unfit by others, they will be likely to
ask permission to leave the class; she means that if she finds them
unfit she will be “liable” to fire them out. When she nobly offers
“tuition for all strictly in advance,” she does not mean “instruction
for all in advance-payment for it later.” No, that is only what she
says, it is not what she means. If she had written Science and Health,
the oldest man in the world would not be able to tell with certainty
what any passage in it was intended to mean.

Her Church was on its legs.

She was its pastor. It was prospering.

She was appointed one of a committee to draught By-laws for its
government. It may be observed, without overplus of irreverence, that
this was larks for her. She did all of the draughting herself. From the
very beginning she was always in the front seat when there was business
to be done; in the front seat, with both eyes open, and looking sharply
out for Number One; in the front seat, working Mortal Mind with fine
effectiveness and giving Immortal Mind a rest for Sunday. When her
Church was reorganized, by-and-by, the By-laws were retained. She saw
to that. In these Laws for the government of her Church, her empire, her
despotism, Mrs. Eddy's character is embalmed for good and all. I think
a particularized examination of these Church-laws will be found
interesting. And not the less so if we keep in mind that they were
“impelled by a power not one's own,” as she says--Anglice--the
inspiration of God.

It is a Church “without a creed.” Still, it has one. Mrs. Eddy draughted
it--and copyrighted it. In her own name. You cannot become a member of
the Mother-Church (nor of any Christian Science Church) without signing
it. It forms the first chapter of the By-laws, and is called “Tenets.”
 “Tenets of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist.” It
has no hell in it--it throws it overboard.




THE PASTOR EMERITUS

About the time of the reorganization, Mrs. Eddy retired from her
position of pastor of her Church, abolished the office of pastor in
all branch Churches, and appointed her book, Science and Health, to be
pastor-universal. Mrs. Eddy did not disconnect herself from the office
entirely, when she retired, but appointed herself Pastor Emeritus. It is
a misleading title, and belongs to the family of that phrase “without
a creed.” It advertises her as being a merely honorary official, with
nothing to do, and no authority. The Czar of Russia is Emperor Emeritus
on the same terms. Mrs. Eddy was Autocrat of the Church before, with
limitless authority, and she kept her grip on that limitless authority
when she took that fictitious title.

It is curious and interesting to note with what an unerring instinct the
Pastor Emeritus has thought out and forecast all possible encroachments
upon her planned autocracy, and barred the way against them, in the
By-laws which she framed and copyrighted--under the guidance of the
Supreme Being.




THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

For instance, when Article I. speaks of a President and Board of
Directors, you think you have discovered a formidable check upon the
powers and ambitions of the honorary pastor, the ornamental pastor, the
functionless pastor, the Pastor Emeritus, but it is a mistake. These
great officials are of the phrase--family of the Church-Without-a-Creed
and the Pastor-With-Nothing-to-Do; that is to say, of the family of
Large-Names-Which-Mean-Nothing. The Board is of so little consequence
that the By-laws do not state how it is chosen, nor who does it; but
they do state, most definitely, that the Board cannot fill a vacancy in
its number “except the candidate is approved by the Pastor Emeritus.”

The “candidate.” The Board cannot even proceed to an election until the
Pastor Emeritus has examined the list and squelched such candidates as
are not satisfactory to her.

Whether the original first Board began as the personal property of Mrs.
Eddy or not, it is foreseeable that in time, under this By-law, she
would own it. Such a first Board might chafe under such a rule as that,
and try to legislate it out of existence some day. But Mrs. Eddy was
awake. She foresaw that danger, and added this ingenious and effective
clause:

“This By-law can neither be amended nor annulled, except by consent of
Mrs. Eddy, the Pastor Emeritus.”




THE PRESIDENT

The Board of Directors, or Serfs, or Ciphers, elects the President.

On these clearly worded terms: “Subject to the approval of the Pastor
Emeritus.”

Therefore She elects him.

A long term can invest a high official with influence and power, and
make him dangerous. Mrs. Eddy reflected upon that; so she limits the
President's term to a year. She has a capable commercial head, an
organizing head, a head for government.




TREASURER AND CLERK

There are a Treasurer and a Clerk. They are elected by the Board of
Directors. That is to say, by Mrs. Eddy.

Their terms of office expire on the first Tuesday in June of each year,
“or upon the election of their successors.” They must be watchfully
obedient and satisfactory to her, or she will elect and install their
successors with a suddenness that can be unpleasant to them. It goes
without saying that the Treasurer manages the Treasury to suit Mrs.
Eddy, and is in fact merely Temporary Deputy Treasurer.

Apparently the Clerk has but two duties to perform: to read messages
from Mrs. Eddy to First Members assembled in solemn Council, and provide
lists of candidates for Church membership. The select body entitled
First Members are the aristocracy of the Mother-Church, the Charter
Members, the Aborigines, a sort of stylish but unsalaried little
College of Cardinals, good for show, but not indispensable. Nobody is
indispensable in Mrs. Eddy's empire; she sees to that.

When the Pastor Emeritus sends a letter or message to that little
Sanhedrin, it is the Clerk's “imperative duty” to read it “at the place
and time specified.” Otherwise, the world might come to an end. These
are fine, large frills, and remind us of the ways of emperors and such.
Such do not use the penny-post, they send a gilded and painted special
messenger, and he strides into the Parliament, and business comes to
a sudden and solemn and awful stop; and in the impressive hush that
follows, the Chief Clerk reads the document. It is his “imperative
duty.” If he should neglect it, his official life would end. It is
the same with this Mother-Church Clerk; “if he fail to perform this
important function of his office,” certain majestic and unshirkable
solemnities must follow: a special meeting “shall” be called; a member
of the Church “shall” make formal complaint; then the Clerk “shall” be
“removed from office.” Complaint is sufficient, no trial is necessary.

There is something very sweet and juvenile and innocent and pretty about
these little tinsel vanities, these grave apings of monarchical fuss and
feathers and ceremony, here on our ostentatiously democratic soil. She
is the same lady that we found in the Autobiography, who was so naively
vain of all that little ancestral military riffraff that she had dug up
and annexed. A person's nature never changes. What it is in childhood,
it remains. Under pressure, or a change of interest, it can partially or
wholly disappear from sight, and for considerable stretches of time, but
nothing can ever permanently modify it, nothing can ever remove it.




BOARD OF TRUSTEES

There isn't any--now. But with power and money piling up higher and
higher every day and the Church's dominion spreading daily wider and
farther, a time could come when the envious and ambitious could start
the idea that it would be wise and well to put a watch upon these
assets--a watch equipped with properly large authority. By custom, a
Board of Trustees. Mrs. Eddy has foreseen that probability--for she is
a woman with a long, long look ahead, the longest look ahead that ever a
woman had--and she has provided for that emergency. In Art. I., Sec.
5, she has decreed that no Board of Trustees shall ever exist in the
Mother-Church “except it be constituted by the Pastor Emeritus.”

The magnificence of it, the daring of it! Thus far, she is:

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College; Pastor Emeritus; President;
Board of Directors; Treasurer; Clerk; and future Board of Trustees;

and is still moving onward, ever onward. When I contemplate her from
a commercial point of view, there are no words that can convey my
admiration of her.




READERS

These are a feature of first importance in the church-machinery of
Christian Science. For they occupy the pulpit. They hold the place
that the preacher holds in the other Christian Churches. They hold that
place, but they do not preach. Two of them are on duty at a time--a man
and a woman. One reads a passage from the Bible, the other reads
the explanation of it from Science and Health--and so they go on
alternating. This constitutes the service--this, with choir-music. They
utter no word of their own. Art. IV., Sec. 6, closes their mouths with
this uncompromising gag:

“They shall make no remarks explanatory of the Lesson-Sermon at any time
during the service.”

It seems a simple little thing. One is not startled by it at a first
reading of it; nor at the second, nor the third. One may have to read it
a dozen times before the whole magnitude of it rises before the mind.
It far and away oversizes and outclasses the best business-idea yet
invented for the safe-guarding and perpetuating of a religion. If it had
been thought of and put in force eighteen hundred and seventy years ago,
there would be but one Christian sect in the world now, instead of ten
dozens of them.

There are many varieties of men in the world, consequently there are
many varieties of minds in its pulpits. This insures many differing
interpretations of important Scripture texts, and this in turn insures
the splitting up of a religion into many sects. It is what has happened;
it was sure to happen.

Mrs. Eddy has noted this disastrous result of preaching, and has put up
the bars. She will have no preaching in her Church. She has explained
all essential Scriptures, and set the explanations down in her book. In
her belief her underlings cannot improve upon those explanations, and
in that stern sentence “they shall make no explanatory remarks” she has
barred them for all time from trying. She will be obeyed; there is no
question about that.

In arranging her government she has borrowed ideas from various
sources--not poor ones, but the best in the governmental market--but
this one is new, this one came out of no ordinary business-head, this
one must have come out of her own, there has been no other commercial
skull in a thousand centuries that was equal to it. She has borrowed
freely and wisely, but I am sure that this idea is many times
larger than all her borrowings bulked together. One must respect the
business-brain that produced it--the splendid pluck and impudence that
ventured to promulgate it, anyway.




ELECTION OF READERS

Readers are not taken at hap-hazard, any more than preachers are taken
at hap-hazard for the pulpits of other sects. No, Readers are elected by
the Board of Directors. But--

“Section 3. The Board shall inform the Pas. for Emeritus of the names
of candidates for Readers before they are elected, and if she objects to
the nomination, said candidates shall not be chosen.”

Is that an election--by the Board? Thus far I have not been able to
find out what that Board of Spectres is for. It certainly has no real
function, no duty which the hired girl could not perform, no office
beyond the mere recording of the autocrat's decrees.

There are no dangerously long office-terms in Mrs. Eddy's government.
The Readers are elected for but one year. This insures their
subserviency to their proprietor.

Readers are not allowed to copy out passages and read them from the
manuscript in the pulpit; they must read from Mrs. Eddy's book itself.
She is right. Slight changes could be slyly made, repeated, and in time
get acceptance with congregations. Branch sects could grow out of these
practices. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race, and how far to trust it. Her
limit is not over a quarter of an inch. It is all that a wise person
will risk.

Mrs. Eddy's inborn disposition to copyright everything, charter
everything, secure the rightful and proper credit to herself for
everything she does, and everything she thinks she does, and everything
she thinks, and everything she thinks she thinks or has thought or
intends to think, is illustrated in Sec. 5 of Art. IV., defining the
duties of official Readers--in church:

“Naming Book and Author. The Reader of Science and Health, with Key
to the Scriptures, before commencing to read from this book, shall
distinctly announce its full title and give the author's name.”

Otherwise the congregation might get the habit of forgetting who
(ostensibly) wrote the book.




THE ARISTOCRACY

This consists of First Members and their apostolic succession. It is a
close corporation, and its membership limit is one hundred. Forty will
answer, but if the number fall below that, there must be an election, to
fill the grand quorum.

This Sanhedrin can't do anything of the slightest importance, but it
can talk. It can “discuss.” That is, it can discuss “important questions
relative to Church members”, evidently persons who are already Church
members. This affords it amusement, and does no harm.

It can “fix the salaries of the Readers.”

Twice a year it “votes on” admitting candidates. That is, for Church
membership. But its work is cut out for it beforehand, by Art. IX.:

“Every recommendation for membership In the Church 'shall be
countersigned by a loyal student of Mrs. Eddy's, by a Director of this
Church, or by a First Member.'”

All these three classes of beings are the personal property of Mrs.
Eddy. She has absolute control of the elections.

Also it must “transact any Church business that may properly come before
it.”

“Properly” is a thoughtful word. No important business can come before
it. The By laws have attended to that. No important business goes before
any one for the final word except Mrs. Eddy. She has looked to that.

The Sanhedrin “votes on” candidates for admission to its own body. But
is its vote worth any more than mine would be? No, it isn't. Sec. 4, of
Art. V.--Election of First Members--makes this quite plain:

“Before being elected, the candidates for First Members shall be
approved by the Pastor Emeritus over her own signature.”

Thus the Sanhedrin is the personal property of Mrs. Eddy. She owns it.
It has no functions, no authority, no real existence. It is another
Board of Shadows. Mrs. Eddy is the Sanhedrin herself.

But it is time to foot up again and “see where we are at.” Thus far,
Mrs. Eddy is:

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College; Pastor Emeritus, President;
Board of Directors; Treasurer; Clerk; Future Board of Trustees;
Proprietor of the Priesthood: Dictator of the Services; Proprietor of
the Sanhedrin. She has come far, and is still on her way.




CHURCH MEMBERSHIP

In this Article there is another exhibition of a couple of the large
features of Mrs. Eddy's remarkable make-up: her business-talent and her
knowledge of human nature.

She does not beseech and implore people to join her Church. She knows
the human race better than that. She gravely goes through the motions of
reluctantly granting admission to the applicant as a favor to him. The
idea is worth untold shekels. She does not stand at the gate of the fold
with welcoming arms spread, and receive the lost sheep with glad emotion
and set up the fatted calf and invite the neighbor and have a time. No,
she looks upon him coldly, she snubs him, she says:

“Who are you? Who is your sponsor? Who asked you to come here? Go away,
and don't come again until you are invited.”

It is calculated to strikingly impress a person accustomed to Moody and
Sankey and Sam Jones revivals; accustomed to brain-turning appeals to
the unknown and unendorsed sinner to come forward and enter into the
joy, etc.--“just as he is”; accustomed to seeing him do it; accustomed
to seeing him pass up the aisle through sobbing seas of welcome, and
love, and congratulation, and arrive at the mourner's bench and be
received like a long-lost government bond.

No, there is nothing of that kind in Mrs. Eddy's system. She knows that
if you wish to confer upon a human being something which he is not sure
he wants, the best way is to make it apparently difficult for him to get
it--then he is no son of Adam if that apple does not assume an interest
in his eyes which it lacked before. In time this interest can grow into
desire. Mrs. Eddy knows that when you cannot get a man to try--free of
cost--a new and effective remedy for a disease he is afflicted with, you
can generally sell it to him if you will put a price upon it which he
cannot afford. When, in the beginning, she taught Christian Science
gratis (for good reasons), pupils were few and reluctant, and required
persuasion; it was when she raised the limit to three hundred dollars
for a dollar's worth that she could not find standing room for the
invasion of pupils that followed.

With fine astuteness she goes through the motions of making it difficult
to get membership in her Church. There is a twofold value in this
system: it gives membership a high value in the eyes of the applicant;
and at the same time the requirements exacted enable Mrs. Eddy to keep
him out if she has doubts about his value to her. A word further as to
applications for membership:

“Applications of students of the Metaphysical College must be signed by
the Board of Directors.”

That is safe. Mrs. Eddy is proprietor of that Board.

Children of twelve may be admitted if invited by “one of Mrs. Eddy's
loyal students, or by a First Member, or by a Director.”

These sponsors are the property of Mrs. Eddy, therefore her Church is
safeguarded from the intrusion of undesirable children.

Other Students. Applicants who have not studied with Mrs. Eddy can get
in only “by invitation and recommendation from students of Mrs. Eddy....
or from members of the Mother-Church.”

Other paragraphs explain how two or three other varieties of applicants
are to be challenged and obstructed, and tell us who is authorized to
invite them, recommend them endorse them, and all that.

The safeguards are definite, and would seem to be sufficiently
strenuous--to Mr. Sam Jones, at any rate. Not for Mrs. Eddy. She adds
this clincher:

“The candidates be elected by a majority vote of the First Members
present.”

That is the aristocracy, the aborigines, the Sanhedrin. It is Mrs.
Eddy's property. She herself is the Sanhedrin. No one can get into the
Church if she wishes to keep him out.

This veto power could some time or other have a large value for her,
therefore she was wise to reserve it.

It is likely that it is not frequently used. It is also probable that
the difficulties attendant upon getting admission to membership have
been instituted more to invite than to deter, more to enhance the
value of membership and make people long for it than to make it really
difficult to get. I think so, because the Mother. Church has many
thousands of members more than its building can accommodate.




AND SOME ENGLISH REQUIRED

Mrs. Eddy is very particular as regards one detail curiously so, for
her, all things considered. The Church Readers must be “good English
scholars”; they must be “thorough English scholars.”

She is thus sensitive about the English of her subordinates for cause,
possibly. In her chapter defining the duties of the Clerk there is an
indication that she harbors resentful memories of an occasion when the
hazy quality of her own English made unforeseen and mortifying trouble:

“Understanding Communications. Sec. 2. If the Clerk of this Church shall
receive a communication from the Pastor Emeritus which he does not fully
understand, he shall inform her of this fact before presenting it to
the Church, and obtain a clear understanding of the matter--then act in
accordance therewith.”

She should have waited to calm down, then, but instead she added this,
which lacks sugar:

“Failing to adhere to this By-law, the Clerk must resign.”

I wish I could see that communication that broke the camel's back.
It was probably the one beginning: “What plague spot or bacilli were
gnawing at the heart of this metropolis and bringing it on bended knee?”
 and I think it likely that the kindly disposed Clerk tried to translate
it into English and lost his mind and had to go to the hospital.
That Bylaw was not the offspring of a forecast, an intuition, it was
certainly born of a sorrowful experience. Its temper gives the fact
away.

The little book of By-laws has manifestly been tinkered by one of Mrs.
Eddy's “thorough English scholars,” for in the majority of cases its
meanings are clear. The book is not even marred by Mrs. Eddy's peculiar
specialty--lumbering clumsinesses of speech. I believe the salaried
polisher has weeded them all out but one. In one place, after referring
to Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy goes on to say “the Bible and the
above-named book, with other works by the same author,” etc.

It is an unfortunate sentence, for it could mislead a hasty or careless
reader for a moment. Mrs. Eddy framed it--it is her very own--it bears
her trade-mark. “The Bible and Science and Health, with other works by
the same author,” could have come from no literary vacuum but the one
which produced the remark (in the Autobiography): “I remember reading,
in my childhood, certain manuscripts containing Scriptural Sonnets,
besides other verses and enigmas.”

We know what she means, in both instances, but a low-priced Clerk would
not necessarily know, and on a salary like his he could quite excusably
aver that the Pastor Emeritus had commanded him to come and make
proclamation that she was author of the Bible, and that she was thinking
of discharging some Scriptural sonnets and other enigmas upon the
congregation. It could lose him his place, but it would not be fair, if
it happened before the edict about “Understanding Communications” was
promulgated.




“READERS” AGAIN

The By-law book makes a showy pretence of orderliness and system, but it
is only a pretence. I will not go so far as to say it is a harum-scarum
jumble, for it is not that, but I think it fair to say it is at least
jumbulacious in places. For instance, Articles III. and IV. set forth
in much detail the qualifications and duties of Readers, she then
skips some thirty pages and takes up the subject again. It looks
like slovenliness, but it may be only art. The belated By-law has a
sufficiently quiet look, but it has a ton of dynamite in it. It makes
all the Christian Science Church Readers on the globe the personal
chattels of Mrs. Eddy. Whenever she chooses, she can stretch her long
arm around the world's fat belly and flirt a Reader out of his pulpit,
though he be tucked away in seeming safety and obscurity in a lost
village in the middle of China:

“In any Church. Sec. 2. The Pastor Emeritus of the Mother-Church shall
have the right (through a letter addressed to the individual and Church
of which he is the Reader) to remove a Reader from this office in any
Church of Christ, Scientist, both in America and in foreign nations;
or to appoint the Reader to fill any office belonging to the Christian
Science denomination.”

She does not have to prefer charges against him, she does not have to
find him lazy, careless, incompetent, untidy, ill-mannered, unholy,
dishonest, she does not have to discover a fault of any kind in him,
she does not have to tell him nor his congregation why she dismisses and
disgraces him and insults his meek flock, she does not have to explain
to his family why she takes the bread out of their mouths and turns them
out-of-doors homeless and ashamed in a strange land; she does not have
to do anything but send a letter and say: “Pack!--and ask no questions!”

Has the Pope this power?--the other Pope--the one in Rome. Has he
anything approaching it? Can he turn a priest out of his pulpit and
strip him of his office and his livelihood just upon a whim, a caprice,
and meanwhile furnishing no reasons to the parish? Not in America. And
not elsewhere, we may believe.

It is odd and strange, to see intelligent and educated people among
us worshipping this self-seeking and remorseless tyrant as a God. This
worship is denied--by persons who are themselves worshippers of Mrs.
Eddy. I feel quite sure that it is a worship which will continue during
ages.

That Mrs. Eddy wrote that amazing By-law with her own hand we have much
better evidence than her word. We have her English. It is there. It
cannot be imitated. She ought never to go to the expense of copyrighting
her verbal discharges. When any one tries to claim them she should call
me; I can always tell them from any other literary apprentice's at a
glance. It was like her to call America a “nation”; she would call a
sand-bar a nation if it should fall into a sentence in which she was
speaking of peoples, for she would not know how to untangle it and get
it out and classify it by itself. And the closing arrangement of that
By-law is in true Eddysonian form, too. In it she reserves authority to
make a Reader fill any office connected with a Science church-sexton,
grave-digger, advertising-agent, Annex-polisher, leader of the choir,
President, Director, Treasurer, Clerk, etc. She did not mean that.
She already possessed that authority. She meant to clothe herself with
power, despotic and unchallengeable, to appoint all Science Readers to
their offices, both at home and abroad. The phrase “or to appoint”
 is another miscarriage of intention; she did not mean “or,” she meant
“and.”


That By-law puts into Mrs. Eddy's hands absolute command over the most
formidable force and influence existent in the Christian Science kingdom
outside of herself, and it does this unconditionally and (by auxiliary
force of Laws already quoted) irrevocably. Still, she is not quite
satisfied. Something might happen, she doesn't know what. Therefore she
drives in one more nail, to make sure, and drives it deep:

“This By-law can neither be amended nor annulled, except by consent of
the Pastor Emeritus.”

Let some one with a wild and delirious fancy try and see if he can
imagine her furnishing that consent.




MONOPOLY OF SPIRITUAL BREAD

Very properly, the first qualification for membership in the
Mother-Church is belief in the doctrines of Christian Science.

But these doctrines must not be gathered from secondary sources. There
is but one recognized source. The candidate must be a believer in the
doctrines of Christian Science “according to the platform and teaching
contained in the Christian Science text-book, 'Science and Health, with
Key to the Scriptures,' by Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy.”

That is definite, and is final. There are to be no commentaries, no
labored volumes of exposition and explanation by anybody except Mrs.
Eddy. Because such things could sow error, create warring opinions,
split the religion into sects, and disastrously cripple its power. Mrs.
Eddy will do the whole of the explaining, Herself--has done it, in fact.
She has written several books. They are to be had (for cash in advance),
they are all sacred; additions to them can never be needed and will
never be permitted. They tell the candidate how to instruct himself,
how to teach others, how to do all things comprised in the business--and
they close the door against all would-be competitors, and monopolize the
trade:

“The Bible and the above--named book [Science and Health], with
other works by the same author,” must be his only text-books for the
commerce--he cannot forage outside.

Mrs. Eddy's words are to be the sole elucidators of the Bible and
Science and Health--forever. Throughout the ages, whenever there is
doubt as to the meaning of a passage in either of these books the
inquirer will not dream of trying to explain it to himself; he would
shudder at the thought of such temerity, such profanity, he would be
haled to the Inquisition and thence to the public square and the stake
if he should be caught studying into text-meanings on his own hook; he
will be prudent and seek the meanings at the only permitted source, Mrs.
Eddy's commentaries.

Value of this Strait-jacket. One must not underrate the magnificence
of this long-headed idea, one must not underestimate its giant
possibilities in the matter of trooping the Church solidly together and
keeping it so. It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing
impossible, profane, criminal, it authoritatively settles every dispute
that can arise. It starts with finality--a point which the Roman Church
has travelled towards fifteen or sixteen centuries, stage by stage,
and has not yet reached. The matter of the Immaculate Conception of
the Virgin Mary was not authoritatively settled until the days of Pius
IX.--yesterday, so to speak.

As already noticed, the Protestants are broken up into a long array of
sects, a result of disputes about the meanings of texts, disputes made
unavoidable by the absence of an infallible authority to submit doubtful
passages to. A week or two ago (I am writing in the middle of January,
1903), the clergy and others hereabouts had a warm dispute in the papers
over this question: Did Jesus anywhere claim to be God? It seemed an
easy question, but it turned out to be a hard one. It was ably and
elaborately discussed, by learned men of several denominations, but in
the end it remained unsettled.

A week ago, another discussion broke out. It was over this text:

“Sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor.”

One verdict was worded as follows:

“When Christ answered the rich young man and said for him to give to the
poor all he possessed or he could not gain everlasting life, He did not
mean it in the literal sense. My interpretation of His words is that we
should part with what comes between us and Christ.

“There is no doubt that Jesus believed that the rich young man thought
more of his wealth than he did of his soul, and, such being the case, it
was his duty to give up the wealth.

“Every one of us knows that there is something we should give up for
Christ. Those who are true believers and followers know what they have
given up, and those who are not yet followers know down in their hearts
what they must give up.”

Ten clergymen of various denominations were interviewed, and nine of
them agreed with that verdict. That did not settle the matter, because
the tenth said the language of Jesus was so strait and definite that it
explained itself: “Sell all,” not a percentage.

There is a most unusual feature about that dispute: the nine persons
who decided alike, quoted not a single authority in support of their
position. I do not know when I have seen trained disputants do the like
of that before. The nine merely furnished their own opinions, founded
upon--nothing at all. In the other dispute (“Did Jesus anywhere claim to
be God?”) the same kind of men--trained and learned clergymen--backed up
their arguments with chapter and verse. On both sides. Plenty of verses.
Were no reinforcing verses to be found in the present case? It looks
that way.

The opinion of the nine seems strange to me, for it is unsupported
by authority, while there was at least constructive authority for the
opposite view.

It is hair-splitting differences of opinion over disputed text-meanings
that have divided into many sects a once united Church. One may
infer from some of the names in the following list that some of
the differences are very slight--so slight as to be not distinctly
important, perhaps--yet they have moved groups to withdraw from
communions to which they belonged and set up a sect of their own. The
list--accompanied by various Church statistics for 1902, compiled by
Rev. Dr. H. K. Carroll--was published, January 8, 1903, in the New York
Christian Advocate:

Adventists (6 bodies), Baptists (13 bodies), Brethren (Plymouth) (4
bodies), Brethren (River) (3 bodies), Catholics (8 bodies), Catholic
Apostolic, Christadelphians, Christian Connection, Christian Catholics,
Christian Missionary Association, Christian Scientists, Church of God
(Wine-brennarian), Church of the New Jerusalem, Congregationalists,
Disciples of Christ, Dunkards (4 bodies), Evangelical (2 bodies),
Friends (4 bodies), Friends of the Temple, German Evangelical
Protestant, German Evangelical Synod, Independent congregations, Jews (2
bodies), Latter-day Saints (2 bodies), Lutherans (22 bodies), Mennonites
(12 bodies), Methodists (17 bodies), Moravians, Presbyterians (12
bodies), Protestant Episcopal (2 bodies), Reformed (3 bodies),
Schwenkfeldians, Social Brethren, Spiritualists, Swedish Evangelical
Miss. Covenant (Waldenstromians), Unitarians, United Brethren (2
bodies), Universalists.

Total of sects and splits--139.

In the present month (February), Mr. E. I. Lindh, A.M., has communicated
to the Boston Transcript a hopeful article on the solution of the
problem of the “divided church.” Divided is not too violent a term.
Subdivided could have been permitted if he had thought of it. He came
near thinking of it, for he mentions some of the subdivisions himself:
“the 12 kinds of Presbyterians, the 17 kinds of Methodists, the 13 kinds
of Baptists, etc.” He overlooked the 12 kinds of Mennonites and the 22
kinds of Lutherans, but they are in Rev. Mr. Carroll's list. Altogether,
76 splits under 5 flags. The Literary Digest (February 14th) is pleased
with Mr. Lindh's optimistic article, and also with the signs of the
times, and perceives that “the idea of Church unity is in the air.”

Now, then, is not Mrs. Eddy profoundly wise in forbidding, for all time,
all explanations of her religion except such as she shall let on to be
her own?

I think so. I think there can be no doubt of it. In a way, they will be
her own; for, no matter which member of her clerical staff shall furnish
the explanations, not a line of them will she ever allow to be printed
until she shall have approved it, accepted it, copyrighted it, cabbaged
it. We may depend on that with a four-ace confidence.




CHAPTER VII.




THE NEW INFALLIBILITY

All in proper time Mrs. Eddy's factory will take hold of that
Commandment, and explain it for good and all. It may be that one member
of the shift will vote that the word “all” means all; it may be that ten
members of the shift will vote that “all” means only a percentage; but
it is Mrs. Eddy, not the eleven, who will do the deciding. And if she
says it is percentage, then percentage it is, forevermore--and that
is what I am expecting, for she doesn't sell all herself, nor any
considerable part of it, and as regards the poor, she doesn't declare
any dividend; but if she says “all” means all, then all it is, to the
end of time, and no follower of hers will ever be allowed to reconstruct
that text, or shrink it, or inflate it, or meddle with it in any way at
all. Even to-day--right here in the beginning--she is the sole person
who, in the matter of Christian Science exegesis, is privileged to
exploit the Spiral Twist. The Christian world has two Infallibles now.

Of equal power? For the present only. When Leo XIII. passes to his rest
another Infallible will ascend his throne; others, and yet others, and
still others will follow him, and be as infallible as he, and decide
questions of doctrine as long as they may come up, all down the far
future; but Mary Baker G. Eddy is the only Infallible that will ever
occupy the Science throne. Many a Science Pope will succeed her, but
she has closed their mouths; they will repeat and reverently praise and
adore her infallibilities, but venture none themselves. In her grave she
will still outrank all other Popes, be they of what Church they may.
She will hold the supremest of earthly titles, The Infallible--with
a capital T. Many in the world's history have had a hunger for such
nuggets and slices of power as they might reasonably hope to grab out
of an empire's or a religion's assets, but Mrs. Eddy is the only person
alive or dead who has ever struck for the whole of them. For small
things she has the eye of a microscope, for large ones the eye of a
telescope, and whatever she sees, she wants. Wants it all.




THE SACRED POEMS

When Mrs. Eddy's “sacred revelations” (that is the language of the
By-laws) are read in public, their authorship must be named. The By-laws
twice command this, therefore we mention it twice, to be fair.

But it is also commanded that when a member publicly quotes “from the
poems of our Pastor Emeritus” the authorship shall be named. For these
are sacred, too. There are kindly people who may suspect a hidden
generosity in that By-law; they may think it is there to protect the
Official Reader from the suspicion of having written the poems himself.
Such do not know Mrs. Eddy. She does an inordinate deal of protecting,
but in no distinctly named and specified case in her history has Number
Two been the object of it. Instances have been claimed, but they have
failed of proof, and even of plausibility.

“Members shall also instruct their students” to look out and advertise
the authorship when they read those poems and things. Not on Mrs. Eddy's
account, but “for the good of our Cause.”




THE CHURCH EDIFICE

1. Mrs. Eddy gave the land. It was not of much value at the time, but it
is very valuable now. 2. Her people built the Mother-Church edifice on
it, at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 3. Then they
gave the whole property to her. 4. Then she gave it to the Board of
Directors. She is the Board of Directors. She took it out of one pocket
and put it in the other. 5. Sec. 10 (of the deed). “Whenever said
Directors shall determine that it is inexpedient to maintain preaching,
reading, or speaking in said church in accordance with the terms of this
deed, they are authorized and required to reconvey forthwith said lot
of land with the building thereon to Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and
assigns forever, by a proper deed of conveyance.”

She is never careless, never slipshod, about a matter of business.
Owning the property through her Board of Waxworks was safe enough, still
it was sound business to set another grip on it to cover accidents,
and she did it. Her barkers (what a curious name; I wonder if it is
copyrighted); her barkers persistently advertise to the public her
generosity in giving away a piece of land which cost her a trifle, and
a two--hundred--and--fifty--thousand--dollar church which cost her
nothing; and they can hardly speak of the unselfishness of it without
breaking down and crying; yet they know she gave nothing away, and never
intended to. However, such is the human race. Often it does seem such a
pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

Some of the hostiles think that Mrs. Eddy's idea in protecting this
property in the interest of her heirs, and in accumulating a great money
fortune, is, that she may leave her natural heirs well provided for when
she goes. I think it is a mistake. I think she is of late years giving
herself large concern about only one interest-her power and glory, and
the perpetuation and worship of her Name--with a capital N. Her Church
is her pet heir, and I think it will get her wealth. It is the torch
which is to light the world and the ages with her glory.

I think she once prized money for the ease and comfort it could bring,
the showy vanities it could furnish, and the social promotion it could
command; for we have seen that she was born into the world with little
ways and instincts and aspirations and affectations that are duplicates
of our own. I do not think her money-passion has ever diminished in
ferocity, I do not think that she has ever allowed a dollar that had no
friends to get by her alive, but I think her reason for wanting it
has changed. I think she wants it now to increase and establish and
perpetuate her power and glory with, not to add to her comforts and
luxuries, not to furnish paint and fuss and feathers for vain display.
I think her ambitions have soared away above the fuss-and-feather stage.
She still likes the little shows and vanities--a fact which she
exposed in a public utterance two or three days ago when she was not
noticing--but I think she does not place a large value upon them now.
She could build a mighty and far-shining brass-mounted palace if she
wanted to, but she does not do it. She would have had that kind of an
ambition in the early scrabbling times. She could go to England to-day
and be worshiped by earls, and get a comet's attention from the
million, if she cared for such things. She would have gone in the early
scrabbling days for much less than an earl, and been vain of it, and
glad to show off before the remains of the Scotch kin. But those things
are very small to her now--next to invisible, observed through the
cloud-rack from the dizzy summit where she perches in these great days.
She does not want that church property for herself. It is worth but a
quarter of a million--a sum she could call in from her far-spread flocks
to-morrow with a lift of her hand. Not a squeeze of it, just a lift. It
would come without a murmur; come gratefully, come gladly. And if her
glory stood in more need of the money in Boston than it does where her
flocks are propagating it, she would lift the hand, I think.

She is still reaching for the Dollar, she will continue to reach for it;
but not that she may spend it upon herself; not that she may spend it
upon charities; not that she may indemnify an early deprivation and
clothe herself in a blaze of North Adams gauds; not that she may have
nine breeds of pie for breakfast, as only the rich New-Englander can;
not that she may indulge any petty material vanity or appetite that once
was hers and prized and nursed, but that she may apply that Dollar to
statelier uses, and place it where it may cast the metallic sheen of her
glory farthest across the receding expanses of the globe.




PRAYER

A brief and good one is furnished in the book of By-laws. The Scientist
is required to pray it every day.




THE LORD'S PRAYER-AMENDED

This is not in the By-laws, it is in the first chapter of Science and
Health, edition of 1902. I do not find it in the edition of 1884. It
is probable that it had not at that time been handed down. Science and
Health's (latest) rendering of its “spiritual sense” is as follows:

“Our Father-Mother God' all-harmonious, adorable One. Thy kingdom is
within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know--as in heaven, so
on earth--God is supreme. Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished
affections. And infinite Love is reflected in love. And Love leadeth us
not into temptation, but delivereth from sin, disease, and death. For
God is now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love.”

If I thought my opinion was desired and would be properly revered, I
should say that in my judgment that is as good a piece of carpentering
as any of those eleven Commandment--experts could do with the material
after all their practice. I notice only one doubtful place. “Lead us not
into temptation” seems to me to be a very definite request, and that the
new rendering turns the definite request into a definite assertion. I
shall be glad to have that turned back to the old way and the marks of
the Spiral Twist removed, or varnished over; then I shall be satisfied,
and will do the best I can with what is left. At the same time, I do
feel that the shrinkage in our spiritual assets is getting serious.
First the Commandments, now the Prayer. I never expected to see these
steady old reliable securities watered down to this. And this is not
the whole of it. Last summer the Presbyterians extended the Calling and
Election suffrage to nearly everybody entitled to salvation. They did
not even stop there, but let out all the unbaptized American infants
we had been accumulating for two hundred years and more. There are some
that believe they would have let the Scotch ones out, too, if they could
have done it. Everything is going to ruin; in no long time we shall have
nothing left but the love of God.




THE NEW UNPARDONABLE SIN

“Working Against the Cause. Sec. 2. If a member of this Church shall
work against the accomplishment of what the Discoverer and Founder of
Christian Science understands is advantageous to the individual, to this
Church, and to the Cause of Christian Science”--out he goes. Forever.

The member may think that what he is doing will advance the Cause,
but he is not invited to do any thinking. More than that, he is not
permitted to do any--as he will clearly gather from this By-law. When a
person joins Mrs. Eddy's Church he must leave his thinker at home. Leave
it permanently. To make sure that it will not go off some time or other
when he is not watching, it will be safest for him to spike it. If he
should forget himself and think just once, the By-law provides that he
shall be fired out-instantly-forever-no return.

“It shall be the duty of this Church immediately to call a meeting, and
drop forever the name of this member from its records.”

My, but it breathes a towering indignation!

There are forgivable offenses, but this is not one of them; there are
admonitions, probations, suspensions, in several minor cases; mercy is
shown the derelict, in those cases he is gently used, and in time he can
get back into the fold--even when he has repeated his offence. But let
him think, just once, without getting his thinker set to Eddy time,
and that is enough; his head comes off. There is no second offence, and
there is no gate open to that lost sheep, ever again.

“This rule cannot be changed, amended, or annulled, except by unanimous
vote of all the First Members.”

The same being Mrs. Eddy. It is naively sly and pretty to see her keep
putting forward First Members, and Boards of This and That, and other
broideries and ruffles of her raiment, as if they were independent
entities, instead of a part of her clothes, and could do things all by
themselves when she was outside of them.

Mrs. Eddy did not need to copyright the sentence just quoted, its
English would protect it. None but she would have shovelled that
comically superfluous “all” in there.

The former Unpardonable Sin has gone out of service. We may frame the
new Christian Science one thus:

“Whatsoever Member shall think, and without Our Mother's permission act
upon his think, the same shall be cut off from the Church forever.”

It has been said that I make many mistakes about Christian Science
through being ignorant of the spiritual meanings of its terminology.
I believe it is true. I have been misled all this time by that word
Member, because there was no one to tell me that its spiritual meaning
was Slave.




AXE AND BLOCK

There is a By-law which forbids Members to practice hypnotism; the
penalty is excommunication.

1. If a member is found to be a mental practitioner--2. Complaint is to
be entered against him--3. By the Pastor Emeritus, and by none else;
4. No member is allowed to make complaint to her in the matter; 5. Upon
Mrs. Eddy's mere “complaint”--unbacked by evidence or proof, and without
giving the accused a chance to be heard--his name shall be dropped from
this Church.

Mrs. Eddy has only to say a member is guilty--that is all. That ends
it. It is not a case of he “may” be cut off from Christian Science
salvation, it is a case of he “shall” be. Her serfs must see to it, and
not say a word.

Does the other Pope possess this prodigious and irresponsible power?
Certainly not in our day.

Some may be curious to know how Mrs. Eddy finds out that a member is
practicing hypnotism, since no one is allowed to come before her throne
and accuse him. She has explained this in Christian Science History,
first and second editions, page 16:

“I possess a spiritual sense of what the malicious mental practitioner
is mentally arguing which cannot be deceived; I can discern in the human
mind thoughts, motives, and purposes, and neither mental arguments nor
psychic power can affect this spiritual insight.”

A marvelous woman; with a hunger for power such as has never been seen
in the world before. No thing, little or big, that contains any seed or
suggestion of power escapes her avaricious eye; and when once she gets
that eye on it, her remorseless grip follows. There isn't a Christian
Scientist who isn't ecclesiastically as much her property as if she had
bought him and paid for him, and copyrighted him and got a charter.
She cannot be satisfied when she has handcuffed a member, and put a
leg-chain and ball on him and plugged his ears and removed his thinker,
she goes on wrapping needless chains round and round him, just as a
spider would. For she trusts no one, believes in no one's honesty,
judges every one by herself. Although we have seen that she has absolute
and irresponsible c

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/3187