Christian science, the faith and its founder

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By LYMAN P. POWELL

The Emmanuel Movement
Christian Science
Heavenly Heretics

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

THE FAITH AND ITS FOUNDER

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BY -v/

LYMAN P/POWELL

President of Hobart College

SECOND EDITION
WITH A NEW FOREWORD

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

^be fcnicfierbocfier pre66
1917

Copyright, 1907

BY

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Published, December, 1907
Reprinted, April, 1908; October, 1909

Copyright, 1917

BY

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
For Second Edition

MAR 28 1917

Ube f^nfcfictbocTier Press, lkc\9 J^orlt

©CI.A457677

PREFACE

/CHRISTIAN SCIENCE has long en-
^•^ gaged my interest. For years I dis-
couraged none who sought its heahng
ministry. The undiscriminating censure visited
upon it in apparent ignorance or prejudice
made no impression on me. The desire Chris-
tian Scientists were constantly expressing to
be judged by their fruits seemed to me to be
both Christian and scientific.

A year or two ago, however, closer observa-
tion and more serious consideration brought
me to three conclusions which appear to me
unquestionably true:

1. That when members of any Christian
church turn to Christian Science healing they
usually turn away from historic Christianity.

2. That there are in the theory of Chris-
tian Science certain structural weaknesses
which may easily be overlooked by people
unschooled in philosophy, theology, or science.

3. That the answers of the accredited ex-
ponents of the movement to the criticisms

iii

IV

Preface

which are steadily gaining headway satisfy
none save Christian Scientists and such others
as read carelessly and think loosely.

This volume grew out of a booklet of
mine which was never regularly pubHshed, but
for which there soon came to be a large demand
from all parts of the country. It was at the
suggestion, altogether unexpected, of G. P.
Putnam's Sons that I have expanded the
monograph into a book.

My purpose, as the reader will discover, has
been to write a book in which the average man
who is outside of Christian Science can find
the things he wants to know about its theory
and practice. If to my readers it may now
and then appear that I unduly emphasise the
defects of the system, I ask them to observe
that the good in Christian Science is the good
in other religions and therefore requires no
special emphasis, while the evil is distinctive
and needs analysis and publicity to make it
evident.

In studying the theory of Christian Science
I have read various editions of Science and
Healthy covering its entire development, to-
gether with other writings of Mrs. Eddy, and
the literature, now abundant, both in explana-
tion and in criticism of the system. To read-

Preface v

ing I have added interviews and correspond-
ence with representative apologists and critics
of the movement.

In considering Mrs. Eddy's personal his-
tory, I have made free use of Georgine Mil-
mine's articles in McClure's, I have taken
the pains, however, in each instance to verify
her statements by correspondence or by inter-
views with those concerned. For this purpose
alone I have travelled more than twenty-five
hundred miles and am glad to be able to testify
to the singular accuracy of the articles and
the thoroughness with which they have been
prepared.

In the chance that there might be witnesses
whom Georgine Milmine overlooked to con-
tradict the witnesses she introduces in the open
court of a great magazine, I took counsel with
the Committee on Publication of the Christian
Science organisation. He referred me to the
author of the Human Life articles on the same
subject, but I was no more fortunate with her
than with the Committee. I am, therefore,
satisfied, so far as it is possible to be, that there
is no significant evidence to offset the evidence
presented in McClure's,

To name all who have in one way or another
helped me in my work would be impossible.

VI

Preface

But I must at least mention the following to
whom I am especially indebted: Mr. Alfred
Farlow, Mrs. Benjamin Welles, Mr. George
A. Quimby, Mr. F. W. Peabody, Professor
R. W. Micou, Rev. Dr. C. E. Holmes, Rev.
Dr. A. E. Dunning, Mr. George Perry Mor-
ris, Mr. Horatio W. Dresser, Dr. A. M.
Gushing, Mr. Livingston Wright, Rev. John
Snyder, Rev. Wm. L. Chaffin, Mr. Robert K.
Shaw, Rev. Dr. J. M. Buckley, Rev. Dr.
S. A. Eliot, Rev. Dr. E. H. Delk, Mr.
Richard Kennedy, Mr. Daniel H. Spofford,
Mrs. Sarah G. Crosby, Mrs. Julia Russell
Walcott, Mr. H. T. Wentworth, Mrs. Joseph
French Johnson, Mrs. S. A. K. Robinson,
Miss Florence Ben-Oliel, Mr. Henry B.
Hinckley, Dr. John B. Huber, Dr. John
S. Hitchcock, Dr. Elmer H. Copeland, and
the librarians of Northampton, Springfield,
and Worcester, Massachusetts.

To my wife, Gertrude Wilson Powell, I am
under the deepest obligation for many aids
which she alone could give. To the editorial
skill of my nephew, Harold Ayres Powell, I
owe much for a searching criticism of the
manuscript. To Dr. Talcott Wilhams I am
grateful, as often in the past, for the use of his
comprehensive collection of magazine articles

Preface vil

and newspaper clippings which cover practi-
cally every subject of human interest, and can
nowhere be duplicated.

Christian Scientists will say as usual that the
truths of Christian Science are self -authenti-
cating, and that another critic has, in under-
taking to set forth the case, missed the essential
point. But others will, I trust, believe that
I have brought to one of the most elusive
problems of the time a truth-seeking spirit,
and that whether all my conclusions stand or
not, the variety of quotation from Christian
Science writings and the definiteness and com-
prehensiveness of the facts presented will con-
vince people that it is perilous to commit
themselves to this crude faith, which is repudi-
ated with indignation by historic Christianity
and with contempt by science, without a clearer
understanding than is common of its insecure
foundations and its inevitable implications.

L. P. P.

St. John's Rectory,
Northampton, Mass.
August 20, 1907.

FOREWORD TO SECOND EDITION

THEN years ago the central interest of the
'■' reading public was Christian Science. A
novel cult seemed suddenly to take the center
of the stage and its founder and leader to
become the subject of more discussion than
any woman of her time, perhaps of modern
days.

Clergymen were obliged to take heed of
the movement because some of their members
in many places drifted off to Christian Science.
As rector of the parish in Northampton,
where the church is almost at the heart of the
Smith College campus, my turn came. Dur-
ing the winter of 1906 a few members of my
flock became interested in Christian Science. I
encouraged them to accept any help it appeared
to offer without abandoning their Church.
When I found it seemed impossible for them
to get help from Christian Science and remain
Episcopalians I myself began to look into
the subject. Of Science and Health I made
about as little as many others who were then
attempting from the outside to read the book.

IX

X Foreword

The Rev. Dr. William H. Van Allen directed
me toward several books of a polemical char-
acter on the subject, and his well-known op-
position to Christian Science he stated with
his usual clearness and conviction.

During the year that followed I read practi-
cally everything in print on the subject on
either side of the Atlantic. My first reflections
went into a booklet I prepared for my own
parish. Then as magazines like McClure^s
began to publish original studies of Mrs.
Eddy, my booklet grew into this book. At
that time, there was, perhaps, overmuch both
of fulsome adulation and extreme condemna-
tion of the movement and its founder. No
one seemed disposed to be judicial minded.
The McClure's articles were easily the most
exhaustive as to facts; some of their infer-
ences from the same were not convincing.
Sibyl Wilbur's biography gave no evidence
either of much first-hand study of the facts
or of value as an interpretation of the same.

My ambition grew to produce a book which
would steer a course between extremists of
both types, a book authoritative as to facts,
judicial and fair-minded in their exposition.
When it appeared ten years ago, reviewers
generally gave the author credit for honesty of

Foreword xi

purpose. The Springfield Republican said
that the book was "not the less destructive
for its moderation and fairness." The Out-
look spoke as follows: "Mr. Powell's book will
not be satisfactory to the advocates of Chris-
tian Science, because it does not advocate
Christian Science; it will not be satisfactory
to the assailants of Christian Science, because
it does not assail Christian Science. It ought
to be satisfactory to those who wish a fair-
minded and judicial interpretation of Christian
Science by one who is neither its assailant nor
its defender."

These ten years past there has been some
reason to believe that the book has maintained
its place in the literature of the subject. Of
course my many Christian Science friends
think I am mistaken. My Christian friends
as frankly say that with the facts set forth by
me I might properly have been less judicial.

Whatever value the book still has arises, I
think, from an honest effort to find the proper
place for Christian Science in the history of
religion and medicine. No one has had any
excuse since the book appeared to confuse New
Thought, Mental Science, or other healing
cults with Christian Science. The Emmanuel
Movement was an effort highly successful in

xii Foreword

the circumstances to show that people can
get all the good there is in Christian Science
without leaving their own minister or doctor;
and though the term has disappeared, the
philosophy and methods of the Emmanuel
Movement seem to have been adopted the
whole country over both by churches and by
physicians, who have used with more con-
sciousness the principle of suggestion, which
every successful doctor has always used in
one way or another.

In the years that followed the appearance of
this book the author studied psychotherapy
in all of its relationships, wrote several other
books upon the general subject of psycho-
therapy, many magazine articles, and at last
abandoned special interest simply because
what had been an avocation was encroaching
upon his vocation and also because the sub-
ject seemed to be too well understood to need
more explanation. Looking back across the
years Christian Science still seems to be what
it is pictured in this book, — suggestion rein-
forced by a profound but very unconvincing
theology.

Meanwhile Mrs. Eddy has died, and as
Mark Twain predicted both in private letters
to me and in his well-known book on Chris-

Foreword xiii

tian Science, the Board of Directors have suc-
ceeded to her authority. So far as it is
possible to tell the Directors have exercised
the same with caution and efficiency. Some
of the bizarre and extravagant Interests in
Christian Science are no longer stressed. It is
not the habit of Christian Scientists to dis-
avow outgrown beliefs. They simply stop
talking about them. Certain views which
Invited much ridicule ten years ago are rarely
mentioned In these days and only by a
few.

But the appreciation of the virtues of the
Christian Scientists set forth frankly in this
book still stands. In the last ten years
Christian Science has certainly encouraged
daily Bible reading, until now Christian
Scientists are probably the most assiduous
Bible readers In the world. They still avoid
antagonisms. They keep singularly serene.
They average high in other-worldliness. It
looks as though the cult were profiting by
experience and endeavouring to make the most
of the spiritual reality which those who study
far into the movement easily discover.

The criticisms offered In the book in general
remain. Nothing has happened in the years
that have followed Its first appearance to

xiv Foreword

shake them. But a somewhat different slant
has certainly in some quarters been given to
the Christian Science movement. A new
adaptability has been shown by the manage-
ment. The Christian Science Monitor has
proved the power of the movement to develop
a daily paper as reliable as it is clean, and
barring the persistence still marked in some
places to discourage an appeal which the
author believes should be made to the
physician, there would seem to be no ex-
cuse for what once looked like persecution of
the Christian Scientists. Of course men like
the late Professor William James, who in the
interest of fair play would allow the Christian
Scientist or anybody else to treat any disease,
can no longer maintain themselves. It is the
duty of the state to see that where there is
good reason to believe that only a doctor can
save life, no one else should be allowed to
practise medicine. The author stands firm
by this position.

Those who believe in Christian unity must
continue to regret that during these years,
culminating in the recent suggestions of the
Vatican, of renewed interest in Christian
unity, the theology of Christian Science would
seem to be a barrier as insuperable to Christian

Foreword xv

unity as its therapeutics is a challenge to
scientific medicine.

However in this matter as in all others
light rather than heat is indicated. If Chris-
tian Scientists and historic Christians will but
keep their tempers toward each other and try
to get together at least in Christian love, the
time may come when the Christian Church
will absorb a Christian Science rid of certain
of its dogmas.

This certainly must be if there is even the
slightest justification for the words which
Mark Twain wrote awhile before he died: "the
thing back of it is wholly gracious and beauti-
ful; the power, through loving mercifulness
and compassion, to heal fleshly ills and pains
and griefs — all — with a word, with a touch of
the hand! This power was given by the
Saviour to the Disciples, and to all the con-
verted. All — every one. It was exercised for
generations afterwards. Any Christian who
was in earnest and not a make-believe, not a
policy-Christian, not a Christian for revenue
only, had that healing power, and could cure
with it any disease or any hurt or damage
'possible to human flesh and hone. These
things are true, or they are not. If they were
true seventeen and eighteen and nineteen

xvi Foreword

centuries ago It would be difficult to satisfac-
torily explain why or how or by what argument
that power should be non-existent in Chris-

tians now. "

Lyman P. Powell.

HoBART College, Geneva, N. Y.,
January 15, 19 17.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY

PAGES

A Strained Relationship — The Cause — Aim of Chris-
tian Science — Its Criticism of the Churches — Mrs. Eddy's
Purpose — Conscientious Proselyting — The Virtues of the
Scientists — Weakness of Christian Churches — The
Danger Point 1-11

CHAPTER II

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

Source of its Authority — Takes Precedence of the
Bible — ^Exorbitant Selling Price — Its Healing Power —
Relationship to New Thought Literature — Faults of Style
— Value as a Commentary on the Bible — Fantastic
Exegesis — Element of Peril — How it Differs from the
Bible — The House upon the Sand 12-27

CHAPTER in

THE SOURCE OF ITS IDEAS

Modem Claim of their OriginaUty — The Conflict with
the Author's Earlier Words — The Quimby Panegyrics —
Teaching Quimbyism — Cooling Gratitude — Absolute
Disavowals — Mesmeric Explanations — Crux of the Sit-
uation — 1862 versus 1888 — Quimby's Scrap-book — Dr.
Evans's Testimony — Incapacity of Mrs. Eddy's Modern

Witnesses — The Deadly Parallel 28-49

xvii

xviii Contents

CHAPTER IV

THE FOUNDER OP THE FAITH

The World when she was Born — Childhood — Envu-on-
ment and Education — First Marriage in 1843 — Widow-
hood and Invalidism — Second Marriage in 1853 — Visit in
1862 to Quimby — His Healing System — Mrs. Eddy's
Great Mistake — The " Final Revelation" in 1866— Sepa-
ration from her Second Husband and Divorce — Profes-
sional Visiting — Partnership in Lynn with Richard
Kennedy in 1870 — Established as a Healer — Relationship
with D. H. Spofford— The Docile Mr. Eddy— Third Mar-
riage — Christian Science Organised in 1875 — Removed
in 1881 to Boston — Court and Cabinet — College and
Church — To Concord in 1889 — Christian Science To-day
— An Astonishing Autocrat — The Manual — The Mod-
ern Mona Lisa — Her Virtues and her Faults. . . 50-107

CHAPTER V

THE PHILOSOPHY

A Phase of Idealism — Mrs. Eddy Makes a Revelation
of it — The Battle Cry of Christian Science — The Ques-
tion of Reality — Christian Science neither Christian
nor Scientific — The Practical Objection — Difficulties
of Apologists — Soul Senses — Mrs. Eddy's Isolation —
An Unanswerable Criticism — No Room for Evolution
— A Grave Indictment — Timely Illustrations of its
Philosophical Anarchy 108-134

CHAPTER VI

THE RELIGION AND THEOLOGY

God All-in-all — Principle not Personality — From
Pantheism into Dualism — The Trinity — Christian
Science is the Holy Spirit — The Incarnation an Exag-
gerated Nestorianism — Deifying Mrs. Eddy — Prayer
Declaration not Petition — Abandoning the Sacraments
— Substitution of a Breakfast for the Lord's Supper —
Evil no Real Existence — The Absurd Obsession of Ani-
mal Magnetism 135-168

Contents xix

PAGES

CHAPTER VII

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING

The Supreme Test of Christian Science — Mrs. Eddy's
Claim that Christian Science Cures All Diseases — Her
Followers' Attitude — Venturesome Experiments — Con-
cessions to Pubhc Opinion — Inadequate Diagnoses — All
Tests Dechned — Mrs. Eddy's Attack upon the Doctors
— Reply of Medicine and Surgery — Healing by Under-
standing of the Christian Science Theory — Practical
Illustrations — Chemicalisation — Jesus' Way ^—Mental ■""
HeaUng through the Centuries — Pseudo-Scientific and
True Scientific Mental Healing — Principle Common to
Both — The Possibihties and Limitations of Suggestion
— Christian Science Admits no Limitations — Consequent
Need of State Regulation— The Duty to the Truth. 169-202

CHAPTER Vin

MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

The Gravest Defect — Christian Science Ascetic — Mrs.
Eddy's Testimony Prompted by her Personal Experience
— Denies the Sacramental Use of Matter — Misinter-
prets Jesus' Words — Teaches Possibihty of Race Perpet-
uation without Marriage — Some Explanations which
do not Explain — Simultaneous Contradictions — The
Testimony of the Manual and the Lesson Quarterly —
Public Opinion Making Ready for a Final Judgment
— The Alternative — Duty of the Hour. . . 203-220

Notes 221-252

Index , 253-261

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This bibliography does not profess to be complete. It
includes in fact only those books and other writings which
have proved useful in the preparation of this volume.
The current literature on Christian Science is too abun-
dant for mention of more than the most significant maga-
zine articles. The arrangement is made with respect to
the special needs of those who may desire to read sys-
tematically in explanation, in commendation, or in criti-
cism of the movement.

BOOKS BY MRS. EDDY

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Boston,
editions of 1875, 1881,1883, 1888, 1898, 1905, 1906.
Miscellaneous Writings. Boston, 1902.
Retrospection and Introspection. Boston, 1900.
Pulpit and Press. Boston, 1905.
No and Yes. Boston, 1906.
Rudimental Divine Science. Boston, 1906.
Christian Science versus Pantheism. Boston, 1906.
Unity of Good. Boston, 1906.
Christ and Christinas. Boston, 1906.
Church Manual. Boston, 1906.

PAMPHLETS BY CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS

Farlow, Alfred. A Critic Answered.

Fluno, F. J. Christian Science; A Reasonable and Ra-

tional View of all Things.
Hanna, S. J. Christian Science History.

Healing through Christian Science.

Christian Science and Legislation,

XX

Bibliography xxi

Hering, H. S. Christian Science: Humanity's Helper,
Kimball, E. A. Christian Science and Legislation.
Norton, Carol. The Christian Science Church: Its

Organisation and Polity.
Robinson, Henry. A Biographical Sketch of Rev. Mary

Baker G. Eddy.
Smith, C. P. Christian Science and Legislation.

CURRENT LITERATURE FAVOURABLE TO
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Beman, S. S., in The World To-day, June, 1907.
Brisbane, Arthur, in The Cosmopolitan, August, 1907.
BuRNHAM, Clara Louise, in The World To-day, February,

1907.
Dunmore, Earl of, in The Cosmopolitan, March, 1907.
Eddy, Mrs., in The Independent, Nov. 22, 1906.
EwiNG, Wm. G., in Success, June, 1907.
Farlow, Alfred, in Government, May, 1907.
Flower, B. 0., in The Arena, January, 1907.
Johnston, W. A., in The Broadway Magazine, May, 1907.
Kimball, E. A., in The Cosmopolitan, May, 1907.
Klein, Charles, in The Cosmopolitan, January, 1907.

in The Arena, May, 1907.

McCracken, W. D., in The Arena, May, 1907.
Mattox, W. S., in The American Queen, May, 1907.
MiMS, Sue H., in Success, May, 1907.
MosLEY, J. R., in The Cosmopolitan, July, 1907.

1907.
Wilbur, Sibyl, in Human Life, serial beginning January,

1907.
T'^iLLis, John B., in The Arena, July.
Yates, Katherine M., in The American Queen, March.
The list of daily papers will not be given.

BOOKS OF CRITICISM OR APPRAISAL

Buckley, J. M. , Christian Science and Other Super-
stitions. New York, 1902.

xxii Bibliography

BuRRELL, J. D., A New Appraisal of Christian Science.
New York, 1906.

Casson, H. N., The Crime of Credulity. New York, 1901.

Clark, Gordon, The Church of Saint Bunco. New York,
1901.

Clemens, S. L. (Mark Twain), Christian Science. New
York, 1907.

COE, George A., The Spiritual Life, Ch. IV. New York,
1900.

CUSHMAN, H. E., The Truth in Christian Science. Bos-
ton, 1902.

Dresser, A. G., The Philosophy of P, P, Quimby. Bos-
ton, 1895.

Dresser, H. W., Health and the Inner Life. New York,
1906.

, Methods and Problems of Spiritual Healing.

New York, 1899.

Dresser, Julius A., The True History of Mental Science.
New York, 1899.

Farnsworth, Edward C, in The Arena, July.

GODDARD, H. H., The Effects of Mind on Body, as Evi-
denced by Faith Cures. American Journal of Psy-
chology, volume X, 1899.

Hutchinson, Oliver W., Christian Science. Leominster,

Mass., 1906.
James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience,

Chs. IV and V, New York, 1902.

Micou, R. W., Outline Notes on Fundamental Theology
and Christian Apologetics. Alexandria, Va., 1902.

MuLDOON, W. H., Christian Science Claims Unscientific
and TJn-ChristiaiR Brooklyn Eagle Library, 51.
March, 1901.

Newton, R. Heber, Christian Science. New York, 1898.

OuGHTON, C. M., Crazes, Credulities, and Christian Sci-
ence, Chicago, 1901.

Parmelee, Mary Platt, Christian Science. New York,
1904.

Patterson, C. B., The Will to be Well. New York, 1907.

Bibliography xxiii

Peabody, F. W., Complete Exposure of Eddyism or

Christian Science. Boston, 1907.
Powell, L. P., The Anarchy of Christian Science. North-
ampton, Mass., 1906.
Searchlights on Christian Science. New York, 1899.
Shinn, G. W., Some Modern Substitutes for Christianity.

New York, 1896.
Snyder, John, A Little Journey in Christian Science.

Boston, 1907.
Sturge, M. Carta, The Truth and Error of Christian

Science. New York, 1903.
Wood, Henry, The New Thought Simplified. Boston,

1903.
Wright, Livingston, How Rev. Wiggin Rewrote Mrs.

Eddy's Book. Reprinted from the New York World,

1906.

OTHER WRITINGS USED OR CITED

Barker, Lewellys F., The Nervous System. New York,

1899.
Bernheim, Le Dr., De la Suggestion. Paris, 1888.
Bramwell, J. Milne, Hypnotism, its History, Practice,

and Theory. London, 1903.
Campbell, R. J., The New Theology. New York, 1907.
Case, C. D., The Masculine in Religion. Philadelphia,

1907.
Dresser, H. W., The Facts of the Case. The Arena, May,

1899.
Dubois, Paul, The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Dis-
orders. New York, 1906.
,The Influence of the Mind on the Body, New

York, 1906.
Evans, W. F., Mental Medicine. Boston, 1872 and 1874.
Farrar, F. W., The Bible: Its Meaning and Supremacy.

New York, 1897.
Frothingham, O. B., Transcendentalism in New England.

New York, 1876.
Hopkins, H. R., The Prognosis in Eddyism, in American

Medical Quarterly, January, 1900.

xxiv Bibliography

Hudson, T. J., The Law of Mental Medicine,

Huxley, T. H., on The Miraculous, in The Nineteenth

Century, March, 1899. Chicago, 1903.
Keen, W. W., Surgery, in The Progress of the Century.

New York, 1901.
Lane-Poole, Stanley, The Speeches and Table-Talk of

the Prophet Mohammed. London, 1882.
Leonard, W. J., Warren Felt Evans, in Practical Ideals,

1905-6.
Lodge, Sir Oliver, The Substance of Faith Allied with

Science. New York, 1907.

Milmine, Georgine, Mary Baker G. Eddy. McClure's

Magazine, serial beginning January, 1907.
Moll, Albert, Hypnotism. New York, 1894.
More, Paul Elmer, The Great Refusal. Boston and

New York, 1894. j ,

MussER, John H. A Practical Treatise on Medical

Diagnosis. Philadelphia, 1900.
Myers, F. W. H., Human Personality, 2 vols. New York,

1903.
Osler, William, The Principles and Practice of Medicine,

New York, 1892.
, Medicine in The Progress of the Century. New

York, 1901.
QuiMBY, George A., Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, in The

New England Magazine, March, 1888.
Richardson, T. H., Race Suicide and Christian Science,

in The Canadian Journal of Medicine and Surgery.

Toronto, October, 1906.
Schofield, a. T., a Study of Faith Healing. New

York.

, Nerves in Disorder, New York, 1903.

Seaman, Major L. L., on the Japanese Army Medical

Service, in Review of Reviews, Nov. 1905.
The Spectator, Feb. 16 and 23, 1907, The Power of

Suggestion.
Suzuki, S., Sanitation of the Japanese Navy, in Review

of Reviews, Nov., 1905.

Bibliography xxv

Taylor, J. Madison, Drugs and their Abuses, in Popular

Science Monthly, May, 1907.
Thomson, W. H., Brain and Personality. New York,

1907.
TuCKEY, C. Lloyd, Treatment by Hypnotism and Sugges-
tion. New York, 1907.
Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, The History of David Grieve.

New York, 1892.
Wood, Irving F., The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature.

New York, 1904.
Woodbury, J. C, The Book and the Woman, in The Arena,

May, 1899.
Zechandelaer, Dr., Suggestion, in The Hollandsche

Revue, 1907.
Zola, Emile, Lourdes. London, 1903.

To this list should be added the collection of newspaper
clippings and magazine articles of Dr. Talcott Williams
of Philadelphia, to which reference is made in the Preface.

I

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

CHAPTER I

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND HISTORIC
CHRISTIANITY

A Strained Relationship — The Cause — Aim of Christian
Science — Its Criticism of the Churches — Mrs. Eddy's
Purpose — Unconscious Proselyting — The Virtues of
the Scientists — Weakness of Christian Churches —
The Danger Point.

T F there is to-day a strained relationship be-
^ tween historic Christianity and Christian
Science, the fault chiefly, in the nature of the
case, is with Christian Science. The facts in
evidence are incontestable.

Christian Science has passed through no
such persecution as the early Church experi-
enced. While now and then some minister
has raised his voice or pen, he has always
spoken for himself alone, and hot always even
then in criticism severed from appreciation.

2 Christian Science

Far from any disposition to drive out the mem-
bers of their flock turned Christian Scientists,
most ministers have, if I may trust my observa-
tion and inquiry, tried by kindly toleration and
by friendly words to keep them in the fold.
When, nevertheless, they would go out, many
ministers have watched them go more in
sorrow than in bitterness.

Even a careless reader of Mrs. Eddy's books
is obliged to see that Mrs. Eddy came not, like
Jesus, to fulfil but to destroy. She was
prompt in breaking with the past. The know-
ledge she had gleaned from school books
vanished, she remarks, when she discovered
Christian Science.^ Between Christ and her,
all along the intervening centuries, she hints,
no thinker has appeared, and she quietly ob-
serves, " The time for thinkers has come.
Truth independent of doctrines and time-
honoured systems, knocks at the portal of
humanity." ^

Christian Science was not the culmination of
a movement. " I have found nothing," she
says, " in ancient or modern systems on which
to found my own." ^ It was a revelation. No
one had made ready for it. No one could. It

1 Here and elsewhere the numerals in the text refer to
notes at the end of the volume.

^

And Historic Christianity 3

flashed upon- her as soon as she was ready to
receive it,^ and when it did it was " higher,
clearer, and more permanent " than His revela-
tion was to Jesus. ^

Though there are signs of late that some of
her representatives do not sharply discrimi-
nate between a revelation and an evolution,
Mrs. Eddy's course in this regard has been
steadily consistent. She withdrew from the
church of her upbringing. She founded a
church of her own. She gave to it rules and
by-laws " impelled by a power not her own." ^
She claims for her text-book, which contains —
as she states — the revelation, a place of equal
importance with the Bible in the public ser-
vices of her church. She calls her book
" God's Book " and the " Book of Books." '
She contends that it is as truly authorised by
Christ as is the Bible. ^

A quarter of a century has passed since she
began to preach in the " Mother Church in
Boston," and nowhere all along the years, if
her books are a criterion, has she shown any
disposition to affiliate with those who do not
share her point of view and who yet believe
that they are Christians. In spite of Mrs.
Eddy's protest in The Independent of Nov.
22, 1906, that she " loves the prosperity of

4 Christian Science

Zion, be it promoted by Catholic, by Protest-
ant, or by Christian Science," there is no mis-
taking what Hes back of words Hke these,
written as long ago as 1890:

Christian Science is the pure evangelic truth.
It accords with the trend and tenor of Christ's
teaching and example, while it demonstrates the
power of Christ as taught in the four gospels.
Truth, casting out evils and healing the sick; Love
fulfilling the law, and keeping man unspotted from
the world — these practical manifestations of Christi-
anity constitute the only evangelism, and they
need no creed.^ Outside of this science all is un-
stable error.i^

She calls the faith of others blind belief rest-
ing on the evidences of the senses rather than
on the teaching and practice of Jesus, or the
world of spirit.^^ She hints that her sense,
whatever it may be, is a higher sense than
yours or mine, and speaks outright about our
ignorance.^^ She says that " sin makes deadly
thrusts at the Christian Scientist, as natural-
ism and creed are summoned to give place
to higher law." She gives twelve pages,
above her average in clearness, in the late edi-
tions of Science and Health to the identifica-
tion of modern Christians with the ancient
Pharisees.^^

And Historic Christianity 5

Men may differ about even the essentials of
Christian faith and yet wish each other well
so long as they beheve in one another's honesty
of purpose. But how can there be the entente
cordiale between historic Christianity and
Christian Science with Mrs. Eddy falling into
what comes close to personal abuse?

As in Jesus' time, so to-day, tyranny and pride
need to be whipped out of the temple, and humility
and divine science welcomed in. The strong cords
of scientific demonstration as twisted and wielded
by Jesus are still needed, to purge the temples of
their worldly policy, and make them meet dwelling
places for the Most High.^*

As Charles Francis Adams reminded Lord
Russell at a memorable moment in our coun-
try's history, this sort of thing is war, and no
talk about love in the abstract, no injunction
to "do good unto your enemies when the op-
portunity comes," ^^ no protestation that Mrs.
Eddy loves the orthodox church, can make up
for the lack of love displayed through many of
her writings. It is war. Mrs. Eddy pictures
it in her parody on The Charge of the Light
Brigade:

" Traitors to right of them,
M. D.'s to left of them,
Priestcraft in front of them,
Volleyed and thundered." ^^

6 Christian Science

It is war. But as Mrs. Eddy, more accu-
rate than she designed, describes it, war of
her own making on those who have gone out
from her, on doctors, and on clergymen, —
all of whom she pictures in her doggerel as
in an attitude, not of offence, but of vigorous
self-defence.

Be not deceived. Mrs. Eddy means to
drive historic Christianity out of people's
minds and to put her faith in place of it.
" We can not fill vessels already full. They
must first be emptied," ^^ she remarks. Be-
fore she published her text-book in 1875, she
was making it obligatory on her followers to
break with their past, ^^ and to-day the conver-
sion of a man or woman to Christian Science
invariably detaches them, in thought at least,
from the church of their first love and leads to
their affiliation, actual if not always nominal
at first, with the band of the like-minded. For
a Christian Scientist, old things are passed
away, all things are become new.

Everywhere, the Christian Science organisa-
tion is made up, it would seem, of those who
have come out of Christian churches and who
keep out of touch with other Christians,
who interpret the embarrassment their own
aloofness causes as distraint, charge honest in-

And Historic Christianity 7

quiry to unfriendliness, claim all criticism to be
persecution, and serve year in, year out, as
magnets, not to draw the heathen far or near,
but to draw the discontented and the ill-
informed from their proper church allegi-
ance/^

Mistaking incoherence for illumination, they
put into the minds of those who have perhaps
no philosophy of life, a philosophy so difficult
to understand that when an inquirer in all
honesty both fails to understand and refuses to
accept on trust, his intelligence is questioned or
his sincerity denied. Mistaking pseudo-scien-
tific terminology for scientific truth, they give
to people who may be informed in everything
but science, conceptions which would crowd
out of even the most spacious mind every fact
that science has discovered and every general-
isation that science has established. Mistaking
optimistic vagueness for Christian revela-
tion, they allure from their allegiance the
generous, the high-minded, and the over-
trustful, who appearing to find in Christian
Science relief from certain ills they thought in-
curable, straightway forget that a little know-
ledge is a dangerous thing and hasten on to the
conclusion that Christian Science must be true
in all respects because it may be true in one.

8 Christian Science

No one doubts the good intentions of the
Christian Scientists. Some of the purest souls
ahve to-day are Christian Scientists. They
have done much good. Allowing all you will
for exaggeration, there can be no denying that
Christian Scientists have helped the sick, re-
formed the drunkard, reclaimed the prodigal,
brought surcease to many a sorrow and anxi-
ety, tempered life's asperities, furnished a
philosophy for every-day existence where there
was none before, filled souls with what Charles
Klein has called " happiness far beyond my
wildest dreams."

To an age grown weary and impatient of
ecclesiasticism and machinery. Christian Sci-
entists have brought something of the warmth
and glow, the freshness and the spontaneity,
the poise and the sincerity, the gladness and
the other worldliness which suffused the Apos-
tolic age and made it all alive with spiritual
power.^^

The early Christians lived above life's fret
and turmoil. They knew the peace which
passeth understanding. They endured as
seeing Him who is invisible. They lived for
Jesus Christ and Him alone. Knit together
** in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith
and charity," they went out to win the world
to Christ.

And Historic Christianity 9

Christians to-day in many places seem to
have lost the Apostolic spirit. They appear
sometimes to believe with their heads but not
with their hearts. There is much in Christen-
dom now to recall the situation in Rome when
**' every man had two religions ; the one he pro-
fessed and the other he believed." ^^ Chris-
tian work to-day is far too often automatic.
Christians are too prone to give everything but
themselves to the cause they represent. For-
getting that the good fight of faith is never
won by hirelings, they are apt to send sub-
stitutes in their stead and to repair to the golf
links. Guilds and societies are frequent and
inadequate representatives of " one holy bond
of truth and peace, of faith and charity."

While this is distinctively a church-build-
ing age, it is not so clearly a church-going age.
Men are so small a proportion of the average
congregation that the faith is often feminised.^^
The Church's loss of moral leadership is every-
where admitted. The Priest and Levite, as
President Eliot said the other day, too often
pass by the great evils of the age. Church
papers now are in the stage of explanation.
The great preachers of the new redemption of
society are found in the White House, the cabi-
net, and the editorial room, oftener than the
pulpit. Far from standing together and

lo Christian Science

together going out, as early Christians did, to
conquer all for Christ, the Christian Church at
large is broken up into conflicting sects, and
the individual church in many a place is di-
vided into sets distrustful of one another and
insistent on those undemocratic class distinc-
tions which are the bane of Church and State
alike and which make the Church, though not
the Christ, a hissing and a by- word everywhere.

And God, unless the signs belie Him, is
growing weary of it all. He is saying in
these days to many a church that will not hear
his voice: " Bring me no more vain oblations.
. . . Your appointed feasts my soul hateth;
they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear
them!" "What doth the Lord require of
thee but to do justly and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with thy God?"^^ There
must be a return all along the line to Apos-
tolic simplicity, Apostolic spontaneity. Apos-
tolic love. Apostolic joy, and Apostolic peace.
And Christian Science, whatever be its limita-
tions, seems to some to blaze a way.

Christian Science has its faults, but Chris-
tian Scientists, whatever the demerits of their
system, have many virtues to their credit.
" They are sincere and filled with that moral
enthusiasm that is a potent motor power in all

And Historic Christianity ii

great religious or ethical movements in their
early days." ^* They believe in spiritual
things, and they are as bold in uttering their
belief as were the early Christians. There is
never the apologetic note for which one in-
stinctively listens in the talk of many Chris-
tians in these days. They are protests in the
flesh against the worldliness and the ecclesi-
asticism which afflict the Church, and the
materialism and lust which threaten the foun-
dations of the social order. They furnish
everywhere proof positive and peace-bringing,
that where there is a will there is a way to live
the spirit's life against all odds.

And yet in spite of all the virtues which I
find in Christian Scientists and more readily
admit because I count them rather the product
of historic Christianity than of Christian
Science, I see in Christian Science defects
which in time will either relegate it to the
limbo of exploded heresies or which, should
it possibly become the universal faith — a mani-
fest improbability — will take from the world
all humanity has learned in ages past, will
write falsehood across the brow of philosophy,
science, and religion, and will give us in the
place of what we have, the inheritance of the
centuries, some sort of anarchy.

CHAPTER II

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

Source of its Authority — Takes Precedence of the Bible —
Exorbitant Selling Price — Its Healing Power — Re-
lationship to New Thought Literature — Faults of
Style — Value as a Commentary on Bible — Fantastic
Exegesis — Element of Peril — How it Differs From the
Bible — The House Upon the Sand.

A A /^HILE there is an abundant literature
^ ^ on Christian Science, there is but one
authentic source of information. That is Mrs.
Eddy's monumental book, Science and Healthy
first published in 1875, and now past its 440th
edition. It is a portly volume of some seven
hundred pages and more than two hundred
thousand words. But large as is the book, its
claim for authority is larger. The author
gravely writes that Science and Health is " the
voice of Truth to this age, and contains the
whole of Christian Science." ^ The book is to
be read at every Christian Science service in
explanation of the Bible, and is, Mrs. Eddy
says, through her official representatives, as

12

Science and Health 13

" uncontaminated and unfettered by human
hypotheses " as is the Bible, and as surely
'' authorised by Christ." ^

But this surprising claim is modesty itself
compared with the larger claim which Mrs.
Eddy makes in her autobiography that Science
and Health occupies a vantage ground which
the Bible does not share. These are her own
words: "The Scripture gave no direct inter-
pretation of the Scientific basis for demonstrat-
ing the spiritual Principle of heaUng, until our
Heavenly Father saw fit, through the key to
the Scriptures, in Science and Health, to un-
lock ' this mystery of Godliness.' " ^ And then,
as though to allay the dismay such words are
apt to bring to those who read them first, she
writes in 1901 : " I should blush to write of
Science and Health, with Key to the Scrip-
tures, 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,
I can not be supermodest of the Christian
Science text-book." ^

After this, one is not surprised to find the
Bible yielding first place in Christian Science
worship to the Christian Science text-book.
It seems fitting in the light of Mrs. Eddy's
estimate of the relative importance of the

14 Christian Science

Bible and her book that the Second Reader,
not the First, should read aloud the Scripture
texts while to the First Reader falls the more
important task of reading the passages from
Science and Health which are expected to ex-
plain in full the meaning of the Bible words.^

But to the practical mind far more signifi-
cant is the amazing difference in the selling
price of the two books. The Bible with its
million words can be bought by any one for
fifteen cents. ^ Science and Healthy not one-
fourth as large, sells in its least expensive form,
for $3.18. Whether rich or poor, you must
pay for Science and Healthy allowing for the
difference in size of the two books, eighty times
as much as you may pay for your Bible. The
Bible is sold at cost in the cheaper editions.
Science and Health in its cheapest form yields
a profit to its author amounting probably to
several hundred per cent.

In quantities of one hundred thousand copies
Science and Health can, as I am informed,
be reproduced at a cost of from thirty to forty
cents a copy. Mark Twain, with his life-long
experience as both an author and a publisher,
thinks that the cost would be much smaller
in the case of a book like Science and Health
*• whose market is so sure and so great that you

Science and Health 15

can give a printer a standing order for thirty
or forty or fifty thousand copies a year," which
will enable him to work at the contract " when-
ever there is a slack time in his press-room
and bindery." '^ In confirmation of Mark
Twain's estimate, an easy calculation will
clearly indicate that the weekly output of
Science and Health is now about a thousand
copies and a new edition is run off the press
every two or three weeks.

The Publication Committee, after disclaim-
ing all specific knowledge of the facts, says
that the Christian Science text-book is
" printed in small quantities and with constant
changes," that there is a profit to the publisher
and the retailer to be taken into account, and
that the expense of transportation is paid by
the publisher in lots of one dozen or more.^

But such an explanation is not adequate.
The cost of making the plates is the same for
one copy as for one hundred thousand copies.
The changes made from time to time cannot
be considerable in a book of which there have
been in ten years almost three hundred new
issues, an average of almost three a month. ^
It is also of significance that in the preparation
of the Bible lessons for the present quarter,
not the 440th edition, but the 379th was used,

1 6 Christian Science

and " most of the references can be found,"
says the note for students of the lessons, " in
the previous editions " back as far as the
226th, which appeared some years ago/^

With full allowance for proper compensa-
tion to the publisher, the retailer, and the
transportation companies, there will still be
for the author a profit of several hundred per
cent. Mrs. Eddy has actually acknow-
ledged in the case of Eddy versus Frye et at
that she has an estate amounting to almost a
million dollars,^^ most of which has doubtless
accumulated from the sale of Science and
Health, of which every Christian Scientist is
obliged to circulate and sell as many copies as
possible on pain of losing " his membership in
the church." ^^

Again, Mrs. Eddy claims for her book what
has never in all the Christian centuries been
claimed for the Bible, that the mere reading of
it " heals sickness constantly." The Earl
of Dunmore, who died August 26, testifies that
his wife was " literally snatched from the jaws
of death through reading the Christian Science
text-book." The palsied arm of another was
cured by reading the single sentence " All is
Mind." ^^ And some have claimed that one
sentence fully understood will cure disease of

Science and Health 17

any sort. The spiritual atmosphere which the
book generates, wherever and whenever it is
read, is too rarefied to nourish long the false
view that we are sick; therefore we get well.

Many of the thoughts found in Science and
Health abound in the Christian literature of
this and of other times. Much of it is familiar
to those who read the New Thought books of
Henry Wood and Charles Brodie Patterson. ^"^
In them as well as in the Christian Science
text-book there is insistence on the unity of
all life and of all intelligence gathered up into
the thought of God as " All in all." But as to
matter, sin, and pain there is a constant and
irreconcilable difference. The New Thought
does not invalidate the evidence of the senses.
The New Thought does not dodge the realities
of hfe. The New Thought admits the actual
existence of matter, sin, and pain, but teaches
us to rise above them on the spirit's wings.
Christian Science dismisses them as vain
imaginings of mortal mind and is put to such
shrift to deny their existence as makes Science
and Health sometimes read, says Dr. Elwood
Worcester, " Kke the writing of a philosopher
suffering from acute softening of the brain."

The difficulty is not merely with the style,
which though often marred by absurdity, tur-

1 8 Christian Science

gidity, and faulty diction, possesses a certain
lofty distinctiveness, a certain sonorous au-
thoritativeness, which a book that claims to be
a j'cvelation ought to have to command the
interest of the undiscriminating. The diffi-
culty is also with the arrangement of the work.
There is a woful want of seciuence both in
thought and word. The reader can begin
anywhere and stop anywhere without serious
loss or gain. Mrs. Kddy in one section states
that certain of her sentences read backward
mean as much as when read forward, and many
not of her persuasion will readily agree with
her.

No matter what editions you may chance to
be comparing, there is an unexpected insta-
bility of arrangement in a book which the au-
thor claims is of the nature of " final revela-
tion." Mrs. Eddy is not content to let the
sequence remain permanent. Of four editions
dated, respectively, 1881, 1888, 1898, and 1906,
the chapter which comes first in the first and
second of the four editions comes fifth in the
third and sixth in the fourth. The second
chapter in the first and second editions is third
and eighth respectively in the third and fourth.
The third chapter in the first edition appears
as the fifth in the second, the second in the

Science and Health 19

third, and the seventh in the fourth. Chapter
IV in the first edition is Chapter XII in the
second and XIV in the third and fourth
editions. Chapter V in the first is IX in the
second, XII in the third and fourth. And
the variation lasts throughout.

Lucidity is an honest test to apply to any
modern Anglo-Saxon book. Those who think
clearly and write clearly can state the truth
to-day in terms the average mind can under-
stand. And when normal people find men as
high above the average as the Rev. Drs. Ly-
man Abbot, George A. Gordon, J. M. Buck-
ley, and Elwood Worcester differing among
themselves as to the meaning of Science
and Health it is not, perhaps, unreasonable
to conclude that the responsibility rests
not on the reader but on the author of the
book.

Mrs. Eddy has undoubtedly improved
greatly in her power to express herself on pa-
per, since her literary helper ^^ twenty years
ago testified she was constantly confusing
such words as physics and physiology, gnostic
and agnostic, and putting him to his wits' end
to save her " from making herself ridiculous
and from flatly contradicting herself." But
there is still some justification for Mark

20 Christian Science

Twain's sweeping judgment that Mrs. Eddy
" so lacks in the matter of Hterary precision
that she can seldom put a thought into words
that express it lucidly to the reader and leave
no doubts in his mind as to whether he has
rightly understood or not." ^^

Philosophy is broken up to-day into three
camps. In one, matter is regarded as the only
reality ; in another, mind and matter seem alike
substantial; in the third, matter is steadily
characterised as but a form of thought. It is
in this camp that Mrs. Eddy can be found, but
she has a special tent. Her philosophy is a
" crude unintelligent form of idealistic panthe-
ism." ^^ Her purpose is to superimpose it on
organic Christianity by making Science and
Health the one authoritative commentary on
the Bible.

To the most audacious task any commenta-
tor ever undertook Mrs. Eddy brings no-
thing usually considered necessary to Biblical
exegesis. She says in her autobiography that
she learned some Greek and Hebrew when she
was a girl. But she also says that all her child-
hood learning " vanished like a dream " after
her discovery of Christian Science.^^

If she has any quality except persistence re-
quired in the scholar whose business it is to

Science and Health 21

find out what the Bible means, no matter what
philosophy it may support, Mrs. Eddy has
succeeded all these years in hiding it from even
the most searching student of her book. If
she knows anything of the real nature of the
problems on which Biblical experts are brood-
ing in these days she nowhere gives a sign of
it/^ She indicated in a letter of last April
her intention to take up the higher critic-
ism, but at eighty-six a mind is too well-sea-
soned to be likely to habituate itself to a
radically different point of view.

The fact is that she distrusts all modern
learning, and with her approval the Mother
Church in Boston chose for its new president,
June 11, 1907, a man who put himself on rec-
ord thus in his acceptance of the office: " In an
age of so-called higher criticism, wherein the
fundamental truths of the Bible are openly
assailed and cast aside as impractical and
visionary, it remains to them [Christian Scien-
tists] to preserve for future generations the
very integrity of the Scriptures." ^^

Her exegesis of specific words is but the
reading into them of meaning necessary to
support her strange philosophy. To oblige a
commentator so ambitious one would believe,
if it were possible, that Science and Health

22 Christian Science

contains, as its author earnestly assures us,
" the metaphysical interpretation of Bible
terms — giving their spiritual sense, which is
also their original meaning." But how can
it be possible with interpretations offered us as
fanciful as these? ^^

Adam " represents the false supposition " that
" the Infinite enters the finite."

ArJc means " the understanding of spirit, destroy-
ing belief in matter."

Baptism is " submergence in Truth."

Children are " counterfeits of creation, whose
better originals are God's thoughts."

Dan is " animal magnetism : so-called mortal mind
controlling mortal mind."

Death: " Any material evidence of death is
false."

Mortal Mind: "Nothing, claiming to be some-
thing."

Mother: " God, divine and eternal Principle, Life,
Truth, and Love."

New Jerusalem: " Divine Science."

Noah: " Knowledge of the nothingness of material
things, and the immortality of all that is spiritual."

Will: " The motive-power of error."

No less fanciful is Mrs. Eddy in the inter-
pretation of specific texts.^^ Her practice
is, as in the exegesis of words, to give every
text the meaning it should have to illustrate
her philosophy.

Science and Health 23

" Thy kingdom come " she thus explains re-
gardless of the tense : " Thy kingdom is within
us, Thou art ever present."

" That was the true Light, which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world," carries
with it the evident non sequitur: " Truth cross-
questioning man as to his knowledge of error,
finds woman the first to confess her fault."

" The Lord knoweth the way of the right-
eous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.'*
When a truth is so self-evident, why need
Mrs. Eddy add " Truth has but one reply to
all error, to sin, sickness, and death : ' Dust
(nothingness) thou art, and unto dust (no-
thingness) shalt thou return ' " ?

" I am he that liveth and was dead : and be-
hold I am alive for evermore, Amen ; and have
the keys of hell and of death." The Book of
Revelation is difficult at best to understand.
Explanations like the following but enhance
the difficulty : " Truth should, and does drive
error out of all selfhood."

Once at least Mrs. Eddy has ventured to
change outright the words of Scripture so as
to alter their essential meaning. She sent the
following telegraphic greeting to the Na-
tional Christian Science Association in session
in New York, May 27, 1890;

24 Christian Science

" All hail! He hath filled the hungry with
good things and the sick he hath not sent empty
away. — Mother Maryf'

When later brought to account by a dis-
tressed disciple for substituting " sick " for
" rich " and inserting a " not " where there
was none, she showed at first no disposition to
correct the error, though she did correct it
casually two months later in an organ circu-
lated only among her own flock.^^

People outside Christian Science will
scarcely be inclined to take Science and Health
seriously as a commentary on the Bible. And
yet the book must not be dismissed too lightly.
It is read in comment on the Bible every Sun-
day at the service, every week day in the home.
Christian Scientists are among the few people
in the land who read their Bible every day.
Theirs is the only organisation in Christendom
which commands the Bible to be read in the
light of any commentary. Science and Health
is therefore coupled with the Bible in the minds
of some of the most zealous propagandists of
religion in Christendom to-day, and they num-
ber many thousands. There are elements of
peril in the situation.

And yet it can not be that the Bible is to
suffer permanently from the obsession Mrs,

^;

Science and Health 25

Eddy's masterpiece has placed upon it. The
difference between the two books is funda-
mental. The Bible is built upon the rock of
actual experience. It explains no facts away.
It throbs with life Hved in the body. It is the
story of man's battle with the beast within.
Through the pages of the Bible, from Genesis
to Revelation, man is ever coming " from
Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah."
The Bible is stained through with red blood.
Real blows are given. Real tears are shed.
Real shouts of victory ring out on the
air. Live men and women tell us their heart
secrets and we listen as though we saw them
face to face. The Bible finds every one be-
cause it is intensely biographical. " Sunrise
and sunset, birth and death, promise and fulfil-
ment, the whole drama of Humanity are all in
this book! "2^

Science and Health is built upon the sand
of metaphysics, and on nothing else. It is
the most successful effort which the modern
world has seen to make popular a philosoph-
ical abstraction. It is, to be sure, biography,
but the biography of a single soul, and that a
soul which has not entered deeply into life.
If the author of Science and Health has ever
yielded herself in a self -forgetful outpour of

26 Christian Science

affection to any human soul, there is no trace
of such experience in her book. Once at least
she has reproved a follower for expecting to
receive from her a love individualised. The
love she has for man she gives to man as an
abstract composite. ISTo one would think of
calling her what Henry Drummond once called
Dwight L. Moody, " a big human." There
are no heart throbs in her book. There is
nothing human in it.

" My soul is athirst for God ; yea, for the
living God," the psalmist says. Mrs. Eddy
mildly hints that " the human capacities are
enlarged and perfected, in proportion asi
humanity gains the true conception of man
and God." 2^

" The effectual fervent prayer of a
righteous man availeth much," St. James in-
forms us. Mrs. Eddy enters a demurrer:
" This common custom of praying for the re-
covery of the sick, finds help in blind belief;
whereas help should come from the enlightened
understanding." ^^

Completely conscious of the terrible reality
of sin in his own heart, St. Paul breaks out:
" O wretched man that I am! Who shall de-
liver me from the body of this death? " Mrs.
Eddy would deftly pluck away anxiety with

Science and Health 27

the impersonal remark, " If sin were under-
stood as nothingness it would disappear." ^^

" These things I command you, that ye love
one another," said the Master to His friends
the night before the crucifixion. " Personal
love is Uttle better than personal hate," ^^ is
Mrs. Eddy's contribution to the subject.

To those to whom death seems something
more heart-breaking than "the mortal dream"^^
which Mrs. Eddy calls it, the last book in the
Bible brings the comforting assurance that
" God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes." Mrs. Eddy cheers them with the cold
comfort that " there is no cause for grief." ^^

The Bible is built upon the human heart.
That is the reason why when in ages past " the
rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house, it fell
not "; " it was founded upon a rock."

Science and Health is built upon the sand of
metaphysics. That is the reason why, in spite
of Mark Twain's generous prediction, an-
other century may look back on this strange
delusion and remark: "The rain descended,
and the floods came, and the winds blew, and
beat upon that house; and it fell: and great
was the fall of it."

CHAPTER III

THE SOURCE OF ITS IDEAS

Modern Claim of their Originality — The Conflict with the
Author's Earlier Words — The Quimby Panegyrics —
Teaching Quimbyism — Cooling Gratitude — Absolute
Disavowals — Mesmeric Explanations — Crux of the
Situation — 1862 versus 1888 — Quimby's Scrap-book —
Dr. Evans's Testimony — Incapacity of Mrs. Eddy's
Modern Witnesses — The Deadly Parallel.

P OR the thoughts expressed in Science and
Health Mrs. Eddy disavows indebted-
ness to any human soul. " No human pen or
tongue," she says in 1906, " taught me." " In
the year 1866 I discovered the Christ Science
. . . and named it Christian Science"; and
to give her claim Apostolic import she quotes
in preface to her words a sentence of St.
Paul's : " I neither received it of man, neither
was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus
Christ." ^

Here the Christian Scientist is well content
to rest the case. Mrs. Eddy's word suffices.
He would take her word against the world.

28

The Source of its Ideas 29

Evidence, no matter who may offer it, tending
to invahdate her word seems to him, in the
premises, " dehberate falsehood." ^ But un-
happily for the Christian Scientist he has to
reckon with other words, and earlier, from
Mrs. Eddy's pen.

Thirteen years before Science and Health
appeared, four years before she claims in 1906
to have discovered Christian Science, Mrs.
Eddy wrote of a well-known healer, P. F.
Quimby, who cured her of an illness:

Now I can dimly see at first, and only as trees
walking, the great principle which underlies Dr.
Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion
to my right perception of truth is my recovery.
This truth which he opposes to the error of giving*
intelligence to matter and placing pain where it
never placed itself, if received understandingly,
changes the currents of the system to their nor-
mal action; and the mechanism of the body goes
undisturbed. That this is a science capable of
demonstration becomes clear to the minds of those
patients who reason upon the process of their
cure. 3

Transported by sheer gratitude she next
says of Dr. Quimby, since he " speaks as never
man before spake, and heals as never man
healed since Christ, is he not identified with

30 Christian Science

truth? And is not this the Christ which is in
him?"^

Grateful beyond prose she then proceeds to
bathe her healer in bathetic doggerel:

" 'Mid light of science sits the sage profound,
Awing with classics and his starry lore,
Climbing with VenuSj chasing Saturn round,
Turning his mystic pages o'er and o'er.
Till, from empyrean space, his wearied sight
Turns to the oasis on which to gaze.
More bright than glitters on the brow of night
The self-taught man walking in wisdom's ways.
Then paused the captive gaze with peace entwined.
And sight was satisfied with thee to dwell;
But not in classics would the book-worm find
That law of excellence whence came the spell
Potent o'er all, — the captive to unbind.
To heal the sick and faint, the halt and blind." ^

In the months that followed she talked in-
cessantly of Dr. Quimby to her friends, and
turned them into patients when she could.
Her intimate of those days, Mrs. Crosby, in
whose home Mrs. Eddy stayed for several
months, and of whom she once wrote Dr.
Quimby " Mrs. Crosby is one of the precious
few affinities with whom I meet," writes as
though there were no doubt of Mrs. Eddy's
complete absorption in the views of Dr.
Quimby. She adds that even as late as 1877,

The Source of its Ideas 31

when she was reporting Mrs. Eddy's lect-
ures, Mrs. Eddy's views were " substantially
the same " as the two had learned
some fifteen years before at Quimby's
feet.^ The testimony of Mr. and Mrs.
Julius A. Dresser, also student-patients when
Mrs. Eddy was, speaks to the same effect,

though they note that Mrs. Eddy's subsequent
interpretation of the teachings of her master
was one-sided.^ And Quimby's son, then
just past his majority, says that " Christian
Science would not now exist if Mrs. Eddy had
not filched the healing idea from him." ^

She deluged Dr. Quimby with letters, which
she now must wish were not extant, and which
are overfull of fulsome acknowledgment of
her indebtedness to him for the help he gave
her mind as well as for the healing of her body.
January 12, 1863, she wrote: " I am to all who
see me a living wonder, and a Hving monu-
ment of your power. . . . My explanation
of your curative principle surprises people,
especially those whose minds are all matter."
In letters that followed occur such sentences
as these: "Who is wise but you?" "Dear
Doctor, what could I do without you? " " I
am up and about to-day, i. e., by the help of
the Lord (Quimby) ." " Jesus taught as man

32 Christian Science

does not, who then is wise but you? "
" Posted at the public marts of this city is this
notice, — * Mrs. M. M. Patterson [now Mrs.
Eddy] will lecture at the Town Hall on P.
P. Quimby's Spiritual Science healing disease,
as opposed to Deism or Rochester Rapping
Spiritualism.' " ^

When Dr. Quimby died, January 16, 1866,
the year Mrs. Eddy says she discovered Chris-
tian Science without the help of human pen or
tongue, she was concerned lest no one should
be found strong enough to bend Ulysses' bow.
She urges Mr. Dresser, a man of unusual
character and ability, to take up the work of
Quimby on the score that no one is so well
equipped as he to carry on the enterprise.
Then she crowns four years of panegyric of
her healer and her teacher with an obituary
possibly as mellifluous and melodramatic as
was ever visited on the memory of any soul by
a sentimental and adoring worshipper:

" Did sack-cloth clothe the sun and day grow night,
All matter mourn the hour with dewy eyes,
When Truth receding from our mortal sight
Had paid to error her last sacrifice?

" Can we forget the power that gave us life?
Shall we forget the wisdom of its way?

The Source of its Ideas 33

Then ask me not amid this mortal strife —
This keenest pang of animated clay —

" To mourn him less ; to mourn him more were just
If to his memory 't were a tribute given
For every solemn, sacred, earnest trust
Delivered to us ere he rose to heaven.

" Heaven but the happiness of that calm soul,
Growing in stature to the throne of God;
Kest should reward him who has made us whole,
Seeking though tremblers, where his footsteps
trod." 10

In the years that followed Quimby's death
in 1866 Mrs. Eddy in season and out was
preaching Quimby's ideas and giving him the
credit for them all. Those closest to her then
are in complete agreement on this point. Dr.
A. M. Gushing, who attended Mrs. Eddy
professionally in February, 1866, and again in
August, 1866, tells me that as her physician
he was much embarrassed by her frequent ref-
erences to Dr. Quimby.^^ Mrs. Julia Rus-
sell Walcott writes me of Mrs. Eddy's con-
tinuous study of the notes of Quimby that
same year at the Russells' in Lynn and at the
Wheelers' in Swampscott.^^ At the Ellises'
in Swampscott she was constantly explaining
Quimby's theories of mind and matter.^^ The
spring of 1867 found her instructing Hiram

34 Christian Science

S. Crafts, of East Stoughton, in Quimby's
healing system, and later, in Amesbury, she
was known as Quimby's pupil. At the Went-
worths' in Stoughton, where she stayed for two
years, her one consuming interest was Quimby-
ism, and she was continually emphasising this.
Mr. Richard Kennedy, her partner in the heal-
ing work from 1870 to 1872, bears tribute to
the largeness of the Quimby influence in her
life, and Mr. Daniel H. Spoiford, who knew
her intimately in the years that followed,
speaks in the same vein.^^

But by and by Mrs. Eddy's transports of
affection for her teacher cooled. As pupils
came beneath her spell, they began to doubt
whether Quimby could have meant so much to
her as she had thought, and she was not un-
willing to revise her earlier impressions in the
interest of her growing fame. Her mem-
ory of the details of her relationship to Quimby
steadily grew more and more defective. Her
earlier panegyrics of him faded from her recol-
lection. " Others of his pupils," says Georgine
Milmine, " lost themselves in Quimby's philos-
ophy, but Mrs. Glover lost Quimby in her-
self." ^^ By 1883 she was making bold to
qualify the more tenacious memory of even
Mrs. Crosby. She tried, with the help of a

The Source of its Ideas 35

lawyer, to induce Mrs. Crosby to make aiRda-
vit that when they two were fellow-patients
under Quimby more than twenty years before,
she " used to take his scribblings and fix them
over for him and give him my thoughts and
language, which, as I understood it, were far
in advance of his." Mrs. Crosby's answer was
so prompt and unsatisfying that she has never
since had word from Mrs. Eddy.^^

By this time Mrs. Eddy could bear to write
wdth some aplomb:

We never were a student of Dr. Quimby's. . .
We were one of his patients. . . . We knew him
about twenty years ago, and aimed to help him.
We saw he was looking in our direction, and asked
him to write his thoughts out. He did so, and then
we would take that copy to correct, and sometimes
so transform it that he would say it was our com-
position, which it virtually was.

The next year she was able to speak with
something close to patronising nonchalance.

The old gentleman to whom we have referred
had some very advanced views on healing, but he
was not avowedly religious, neither scholarly. We
interchanged thoughts on the subject of healing the
sick. I restored some patients of his that he failed
to heal, and left in his possession some manuscripts
of mine containing corrections of his desultory
pennings.^'^

36 Christian Science

Brought to book by some of the letters which
she had written earher to Dr. Quimby in frank
acknowledgment of her obligations to him,
Mrs. Eddy disavows responsibility by assert-
ing that she wrote these under meomeric
influence.

" Did I write those articles purporting to be
mine?" she asks in the Boston Post, March 7, 1883,
after the publication of some of the most damaging
of all the letters. " I might have written them
twenty or thirty years ago, for I was under the
mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby from 1862 until
his death. . . . My head was so turned by animal
magnetism and will power, under treatment, that I
might have written something as hopelessly incor-
rect as the articles now published in the Dresser
pamphlet. I was not healed until after the death
of Mr. Quimby; and then healing came as the re-
sult of my discovery, in 1866, of the Science of
Mind-healing, since named Christian Science." ^^

Though her literary helper, Rev. J. H.
Wiggin, told her frankly that there was noth-
ing to be said for her new attitude toward Dr.
Quimby, and wrote in a personal letter (now
in the possession of McClure's Magazine) that
" What Mrs. Eddy has, as documents clearly
prove, she got from P. P. Quimby of Portland,
Me., whom she eulogised after death as the
great leader and her special teacher/' Mrs,

The Source of its Ideas 37

Eddy has with passing years grown more as-
sertive that she owes no debt to Dr. Quimby,
that he in fact got all he knew from her. But
even thus she has not steadily adhered to the
date, 1866, which she sets in 1906 for the dis-
covery of her system. In 1875 she gives the
year as 1864; in 1883 as 1853; and in 1887 she
writes, " As long ago as 1844 I was convinced
that mortal mind produced all disease and that
the various medical systems were in no proper
sense scientific. "^^

To the Christian Scientist, all this confusion
of dates and contradiction of facts presents no
problem. Mrs. Eddy's latest word is for him
her authentic word. Anything spoken hith-
erto that does not agree with what she says
to-day was spoken under the mesmeric in-
fluence of animal magnetism and therefore is
superseded.

To the generous-minded, there will at once
recur in the consideration of the problem in-
stances in which what seem to be discrepancies
of dates might conceivably be stepping-stones
in the development of a great system. But
unhappily Mrs. Eddy has appeared unwilling,
since she came to wider repute, to give to her
master credit such as once she gave readily for
any share whatever in her preparation

38 Christian Science

for an unusual career. Though one would
gladly attribute to mental incapacity for exact
expression seeming inaccuracies of statement,
it is a significant circumstance, as Georgine
Milmine hints,^^ that each date or statement
given by Mrs. Eddy appears to have had the
purpose either of disavowing all indebted-
ness to her teacher or of extricating herself
from some difficulty of the moment ; and if one
is seeking for the truth and nothing but the
truth, one can but hesitate.

The essential issue is this: What was
Quimby's healing method when Mrs. Eddy
came in 1862 into his life? Mrs. Eddy says
in 1888 that Quimby was " a distinguished
mesmerist and that his method was thoroughly
physical rather than mental." ^^ But she
had described it about 1862 in terms that con-
tradict her words of 1888. Which Mrs. Eddy
are we to believe, the Mrs. Eddy of 1888 or
1862? Both cannot be believed.

The P. P. Quimby who, alive, in 1862 fur-
nished Mrs. Eddy the true answer that she
gave that year, dead speaks to her confusion
now. There lies before me as I write a little
worn and faded scrap-book.^^ It bears on
the fly-leaf the name of P. P. Quimby. It
was his own book. His wife pasted in it for

The Source of its Ideas 39

him now and then in the fifties and early
sixties newspaper comments on his work. It
contains also an important circular prepared
with his son's assistance, which Quimby used
in the early sixties to describe his healing meth-
ods, and of which Mrs. Eddy wrote him, four
months before she first met him, " I have en-
tire confidence in your philosophy as read in
the circular."

It is interesting to observe that all the com-
ments testify that his method was exactly as
described in 1862 by Mrs. Eddy. Two chp-
pings, bearing the date of 1856, deny that he
used mesmerism and picture him as saying
that " diseases of the body are caused by a
derangement of the mind " and as batthng
with disease as purely " mental." Another, a
year later, from the Bangor Jeffersonian^ de-
nies that he employed mesmeric methods and
then proceeds to the illuminating statement
that the mind can cure as well as cause disease.
The Free Press, Lebanon, New Hampshire,
December 3, 1860, expresses the conviction
that " the foundation of his theory, regarded
simply as a belief, is that disease is not self-
existent nor created by God, but that it is
purely the invention of man." Yet another,
dated 1861, announces that Quimby cures

I

40 Christian Science

even the most desperate cases of disease " on
scientific principles, without the use of medi-
cine or any material agency; also without the
aid of mesmerism."

A clipping from the Portland Advertiser of
February 13, 1862, contains Quimby's own
statement; " I deny disease as a truth, but ad-
mit it as a deception." The next month, in
the same paper. Dr. F. L. Town, assistant
surgeon in the United States army, on his
own responsibility lifts Quimby out of the
class of " spiritualists, clairvoyants, and other
charlatans."

Later in the same year I find in the Port-
land Courier an eloquent denial that Quimby
was either a spiritualist or mesmerist, and an
unequivocal statement that under Quimby's
care patients recovered " in proportion to
* their ' perception of truth." This letter is
signed by Mary M. Patterson, earlier Mary
M. Glover, and now Mary Baker G. Eddy.

With these facts in mind the reader will
probably be more inclined to accept the word of
Mrs. Patterson of 1862, confirmed as it is by
others competent to speak, than of Mrs. Eddy
of 1888 dismissing Quimby merely as a mes-
merist, and in 1907 inspiring a defender to
proclaim " that P. P. Quimby was a mes-

The Source of its Ideas 41

merist, that he mesmerised her body and hyp-
notised her thought." ^^ But if anything is
wanting to enable one to decide between Mrs.
Eddy of 1862 and Mrs. Eddy of 1888 and
1907 the following circular, mentioned above
and in use from 1860 to 1865, from Quimby's
scrap-book, will supply the want.

TO THE SICK.

DR. P. P. QUIMBY would respectfully announce
to the citizens of and vicinity, that he will

be at the where he will attend to those

wishing to consult him in regard to their health,
and, as his practice is unlike all other medical prac-
tices, it is necessary to say that lie gives no medi-
cines and makes no outward applications^ but simply
sits down by the patients, tells them their feelings,
and what they think is their disease. If the pa-
tients admit that he tells them their feelings, etc.,
then this explanation is the cure; and, if he succeeds
in correcting their error, he changes the fluid of the
system and establishes the truth or health. The
Truth is the Cure, This mode of practice applies
to all cases. If no explanation is given, no charge
is made, for no effect is produced. His opinion
without an explanation is useless, for it contains no
knowledge, and would be like other medical opin-
ions, worse than none. This error gives rise to all
kinds of quackery, not only among regular physi-
cians, but those whose aim is to deceive people by
pretending to cure all diseases. The sick are anx-

42

Christian Science

ious to get well and they apply to these persons,
supposing them to be honest and friendly, whereas
they are made to believe they are very sick and
something must be done ere it is too late. Five or
ten dollars is then paid, for the cure of some disease
they never had nor ever would have but for the
wrong impressions received from these quacks, or
robbers, (as they might be called), for it is the
worst kind of robbery, tho' sanctioned by law. Now,
if they will only look at the secret of this descrip-
tion, they will find it is for their own selfish objects
— to sell their medicines. Herein consists their
shrewdness! — to impress patients with a wrong
idea, namely — that they have some disease. This
makes them nervous and creates in their minds a
disease that otherwise would never have been
thought of. Wherefore he says to such, never con-
sult a quack; you not only lose your money, but
your health.

He gives no opinion, therefore you lose nothing.
If patients feel pain they know it, and if he de-
scribes their pain he feels it, and in his explanation
lies the cure. Patients, of course, have some opin-
ion as to what causes pain — he has none, therefore
the disagreement lies not in the pain, but in the
cause of the pain. He has the advantage of patients,
for it is very easy to convince them that he had no
pain before he sat down by them. After this it be-
comes his duty to prove to them the cause of their
trouble. This can only be explained to patients,
for which explanation his charge is dollars.

If necessary to see them more than once
dollars. This has been his mode of practice for the

The Source of its Ideas 43

last seventeen years. For the past eight years he
has given no medicines nor made any outward
applications.

There are many who pretend to practise as he
does, but when a person while in " a trance," claims
any power from the spirits of the departed, and
recommends any kind of medicine to be taken in-
ternally or applied externally, beware! believe them
not, " for by their fruits ye shall know them."

But besides the Quimby scrap-book there is
another confirmation of Mrs. Eddy's estimate
of 1862. It is found in a book published in
1872, three years before Science and Health
first appeared and the Christian Science or-
ganisation was formed, and while Mrs. Eddy
was still paying glad tributes to her master.
The book bears the title Mental Medicine. Its
author was Dr. W. F. Evans, a patient under
Quimby a few months after Mrs. Eddy. Like
Mr. Dresser, Dr. Evans was a man of rare
character and considerable ability. Quimby
won his confidence by curing him of a serious
disease and he won Quimby's by his native
worth. If Quimby had been looking in Mrs.
Eddy's direction, and if he was her pupil rather
than she his, as she professes. Dr. Evans, keen
as he was, would have had some reason to sus-
pect it.

44 Christian Science

This is his description of Quimby as a
healer :

There is profound philosophy underlying the
cures effected by Christ, and a distinct school of
medicine may be erected upon it. One of the marked
characteristics of the system is the discarding of
all drugs and chemical agencies, and the placing
sole reliance on psychical forces and remedies. It
recognises the supreme controlling influence of the
mind over the body, the inner over the outward man,
both in health and disease. The body seems to have
been viewed by him not as the real selfhood, but as
only the shadow of the soul, the inner life of man.
It corresponds to or echoes the states and movements
of the interior nature. Disease is not so much a
mere physical derangement, in its primary princi-
ple, as it is an abnormal mental condition, an in-
harmony of the psychical element and force — a
wrong belief, a falsity. This fixed belief, that was
viewed as the root of the morbid outward condition,
is not a mere intellectual act, and has no reference
to a creed, but represents an inward condition, the
state of the inner man, what the German writers on
the philosophy of mind denominate the interior con-
sciousness. This is the governing element, the
controlling principle. The bodily state is the index
to it. ^' As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
Disease being in its root a wrong belief, in the sense
explained above, change that belief and we cure the
disease. By faith we are thus made whole. There
is a law here the world will sometime understand
and use in the cure of the diseases that afflict man-

The Source of its Ideas 45

kind. The late Dr. Quimby of Portland, Maine, one
of the most successful healers of this or any age,
embraced this view of the nature of disease, and by
a long succession of most remarkable cures, effected
by psychopathic remedies, at the same time proved
the truth of the theory and the efficiency of that
mode of treatment. Had he lived in a remote age
or country, the wonderful facts which occurred in
his practice would have now been deemed either
mythical or miraculous. He seemed to reproduce
the wonders of the Gospel history. But all this was
only an exhibition of the force of suggestion, or the
action of the law of faith, over a patient in the im-
pressible condition.24

Into the vexed question of the Quimby
manuscripts, which through the courtesy of
Mr. George A. Quimby I have read, there is
no need to enter. The evidence akeady pre-
sented is sufficient to acquaint the reader with
the general principle that underlay Quimby's
views. The manuscript which Mrs. Eddy
used in the late sixties and the early seventies
and regularly said was Quimby's is in com-
plete agreement with the Quimby theory. An
unbroken line of witnesses from 1862 to 1875
all testify that Mrs. Eddy was in those years
continuously making generous acknowledg-
ment that she got her central principle from
Quimby and that the Mrs. Eddy of 1862 rather
than the Mrs. Eddy of 1888 is to be believed.

46 Christian Science

Even if George A. Quimby had in 1887 ac-
cepted Mrs. Eddy's proposition to publish at
her expense the Quimby manuscripts on con-
dition that she be allowed to determine whether
they were Quimby's thoughts or hers, the sit-
uation would not have been changed. Even
if the United States Court, in 1883, did decide
that Arens's book was an infringement on the
copyright of Science and Healthy the deeper
question of whether Quimby or Mrs. Eddy
was the author of what were plainly Quimby's
views when Mrs. Eddy knew him was in no
way touched.^^ It could not be.

Mrs. Eddy stands or falls by her own
words. The contradiction between 1862 and
1888 can only be explained away when wit-
nesses are found covering the years from 1856
to 1875, to offset the testimony of the Quimby
scrap-book, Mr. and Mrs. Dresser, Mrs.
Crosby, Mr. George A. Quimby, Mrs. Wal-
cott, the Wentworths, Mr. Kennedy, Dr.
Evans, and Mr. Spofford. The contradiction
in itself disqualifies Mrs. Eddy to testify at all
in the unusual circumstances. Who then will
come to the support of Mrs. Eddy of 1888
and 1907 against Mrs. Eddy of 1862?

The Committee on Publication manifestly
can not. Christian Science, though Quimbjr

The Source of its Ideas 47

had already used the name, had not been born.
The committee, therefore, was not in exist-
ence. In a communication addressed to me
May 3, 1907, the committee claims that
Quimby " never knew or practised a method of
giving a mental treatment. He was a mag-
netic practitioner and a mesmerist and never
was anything else. . . . His practice did
not differ from that of many other magnetic
practitioners of his time. All this I can
prove by conclusive, indisputable, doctmien-
tary evidence." ^^ But when. May 5, I went
by appointment to Boston to make a
careful study of the evidence, I was sadly dis-
appointed. If the committee has such evi-
dence, the public, which is passing on the
Quimby issue in these days, has a right to see
il: and to weigh it carefully. Every day's de-
lay is hurting the Mrs. Eddy^ of 1888 and
1907, and confirming the Mrs. Eddy of 1862.
Still insistent in my search for witnesses
who can speak for Mrs. Eddy of 1888 and
1907 against Mrs. Eddy of 1862, whom all the
witnesses now known support, the Committee
on Publication earnestly advised an interview
with the author of the Human Life series. But
when, on June 13th, I went to Boston by ap-
pointment for this interview I once more

4^ Christian Science

suffered disappointment. The author, hke
the Committee on PubHcation, has apparently
found no witnesses; and since, as she had al-
ready written me, her " information is exhaus-
tive," it begins to look as though the only wit-
nesses who can be found to refute Mrs. Eddy
of 1862 are those who never even knew her
then.2^

While we await the witnesses we need, a
brief comparison of what we know was
Quimby's with Mrs. Eddy's masterpiece may
be worth the while. The deadly parallel does
not always prove its case. There may be simi-
larity of view without plagiarism. But when
similarity shades off into practical identity in
thought and word alike there is but one con-
clusion to be reached. The passages in paral-
lel speak for themselves and from them there
is no appeal conceivable.

DE. QUIMBY.28 MRS. EDDY.

1. " Christian Science.'^ 1. " Christian Science."

2. " Science of Health." 2. "Science and

Health."

3. " Matter has no in- 3. " Matter cannot pro-

telligence. duce mind."

4. " Matter is an error." 4. " Matter is a mortal

error."

The Source of its Ideas

49

5. " Understanding is

God."

6. "Truth is God."

7. " God is Principle."

8. " Wisdom, Love, and

Truth are the Prin-
ciple."

9. " All sciences are
part of God."

10. " The idea, man is

the highest — hence
the image of God."

11. " Error is sickness.

Truth is health."

12. " The patient's dis-

ease is in his dis-
belief. ... If you
are not afraid to
face the error and
argue it down,
then you can heal
the sick."

5. " Understanding is a

quality of God."

6. "Truth is God."

7. " God is Principle."

8. " Adhere to . . .

Principle, and fol-
low its behests,
abiding steadily in
Wisdom, Love, and
Truth."

9. " All science is of

God."

10. " Man was and is

God's idea."

11. " Sickness is part of

the error which
Truth casts out."

12. " Science not only

reveals the origin
of all disease as
wholly mental, but
it also declares
that all disease is
cured by mind."

CHAPTER IV

THE FOUNDER OF THE FAITH

The World when she was Born — Childhood — Environment
and Education — First Marriage in 1843 — Widowhood
and Invalidism — Second Marriage in 1853 — Visit in
1862 to Quimby— His Healing System— Mrs. Eddy's
Great Mistake— The "Final Revelation" in 1866—
Separation from her Second Husband and Divorce
— Professional Visiting — Partnership in Lynn with
Richard Kennedy in 1870 — Established as a Leader —
Relationship with D. H. Spofford — The docile Mr.
Eddy — Third Marriage — Christian Science organised
in 1875 — Removal in 1881 to Boston — Court and Cabi-
net — College and Church — To Concord in 1889 —
Christian Science To-day — An Astonishing Autoc-
racy — The Manual — The Modern Mona Lisa — Her
Virtues and her Faults.

IVARS. eddy is no longer young. She
^ ' ^ was born the summer of Napoleon's
death, in 1821. She was closer that year to the
American Revolution and the War of 1812
than babies born this year are to the Civil War
and our recent war with Spain.

50

The Founder of the Faith 51

Always a New Englander in point of view,
Mrs. Eddy grew up with New England. The
prestige of Virginia was waning. New York's
was yet to be. New England was generat-
ing for the entire land ideas in politics and in
religion, and was indulging to the full her na-
tive penchant for the mystical.

Clairvoyance, spiritualism, mesmerism, and
other psychical phenomena were in the air.
There was discussion of them on the lecture
platform and at every cross-road. Mesmer
was dead but mesmerists were everywhere in
evidence.^ Charles Poyen was talking in
many places where Mrs. Eddy later lived,
about the " Power of Mind over Matter," and
was making ready for the publication in 1837
of his book on Animal Magnetism in New
England, What Braid had done in England
to make mesmerism popular. Grimes was do-
ing in New England, and Dods and Stone
were proving his apt pupils. Andrew Jack-
son Davis, also, was astonishing audiences by
his mesmeric performances.

At Canterbury, five miles from the place
where Mrs. Eddy lived from her fifteenth to
her twenty-second year, the Shakers, whom
Mrs. Eddy's brother's preceptor-at-law,
Franklin Pierce, later President of the United

52 Christian Science

States, defended in the courts, were ever
thinking of their extraordinary leader. She
had died long years before, but they were still
speaking of her as the " Mother," " the female
principle of God," " the female Christ "; using
such terms as " Father-Mother God," " the
Church of Christ," the "Mother Church";
and refusing to pray audibly and setting
celibacy high above the marriage state.

Mrs. Eddy comes of good New England
stock. On both sides she has a pedigree of
thrift, honesty, and intelligence above the
average. Her father, Mark Baker, was able,
upright, conscientious, and fearless, though
dogmatic, high-tempered, and hard-fisted.
Accounts agree in making her mother, nee
Abigail Bernard Ambrose, capable, gentle,
and unselfish.^

Born at Bow, New Hampshire, July 16,
1821, the youngest in a family of six, Mary A.
Morse Baker proved to be the only member of
her family who achieved national distinction.
Her brother Albert, nominated for Congress
in 1841, might have proved a worthy second
had he not died at the age of thirty-one before
he was elected. The loneliness of a childhood
spent on the ancestral farm was accentuated
by delicacy of health which saved her from the

The Founder of the Faith 53

drudgery that usually falls to the New Eng-
land girl brought up in the country, gave her
time to read such books as were at hand, and
brought out both the defects and the virtues of
her character.

In 1836 Mark Baker sold his farm and
moved to town, Sanbornton Bridge, — now
Tilton. Life was larger and more interesting
at " The Bridge." Mary Baker, then fifteen,
blossomed out at once into the village belle.
Of medium height, slim and graceful, ex-
quisitely moulded even to her hands and feet,
features regular and refined, big blue eyes
which could flash black on occasion, the fresh
bloom of a pure complexion, an abundance of
bright brown hair, escaping in ringlets from
beneath her bonnet, always gowned in good
taste and yet mindful of observers, Mary
Baker was the cynosure of every eye as she
came tripping every Sunday into church.

Already conscious of the power which has
given her a distinctive place among women,
she invariably took the centre of the stage.
She expected and accepted the peculiar con-
sideration given to her instinctively by every-
body in the family and friendly circle. When
her sweetness and her charm, however, were
not adequate to win the influence desired, she

54 Christian Science

knew how to challenge and command. High-
strung and hysterical, she knew when to em-
ploy the arts of the neurotic. Imperious and
masterful in girlhood as in womanhood, she
always played the game of life to win. In-
dependent in her judgments even then, she
won exemption from belief in predestination,
when at the age of seventeen she joined the
Tilton Congregational Church.

Schools are for the average and Mary Baker
was no average girl. The stories of her
school-days are the stories many people tell
about the school-days of extraordinary people.
Her schoolmates found her indolent and indif-
ferent to the routine to which they yielded
without murmuring. Ill-health and day-
dreaming are not conducive to the plodding
of the school room. Her father, therefore,
wisely kept her " much out of school " she
says, and without hurt to her.^

One may be permitted, however, not to ac-
cept too literally her statement that she was
studying those years, under her brother Al-
bert, Natural Philosophy, Logic, Moral
Science, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. There
is nowhere in her writings substantial evidence
that she was well grounded in these subjects.
Real learning does not vanish like a dream as

The Founder of the Faith 55

Mrs. Eddy says hers did when she discovered
Christian Science. If one is obliged to draw
any inference as to her schoohng from the
facts in evidence it will, perhaps, be not unlike
that which her schoolmates stated in the homely
v/ords: "Mary Baker completed her educa-
tion when she had finished Smith's grammar
and had reached long division in arithmetic." *

Marriage was inevitable. The craving for
the new experience is insatiate in a person-
ality as highly sensitised as Mary Baker's
was. And so when George Washington Glo-
ver, big, kind-hearted, and industrious, came
a-courting she did not say him nay. They
were married in December, 1843, and went to
South Carolina to live, where he died six
months later of yellow fever. Helped north
by the Free Masons because her husband was
a Mason, Mrs. Glover gave birth the next
September in her father's house in Tilton to a
son whom she named for his father.

The years that followed are too sad and
bleak for full description. The mdowed
mother, just past twenty-three, was lapsing
from frailness into an invalidism which was
not to lift till she was almost fifty. Her
baby fell into the hands of kind but ignorant
care-takers, grew up without education, and

56 Christian Science

has seldom seen his mother since his babyhood.
Her mother was old, her father past his prime.
There was no place for her at home, and her
brothers and sisters, with homes of their own,
were not inclined to make one for a sister who
in spite of many native gifts lacked the grace
of adaptation. Mrs. Glover was discouraged.
She made one short-lived effort to support her-
self by teaching. Then after her father's sec-
ond marriage she entered on a sad and sordid
life of drifting which continued till Richard
Kennedy came to her relief in 1870 and by his
industry and generosity made her for the first
time in her life economically independent.

She lived with one relative for a time, and
then passed on to the next who would receive
her. Poor relation as she was in every home,
she acted steadily as though her presence was
a privilege to be impressed on those with
whom she lived. She took the best they had
to give as though it were her right. She had
the family life adjusted to her nerves. She
made herself the centre of each situation. She
gave the servants extra trouble if there were
servants in the house. If there were not, she
let it sometimes fall upon a hostess old enough
to be her mother.

If the thought of helping on, as others do

The Founder of the Faith 57

who fall into her plight, ever crossed her mind,
she carefully safeguarded it from practical ex-
pression. To spend your time writing books
and entertaining callers while your hostess
plays the drudge, to queen it at the sewing
circle and the " lodge " when there are duties
to be done in the home where you are staying,
does not tend to the perpetuation of the wel-
come, however gladly it may at first have been
given. And so in all those bitter years, which
ran on from 1843 to 1870, Mrs. Eddy was en-
gaged almost continuously in wearing out her
welcome and in saying good-bye to the past.

She sometimes received attention from the
other sex. She had to have it. Admiration was
the breath of life to her. She touched at last
the heart of an itinerant dentist. Dr. Daniel
Patterson, who was rough but genial, and
when he gave her sympathy in her forlornness
and her invahdism, she married him in 1853.

But her second marriage did not end her
troubles. It prolonged them. One who
knew her husband tells me, " Dr. Patterson
was too slow for her." He was not a good
provider. He could not always earn a living
as a dentist and so he sometimes practised
homoeopathy and even turned his hand to run-
ning a saw-milL They Uved for years a pre-

58 Christian Science

carious existence, moving from place to place,
— Tilton, Franklin, North Groton, Rumney.
Incompatibility of disposition and irreconcil-
able standards led in 1862 to a separation, when
Dr. Patterson went off to the Civil War as a
spectator, only to be captured by the Confed-
erates and to fall into Libby prison. After
his return some two years later, there was an-
other unsuccessful effort made in Lynn to live
together, followed by final separation in 1866
and by divorce in 1873.

After the last separation her plight was
worse than ever. She was now estranged
from practically all of her own flesh and blood.
She had lost one husband too soon after mar-
riage for assurance that the marriage would
have proved a happy and successful one. She
had lost another husband through the utter
failure of the marriage. She was the mother
of a son now grown to man's estate but whom
she had not seen for years and in whom she
seemed to have so little interest as to perplex
her good friend Mrs. Crosby, busy and con-
tented with her babies. She had few friends.
They invariably have few who count friend-
ship a field for exploitation. She had no plan
in life except apparently to eat bread that she
had not earned and would not help to bake.

The Founder of the Faith 59

She had no point of view to insure straight
looking out on hfe and no philosophy to lift
her out of self. That she was to find in her
search for health.

All the years of her domestic infelicity and
chronic invalidism Mrs. Eddy was thinking,
she now says, of the possibilities of spiritual
release from pain. After Dr. Patterson went
south in the summer of 1862, she made a visit
to Portland, Maine, a nervous wreck, attracted
by the stories of the " wonderful cures " a cer-
tain Dr. Quimby had been making without
drugs.^

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was then a man
of sixty. Son of a blacksmith of scanty means,
he received but little schooling. Appren-
ticed as a boy to a clock-maker, he early showed
those keen powers of observation, inventive-
ness, and originality of thought which made
him a marked man his whole life through. A
truth-lover and truth-seeker by instinct, he
never took opinions ready-made. He read
much. The Bible was ever in his hand, and
sometimes Berkeley. He was well informed
on current topics, thought clearly, and was apt
to put his thoughts on paper.

Such a man was certain to be interested in
the occultism which in his young manhood

6o Christian Science

swept through New England. He followed
Charles Poyen about from place to place and
learned how to do his mesmeric tricks. In
the forties, " Park Quimby " and his subject
Lucius Burkmar, became household words in
many a New England and Canadian village.^

Quimby, with his love for man, soon grad-
uated out of the spectacular into the bene-
ficent and turned his mesmerism to the good
account of healing. But, like Bernheim of
Nancy and Dubois of Berne in more modern
times, Quimby by and by discovered that in
suggestion lies the secret of all mental healing,
and that its exaggerated forms, as seen in
mesmerism and hypnotism, are seldom needed
to effect a cure. Long before Mrs. Eddy
came his way, he was leaving mesmerism be-
hind and, as one of his old friends wrote to me,
June 16, 1907, when Mrs. Eddy knew Quimby
" nothing was more apt to excite him than the
suggestion that there was mystery in his
theory or practice."

At least three years before Mrs. Eddy
sought his help, he was beginning to reduce
his theory of healing to writing. With his
own hand he put his thoughts on paper. He
had the clerical assistance of the Misses Ware,
daughters of a judge of the United States

The Founder of the Faith 6i

Admiralty Court, and of his son, George A.
Quimby. Mr. Horatio W. Dresser, son of
Mr. J. A. Dresser, who was not only one of
Quimby 's patients before Mrs. Eddy came to
him in 1862 but also often explained Quimby's
theory to Mrs. Eddy, several years ago talked
out the matter with all those who gave Quimby
clerical assistance in his writing and himself
later copied several hundred pages, which on
his father's and his mother's word, as well as
on that of George A. Quimby and of the
Misses Ware, he was assured was Quimby's
intellectual production.

Mr. George A. Quimby thus describes his
father's way of working: "From that time
(1859) he began to write out his ideas, which
practice he continued until his death, the arti-
cles now being in the possession of the writer
of this sketch. The original copy he would
give to the Misses Ware ; and it would be read
to him by them ; and, if he suggested any alter-
ation, it would be made, after which it would
be copied either by the Misses Ware or the
writer of this, and then reread to him, that he
might see that all was just as he intended it.
Not even the most trival word or the construc-
tion of a sentence would be changed without
consulting him. He was given to repetition,

62 Christian Science

and it was with difficulty that he could be in-
duced to have a repeated sentence or phrase
stricken out, as he would say, ' If that idea is a
good one, and true, it will do no harm to have
it in two or three times.' He believed in the
hammering process, and in throwing an idea
or truth at the reader till it would be firmly
fixed in his mind."

Between 1859 and 1866, when Dr. Quimby
died, he produced in this way — so character-
istic of literary workers in these typewriter
days — ten volumes of manuscript. Much of
this — "over eight hundred closely written
pages covering one hundred and twenty sub-
jects " ^ — was written before Mrs. Eddy
paid him her first visit in the autumn of 1862.
She probably never saw a page of the original
manuscript. The copy which she made in
1862 of the first volume was a copy of a copy
made by Julius A. Dresser and loaned by him
to Mrs. Eddy. Her claim in later years that
the Quimby manuscripts were her own manu-
scripts which she had left with Quimby years
before ^ can be established only by discredit-
ing all the other witnesses and by denying facts
themselves. Her unexpected assertion that
certain quotations from Quimby's manu-
scripts " were my own words, as near as I can

The Founder of the Faith 63

recollect them," is offset by the statement of
Horatio W. Dresser, who like the author is
familiar, as Mrs. Eddy is not, with the Quimby
manuscripts in general, that the words in ques-
tion " were from an article written by Dr.
Quimby in 1863, copied by myself into a book,
which Mrs, Eddy never saw, from the manu-
script of Dr. Quimby's writings, copies from
the original not a page of which Mrs. Eddy
ever saw."

To doubt in the light of Quimby's history,
in the well-known circumstances that sur-
rounded the production of his manuscripts, in
the face of all the witnesses who have testified
to the development of his healing system, in
spite of the words of Horatio W. Dresser, who
found, as has the author of this book, hundreds
of pages of manuscript written before Mrs.
Eddy ever went to Dr. Quimby containing
" a very original and complete statement of the
data and theory of mental healing," that Quim-
by had a healing system of his own for which
he owed no debt to Mrs. Eddy, is to prove one-
self unappreciative of the psychology of in-
tellectual production and literary expression.

To dispel the morbid fancies of the moody
Cowper, Lady Austen once told him the old
story of the London citizen riding to Edmon-

64 Christian Science

ton, and ever since that day John Gilpin,
started by the word of Cowper, has been gal-
loping through the thoroughfare of Anglo-
Saxon verse, and Lady Austen never once
claimed any credit in the matter.

Dr. Quimby had started on his mental
healing course years before his most dis-
tinguished patient ever heard of him. The
most she ever did for him who did so much for
her, was to give to him while he was alive the
appreciation precious beyond words to every
doctor, and after he was dead fulsome verse in
which she made " sackcloth clothe the sun and
day grow night." And then, as years went by
and ambition grew with what it fed on, she
began to claim first that she had started
Quimby on his course, then that she, not he, had
planned the course, and last, that he had not
taken any course at all of mental healing, but
was a mere mesmerist. And only in the high
noon of this year's publicity has truth crushed
to earth risen once again to the defence of
Quimby and the depreciation of his one-time
friend and pupil-patient.

When Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson, was
helped up the stairs in October, 1862, to Dr.
Quimby 's office, she was " a frail shadow of a
woman." The beauty of her early woman-
hood was gone.^ Pale, emaciated, shabby.

The Founder of the Faith 65

the stamp of poverty as well as illness on her
face and form, her first request of Quimby
was to assist her to secure an inexpensive
boarding-place. Three weeks later she left
him, a well woman, — well in body and in mind.
Quimby had cured her of her nervous trouble,
but that was the least that he had done for her.
He had given her the idea which was to domi-
nate her whole life, the rock on which she was
by and by to build her church, against which
she has been wont ever since stoutly to assert
" the gates of hell shall not prevail."

What she had ever heard before of the idea
we may not know. Mrs. Eddy is the only
witness who can testify and she contradicts
herself. She told the " Masters," August
14th, in the recent lawsuit, that the idea came
to her before her eighteenth year. But she
has in other instances borne different testi-
mony. The one thing we surely know is this :
She had at last a great idea. It came to her
in all its force and fulness with Quimby's
stamp on it. But it was hers ; hers even to the
repudiation — ^if she pleased — of the Quimby
stamp. Generous to carelessness, scientific
in the true sense of claiming no proprietary
right in any truth he found, Quimby went on
his way in cheerful godHness.

For many a year Mrs. Eddy seemed to be

66 Christian Science

the winner in the so-called Quimby contro-
versy. But this year she is losing, and at the
age of eighty-six, when " visions that charm
and bless " alone should visit her, Mrs. Eddy
has to face the ghost of her ungenerosity which
has enlarged her fame as founder of the
Christian Science Church at the expense of
her reputation as a woman. Even from the
standpoint of mere policy, it has been a mis-
take not to acknowledge in these later years,
as she did in the earlier ones, the efficient
source of the idea on which she has erected a
structure Quimby would never claim as his,
but which could not have been built at all ex-
cept on the foundation laid by Quimby in the
receptive mind of Mrs. Eddy.

It was in Lynn, where she and her husband
lived a while before their final separation, that
she had the great experience from which in
later years she dated her discovery of Chris-
tian Science. Returning February 1, 1866,
from the " lodge," she slipped and fell on
the icy sidewalk, sustaining a nervous shock
which the physician. Dr. A. M. Cushing, at
once ameliorated and in a fortnight cured,

Mrs. Eddy's recollection materially differs
from her doctor's. ^^ She thinks she was
critically ill. The doctor tells me she was not

The Founder of the Faith (>1

and he never said she was. He says she had
sustained a nervous shock, which every doctor
understands. She says that after his first
visit she ceased to take his medicines. He
tells me that she told another story at the time
and that he had satisfying proof that she did
follow to the letter his directions. She de-
scribes in some detail how she depended solely
upon God, read the story in the Bible of the
healing of the palsied man by Jesus Christ,
caught " the lost chord of Truth, healing, as
of old, from the Divine Harmony," and the
third day rose as one from the dead, appeared
before the friends who had gathered in the ad-
joining room to say good-bye to her, and was
at first believed to be an apparition. The
doctor, understanding that hysteria is, as Char-
cot says, nothing but " a psychic disease,"
would not have been surprised had she ap-
peared even earlier before her friends.

She had done, it seemed, forevermore with
doctors and their drugs. And yet the August
following she called on Dr. Cushing once
again to treat her for a cough. Belonging to
a class of persons described by Professor
Miinsterberg, who, through weakness of the
powers of perception, through inattention due
to introspection, through misdirected volition

68 Christian Science

or deficient suggestibility, or through some
psychical abnormality to which Mrs. Eddy in
her neuropathic state must then have been li-
able, are unable, even with the best intentions,
to recall details with precision, her word — any
nervous patient's word — cannot count against
the word of a trained diagnostician. Dr.
Cushing's judgment will undoubtedly be taken
by the medical fraternity. Mrs. Eddy's case
is a familiar one ; her symptoms are accurately
symptomatic of the disease.

It was a wretched life she lived in Lynn
after the final separation from her husband/^
She was physically and temperamentally un-
fit to earn her living. She did not play suc-
cessfully the role of the professional visitor.
She could not efface herself in any home. She
neither helped along nor kept hands off the
family affairs. She could not master the sim-
ple lesson, easily learned by normal people
who visit much, of leaving the family, enlarged
to take her in, more closely knit together be-
cause she had been in it. There are families
which still feel the strain she put upon them
years ago.

The Russells and the Newhalls of Lynn
were quit of her as soon as possible. The
Wheelers and the EUises of Swampscott

The Founder of the Faith 69

passed her on — no easy task. At the Crafts',
in East Stoughton, she was made more wel-
come, but there too she brought discord, no
matter whose the fault. At the Websters' in
Amesbury, though not herself perhaps a spirit-
ualist, she trained with spiritualists until they,
too, grew weary of her presence and had re-
sort almost to force to send her off. Miss
Sarah Bagley was a little kinder to her. But
by and by Mrs. Patterson, then calling her-
self Mrs. Glover, went to Stoughton and
spent two years before 1870 in the home of
Mrs. Sally Wentworth, who was more than
kind to her.

Of Mrs. Eddy's life there we know more
than of her life elsewhere in those years.^^
Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth are not living.
But the son, Horace T. Wentworth, the wife
whom he brought home as a young bride, Mrs.
Arthur L. Holmes (then Lucy Wentworth),
and a niece, now Mrs. Catherine Isabel Clapp,
are alive and retain vivid memories of that
visit. They tell me the same story of a
favourable first impression passing into the
usual strained relationship as the daily contact
unveiled a nature self-centred, at the cost of
family peace and happiness. She had made
trouble a while before between Mr. and Mrs.

7^ Christian Science

Crafts, and now she was sowing the seed of the
same possibihty in the Wentworth home by-
trying to persuade the wife to go off with her
and practise the Quimby healing.

Here as elsewhere there was an aloofness
from real life that made more work for the
housewife and that once found expression, to
the disgust of a young mother (Mrs. Horace
T. Wentworth) , in the characterisation of her
new-born babe as an " embryo of human men-
tality." Mrs. Holmes, then Lucy Wentworth,
in her teens and devoted to Mrs. Eddy, tells
how Mrs. Eddy put into her head the nonsense
that she was made of finer clay than other
members of her family. She also recalls that
when Mrs. Eddy was not writing in her room
or talking with the family or strolling along
country roads, she was likely to be found, Lucy
Wentworth with her, reading the spiritualis-
tic journal. The Banner of Light, or the back
numbers of the New York Ledger, with their
stories of cloying sweetness and their high-
pitched sentimentalism. Mrs. Southworth's
stories seemed to have a special charm for Mrs.
Eddy, and if her reference in a personal letter
to ^*^ Irving' s Pickwick Papers '' ^^ be in evid-
ence, she could not in those days have had
much interest in Dickens.

The Founder of the Faith 71

Here, as elsewhere, her supreme interest was
Quimby. For the consideration of three
hundred dollars, to be " boarded out," she
taught all she knew of Quimby to Mrs. Went-
worth, who had a native talent for healing
Mdthout medicine. In teaching Mrs. Went-
worth she used a manuscript, which she allowed
her pupil to copy, and which we know w^as
Quimby's not only because Mrs. Eddy said
so but also because it is, as I have found, al-
most word for word identical with a Quimby
manuscript owned by George A. Quimby, and
in his mother's handwriting, bearing the date
February, 1862, eight months before Mrs.
Eddy first met Quimby.

All those months, Mrs. Eddy was consumed
with a desire to put the Quimby theory into a
book. She was ever writing at it, ever trying
to find funds for its publication. She was
even willing that Mrs. Wentworth, without
her husband's knowledge, should put a mort-
gage on the place to secure the money needed.
She talked Quimby until every one grew
" dead tired of hearing " of him, and Mrs.
Clapp, in imitation of the Quimby propagan-
dist, would fold her hands softly in her lap,
smile gently, nod her head slowly and remark :
*' I learned this from Dr. Quimby^ and he made

I

72 Christian Science

me promise to teach it to at least two persons
before I die/''

There, too, in Stoughton, the inevitable hour
struck when how to say good-bye to Mrs.
Eddy without a scene, became the burning is-
sue. There too, as elsewhere, it was not man-
aged with complete success; for Mrs. Eddy
left behind when she at last departed evidences
of her frame of mind not to be mistaken or
forgotten.

The summer of 1870 found Mrs. Eddy once
again in Lynn. She was now entering her
fiftieth year. Her great contemporaries Lin-
coln, Stanton, Seward, Chase, had finished
their life work, and two of them were dead.
Mrs. Eddy was still making ready for a career
as remarkable in many ways as theirs. She
was now about to taste some of the sweets of
the success hitherto denied her.

No evidence has yet appeared that, in the
years that lay immediately behind, she had
shown much interest in healing, or that she
had much power to heal. In the Wentworth
home, she had shrunk instinctively, like any
other nervous woman, from the sick-bed of
others, and had shown such a morbid fear of
death that Mrs. Wentworth often wondered
what there could be in her past to make death

The Founder of the Faith 73

seem so dreadful. Mrs. Eddy's one interest
was to teach Quimbyism, to " carpenter " it
out into a book, and find the means to pub-
lish it. What she needed most was some one
who could illustrate her theory by effective
healing.

Him she found in Richard Kennedy/^ a
brown-haired, ruddy-faced, enthusiastic, good-
natured, industrious, studious, clear-headed,
and clean-minded youth just coming into man-
hood. The two opened offices together. He
healed with much success. His offices were
crowded. Money poured into the treasury.
At the end of eighteen months she who had
been a poor relation and a professional visitor
practically all her adult life found to her credit
in the bank the neat sum of $6000.

While her partner healed, and paid all bills
for both, Mrs. Eddy taught, and though the
major portion of her profits came from Rich-
ard Kennedy's generosity she also contributed
to the adequate bank account she now had for
the first time. In the new atmosphere of fi-
nancial independence, some of the small con-
ceits and the ingratiating mannerisms began
to disappear. She did not try so hard to
please the uncongenial. There was no press-
ing need. Though by no means a recluse, she

74 Christian Science

wanted social contact only on terms of her
own choosing. They who would have her
good-will had to pay the price, as Mr, Ken-
nedy informs me, of " dancing round her like a
Maypole."

As months slipped by, she grew more asser-
tive and ambitious. Once in a burst of con-
fidence she said to her young partner, in whom
people to this day instinctively confide,
" Richard, I was born an unwelcome child,
and I mean to have the whole world at my
feet before I die." As Quimbyism in her
thought began to grow by accretions which
Quimby would not always have approved, she
looked far into the future, saw a popular re-
ligion upbuilding on the book she was one
day to publish, and with eyes lighted by the
supreme faith she had even then in her own
powers she said more than once to Richard
Kennedy, " You will hve to hear the church
bells ring out my birthday." And the pre-
diction has already been fulfilled. The bells
of her own church at Concord rang out her
birthday, July 16, 1904.

As students multiplied, she grew more
certain of herself. For twelve lessons, her
first students paid her $100 each, promised
her a life annuity of ten per cent, of all

The Founder of the Faith 75

their future earnings, and gave a $3000 bond
not to show to any one the copy she allowed
them to make of the manuscripts now grown
from Quimby's one to three. At the end of
three weeks she saluted them as " Doctor," and
sent them out into the world to practise
Quimbyism without the name of Quimby.
Moved, she says, " by a strange providence," ^^
she raised her charges in a little while to $300
for twelve lessons, reduced in later years in
Boston to the number seven.

Never able permanently to retain those who
would not give their heart and mind completely
to her keeping, she soon began to lose some of
her more thoughtful students. Writes one of
them to me : " As a teacher she considered her-
self the wisdom and in all things was to be
obeyed; any one going contrary was in rebel-
lion and must be put down. In the class she
strove to prejudice her students against any
rebellious ones through awakening as much
sympathy as possible among the loyal by in-
forming them that she was caused both mental
and physical suffering by their misconduct."

One woman left her class because she
thought Mrs. Eddy " was taking Christ away
from her." Another through the court re-
covered her tuition fee on the ground that she

7^ Christian Science

had not received her money's worths Some
sued her; others she sued. The air was thick
with htigation. With some of the choicest
spirits her system broke down of sheer absurd-
ity as she began to put it to unnecessary strain.
One student was so disgusted by her claims
that she could raise the dead — to which claims
more than one have testified — that he chal-
lenged her to give a public exhibition. ^^

She had her stormy differences even with her
youthful partner, whom it would be difficult
to-day for any one to differ with in anger, and
after he performed the thitherto impossible
feat in 1872 of breaking with her without any
public scene, and went off to complete alone
the establishment of the reputation which he
now enjoys for courtesy and integrity, she
followed him like any mediaeval pope with
her anathemas, made him the occasion of the
development of her strange obsession of Ma-
licious Animal Magnetism, singled him out
nine years later for furious denunciation in the
third edition of her book, and at last dismissed
him with the inappropriate characterisation,
" the Nero of to-day." ^'

But every time she lost a follower another
came to take his place. Disciples increased
alike in zeal and numbers. Those who came

The Founder of the Faith 7^

to stay passed under the spell she put upon
them. Her influence had no necessary rela-
tionship to the system she was teaching. It
would have been as dominating had she been
preaching Comtism or Mormonism. It was
not, as some have thought, humbuggery that
attracted many, but a hypnotic influence — the
power Mrs. Eddy has of profound and, to
some, irresistible suggestion, which none of
her conspicuous contemporaries, except per-
haps Gladstone, had in such large measure.

Of Mrs. Eddy and her students in those
early days Georgine Milmine draws this vivid
and veracious picture:

The closer students, who constituted Mrs. Glov-
er's cabinet and body-guard, executed her commis-
sions, transacted her business, and were always at
her call. To-day some of these who have long been
accounted as enemies by Mrs. Eddy, and whom she
has anathematised in print and discredited on the
witness-stand, still declare that what they got from
her was beyond equivalent in gold or silver. They
speak of a certain emotional exaltation which she
was able to impart in her class-room; a feeling so
strong that it was like the birth of a new under-
standing and seemed to open to them a new heaven
and a new earth. Some of Mrs. Glover's students
experienced this in a very slight degree, but such
as were imaginative and emotional, and especially
those who had something of the mystic in their na-

78 Christian Science

ture, came out of her class-room to find that for
them the world had changed. They lived by a new
set of values; the colour seemed to fade out of the
physical world about them; men and women be-
came shadow-like, and their own humanity grew
pale. The reality of pain and pleasure, sin and
grief, love and death, once denied, the only positive
thing in their lives was their belief — and that was
almost wholly negation. One of the students who
was closest to Mrs. Glover at that time says that
to him the world outside her little circle seemed
like a madhouse, where each inmate was given over
to his delusion of love or gain or ambition, and the
problem which confronted him was how to awaken
them from the absurdity of their pursuit. It is but
fair to say that occasionally a student was more of
a royalist than the king, and that Mrs. Glover her-
self had a very sound sense of material values and
often reminded an extravagant follower to render
unto Caesar what was his due.^^

By 1875, Mrs. Eddy's following was large
enough to warrant the establishment of per-
manent headquarters. A house, still standing,
was therefore bought in Lynn, and in a low-
ceiled room on the third floor Mrs. Eddy com-
pleted, with money furnished her by her
students, the manuscript of Science and
Health, gave it to the world, and prepared the
second and third editions for her publishers.

It was this year that Daniel H» Spofford

The Founder of the Faith 79

cast in his fortunes with her. They had met
four years before. He had since become in-
terested in her work, made a careful study of
her manuscripts, and won some reputation as a
healer. In April, 1875, she induced him to
join her class, treated him with marked dis-
tinction, gave him the pen with which she
wrote Science and Health,, made him treasurer
of the Christian Science Association formed
next month for the conduct of Sunday services
in a public hall, and when the following au-
tumn her book fell still-born from the press, it
was to Mr. Spofford that she turned to ad-
vertise and push its sale. A gentle dreamer,
ever on spiritual business bound, Daniel H.
Spofford had none of Richard Kennedy's im-
pulsiveness and easy savoir faire. But he had
the same sense of devotion to his duty as he
saw it.

Like Mr. Kennedy, effective as a healer, Mr.
Spofford was successful also as a teacher.
Complications, however, came as usual, and
various explanations have been given of them.
The next spring it was evident that Mrs.
Eddy was cooling toward her favourite.^^
The summer brought the open break, and in
January, 1877, Mr. Spofford was expelled
from the Christian Science Association on the

So Christian Science

serious charge of immorahty, by which Mrs.
Eddy simply meant disloyalty to her.^^

As she had followed and was still following
Richard Kennedy with her frenzied thought,
charging him with mesmerism, developing in
her heated mind the curious theory of mali-
cious animal magnetism which was not found
in Quimbyism, so now she followed Mr. Spof-
f ord, mild and serene as he was, to the ridicu-
lous extremity of causing him to be haled into
the Salem court in the spring of 1878 on the
charge of witchcraft, which the judge dis-
missed with the smiling explanation that " it
was not within the power of the court to
control Mr. Spofford's mind." ^^ The last
strange chapter in as strange a story as ever
yet was told of Mrs. Eddy's strange career
was the indictment the following December of
Asa Gilbert Eddy, Mrs. Eddy's husband, and
Edward J. Arens, one of her students, by the
grand jury on the charge of conspiracy to
murder Daniel H. Spofford. The evidence
was dubious and inconsequential. No infer-
ence can to-day be drawn from it except that
there was probably hysteria on one side and
panic on the other. The case was nolle
prossedj, and never came to trial.^^ Mr. Eddy
paid the costs, and Mr. Spofford still lives and

The Founder of the Faith 8i

at the age of sixty-five enjoys the confidence
of those who know him well.

It was through Mr. Spofford that Mrs. Eddy
met Asa Gilbert Eddy. Her first husband had
been dead thirty years and more. She had
been divorced in 1873 from Dr. Patterson, and
it was to Mrs. Glover, and not Mrs. Patter-
son, that Mr. Spofford presented one of his
new patients, Asa Gilbert Eddy. To speak
with gravity of this new friend, who, unlike
many another, came into Mrs. Eddy's life to
stay, is far from easy. When after five years of
married bliss he passed from earth, Mrs. Eddy
surmned him up with the Psalmist's challenge,
" Mark the perfect man." ^^ But Mrs. Eddy's
standard of perfection was evidently not the
Psalmist's. Unquestioning obedience to her
has invariably sufficed to uptilt the horn of
adulation even on the stupidest head.

From Mrs. Eddy's point of view Asa Gil-
bert Eddy was " a perfect man." Promoted
from sewing-machine agent to successful
pedler of Mrs. Eddy's precious book, from
pedler elevated to the high dignity of hus-
band to the author, Asa Gilbert Eddy yielded
to his spouse the tmquestioning obedience
necessary to retain his place. He was a handy
man for any wife to have about the house. He

82 Christian Science

did what he was told to do. He would solicit
students for his wife or take up the collection
at the Sunday service when she preached the
sermon. His sister-in-law remembers that
" he could do up a shirt as well as any woman."
Dull but thrifty, slow but steady, stolid but
dutiful, superstitious but amiable, Mrs. Eddy's
third husband furnished a better background
for her erratic brilliancy than she had ever had
before. Not even in her wildest dreams could
Mrs. Eddy foresee in her docile helpmate, as
in Mr. Spoiford, a potential rival. No one
would be likely, in all human probability, to
rally to the rebel standard of a slow little man
in a cinnamon-coloured overcoat and a fur
cap, which he was known to wear, without
sense of incongruity, even in the summer.

The marriage was a genuine surprise to all.
To be sure the grand dame had allowed the
little man to call her " Mary " in the class-
room, but even then the announcement of the
engagement was too sudden to be credible.
When Mr. Spofford received from Eddy's
hand the note that brought the news he re-
marked : " You 've been very quiet about all
this, Gilbert." " Indeed, Dr. Spofford," the
prospective groom replied, " I did n't know a
thing about it myself until last night.'

>' 24

The Founder of the Faith 83

On New Year's Day, 1877, Mrs. Glover,
aged fifty-six, though the age appeared as
forty in the marriage hcense, led to the altar
the man of forty whom she took for her third
trial marriage, and so well was she impressed
with him that after three days, with that scant
sense of the eternal fitness of things of which
Mrs. Eddy has often given illustration in her
life, she wrote one of her students : " I feel
sure that I can teach my husband up to a
higher usefulness, to purity, and the higher de-
velopment of all his latent noble ^^ qualities
of head and heart."

He was willing to be taught. He would
even turn docility into self-effacement. There
is no evidence that he objected to Mrs. Eddy's
use of the editorial " we " in writing of herself
or to her reference to him as " our husband."
The marriage was, she says, a spiritual one.
She had already made him " Doctor " after
his twelve lessons with her in the art of healing.
Now that he was completely hers, she made
him " the first organiser of a Christian Science
Sunday-school, which he superintended. He
also," she says, "taught a special Bible-class;
and he lectured so ably on scriptural topics,
that clergymen of other denominations listened
to him with deep interest. He was remarkably

84 Christian Science

successful in mind-healing, and untiring in his
chosen work. In 1882 he passed away, with
a smile of peace and love resting on his serene
countenance." And Mrs. Eddy spoke her
" Well done, good and faithful servant " in
these words : " Mark the perfect man, and be-
hold the upright; for the end of that man is
peace." ^^

A quarter of a century has gone since Mrs.
Eddy was the last time widowed, and she has
had no husband since to do her will. But in
Calvin A. Frye,^^ steward, bookkeeper, secre-
tary, coachman, her " man of all work " as she
herself has called him, she has had the while
one singularly devoted to her and to her
interests. To serve her he gave up all at
the outset. Family ties were relinquished.
Friendships were allowed to languish. It is
said that never since the day he came, not
knowing what her purpose was, in answer to
her telegram, has he been beyond the reach of
her voice for a whole day. Though from 1882
to 1900 he received only ten to twelve dollars a
week and board, and for the last four years
has been paid at most one hundred dollars a
month and board, he has, according to his affi-
davit in the suit entitled Eddy vs. Frye et als,,
received in money and jewelry presents

The Founder of the Faith 8$

amounting in value to $7300, and now has in
bank $11,000 to his credit. In addition, Mrs.
Eddy, for reasons not divulged in his affidavit,
at one time or another has assigned to him cer-
tain copyrights of her publications, deeds to
her home, and to various other properties, and
has had them at her will reassigned to her.

Stories have been so freely circulated by
many — among them Dr. E. J. Foster, whom
she adopted in 1882 but who according
to his own report was driven out of Mrs. Ed-
dy's heart and home by Frye's influence — of
the unusual authority exercised by a coachman-
secretary, that suit was, March 1st, instituted
by her son and others to break this authority
once for all. Frye's reply in his affidavit was
that Mrs Eddy is sole manager of her affairs.
Those nearest to her testified in the same
terms. Mrs. Eddy stated clearly, June 15th,
to a representative of the Boston Globe, " No
living person abridges my rights in this house
or governs my actions." Dr. Edward French,
the expert alienist, July 10th, " was impressed
with her intelligence and business ability "
and pronounced her " competent to manage
her own affairs." And no less an alienist than
Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton found, August
12th, that " she is competent to take care of

86 Christian Science

herself and manage her affairs and that she is
not coerced in any way." It was therefore
wise for the " next friends," whatever may
have been their motive, to abandon their law-
suit on August 21st.

With a name, a book, a tentative organisa-
tion, and headquarters. Christian Science was
fairly launched by 1875. On the centennial
of the nation's birthday in 1876 the organisa-
tion was perfected and April 19, 1879, it was
turned into a church. A charter was obtained
in August, and Mrs. Eddy, called the same
year by the little flock of twenty-six to be their
pastor, was ordained in 1881.^^

The church was not, however, an immediate
success. Lynn was already growing weary of
the new faith and its founder. She was so
often in the courts that the Boston papers
were headlining her troubles with increasing
facetiousness. Students one by one withdrew
till once she had but two left. She was
meanwhile, under the great strain, growing
so difficult to satisfy that even her obedient
husband once confided to a friend that he did
'* not beHeve God Almighty could please Mrs.
Eddy." Realising that there was nothing
more that she could do in Lynn she dissolved
her little church of less than fifty members,

The Founder of the Faith 87

and early in the winter of 1882 beat a wise re-
treat to Boston.

She had for several years been reconnoi-
tring there, — lecturing occasionally in 1878 in
a Baptist church on Shawmut Avenue and in
1879 giving Sunday afternoon talks in the
Parker Fraternity Building, on Appleton
Street, to audiences ranging from twenty-five
to fifty. By 1880 there were a few Christian
Scientists meeting every week at the home of
Mrs. Clara Choate. On Dec. 12, 1880, the
services were transferred to the Hawthorne
rooms on Park Street, and before Mrs. Eddy
removed to Boston her habit was to come up
every Sunday from Lynn, conduct the ser-
vice, and preach the sermon.

In 1881 a charter was secured for the Mas-
sachusetts Metaphysical College. The college
was at first designed to help her to rehabilitate
herself in Lynn. It never had a building of
its own. It met in Mrs. Eddy's parlour, and
its faculty, consisting solely of Mrs. Eddy, was
not as large as the faculty of that western col-
lege which Mr. Bryce once to his amusement
found was made up of the president and his
versatile wife. But the college grew in the
face of all discouragements and out of it de-
veloped various organisations. At last in 1886

88 Christian Science

the National Christian Science Association
was formed, which met in general convention
in New York City February 11, 1886. From
Science and Health sprang new editions in be-
wildering frequency with passing years, vari-
ous smaller books and brochures^ The Chris-
tian Science Journal^ published once a month
and now in its twenty-fifth year, and at last
The Christian Science Sentinel^ this year in
its ninth volume.

Mrs. Eddy was now coming to her own.
Her organisations were developing. She too
was growing steadily in the power to express
herself with pen and tongue. There were
still vagueness and verbosity in both her priv-
ate correspondence and her published writings.
But there was also a new ease evident. She
was learning somewhat of the art of feather-
ing the arrow of expression. More import-
ant still, she was beginning to submit her liter-
ary productions to others for censorship ere she
gave them forth to that cold world which still
is slow to take her at her own high valuation.

Astute beyond description Mrs. Eddy had
discovered that to make the most profound im-
pression on an audience one must not speak
too often and one must never speak except
when in the speaking mood. She now began

The Founder of the Faith 89

to limit the number of her public addresses
and never hesitated to break her Sunday ap-
pointment if she were not " in the Spirit on the
Lord's day." Her substitutes had to be ready
at short notice to officiate and sometimes even
then " after the audience at Hawthorne Hall
had been waiting for perhaps half an hour,
Mrs. Eddy's carriage would swing into Park
Street, the horses on a trot, and she would
ahght amid a crowd of delighted students,
sweep rapidly up the aisle, ascend the rostrum,
and at once begin to deliver one of her most
effective sermons."

A critic who heard her in the eighties in the
pulpit and the class-room pays this tribute to
her singular impressiveness :

" From hearing Mrs. Eddy preach, from reading
her books, from talking to her, one does not get an
adequate idea of her mental powers, unless one
hears her also in her classes. Not only is she glow-
ingly earnest in presenting her convictions, but her
language and illustrations are remarkable. She
is quick in repartee, and keenly turns a jest upon
her questioner, but not offensively or unkindly.
She reads faces rapidly. A brief exposition of the
Book of Job, which one day entered incidentally
into her statement of how God is found, would do
honour to any ecclesiastic. Critical listeners are
frequently astonished at the strength of her argu-

go Christian Science

ment and cogency of her reasoning, even when they
cannot fully agree with her conclusions. While she
is quick to detect variations from her own views,
and to argue the point, she maintains the utmost
repose in every debate. In fact, she is a natural
class-leader, and three hours pass quickly away in
her lessons." ^9

At first she hved at 569, then at 571, Colum-
bus Avenue, and in 1887 purchased a house in
the Back Bay district, 385 Commonwealth
Avenue,^^ where the First Reader of the
Mother Church is now directed by the Manual
to reside. Her house was her strategic point
for doing things and managing people.
Classes were meeting all day long. There was
little social intercourse and no idling. But there
was much self -consciousness grown morbid
through Mrs. Eddy's over-emphasis of ma-
licious animal magnetism. She herself was
troubled with nocturnal hysteria which she in-
variably ascribed to " M. A. M." as she famil-
iarly designated it. It was not unusual for
the whole family and even students living near
to be called up at night to give her mental
treatment. If the wash-boiler leaked or the
waterpipes froze, " M. A. M." was the malign
agent to be withstood by the united effort of
the little band of her retainers, whom at last
she organised into the " P. M. Society," to

The Founder of the Faith 91

present a solid front to the unseen and malig-
nant foe. For years her house was the " House
of Mesmer," and " resembled nothing so much
as one of the small Italian courts of the fif-
teenth century; reputations were made or lost
by an accident, and the favourite of to-day was
the exile of to-morrow." ^^ It was in her home
that she tested those who came her way. She
drew them closer to her if she thought that she
could use them; she sent them off if they
would not do her will.

Sometimes her liking for new people was
so quick and irresistible that she at once made
them members of her household. One man,
Dr. E. J. Foster, she legally adopted as her
son, gave him the name of Foster-Eddy, had
him live in her house, and serve her as account-
ant and publisher. His story of how his posi-
tion was made impossible by another favourite
of Mrs. Eddy's and how at last he fled in great
alarm and still fears for his life, reads like a
page from the Arabian Nights, Another, a
woman, the cleverest perhaps that ever basked
in Mrs. Eddy's sunshine for a season, became
ambitious, claimed to have pushed Mrs. Ed-
dy's views on the spiritual propagation of the
species to their logical conclusion of " imma-
culate conception," and — to quote the title of

92 Christian Science

the book she later wrote — in the War in
Heaven which resulted, suffered the fate of
Satan in Milton's poem.

Out of all the experiments of past years
has been developed Mrs. Eddy's present cabi-
net, including Alfred Farlow, devoted to her
now these twenty years and her official spokes-
man ; Archibald McClellan, man of affairs and
editor of the Christian Science periodicals, H.
S. Hering, First Reader in her church at Con-
cord; Rev. Irving C. Tomlinson, a Congre-
gational preacher turned Christian Scientist
and now her loyal follower: Mrs. Laura E.
Sargeant, her household companion and con-
fidant for fifteen years ; H. Cornell Wilson, her
secretary; and Calvin A. Frye, who is, ac-
cording to reports, nearer to Mrs. Eddy than
any one else.^^

The year 1889 is an epochal date in Mrs.
Eddy's later history. It marks the closing of
some of her efforts, the acceleration of others,
and the initiation of new ones. She was now
entering on the last and largest stage of her
public life. Her college had, she says, suc-
ceeded beyond her fondest hopes. It was not
merely filled, it was " flooded," with students
paying their $300 for a three weeks' course in
mental healing. Students came not only from

The Founder of the Faith 93

America but from Europe too, — and in 1889
there were 300 on the waiting list. The un-
precedented popularity of the institution gave
Mrs. Eddy some concern. " Example has
shown," she writes, " the danger arising from
being placed on earthly pinnacles, and Chris-
tian Science shuns whatever involves material
means for the promotion of spiritual ends." ^^

But there was another circumstance which
possibly gave some concern, if one may read
between the Hues of her discussion of it. Ac-
cording to her words, the college charter she
obtained in 1881 brought with it " the right
to grant degrees." The act on which the grant
was based, however, was repealed in 1882.
Next year the conferring of " any diploma or
degree " by a " corporation " or " associa-
tion," was made punishable by the courts.
Mrs. Eddy claimed that her college did not fall
under the heading of a " corporation " or
" association " and was therefore in no wise
affected by the law. But when there was
some reason in 1889 to expect that her inter-
pretation was not to be accepted without a
test, she closed her college, — and the subject.^*

Fertile as ever in resource, leaving nothing
to chance, forestalhng difficulties that might
later prove embarrassing, she at once gave her

94 Christian Science

students a new interest and by a bold stroke
rallied all who might possibly have been dis-
couraged by the closing of the college to the
support of the church now, after some experi-
mentation, to be developed to its utmost pos-
sibilities. The first proper step in the new
policy was evidently to erect a building
large enough to meet the growing needs
of Christian Science and attractive enough
to lure the casual. Before the year was at
an end Mrs. Eddy gave as a site for the
new church a lot worth, she says, " twenty
thousand dollars," which had come to her for
$5000, " in a circuitous and novel way " ^^ —
to quote her own words, " materially question-
able," " the wisdom of which a few persons
have since scrupled." It was on this lot that
the granite building with a seating capacity
of 1500 was erected in 1894 at a cost of $221,-
000, which now stands as a frontispiece to the
colossal temple, seating 5000, completed in
1906, at a cost of $2,000,000.

It was a happy day for Mrs. Eddy when in
1889, actuated in part by patriotic sentiment,
she removed to Concord, New Hampshire,
a few miles from her birthplace. She
was approaching the time limit which the
psalmist sets for normal human life, but her

The Founder of the Faith 95

natural force was far from spent. She was
passing on toward old age with less infirmity
than she had often felt in earlier years. And
yet it was well for her that she then withdrew
to Concord. The strife of tongues, the clash-
ings of ambition, the inevitable frictions of a
growing church, the " constant troubles in Bos-
ton " might possibly have qualified the unique
prestige she enjoyed had she been near enough
to be tempted to take a hand in all of them.^^

It was Mahomet withdrawn to Medina who
later dominated Mecca, and it was Mrs. Eddy
removed to Concord who won prophetic em-
inence in Boston.^^ If a new religion is to
come to large proportions a cloud of mystery
must some day gather round the head of the
originator.

The founder of Christian Science has been
fortunate to have her personality take on a
little mystery before her death. At Concord
she has been far enough away to arrange with
dramatic detail the infrequent epiphany of
pilgrims who have come from far and near to
break their alabaster box upon her feet and to
receive upon their reverent heads her blessing
from the balcony of Pleasant View. At Con-
cord she has not been so far away but that she
could keep the reins of government well within

g6 Christian Science

her practised hands as those about her testify
has been and is to-day her habit.

Christian Science is a movement of signifi-
cance from the point of view of numbers. Mrs.
Eddy claims more than a miUion followers.
Certainly the whole world over there are those
who call her blessed, and who prove their grati-
tude by building costly and commodious
churches. The Christian Science congrega-
tions number now at least a thousand, of which
perhaps three hundred are not regularly or-
ganised under state laws but are simply
societies holding public services. The Mother
Church in Boston reported June 11, 1907, a
membership of 43,876, and the total member-
ship of the 64<5 branch churches which have re-
ported, is now 42,846.^^

The aggregate membership, however, is not
so large as might appear; for as the Publica-
tion Committee writes me, " All the members
of the branch churches are eligible to member-
ship in the Mother Church and I think it is
safe to assume that a very large percentage of
them belong to that society." To the enrol-
ment, therefore, of 42,846 in the branch
churches must be added not all the 43,876 in
the Mother Church but only that relatively
small percentage of them who are members of

The Founder of the Faith 97

no church except the Mother Church. But
on the other hand, the Committee on Pubhca-
tion bids us to remember, that there are many
Christian Scientists at heart who are " situated
as to their family relations and otherwise so
that it does not seem advisable to sever their
old connections at the present time and for
that reason it is not easy to estimate the num-
ber of those who are actually interested." ^^

However numerous Christian Scientists
may be, Mrs. Eddy is their ruler absolute.*^
No earthly potentate has the authority which
Mrs. Eddy now enjoys. If the whole world
is not yet at her feet as she hopes it may be be-
fore she dies, she has worshippers enough to
give some pertinence to proud ambition. Na-
poleon's one hope to perpetuate his throne was
through a son. Mrs. Eddy is content to per-
petuate her pulpit by a book. No one can
succeed her in the Christian Science pulpit,
which nowhere has a preacher, and ip the
place of a preacher. Science and Healthy read
by a reader chosen with her approval, is every-
where the Sunday sermon in connection with
and in comment on the Bible.

Those who would know how absolute is
Mrs. Eddy's will must read not Science and
Health but the Manual of the Mother Church

98 Christian Science

in Boston, of which it should always be remem-
bered most Christian Scientists in the land are
members. Mrs. Eddy claims for the Manual,
prepared in 1892, as for Science and Health,
that it was in its origin " impelled by a power
not one's own." ^^ If Science and Health
surprises one by its extraordinary theories^ the
Manual amazes us by the powers it entrusts
to Mrs. Eddy.

Pastor Emeritus to Science and Health and |

not to any pastor in the flesh, Mrs. Eddy has J

all the authority she had when she was pastor
without the wear and tear of pastoral relation-
ship. The Church has its directors and trustees
but they are responsible to Mrs. Eddy. The
Church elects its readers but always from a
list approved by Mrs. Eddy, and she can re-
move a reader without assigning any reason
for her act.

Every application for membership must be
passed upon by Mrs. Eddy. Every Christian
Scientist is responsible to her for even some of
the incidental interests of life. No Christian
Scientist may read books on hypnotism or may
patronise any publishers or booksellers who
have books for sale that criticise the cause. No
Christian Scientist may make bold to stroll by
Pleasant View or to haunt Mrs. Eddy's drive

The Founder of the Faith 99

or spend a while in Concord with the thought
of seeing her. No Christian Scientist, either
man or woman, may refuse at Mrs. Eddy's
call to leave business, home, and kindred and
go to live with her at Pleasant View for years
if she so orders.

On each instance of infraction of these rules,
Mrs. Eddy sits in judgment. She acts also as
jury, and from her decision there is no appeal.
She professes actual infallibility in dealing
with those who practise hypnotism. " I pos-
sess," she says, " a spiritual sense of what the
malicious mental practitioner is mentally argu-
ing, which cannot be deceived; I can discern
in the human mind thoughts, motives, and pur-
poses; and neither mental arguments nor psy-
chic power can affect this spiritual insight." ^^

The directors of the Christian Science edu-
cational work are chosen subject to her ap-
proval, and she is president of the board
besides. There are teachers, lecturers, mis-
sionaries — chosen ever with her consent — and
even the minor employees of the Publishing
Society are not selected save with her ap-
proval and are removable at her discretion.

Especially important is the Committee on
Publication consisting of one member chosen
with Mrs. Eddy's sanction, and receiving a

TOO Christian Science

salary of at least $4000 a year. His business
is to conduct the Christian Science propa-
ganda through the press the whole world
over, to correct misapprehensions in regard
to Christian Science, to answer criticisms of
Mrs. Eddy and the cause, and "to circulate in
large quantities " his published answers. No
explanation of the growth of Christian Science
can be adequate that does not give full credit
to the Committee on Publication. During Mr.
Alfred Farlow's term of office, these eight
years past, the Press Bureau has been brought
to a high degree of efficiency.

Mrs. Eddy may be described as a Mona
Lisa. If in the light of Mrs. Eddy's history,
one may not say,

" She remains from perturbation free,
This woman that hath made all life her own/' ^^

one may say that opinions of Mrs. Eddy differ
as widely as those concerning the inscrutable
woman who looks out from Leonardo's puz-
zling picture.

To some Mrs. Eddy has for many years
seemed but the passive tool of designing men
who play upon her vanity to put money in
their purse. To others she is not merely, as
one close to her has written me, the purest,
wisest, most unselfish of women,^^ but also as

The Founder of the Faith loi

another devotee has said, " the transparency
to this age, for the reflection of God to
mankind." ^^

Whatever secrets may he hid behind her se-
rene face,^^ Mrs. Eddy is no ordinary woman.
She is rich, famous, popular, and powerful.
Author of a book which many thousands set
above the Bible and study with devoutness
every day, Mrs. Eddy has accumulated a great
fortune out of its enormous sale. Head of a
large and growing organisation of her own
creation and as compact and obedient to her
every wish as a modern army, Mrs. Eddy
is beloved by all her subjects and by many of
them practically deified.

Distinction either in authorship or organisa-
tion never comes by chance. With a great
price it is purchased. To win world-wide
fame, which thousands are profoundly sure
will prove undying, both in authorship and
organisation, is an achievement only those will
underestimate who have not tried to purchase
either.

And yet all the way along these forty years
of such singleness of purpose as probably has
never been surpassed by womankind, Mrs.
Eddy has had heavy handicaps.

Always frail in health, she has not

102 Christian Science

infrequently been positively ill. Untrained
in early life to think, to write, to achieve, she
was past fifty before she found herself. The
impecunious sport of fortune, ill-fated in one
marriage, unhappy in another, unaffected to
any considerable extent by a third, thirty years
out of her long life were filled with embarrass-
ments, discouragements, mortifications, and
temptations.

Interested more in her idea than in the peo-
ple it drew to her she has suffered the for-
lornness which comes to those who sacrifice
relationships to ideas. " I am alone in the
world," she wrote to her son in 1898; "more
alone than a solitary star. . . . My home is
simply a house and a beautiful landscape.
There is not one in it that I love, only as I love
everybody." ^^

Ambitious to have the whole world at her
feet she has been teacher, leader, " Mother
Mary," everything except the simple friend
giving and receiving on those terms of
entire equality which ensure the happiest as
well as richest life. That was why a woman
in whose home she took her meals in 1872 once
said after a sharp censure received from Mrs.
Eddy : " That woman is either a saint or a
devil: I 'm sure I don't know which." *^ The

The Founder of the Faith 103 j

only thing of which anybody could be sure
was that Mrs. Eddy was never to be taken on
terms of equality by any one who crossed her
path.

A determination unshaken through the years
to win her point at any cost has brought its
incidental disadvantages. People of fine sen-
sibilities instinctively distrust the woman who |
airs her grievances in court. Mrs. Eddy has
been in court too often for her own best in-
terests. She has too often turned to strat- |
egy. And when the recent lawsuit was begun
it seemed at first to some as though there was
to be at last ironical illustration of the words
of Him who never went to law: " They that
take the sword shall perish with the sword."

With the head of the Mother Church set-
ting all through life a questionable example, it
was natural for the directors of the Church to
expose Christian Science to the humiliation of
the other day when the Massachusetts Su-
preme Court decided that not merely had the
directors in the building of the new church
broken a legal contract but that they had also
entered into a conspiracy with the labour
union. The leader of a religious movement
embarrasses the cause in unexpected ways by
frequent lawsuits and by legal subterfuges.^^

I04 Christian Science

Love of money has been the root of many
an ill in Mrs. Eddy's life. Spiritual gifts are
too precious to be habitually prostituted to the
accumulation of dollars even though the dol-
lars are designed at last for the perpetuation
of a church. It jars the spirit to turn
from Mrs. Eddy's claim that Science and
Health is " God's Book and He says give
it at once to the people " ^^ to her suggestion
of some years ago that it pays to be a Chris-
tian Scientist, to her sometime admission that
Christian Science healers have made " their
comfortable fortunes," and to her insistence
on selling what she distinctly and steadily as-
serts is a spiritual necessity at a profit which
has led in the case of corporations having a
monopoly of the physical necessities of life to
government investigation and universal repro-
bration. To have a fortune of admittedly
about a million dollars accruing largely from
the sale of a Book of Revelation which con-
tains " nothing of human opinion " ^^ and yet
for years to evade one's proportionate share of
taxpaying, even though one gives back in other
ways large sums to the community in which
©ne lives, is to put too great a strain on public
confidence.

But Mrs. Eddy's heaviest handicap has been
her habitual sense of blamelessness. To claim

The Founder of the Faith 105

inerrancy in judgment would be incredible
enough. To claim, besides, always to have
been correct in conduct is to overtax credulity.
To profess to be, in a unique sense, of " divine
origin," to be one with God in authorship, to
be " only a scribe echoing the harmonies of
heaven," to have a revelation " higher, clearer,
and more permanent " than Jesus had, and
steadily to deny in the face of every fact that
she has ever been at fault in all the many dif-
ficulties she has had with others is to invite an
analogy to Jesus which her record cannot
stand. If only her family had found some
fault with her, one would remember that the
relatives of Jesus never took Him at his proper
valuation. If only the clergy and the doctors
had been scandalised by Mrs. Eddy's words
and works, one would instinctively recall that
it was the common people who heard Jesus
gladly. But, unhappily, those who have been
most severe on Mrs. Eddy all these years have
been her own familiar friends, even her dis-
ciples chosen by her own free will, from the
days when Mrs. Crosby, as she still admits,
found pleasure in her company till not many
years ago when Mrs. Eddy learned how to
bind disciples to her with hoops of steel by
assuring them a comfortable income while they
practise their discipleship.

io6 Christian Science

Among the twelve there was one Judas, only
one. It has been the lament of Mrs. Eddy's
long career, especially before she moved to
Concord, that there have been many Judases
among her twelve. Jesus let his solitary
Judas go out into the night and into the last-
ing detestation of the world without a word
of execration. As Judas after Judas has for-
saken Mrs. Eddy's communion, he has gone
out, with infrequent exceptions, into the day-
light of a friendly world sometimes to be fol-
lowed through long years by Mrs. Eddy's
fiery fulminations. How could it be other-
wise with thirty-six of those nearest to her and
most prominent withdrawing at one time af-
ter planning first to expel her from her
church? ^^ If now in the fulness of her fame
she would, like the great and good of ages
past, acknowledge that she has not always had
the right of it in all the strained relationships
of life, particularly in the Quimby contro-
versy, the voice of criticism would even now,
though late, lose its sharpness, her reputation
for generosity would be enhanced, and the
golden thread, which runs through the strange
pattern of her long career, would be more
evident. But so long as she continues to in-
quire — as she did on August 25th ^^ — " Have

The Founder of the Faith 107

I ever injured any one?" inviting thus the
still unanswered challenge of the Man of Naz-
areth " Which of you convinceth me of sin? ",
only those can find her faultless who doubt the
infallibility of that intuition which, she says,
enables her to " discern in the human mind
thoughts, motives, and purposes " or who un-
der her spell are blind to the indisputable fact
that many a disciple Mrs. Eddy to-day re-
gards as a Judas has gone out from her be-
cause the disillusionment of close relationship
with her or intimate acquaintance with her
theory has disclosed the arrant folly of build-
ing any house upon the sand.

Mrs. Eddy will be judged in years to come
not by her authorship, nor by the efficient or-
ganisation she has built up, but by her daily
life along the past now lit at last by informa-
tion. Ambition, avarice, love of fame and
power may have their place in the career of
a Wolsey, an Elizabeth, a Richelieu, and a Na-
poleon. In the life of a true religious leader,
they have no proper place, and after Mrs.
Eddy's death has broken the spell of " the
grand old hypnotist," ^^ the world will see her
as she is with all her faults as well as all her
virtues, to which those nearest her bear con-
stant witness.

CHAPTER V

THE PHILOSOPHY

A Phase of Idealism — Mrs. Eddy Makes a " Revelation "
of it — The Battle Cry of Christian Science — The
Question of Reality — Christian Science neither
Christian nor Scientific — The Practical Objection —
Difficulties of Apologists — Soul Senses — Mrs. Eddy's
Isolation — An Unanswerable Criticism — No Room for
Evolution — A Grave Indictment — Timely Illustrations
of its Philosophical Anarchy.

THE philosophy of Christian Science is
not difficult to state. It is merely a
distinctive form of idealism. It is, in plain
words, the theory, almost as old as man, that
there is no reality save thought. India had
the general idea before ever Gautama took his
seat beneath the bo-tree. Democritus of Ab-
dera as early as 430 B.C. remarked: "Man
lives plunged in a world of illusion and of
deceptive forms which the vulgar take for
reality." Plato aroused a thoughtful interest
in it among the metaphysical. The Zend-
Avesta is tinged with idealism. The Neo-

io8

The Philosophy 109

Platonists made much of it in the early Chris-
tian centuries.

Bishop Berkeley, without denying the ex-
ternal world which we know, gave it a new
vogue two hundred years ago. Spinoza's
'" Universal Substance " is substantially Mrs.
Eddy's " Infinite Mind." Kant went so far
as to lay down the proposition that " the laws
of nature which physical science studies are
the creations of our own understanding, acting
upon the data of the senses." Lotze said that
" matter is nothing but an appearance for our
perception." The Transcendentalists were
wont to speak of " the supremacy of mind over
matter," and Emerson could on occasion sing:

" Out of thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose in upper air."

But none of them ever dreamed of doing
what Mrs. Eddy has accomplished in a single
generation, making the philosophy of idealism
in the minds of thousands a revelation handed
down from heaven at a definite time and place,
and the basis of a new and startling faith.

The one reality, says Mrs. Eddy, is God,
whose other name is Mind or Spirit. " God
is All-in-all." "All is infinite Mind and its
infinite manifestation." " Matter is unknown
in the Universe of Mind," *' What seems to

no Christian Science

be matter is a mortal, material sense of that
which is spiritual and perfect." " Matter and
mortal body are the illusions of human belief
which seem to appear and disappear to mortal
sense alone." ^

One may agree or disagree with Mrs. Eddy,
but one can not in this case fail to understand
her meaning. She means exactly what she
says, that matter has no real existence.

Before Mrs. Eddy's day, metaphysical dis-
cussion of the nature of the universe was re-
garded as mere theorising. It was academic;
it smelt of the lamp. It was for the class-room
and the seminar. It was not brought out into
the open. 'No one essayed to reduce it to the
terms of everyday experience. The utmost
that even Hegel, most inclusive of all meta-
physical idealists, set the idealist doing was to
teach the world to understand itself, not to
reform itself, according to philosophy.

Not so Mrs. Eddy. She would turn theory
into practice. She would have her followers
live up to her philosophy. Though once she
does advise them to " emerge gently from mat-
ter into spirit," ^ ordinarily, she would have
them all behave as though there were no mat-
ter. Science and Health is one long battle
cry to go forth in the spirit's might and put

The Philosophy m

to rout the things men falsely fancy that they
see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Mrs. Eddy's
ardent understudies crack their whips at the
recalcitrant. Mr. Mosley says : " What God
sees once he sees for all eternity, and sees as
perfect as well as perfectly." ^ Mr. Farlow
bids them to believe that " the demands of
truth are that we shall at once be all that God
would have us." ^ And Mrs. Eddy, for the
encouragement of the faint-hearted who find
matter a stubborn fact, indissoluble even in the
crucible of Christian Science, pleads guilty at
one time or another to having raised the dead,
" brought out one apple blossom on an apple
tree in January when the ground was covered
with snow. And in Lynn demonstrated in
the floral line some such small things." ^

Mrs. Eddy is far-sighted. She sees that
the differentiate of her philosophy is its im-
mediate availability in the world-struggle with
sin and pain. She realises what many of her
followers do not seem to realise, that it is the
possible practicability of her idealism which
enables it to challenge the attention of the
world. She understands what even some of
her official spokesmen give evidence of late of
misapprehending, that to stand the strain of
criticism, growing every year more trenchant

112 Christian Science

the entire philosophy of Christian Science
must abide by its obvious meaning without
such quahfication as one finds in Human Life
for August.

Make it, hke all other forms of idealism,
merely speculation, and Christian Science be-
comes at once much ado about nothing. Re-
gard it as logomachy and Mrs. Eddy takes her
place, the only woman, in the long line of the
bespectacled philosophers who have speculated
to little purpose on the evolution of human
thought. Divorce it like its fellow systems
from daily living, and Christian Science will
shrivel up to a brief paragraph in the Encyclo-
pcedia Britannica.

This is the end, and there is no other, of all
the tangled threads of Christian Science meta-
physics which many a critic has endeavoured
to untangle only to entangle them the more.
This is the end the reader is to seize and gently
pull if he would see the tangles disappear and
the threads all lengthen out to one.

Then he will clearly apprehend why Chris-
tian Science is something wholly different in
its philosophy from historic Christianity, which

looks out, on the entire sum of facts, in all the
reality with which they enter into our vital ex-
periences. It sees the solid earth in its undeniable

The Philosophy 113

activity. It sees humanity in its unmistakable
flesh and blood. It sees a vast physical universe
spreading away into illimitable regions of space and
time, moving under inexorable laws, held together
into a single ordered mass, by the stress of co-ordi-
nated forces. All this it sees, it accepts. It
denies nothing, it refuses nothing. Whatever a
valid experience ratifies, this is, for it, real.^

Historic Christianity accepts things as they
are, and is still as idealistic as Christian Sci-
ence. Things may have all the objectivity
they seem to have and yet be forms of thought
constructed by the mind and needed for the
mind to work with and to work upon. Things
may respond to all the tests the senses make
and still be but expressions of the Universal
Mind. There is no reason in the nature of the
case why God, who is all Spirit and all Mind,
must be limited in His range of choice of spirit
forms. There is, at any rate, no philosophical
necessity for finiteness to set metes and bounds
to Infinitude and presuming upon the posses-
sion of spiritual senses, decide offhand what
Infinitude must always do. Hamlet's word
to Horatio is worthy the consideration also of
the Christian Scientist:

" There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

8

ti4 Christian Science

The reader will apprehend, besides, why
Christian Science is not really scientific.
Science has no place for the finality that Mrs.
Eddy has always claimed for her revelation
of 1866 but has been disproving all these years
by the continuous revision ^ of her monu-
mental book. Science recognises no such
principle as Mr. Farlow would establish in his
exhortation to become " at once all that God
would have us"; for the essence of science is
the gradual development for which evolution
stands and which Jesus illustrated in his words,
" first the blade, then the ear ; after that the
full corn in the ear." And those who would
be Christian Scientists and true scientists at
one and the same time may well regard the
godly counsel of Sir Oliver Lodge : " if they
will let go their anchorage, and sail on in a
spirit of fearless faith, they will find an
abundant reward, by attaining a deeper in-
sight into the Divine Nature, and a wider and
brighter outlook over the destiny of man." ^

But what is the objection to Mrs. Eddy's
theory that the one absolute God, who is
omnipotence, truth, justice, love, has so con-
structed us that we see nothing which we think
we see, that through no fault of our own we
seem to be involved in a universal lie which

The Philosophy 115

Mrs. Eddy has built up a church to dissipate?
The objection is manifestly this, that while we
all may have one opinion or another about the
composition of the universe, while many of us
may hold with her to some form of ideaHsm,
while some of us may agree with her that spirit
and not matter is both original and ultimate
in the universe, we have each day to act as
though matter existed.

For all practical purposes in the action or
in the hf e of man, matter does exist. Bridge-
building, house-building, nation-building,
prove it to be no figment of imagination. We
may all agree to agree with Mrs. Eddy that
there is no matter, that matter is an idle dream.
But our very agreement makes matter cease
to be a dream. For as Kant long since ob-
served: "A dream which all dream together,
and which all must dream, is not a dream but
a reahty."

There are signs of late that some of Mrs.
Eddy's recognised interpreters are uneasy at
the turn the argument is taking at the hands
of critics. Mr. Farlow went the length three
years ago, of admitting that " Christian
Science includes not only a presentation of the
true spiritual state which is to be attained, but
also a wise consideration and disposition of our

it6 Christian Science

present erroneous material condition. Call
them what we please — delusions or realities —
we find ourselves confronted," he admits,
" with limitations, discords, and evils — things
which can not be ignored." ^ Only the other
day, he was at great pains to explain in reply
to a sermon preached, April 22, 1907, in
Indianapolis — for Mr. Farlow's watchful eye
notes every criticism press and pulpit the land
over offer his cause — that Christian Science
" does not deny that pain and sin are real to
material sense." Another of Mrs. Eddy's of-
ficial interpreters, Mr. Bicknell Young, goes
a little farther. He said, October 8, 1906, in
Springfield, Massachusetts, that Christian
Scientists in general do not deny the reality of
things. " They affirm," he says, " the eternal
existence of all things."

And so Mrs. Eddy's thesis of the unreality
of matter would seem to be wounded in the
house of its friends. But the hurt is only in
the seeming. Neither means what his words
imply to those uninitiated in Christian Science
dialectics. Each seizes on a word which every-
body understands generically and gives to it
specialised significance. Each has in mind a
subtle distinction between reality and actuality
which people never make in ordinary discourse.

The Philosophy 117

Each gives to reality the spiritual meaning
which is but one of many meanings it may
have, and when using it of matter thinks of
matter not as matter is to ordinary minds but
as it is to Christian Scientists, — spirit and not
matter.

To the average man anything is real of which
his everyday experience gives valid testimony.
Anything is real to him which cannot be ex-
plained away, which stays where it is put in
time or space, which everybody accepts in the
same sense as anybody. When, therefore,
Mr. Young and Mr. Farlow begin these days
to talk of things as though things were real,
the average man takes notice and begins to
think he apprehends. But just as apprehen-
sion, happy and expectant, passes into satis-
fying comprehension, Mr. Farlow disappears
in a mist of Mrs. Eddy's making about the
difference between the senses of the body and
the senses of the mind, and Mr. Young re-
solves " things into thoughts " existent only in
the mind of God. And so, confused, and
dazed, the uninitiated in Christian Science
metaphysics are led round by a back way once
more into Mrs. Eddy's main travelled road of
the ** unreality of things."

Now one of two things is irrefutably true:

liS Christian Science

either Christian Science spokesmen, in order
to deceive the unwary and untrained, pur-
posely argue in a circle, or else they are trying
to account for themselves in a situation in
which there are spiritual elements playing
round them which they do not understand and
which therefore they cannot make quite clear to
others. Personally, I would gladly believe the
latter of them. But I cannot understand why
through the words and writings of Christian
Scientists often ring impeachments of the sin-
cerity, intelligence, and studiousness of those
outside the fold who want to know the truth,
whatever it may be, about the faith and its
founder, and who intend, at whatever cost,
to have their questions answered or else to
know the reason why.

But Mrs. Eddy and her spokesmen hint
that the real reason why we do not see things
as they see them as thoughts in the Mind of
God is that we lack what they have — Soul
senses. Spirit senses. Mind senses.

What we term the five physical senses [Mrs. Eddy
states], are simply beliefs of mortal mind . . .
the avenues and instruments of human error, which
correspond with it. . . . Christian Science sus-
tains, with immortal proof, the impossibility of any
material sense, and defines these so-called senses as
mortal beliefs, whose testimony can neither be true

The Philosophy 119

of man nor his Maker. . . . Mind alone possesses
all faculties, perception, and comprehension; there-
fore mental endowments are not at the mercy of
organisation and decomposition. Otherwise the very
worms could unfashion man. If it were possible
for the real senses of man to be injured, Soul could
reproduce them in all their perfection; but they
cannot be disturbed, since they exist as Mind, not
matter. . . . Neither age nor accident can inter-
fere with the Soul's senses and there are no other
real senses.^^

Here, at last, one is inclined to make the
frank admission that Mrs. Eddy has had some-
thing very like a revelation. But no. Soul
senses are old friends. Kant knew them.
Emerson's address on " Nature " in 1838 led
to their adequate discussion. ^^ Quimby was
familiar with them ; for in a manuscript the au-
thor has seen, dated March, 1861, a year and
a half before Mrs. Eddy paid her first visit to
Quimby, he speaks of man's true senses as
" spiritual " and potentially free from the
body.^^ In the manuscript, also, which Mrs.
Eddy used at Stoughton and attributed to
Quimby there is a paragraph about soul
senses. And so we find Mrs. Eddy once more
in the wake of P. P. Quimby, learning after
him, probably from him in one of their many
talks, another of the essentials to her theory.

I20 Christian Science

But what does Mrs. Eddy mean by soul
senses? She means evidently spiritual intui-
tions. Why not, then, say so frankly? Why
invent a new vocabulary when the old is ade-
quate ? Why not speak plain English like the
rest of us ? Why write like the young student
in the theological seminary, who brought to his
instructor an essay on the Book of Exodus in
which he said, " In the midst of all this tumult
the son of Amram stood unmoved " ? " Whom
do you mean," inquired the instructor, " by the
son of Amram? " " I mean Moses, sir," was
the reply. " Well, if you mean Moses why do
you not say Moses? "

Is there no one bold enough to point out to
Mrs. Eddy the absurdity of claiming that the
race's spiritual intuitions are given to the
Christian Scientists alone? Is there no one
brave enough to remind her that four years be-
fore her book appeared Professor Tyndall was
showing in his essay on The Scientific Uses of
the Imagination how helpful insight is to sci-
ence? Is there no one venturesome enough to
recall to her memory that ten years before
twenty-six of her admiring friends invited her
to start a church in Boston and become its
preacher, Phillips Brooks began at Trinity
Church, scarcely more than a stone's throw

The Philosophy 121

from Mrs. Eddy's, that prophetic ministry
which for many years was to the intuitions of
countless thousands a continuous unveiling of
the glories that shall be in heaven and earth?
Is there no one divinely daring enough to teach
her the comprehensive truth that all men being
sons of God have the spiritual senses Mrs.
Eddy talks so much about, and use them not
to deny that there is such a thing as matter,
but to transfigure and suffuse and make sacra-
mental this matter which our spirit taber-
nacles in until " our flesh being subdued to the
Spirit, we may ever obey Thy Godly motions
in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy
honour and glory who livest and reignest with
the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God,
world without end? " ^^

It is so pathetic. Shut off from that world
of sense which she vows does not exist, an
aged woman who has had no superior among
the women of recent times in the power to im-
press herself upon the age in which she lives
treads round and round the narrow circle of
her vain delusion that things are not, and yet
for practical purposes they must be for a
while at least, denying the existence of the com-
fortable house she lives in and yet is willing to
live in until she dies, disputing the materiality

122 Christian Science

of the coal that keeps her warm even though
one of her disciples does admit that possibly
it is real as long as the body it protects from
the New England blasts seems to be, denying
that " food is what sustains life " and yet of
course indulging just as usual in her tea and
toast and comforting herself with the reflec-
tion that it would be " foolish to stop eating
until we gain more goodness," disavowing if
she is truly logical that the monumental book
exists, the sale of which at a price prohibitive
to the poor has lifted her from poverty and
placed her in the list of millionaires, and yet
issuing the following instructions to her fol-
lowers: " It shall be the duty of all Christian
Scientists to circulate and to sell as many of
these books [she refers also to her other books]
as they can. If a member of the First Church
of Christ, Scientist, shall fail to obey this in-
junction it will render him liable to lose his
membership in this church." ^*

It is more pathetic yet to turn from Mr.
Farlow's earnest effort to square Christian
Science with common sense in his admission
that there are " things which cannot be ig-
nored," and from Mr. Young's strange dialec-
tic that Christian Scientists do not " deny the
reality of things," to Mrs. Eddy's cruel,

The Philosophy 123

crushing, and conclusive sentence that " no-
thing possesses reality or existence except
God." ^^ Of Mrs. Eddy and her loyal inter-
preters one is compelled to observe in calm
and altogether kindly mood that, wholly apart
from the merits and demerits of the cause they
represent, " They cannot go on forever stand-
ing on one leg, or sitting without a chair, or
walking with their feet tied, or grazing like
the stags of Tityrus in the air." ^^ They must
get together and keep together in the public
mind if they would win the world to Christian
Science.

There is one criticism of the philosophy of
Christian Science to which no answer can be
given. With the rest of us, Mrs. Eddy agrees
that God is infinite. Being infinite, God is,
in the nature of the case, unbounded by the
Hmitations which time sets to our finiteness.
God is timeless, and the psalmist therefore
spoke well within the truth when he remarked
that " A thousand years in Thy sight are but
as yesterday." So careless is God of time that
He takes a summer for the painting of the
petal of the rose, ten thousand years or more
to make a ton of coal, and no one knows how
many million years to make man out of pri-
mordial protoplasm.

124 Christian Science

It would be, perhaps, enough to prove my
point were I to remind the reader that a revela-
tion which, like Mrs. Eddy's, purports to cover
every human interest, leaves no room for the
thought of evolution. But I would take no
advantage. I turn rather to the efforts made
in recent years to explain away Mrs. Eddy's
earlier claims for both originality and finality
in the revelation she received. One instance
is adequately illustrative. Mr. Farlow inci-
dently admits, even in the face of Mrs. Eddy's
frequent hints that between her and Christ
there has been no historic link, that possibly
there have been sages before the sage of Pleas-
ant View, and that while Christian Science is
" the direct emanation of the Divine intelli-
gence as opposed to mere belief, yet its advent
has been the result of development." ^^ But
set no store by such admissions. Mr. Farlow
follows Mrs. Eddy all the way even when his
words would sometimes seem to lead another
way. And to know the attitude of Christian
Science toward evolution we must turn to Mrs.
Eddy before we listen to her representatives.

Mrs. Eddy does say:

Perfection is seen and acknowledged only by de-
grees, in the midst of imperfection. The ages must
slowly work up to it. How long it must be before

The Philosophy 125

we arrive at the demonstration of Scientific Being,
no man knoweth, — not even the Son, but the
Father ; but one thing is certain, that error will con-
tinue its delusions until the final goal of gladness is
assiduously earned and won.^^

This looks like evolution, but it is not evolu-
tion. The process to which she refers is in-
tellectual, not cosmic. It is nothing but a rather
turgid statement that it will take a while to
convert all the world to Christian Science, —
an obvious truth.

At a time when modification of the views of
Darwin and Weismann has not weakened but
rather strengthened the fundamental concept
of evolution, Mrs. Eddy goes merrily along
her way disclosing in such words as these her
ignorance of the very alphabet of evolution:
" Theorising about man's development from
mushrooms to monkeys and from monkeys to
men, amounts to nothing in the right direction,
and very much in the wrong." ^^

It would not be fair, however, to leave this
aspect of our theme without an effort to find
in Mrs. Eddy's entourage some who know
more than she concerning evolution. Mr. Joel
Rufus Mosley is a young man. He has had
in Chicago, Harvard, and Heidelberg train-
ing in philosophy. He writes with charm and

1

126 Christian Science

clearness, and his writings are gladly read.
He tells us, in The Cosmopolitan for July,
1907, that

Christian Science reveals that, since God is above
the finite sense of time and space and all limitations
of ignorance and evil, since he is unchanging in his
perfection of being, action, and thought, whatever
he sees once, he sees forever. The universe, includ-
ing man, is, therefore, always perfect in the mind of
God ; as God made it, sustains it, sees it, as it really
exists.

This means, if it means anything, that there
is in the Christian Science scheme, no place for
the evolution of the universe. Others, but not
Christian Scientists, may therefore sing:

" A fire mist and a planet, a crystal and a cell ;
A jellyfish and saurian, and caves where the cave

men dwell,
Then a sense of law and beauty, and a face turned

from the clod;
Some call it evolution, and others call it God.'^

But Christian Science has its mathematician
as well as its philosopher. The First Reader
of the Church at Concord, Professor Herman
S. Hering, was once a member of the mathe-
matical staff of the Johns Hopkins University.
He, therefore, should have working know-
ledge of the theory of evolution, and he says:

The Philosophy 127

It is claimed by some opponents that because
Christian Scientists do not walk on the water, turn
water into wine, multiply loaves and fishes, as did
Jesus, and because they still have to do with matter
at every turn, the doctrines of Christian Science,
especially that of the unreality of matter, must be
fallacious. Such an argument is like that which
declares that because a schoolboy, who is just learn-
ing to add and subtract, cannot work out a problem
in cube root, therefore the claims of greater pos-
sibilities in the science of mathematics are falla-
cious, and the schoolboy is badly deceived by the
promise of being able eventually to solve such
higher problems.^o

These words, too, mean what they seem to
mean, that evolution is not of matter but
merely in the mind of those who are develop-
ing into consciousness of the unreality of mat-
ter. He says, too, as clearly as analogy can
speak, that the time is coming when Christian
Scientists will be able to whistle matter down
the wind of life. It is all of a piece with Mr.
Farlow's charge that we "at once be all that
God would have us."

Denying, then, that God does follow the
time-method of evolution in His work, insist-
ing that because a thing is true it must neglect
all time conditions except perhaps a few brief
centuries. Christian Science sets itself against
the biggest truth that man has ever learned

128 Christian Science

about God's way of working. All these ages
past, since Anaxagoras was trying to pluck
out the secret of eclipses, and Job on his ash-
heap was justifying to himself the ways of God
to man, men have meditated on the problems
of the universe, assuming at the outset that
however God may work. He must have all the
time He wants to do His work.

As in these latter days men have come to
see that God's method is invariably that of evo-
lution and that therefore He takes more time
than men once thought necessary for Him to
do his work, men have developed such a respect
for God's intelligence as in their ignorance
they never had before. More than this, as
normal men look back across the ages and see
how slowly man has moved upward, working
out the beast, and how quickly he has some-
times fallen back into his native beastliness,
they grow righteously impatient with a scheme
of human conduct which not only bids man act
as if there were no past but also encourages
him to ignore the plain dictates of that ordi-
nary common sense to which society (as
Christian Science will one day find to its dis-
comfiture) sometimes owes more than to that
mysterious second sight of which Mrs. Eddy
speaks.

.1

The Philosophy 129

Mrs. Eddy may conceivably be right, the
rest of us wrong; but it will take more than
her " final revelation " of 1866 to induce repre-
sentative men like Roosevelt and Taft, Eliot
and Woodrow Wilson, Rainsf ord and George
Gordon, to part with the accumulated know-
ledge of the past and to act as though the only
things worth while had been revealed through
the ambiguous pages of Science and Health.
^Vhat Ancrum says to David Grieve, after his
return from the far country, of defiance of
conventions, can as well be said to-day to
those who without a critical study of its philo-
sophy build their house upon the sand of
Christian Science:

All these centuries the human animal has fought
with the human soul. And step by step the
soul has registered her victories. She has won
them only by feeling for the law and finding it-
uncovering, bringing into light, the firm rocks be-
neath her feet. And on these rocks she rears her
landmarks — marriage, the family, the State, the
Church. Neglect them, and you sink into the
quagmire from which the soul of the race has been
for generations struggling to save you. Dispute
them! overthrow them, — ^yes, if you can! You have
about as much chance with them as you have with
the other facts and laws amid which you live —
physical or chemical or biological.21

I30 Christian Science

Along the way of evolution then, I draw to
my indictment of Christian Science as a sys-
tem of philosophy. I charge it with being
nothing less than philosophical anarchy con-
cealed beneath confusedness of thought and
ambiguity of words. I charge it with pro-
posing to the world a strange theory of life
which, if lived up to, would break with the past
in thought and action, disintegrate institutions
built up at cost incredible of life and limb, and
substitute for the order that has been secured
in government, industry, morals, and religion,
a state in which every man would do what
seemed right in his own sight, wilfully regard-
less of the world experience, and what we have
gained in ages past would, therefore, all be
Iost.22

Is my indictment too severe? Think
clearly. If Mrs. Eddy's theory that there is
no matter in the universe is of more signifi-
cance than any other idealistic theory it is be-
cause she would make haste to turn it into
practice. Let us in fancy in a few imaginable
instances act upon her theory:

Coming up the street a moment since, I
passed the police station. A useless burden
on the city ! Since there is nothing in the uni-
verse but God and God is good, there is no

The Philosophy 1 3 1

criminal in jail or out. Or if there seems to
be, the criminal is labouring under a delusion.
" Through silent argument, convince the
mortal of his mistake." ^^ That is Mrs. Eddy's
way, if she is logical.

A block nearer I passed a drug store, whose
contents Mrs. Eddy characterises as substi-
tutes for the dignity and potency of divine
mind, having for their purpose to " give
death and the grave victory over man." ^^
She brushes them away with the few words,
" Mortal mind confers the only power a drug
can ever possess," ^^ and casually suggests that
her third husband was killed by " arsenical
poisoning mentally administered." ^^ For the
doctors she has sharper words than for the
druggists. " Diplomas," she reminds them,
" no more confer a rightful power to kill peo-
ple than does the assassin's steel." ^^ " Why
support the popular systems of medicine," she
inquires, " when the physician may be per-
chance an infidel, and lose ninety-and-nine
patients while Christian Science cures its
hundred? " ^^ As though this were not enough,
she adds that it is the doctors who " are flood-
ing the world with diseases, because they are
ignorant that the human mind and body are
one." If this does not mean what it seems

132 Christian Science

to mean what does it mean? And how can
Miss Brookins say " Christian Scientists have
no quarrel with the medical profession? " ^^

A little nearer home I passed the Edwards
Church, representing three centuries and more
of struggle for the right to worship God as the
individual pleases. Mrs. Eddy's writing is de-
ficient in the saving grace of humour. But
that she can indulge in irony is evident in these
words about the churches and the clergy:
" One of the forms of worship in Thibet is to
carry a praying machine through the streets,
and stop at the doors to earn a penny by grind-
ing out a prayer; whereas civilisation pays for
prayers by the clergy in lofty edifices. Is
the difference very great after all? " ^^ Of all
for which the Edwards Church stands, she can
think of nothing more to say than " Worship-
ping through the medium of matter is Pagan-
ism." ^^ " As in Jesus' days, tyranny and
pride need to be whipped out of the temple,
and humility and divine science welcomed
in." ^^ This is the personal contribution of
Mrs. Eddy to Christian unity.

And as to Smith College on my left, that is,
according to Mrs. Eddy's theory, an evident
absurdity. As we shall see later, sin and suf-
fering are to Christian Scientists the special

The Philosophy 133

delusions that spring out of the great delusion
that matter exists. If sin and suffering are
delusions, history and literature, which are sat-
urated with men's sins and sufferings, are de-
luding. What we call the sciences, too, we
may neglect as " built on the false hypotheses
that matter is its own lawgiver, that law is
founded on material conditions." ^^ Yet the
very buildings of Smith College are a proof
made possible by that form of matter we call
money that matter as well as spirit is, that
God does work sacramentally, does reveal
Himself to us through other books beside those
of Mrs. Eddy, that in spite of Mrs. Eddy's
dictum that "human thought never projected
the least portion of true science," ^^ human
thought is projecting every week in the labora-
tories of Smith College not Christian Science
but true science. Mrs. Eddy would not tear
the buildings down; there are, of course, ac-
cording to her theory, no buildings to tear
down. She suggests that to Christian Science
be given the place in the curriculum which is
now occupied by what she inaccurately calls
" scholastic theology and physiology." ^^ But
she can scarcely hope that her suggestion will
be promptly followed.

Now I submit in all sincerity that if this

134 Christian Science

is not in essence anarchy, then there is no word
in the Enghsh language with which to de-
scribe it.

If the reply is made that Mrs. Eddy would
not apply her theory at once in every instance,
that she has in late years advised her followers
to obey the laws concerning contagious dis-
eases, to leave surgery for a while to the doc-
tors, to refrain from antagonism of the
churches, and to send their children to school;
that in nowise breaks the force of my conten-
tion. Whatever time allowance Mrs. Eddy
permits is in direct contradiction of her thesis
that there is no matter and that we err every
time we act as though matter existed. If Mrs.
Eddy were inclined to give to God all the time
He needs and takes to work by the law of evo-
lution which we see everywhere in operation,
then Christian Science would simply be an in-
teresting speculation bearing in no way on
our every-day existence, in no way disturbing
our relationship to church or to society, and
scarcely worth expression in a new sect whose
ultimate effect will be still further to postpone
the happy day when we shall be " all of one
heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond
of truth and peace, of faith and charity."

»> 36

CHAPTER VI

THE RELIGION AND THEOLOGY

God All-in-all — Principle not Personality — From Panthe-
ism into Dualism — The Trinity — Christian Science is
the Holy Spirit — The Incarnation an Exaggerated
Nestorianism — Deifying Mrs. Eddy — Prayer Declara-
tion not Petition — Abandoning the Sacraments —
Substitution of a Breakfast for the Lord's Supper —
Evil no Real Existence — The Absurd Obsession of
Animal Magnetism.

T^HE religion of Christian Science flows
^ out of its philosophy. Lest I seem to
have an eye more for faults than virtues, let
me once again admit the merits of the system.
Christian Science is in spite of every weakness
a stout protest against materialism. It is, as
Mr. Farnsworth truly says, " a religio-philo-
sophical system appearing amidst an unphilo-
sophical people of materialistic tendencies."
To the philosophical materialism of those who,
forgetting that there may be transmissive as
well as productive functions, would make
thought nothing but a function of the brain.
Christian Science presents a vigorous if some-

135

136 Christian Science

what incoherent denial. To the practical ma-
terialism that would leave God out of all
account except on Sundays, Christian Science,
though often strangely inconsistent, does
steadily reply that " God is All-in-all " on
week days as on Sunday. Christian Science
does save many from their lower self. It does
lead many to a larger faith in God and a closer
walk with Him. It does impart to many a
power and poise, serenity and joy they might
have found before if they had sought them dih-
gently in the church of their upbringing.

But as a religion — and, like Mrs. Eddy, we
must use the term religion loosely to include
theology — Christian Science has defects as
fundamental as we found a while ago in its
philosophy, and the first of these appears in
the consideration of the Christian Science God.

Unity is the mind's first quest, and Mrs.
Eddy is in line with other pilgrims of the In-
finite in seeking unity. Unlike many of those,
however, she has found what she has sought
and has given it a name. " Principle " she
calls it, and thus she answers the inquiry, " Is
there more than one Principle?" "There is
not. Principle is Divine, one Life, one Truth,
one Love." ^ " Principle " is Mrs. Eddy's God
and she has many synonyms for it : " God,"

The Religion and Theology 137

"Mind," "Spirit," "Soul," "Substance,"
" Life," " Truth," " Love."

" Principle " in her theology gathers up into
itself all the concepts we habitually associate
with God, except the most important — per-
sonality. Before her book appeared in 1875,
she was telling her pupils, as two of them in-
form me, that they could make no progress till
they had banished from their minds the thought
of God as person. She instructed Richard
Kennedy " to lay special stress," in healing
patients, on the impersonality of God. This
is the commanding thought that rings through
the first chapter of the first edition of Science
and Healthj and in the third edition (1881) she
writes with confident assurance that God " is
not a person, God is Principle." ^ In subse-
quent editions, while the word " person " oc-
curs more frequently, it is on " Principle " that
she chiefly depends. In No and Yes she says
that " God is Love ; and Love is Principle,
not person." In Christian Science versus
Pantheism^ she draws such a sharp distinction
between principle and personality as practi-
cally to eliminate personality from her idea of
God. And Mr. Bicknell Young admits out-
right that " ' personal ' is one of the words that
has hindered." ^

13B Christian Science

In the interest of clear classification Mrs.
Eddy finds a place among the idealistic pan-
theists. But she does not feel at home in such
companionship. She thinks the prefix pan is
too suggestive of the " mythological deity of
that name." ^ She says that pantheism is an-
nulled by Christian Science. And yet, when
called upon to condense her system into an
epigram she puts it thus, " God is All in all ";
and then allows the sentence to be thus re-
versed. All in all is God.^ If this surprising
proposition differs fundamentally from the
test sentence of all pantheism, " God is all and
all is God," common sense will be slow in mak-
ing the discovery.

Mrs. Eddy explains in some detail that
" God is not in the things He hath made." ^
But her explanation is not so anti-pantheistic
as it seems. She is ever telling us that there
are no things for God to be in. What seem
to be such things are really His thoughts.
" God is the all-inclusive One, Who with His
thoughts, ideas, shadows, constitutes the Uni-
verse." ^ Even man has not the volition and
the self-activity he thinks he possesses. He
must will as God wills and act as God acts.
He is nothing more than God's reflection in the
looking-glass of Christian Science. When

The Religion and Theology 139

he dares to think that he is more, he falls below
the threshold of manhood and becomes what
Mrs. Eddy calls with bated breath mere " mor-
tal mind."

Try as she will, Mrs. Eddy never quite
escapes from pantheism except to stumble
into dualism by the creation of the indepen-
dent activity of " mortal mind," which has no
place in God because it is not good. Strange
to say, Mrs. Eddy's philosopher-apologist,
ISIr. Mosley, takes the plunge along with her
out of pantheism into dualism and pictures
" the Immortal Mind and its universe of pure,
perfect, and immortal ideas and the mortal
mind and its seeming world of imperfections "
as in direct opposition to each other. ^

Mrs. Eddy's pantheism is unnecessary, and
yet its origin was inevitable in a mind as hteral
as hers. Quimby often spoke of God as prin-
ciple. In the Quimby manuscript from which
for several years Mrs. Eddy taught, no sen-
tence is more startling than the sentence " God
is Principle." With her passion for the novel
and bizarre Mrs. Eddy gave to the one new
thought concerning God which she learned
from Quimby an importance which it never
had perhaps in Quimby's large and compre-
hensive mind. She made it central and cen-

140 Christian Science

tripetal in her theology. She exploited it to
the utmost without perceiving until recent
years the plight in which it places her theology.

Once, in 1898, Mrs. Eddy hints that God
may be personal " if the term personality, as
applied to God, means infinite 'personality''
and Mr. Farlow in 1907 assures the Rev.
Edgar P. Hill that Mrs. Eddy does believe
that " God is person in the infinite sense." ^

But our difficulties multiply. For more
than thirty years Mrs. Eddy has been solemnly
asserting that in 1866 she received a ^'^ final ^^
revelation." Now this "final revelation,"
which was finally as well as first expressed in
1875, in Science and Healthy is saturated with
the thought that God is not a person. In the
very first chapter we are informed that " God
is Principle, not person," that Jesus preached
the impersonality of God, that it was the error
of believing in the personality of God that
crucified Jesus, that the trouble with conven-
tional Christianity to-day is that it makes God
a person and that because it " starts from per-
son, instead of Principle, it is not the truth,"
and that our duty in the premises is to base
our opinions on principle and not person.

But if God was " not person " in 1875 He
is " not person " now. Mrs. Eddy can not

The Religion and Theology 141

make God person now without revision of her
"final revelation'" and a final revelation re-
vised is no final revelation. Can it be that
Mrs. Eddy's understudies are engaged in the
revision of the revelation she received in 1866?
These words from the earnest pen of Mr. Mat-
tox would seem to point that way : " Natu-
rally, with the progress of information and the
development of her understanding, she might
be expected to amend or modify her views." ^^
Why "naturally"? If Science and Health
is to be so amended year by year as to contra-
dict one year what it said in earlier years, then
it will take its place among the books of
mortal mind whose value is determined by in-
trinsic worth and not by "final revelation."

If Mrs. Eddy believes in 1907 that which in
1875 she denied, that God is person in any
sense whatever, the way to make clear her
change of heart is not by reading into princi-
ple, which she usually introduces with a capi-
tal letter, the self-conscious content of per-
sonality, which she seldom or never intro-
duces with a capital, but by rewriting the
text-book of Christian Science in the interest
of personaHty. She must stop speaking of
" Principle alone " ^^ as reforming the sinner
and healing the sick. She must allow some

142 Christian Science

place for pleading as well as declaration in
Christian Science prayer. She must cease to
picture Christ as a bare idea in the Man of
Galilee ; ^^ and she must altogether revise this
crude conception which she offers of the Trin-
ity : " Life, Truth, and Love constitute the
triune person called God, — that is, the triply
divine Principle, Love. They represent a
trinity in unity, three in one, — the same in es-
sence, though multiform in office: God the
Father; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship;
divine Science, or the Holy Comforter. These
three express in divine Science the threefold,
essential nature of the infinite. They also in-
dicate the divine Principle of scientific being,
the intelligent relation of God to man and the
universe." ^^

Mrs. Eddy has made many claims for Chris-
tian Science, but this, that Christian Science is
the Holy Spirit, overtops them all. It puts
too heavy a strain upon credulity. And Dr.
Fluno does not lighten the strain for ordinary
Christians, wont to think that according to
promise Jesus sent the Comforter to His be-
reaved disciples, by making what must seem
to many the irreverent suggestion that " a
woman . . . brought it to the world." ^^

Concerning the Incarnation, Mrs. Eddy

The Religion and Theology 143

thinks more loosely than usual. The early
Church was ever trying to determine how
Jesus could be at the same time God and man.
The necessity to exclude dualism from all
thought about the personality of Jesus, and to
establish for all time his oneness, was keenly
felt. The early councils at Nicsea, Constanti-
nople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were called
for the consideration and determination of one
aspect or another of this question. But of
these and of their significance Mrs. Eddy ap-
parently has no knowledge. As though the
Council of Ephesus had not met in 431, she
flings the Christian Science banner to the
breeze of an exaggerated Nestorianism. She
writes, " Jesus is the human man and Christ
is the divine, hence the duality of Jesus, the
Christ." ^'

Whence did she get this heresy? Was it a
feature of the " final revelation " she received
in 1866? Evidently she would have us so be-
lieve. Christian Science as a whole dates, she
says, from that experience. But before we
put the subject out of mind, we turn back again
to Quimby and his views.

What was Quimby's idea of Jesus Christ?
The Quimby manuscript from which for many
years Mrs. Eddy taught is not so clear about

144 Christian Science

the Incarnation as concerning God. It yields,
however, these two striking sentences : " Jesus
was the name of a man and Christ was the
truth." " Christ was the Wisdom that knew
Truth dwelt not in opinion." But, fortu-
nately, there are other Quimby sources. In
the first volume of the Quimby manuscripts,
dated April, 1860, two and a half years be-
fore Mrs. Eddy's first visit to her healer-
teacher, I found the idea first mentioned. A
year later, in 1861, Quimby wrote that Jesus
" separated himself as Jesus the man of opin-
ions from Christ the scientific man." Again,
in an article on the senses, he inquires : " Are
our senses mind? I answer, No. . . . Mind
and senses are as distinct as light and dark-
ness, and the same distinction holds good in
wisdom and knowledge, Jesus and Christ.
Christ, wisdom, and (spiritual) senses are
synonymous. So likewise are Jesus, know-
ledge, and mind." ^^

Here is Mrs. Eddy's dualistic conception of
the Incarnation presented as clearly as she her-
self has ever stated it. The question, there-
fore, instantly arises, is this a case of literary
parallelism? Parallelisms are not uncom-
mon. They occur, however, so often between
Mrs. Eddy and Quimby that the reader is by

The Religion and Theology 145

this time perhaps as sensitive to them as is the
present writer. Instinctively, with each suc-
cessive stage of the unfolding of Mrs. Eddy's
theology, he looks for another parallelism, and
he seldom looks in vain. The Mrs. Eddy of
1862, who in other instances contradicts the
Mrs. Eddy of 1907, once more resolves our
difficulty. In the very letter to the Portland
Courier in which she hints that it is the Christ
in Dr. Quimby which enables him to heal, she
refers to " P. P. Quimby's theory of Christ
(not Jesus) " ^^ and proves conclusively that
she understands it by professing the willing-
ness and ability to furnish additional informa-
tion on the subject. And so once more her
Pauline claim that " I neither received it of
man, neither was I taught it, but by the revela-
tion of Jesus Christ," fades out before a fact.^^
Mrs. Eddy is not unmindful of the prob-
lems raised by her dualistic theory, derived
from Quimby. She justifies it thus: "The
divine origin of Jesus gave him more than hu-
man power." ^^ At the same time she reminds
us that Jesus was not one with the Father,
that " the Lamb slain from the foundation of
the world " was slain only in man's mind, not
God's, and she finally disposes of the question
in these easy words : " This dual personality,

146 Christian Science

of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and
material, the Christ and Jesus, continued un-
til the Master's ascension; when the human,
the corporeal concept or Jesus disappeared;
while his invisible self, or Christ, continued to
exist in the eternal order of Divine Science." ^^
Mrs. Eddy's followers, however, see no
problems. They see only her solution of them.
They go along the course of Christian Science,
belated Nestorians, holding to a dualism dis-
carded by the Christian Church fifteen hun-
dred years ago. Before me as I write there
lie in manuscript the lecture notes of a Chris-
tian Science teacher of some fifteen years ago
in which I find these unexpected words:
" Jesus of Nazareth is often mistaken for the
real Christ." Coming one Sunday morning
from a service in the mother Church in Boston,
I picked up on the street a stray leaf from an
unknown student's Quarterly ^ and on the mar-
gin opposite the lesson for February 24th I
found this pencilled comment: "Jesus, the
human man; Christ, God's spiritual idea."
The prophet and the people are one in this as
in all other things in Christian Science, and
when they speak of Christ they speak in the
light of the following amazing sentence which
Mrs. Eddy gives them: " The true Logos is
demonstrably Christian Science."

The Religion and Theology 147

With the personality of Jesus Christ divided
into a mere man called Jesus, who was not
always ^^dse and never had as high a revelation
as Mrs. Eddy's, and a mere idea called Christ,
who reappears to-day in Christian Science
and no other faith, Mrs. Eddy shows a
certain famiharity in dealing with the In-
carnation which is disquieting even to the
unconventional.

She begins with the assertion that she was
not " apart from God " in writing her text-
book. She calls it — and not the Bible —
" God's Book." She has on more than one
occasion given the impression by a word or
deed that she is in some mysterious way un-
like the rest of us in kind as well as in de-
gree. She once claims " divine origin."
Those who are closest to her appear in-
stinctively to take their cue from her. As
early as 1882 the little band of Christian Scien-
tists at Lynn were declaring that " unless we
hear Her voice we do not hear His voice," and
the Christian Science Sentinel j reporting Mrs.
Eddy's address at the annual meeting of the
mother Church in 1899, says, " it was not then
Mrs. Eddy whom the people heard, but . . .
the voice of God." '^

No later than last December its editor,
Mr. Archibald McLellan, sent to her with a

14S Christian Science

suggestive note the following quotation from
Fiona MacLeod's The Isle of Dreams:

It is commonly said that, if he could be heard,
none should write in advance of his times. That I
do not believe. Only, it does not matter how few
listen, I believe that we are close upon a great and
deep spiritual change. I believe a new redemption
is even now conceived of the Divine Spirit in the
human heart, that is itself as a woman, broken in
dreams and yet sustained in faith, patient, long-
suffering, looking towards home. I believe that
though the Reign of Peace may be yet a long way
off, it is drawing near, and that Who shall save
us anew shall come divinely as a Woman, to save
us as Christ saved but not as He did, to bring
with her a sword. But whether this Divine woman,
this Mary of so many passionate hopes and dreams,
is to come through mortal birth, or as an immortal
Breathing upon our souls, none can yet know.^s

Years ago Mrs. Eddy was identifying her-
self with the " woman clothed with the sun "
in the book of Revelation, and remarking that
as Jesus represents " the fatherhood of God "
so the woman is the " type of God's mother-
hood." ^^ To Mr. Spofford she had already
written that her revelation of God was
" higher, clearer, and more permanent " than
the Master's had been. In 1898 she passes on
to this subtle explanation:

The Religion and Theology 149

^^ The impersonation of the Spiritual idea had a
brief history in the earthly life of our Master; but
of his kingdom there shall be no end; for Christ,
God's idea, will eventually rule all nations and
peoples — imperatively, absolutely, finally — with Di-
vine Science. This immaculate idea, represented
first by man and last hy woman, will baptize with
fire." 25

While she has never said outright, perhaps,
as has been claimed for her, that she is "the
Way to God " and Jesus only " the Way-
shower," ^^ Mrs. Eddy is over-fond of build-
ing up progressive series like the following:
" John the Baptist, Jesus the Messiah, the
Woman " type of God's motherhood." She
is past-mistress in that art of irresponsible
allusiveness which Newman had in mind in
his description of the man " who never enun-
ciates a truth without guarding himself against
being supposed to exclude its contradictory."
What could be more irresponsibly allusive
than this? — " No person can take the individ-
ual place of the Virgin Mary. No person can
compass or fulfill 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." ^^

iSo Christian Science

What Mrs. Eddy's niche in time is to be, she
says, " remains to be proved." She is more
concerned, it seems, to carve out the niche she
is to fill in all eternity, which, as she realises,
includes time. She is making rapid progress
in her ambitious task. She reports in 1906
that God is " divine Principle — as Life, repre-
sented by the Father; as Truth, represented
by the Son; as Love, represented by the
Mother." ''

Discovering long ago that Mrs. Eddy
likes to dwell upon the incarnation of the
motherhood of God, that she had even sug-
gested the idea in her version of the Lord's
Prayer with its appalling substitution of " Our
Father-Mother God " for " Our Father which
art in heaven," Mrs. Eddy's followers began
with one accord to call her " Mother." To
hold the vantage ground thus gained in her
progressive elevation, Mrs. Eddy, in the
nineties, designated herself as " Mother
Mary " and made it in a by-law of the mother
Church " an indication of disrespect for their
Pastor Emeritus, and unfitness to be a mem-
ber of the Mother Church," for Christian
Scientists to give the title Mother to anybody
else on earth except one's mother in the flesh.
Everybody spoke of her as " Mother." She

The Religion and Theology 151

sometimes signed herself " Mother Mary."
The President of the National Christian Sci-
ence Association on one occasion said, " There
is but one Moses, one Jesus; and there is but
one Mary." ^9

All this deifying went on not without some
criticism even in the Christian Science camp.
Mrs. Eddy, therefore, always watchful for
any sign of disaffection, made at last one of
her sweeping denials, as though facts could be
denied, and added a new by-law in 1903 to her
church Manual ordering the substitution of
the word Leader for Mother in Christian Sci-
ence terminology. ^^ Mark Twain's quaint
suggestion that there would never have been
any trouble had Mrs. Eddy signed her famous
telegram " Mother Baker " and not " Mother
Mary " lights up the entire situation.^^ Mrs.
Eddy did not want, and can not bear, to be re-
garded as an ordinary mother of her spiritual
children. She craves, and she will have, a
higher type of motherhood.

Under pressure, Mrs. Eddy has now and
then repudiated the parallelism her words have
constantly been tending to set up between her-
self and Christ. But here, again, facts are
not to be dismissed by mere denial. They are
too numerous and too indicative to be denied.

152 Christian Science

Even in her early teaching days she fell in-
stinctively into comparisons of herself and
Jesus, and never to her own disparagement.

This is what she wrote in 1877 to a favourite
student :

I know the crucifiction of the one who presents
Truth in its higher aspect will be this time through
a bigger error, through mortal mind instead of its
lower strata or matter, showing that the idea given
of God this time is higher, clearer, and more per-
manent than before. My dear companion and fel-
low labourer in the Lord is grappling stronger than
did Peter with the enemy, he would cut off their
hands and ears; you dear student, are doubtless
praying for me — and so the Modern Lawgiver is
upheld for a time.^^

If anything was needed to complete the
parallehsm between herself and Jesus it was
furnished in the amusing comparison of her
un-Petrine husband with the impetuous dis-
ciple who cut off the ear of Malchus when

" Out of the woods my Master came/'

Mrs. Eddy loved, also, to play the role of
the suffering Messiah, as though a system
which has no room for suffering could need a
suffering Messiah, and when she was ill or
troubled, as frequently occurred, she was apt
to remind her students that Jesus, too, was

The Religion and Theology 153

bruised for our transgressions and bore upon
his shoulders the world pain.^^

In 1899 the Christian Science Journal,
which she then owned, distinctly made the
claim, without rebuke from her, that Mrs.
Eddy was the equal of Jesus, and offered elab-
orate proofs in confirmation of the same.^^
She has always had a liking for the words
of Jesus in discussing her own personality,
and she cannot, even in 1906, attempt the solu-
tion of the vexatious servant problem by mak-
ing it obligatory on any Scientist designated
by the Board to become her servant without
adding, in the by-laws of her church, the re-
minder that " He that loveth father or mother
more than me is not worthy of me." ^^

In an illustrated book called Christ and
Christmas J, published by her in 1894, her
parallelisms reach the climax of audacity.
One picture represents Christ with a halo round
his head raising the dead from a modern cof-
fin. Another represents a woman with a halo
round her head raising the sick from a bed.
In a third picture the two are brought to-
gether, and there is a halo round each head.
Jesus, seated on a stone, holds the woman's
right hand while in her left she bears a scroll
on which the words " Christian Science " ap-

154 Christian Science

pear. The identity of the woman is not stated.
Why should it be? The very arrangement
of the hair suggests it. The following limp
verse opposite the picture leaves nothing
to imagination:

"As in Blessed Palestine's hour, so in our age
'T is the same hand unfolds His power and writes
the page."

If the picture is not self -authenticating then
the mystic words she wrote, when the usual
criticism came, that " Scientists sometimes
take things too seriously," ^^ and her with-
drawal of the book from circulation until the
storm was over, will suffice to convince every-
body except those who can not be convinced.
But specific instances are not needed to in-
form the conscientious student of Christian
Science literature that Mrs. Eddy holds her-
self in an unmatched relationship to Jesus
Christ. The entire sweep of her teaching, the
attitude toward her into which her followers
intuitively drift, the progressive mariolatry
steadily developing in spite of her transparent
protests, and the painstaking efforts made till
recently to conceal the infirmities of her ad-
vancing years, are sufficiently indicative.
And if in spite of all appearances, as one near
her has said, there is no warrant for the in-

The Religion and Theology 155

evitable conclusion, the verdict, however well
disposed the critic is, will be not unlike the
homely verdict of the Western jury," " Not
guilty, but don't do it again."

Whatever may be Mrs. Eddy's relationship
to Jesus Christ, there is one respect in which
she seems to set herself above Him. Jesus
prayed as normal people pray. He prayed to
God as though God were a person. He prayed
to God as though God were His Father.
He pleaded with Him for specific things, con-
ditioning each prayer with its "if it be possi-
ble." He prayed in private and He prayed
in public ; and He taught His disciples a form
of common prayer, the justification and illus-
tration of all common prayer to-day. Mrs.
Eddy accepts the fundamental principle of all
Jesus' praying, that prayer is communion with
God. But her acceptance is modified by the
persistence and obtrusiveness of her pantheism.

How can one pray to God when one is not
sure that God is personal? How can one
pray to God when one believes that " prayer
addressed to a person prevents our letting go
of personality for the impersonal Spirit to
whom all things are possible "?^^ How can
one pray to God when one holds that " the
habit of pleading with the divine Mind, as one

156 Christian Science

pleads with a human being, perpetuates the
belief in God as humanly circumscribed, — an
error which impedes spiritual growth " ?

While the Christian Scientist is steadily
moving away from the petitional element with
all that it involves of personal relationship, a
scientific Christian, like Sir Oliver Lodge, is
ever drawing nearer to it with these words:
" Through prayer we admit our dependence on
a higher power, for existence and health and
everything we possess; we are encouraged
to ask for whatever we need, as children ask
parents; and we inevitably cry for mercy
and comfort in times of tribulation and
anguish." ^^

Nowhere in Mrs. Eddy's treatment of the
subject is there the Gethsemane element of
" if it be possible." Audible prayer she re-
prehends. It imparts no understanding. It
makes involuntary hypocrites. It brings no
lasting benefit. " Lips must be mute and
materialism silent, that man may have audi-
ence with Spirit, the divine Principle, Love,
which destroys all error." ^^

Prayer is reduced in Christian Science to
mathematical exactness by the substitution of
declaration for petition, and when Christian
Science prayer is audible at all it is not prayer

The Religion and Theology 157

but merely a declaration of the relationship of
Principle (God) to its idea (man). Clearer
than any definition Mrs. Eddy gives of Chris-
tian Science prayer, is one offered by her lect-
urer, Miss Brookins, in the sentence, " An
habitual declaration of man's unity with the
divine and inexhaustible Life, the real and in-
destructible Substance, the infinite and omni-
potent Love, is the effectual prayer that
availeth much, in that it heals and redeems the
sin-sick and bodily infirm and casts out all
manner of evil." *^

There is one barrier in the way of the
Christian Science theory of prayer. The
Lord's Prayer contains all the elements which
Mrs. Eddy says prayer should not have. It
was intended to be audible. At least it was
in audible use in the public worship of the
early Christians, who were within a genera-
tion of Christ's time. Nothing could be more
certainly petitional than " Give us this day our
daily bread." There is more than a sugges-
tion of " if it be possible " in " Thy kingdom
come." But Mrs. Eddy is not to be daunted.
Careless of her tenses, she explains away the
plain meaning the Lord's Prayer has had all
through the centuries, commands her explana-
tion to be used invariably with it at all Chris-

15^ Christian Science

tian Science services, and prints it thus in her
text-book :

Our Father which art in heaven,
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious y

Hallowed be Thy name.
Adorable One,

Thy kingdom come.
Thy kingdom is within us. Thou art ever-present.
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth — God
is omnipotent, supreme.
Give us this day our daily bread;
Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished
affections;
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors.
And love is reflected in love;

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil;
And God leadeth us not into temptation, but de-
livereth us from sin, disease and death.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and
the glory, forever.
For God is infinite, all Power, all Life, Truth, Love,
over all, and All,^^

To one outside the Christian Science fold it
is refreshing to turn from such unreal and un-
warranted exegesis to the explanation Sir
Oliver Lodge, comprehensive equally in his
Christianity and his science, gives of the

The Religion and Theology 159

Lord's Prayer. He says that when we use it
in these scientific days

we first attune our spirit to the consciousness
of the Divine Fatherhood; trying to realise His
infinite holiness as well as His loving-kindness, de-
siring that everything alien to His will should
cease in our hearts and in the world, and longing
for the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Then we ask for the supply of the ordinary needs
of existence, and for the forgiveness of our sins and
shortcomings just as we pardon those who have
hurt us. We pray to be kept from evil influences,
and to be protected when they attack us. Finally,
we repose in the might, majesty, and dominion of
the Eternal Goodness.^2

Surprising as is Mrs. Eddy's effort to make
prayer nothing more than declaration, far
more surprising is her treatment of the sacra-
ments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Christian people generally agree that a
sacrament is "an outward and visible sign of
an inward and spiritual grace." They accept
hterally Jesus' injunction to " teach all na-
tions, baptising them," and St. Paul's testi-
mony that

I have received of the Lord that which also I
delivered unto you. That the Lord Jesus the same
night in which he was betrayed took bread: And
when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said.
Take, eat : this is my body, which is broken for you :

i6o Christian Science

this do in remembrance of me. After the same
manner also he took the cup, when he had supped,
saying, This is the new testament in my blood: this
do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.^^

Christians perpetuate the sacraments of
Baptism and the Lord's Supper because they
beheve that in so doing they do the will of
Jesus Christ.

Mrs. Eddy sees nothing in a sacrament save
a Roman soldier's oath, and one authorised
to speak for her assures us that she honours
the sacrament apart from its material symbol,
as though the symbol were not itself the
sacrament.**

" Baptism," she says, " is a purification
from all error." One student recalls how Mrs.
Eddy once held a baptismal service without
water, and no student, however earnestly he
seeks, will ever find a font in any Christian
Science church.*^

The Lord's Supper she long ago dismissed
as " a dead rite." *^ She explains that Christ
has come a second time in Christian Science
and inquires, "If a friend be with us, why need
we memorials of that friend?" The mother
Church in Boston does have, not oftener than
once a year, what Christian Scientists are
pleased to call a " Silent Communion." But

The Religion and Theology i6i

it has no actual relationship with the Lord's
Supper. " Our Eucharist," says Mrs. Eddy,
" is spiritual communion with the one God.
Our bread * which cometh down from heaven '
is Truth. Our cup is the Cross: our wine the
inspiration of Love." *^

Worse than this, Mrs. Eddy calmly sug-
gests the substitution of a breakfast for the
historic Supper of the Christian Church.
Read her amazing words : " What a contrast
between our Lord's last supper and His last
spiritual breakfast with His disciples in the
bright morning hours, at the joyful meeting
on the shore of the Galilean sea. . . . This
spiritual meeting with our Lord, in the dawn
of the new light, is the morning meal which
Christian Scientists commemorate." ^^

Even Straus stopped short of substitution.
He wrote, " Never at any time will it be pos-
sible to rise above Him or to imagine any one
who should ever be equal with Him." And
yet Mrs. Eddy, without training in textual
criticism, ventures to dismiss the historic Sup-
per which Jesus established if He established
anything, and to substitute for it a breakfast
He nowhere hints He wanted or intended to
establish.

" The emphatic purpose of Christian Sci-

1 62 Christian Science

ence," says its founder, " is the heaUng of sin;
and this task is a million times harder than the
cure of disease." ^^ St. Paul could bear his
thorn in the flesh. He could even suffer fools
gladly. But sin wrung from him the bitter
cry, " O wretched man that I am. Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death? "
Whatever sin may be in metaphysics it is real
enough in life. It gets up with us in the
morning. It is at our elbow all day long. It
goes to bed with us at night; sometimes to
haunt our dreams. It is grimly real.

But what is sin in the catalogue of Christian
Science? It is usually identified with evil.
It " never did exist." It is the effect of error,
and since error is the author of the unreal,
sin, evil in general, is unreal. It bears " the
same relation to good," says Mr. Farlow,
'' that darkness bears to light. The psalmist
said ' The darkness and the light are both alike
to thee.' This was equivalent to declaring
that to the supreme intelligence there is no
darkness; all is light. God is good onmi-
present ; hence there is no room for evil." ^^

At this point. Christian Science comes
closer possibly than elsewhere to the liberal
thinking of to-day. That evil is unreal in the
sense that it is not to last forever many hold

The Religion and Theology 163

outside of Christian Science. Mystics even
back to Dionysius go all the way with Mrs.
Eddy in denial that evil is, in any sense, real.
Browning says, " The evil is null, is nought, is
silence implying sound " ^^; and R. J. Camp-
bell urges us to break the fetters of sin by
" the reassertion of the universal life." ^^

Christian Science finds its concept of evil in
the fourth of Mrs. Eddy's fundamental pro-
positions: "Life, God, omnipotent Good,
deny death, evil, sin, disease." ^^ In confirma-
tion of this the Scriptures are invoked by Mr.
Farlow. But as often happens when used as
an arsenal from which to draw proof texts,
the Scriptures are far from conclusive. If
the psalmist thought, as Mr. Farlow says,
that God did not create the darkness and the
evil of the world, Isaiah disagrees with him.
Isaiah puts into the mouth of God the words :
" I form the hght, and create the darkness :
I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do
all these things." If, as Mr. Farlow likes to
tell us, after God had finished the creation of
the world He " saw everything that he had
made, and behold, it was very good," God
would seem to have given recognition to the
darkness, since He had, a while before, taken
the trouble to " divide the light from the dark-

164 Christian Science

ness." The time has long since gone for prov-
ing anything by proof texts. The whole
sweep of the Bible has in these days to be re-
garded, and it is enough to say that the Bible
as a whole speaks with uncertain voice as to
the origin of evil.^*

Whether sin be philosophically real or not
it is actual. Of the presence of sin in thought
Mrs. Eddy is quite assured. She says the mind
must be emptied of sin or sin will never cease,
that to indulge in sin while asserting its un-
reality is a moral offence, that the victory over
sin will not be won till we strip off its mask.^^
But if there is in any of her writings the
instinctive recoil from the actuality of sin, I
have failed to find it. In spite of the fact
which the world has long since proved, that
sin, whatever it may be in theory, is in practice
" not a want of light but a neglect of light," ^^
Mrs. Eddy speaks thus her final word: "If
proper ward were kept over that lazar-house,
that dismal cell and slaughter-house of in-
famy, mortal mind, the broods of evil which
infest it could be cleared out."

The characteristic weakness of Mrs. Eddy's
theory of sin is not, however, her failure to
speak clearly about the actuality of sin, nor
yet her pantheistic tendency which many

The Religion and Theology 165

critics have observed to confuse moral distinc-
tions.^^ It is rather her extraordinary atti-
tude toward the will. The will to do the right
and to leave undone the wrong has no place
in the plan of Christian Science. It is, like
sin, an illusion. Its exercise is "detrimental
to health and integrity of purpose." It is
" the motive-power of error." It " produces
evil continually." Though she hints at a
higher will on higher business bent, the will
with her is ordinarily that awful thing she
calls animal magnetism.^^

Many pages in Science and Health are at
first difficult to understand. Those which
deal with animal magnetism are difficult also
at last to understand. Quimby has no re-
sponsibility for them. Had Mrs. Eddy
possessed the knowledge she thought she had
of Quimby she would never, as one of her old
students writes me, have fallen into such an
impossible conception. Had she even caught
Quimby's wholesome spirit she could never
have conjured up such a morbid explanation
of her break with Kennedy and Spofford or
dignified it into an actual doctrine in the third
edition of her text-book. A student ventured
once to suggest: "Don't you think the time
has come to speak less of animal magnetism? "

i66 Christian Science

Whereat Mrs. Eddy sprang up from her desk
and clapped her hands together, sharply cry-
ing, " Leave me at once." ^^

There seems to be no adequate explanation
of the strange hold her animal magnetism
seems to have had on her. It might be called
an obsession. Every religious leader is apt at
some time to personalise the evil of the world.
Nothing else will serve so many purposes.
Years ago Mrs. Eddy found her devil. Her
literary adviser in the eighties said, "Animal
magnetism is her devil." Sometimes she calls
it hypnotism, mesmerism, mortal mind, mali-
cious animal magnetism as well as animal
magnetism, and in her private correspondence
she familiarly refers to it as " M. A. M."

The clearest account of it is given under the
heading of " Mortal Mind." She says it has
no real existence ; it is nothing, while claiming
to be something. And yet she admits it to
be "an autocrat " and " the cause of organic
disease." She says it " changes order into
discord," " confers power on drugs," " pro-
duces false beliefs," " convulses matter,"
" counterfeits divine justice," " creates its own
conditions," " fills creation full of nameless
children," " fills man with pain," " impresses
its thoughts on body," "makes Spirit noth-

The Religion and Theology 167

ing," " rules all that is mortal," " transfers its
fears to other minds," and "seeks to kill his
fellow-mortals, morally and physically." ^^

If Mortal Mind does things so terrible,
no wonder Mrs. Eddy calls it Satan.^^ No
wonder she has spent her life in mortal terror
of it. No wonder she once wrote a student
who, she feared, was criticising her, " Wont
you exercise reason and let me live, or will you
kill me? Your mind is just what has brought
on my relapse." ^^ No wonder she could bring
herself a few years later to believe that her
husband Dr. Eddy had been killed by " arseni-
cal poison mentally administered," and that
even a printing press might be put out of
order by " M. A. M." No wonder her adopted
son. Dr. Foster-Eddy, tells of days as dark
and nights as black as those painted by Poe,
when the unhappy woman fancied that evil
minds were assailing her to her confusion and
distress. No wonder that as recently as 1900
she wrote him: " You are better removed from
' M. A. M.' in Boston." No wonder that her
true son came away from his last meeting
with her a few months ago impressed with the
effect of the terrible obsession on her mind and
soul and has since had evidence of her belief
that " M. A. M." is at the bottom of the late

1 68 Christian Science

lawsuit and of the criticism to which she is in
her old age exposed.

Stranger than Mrs. Eddy's situation is that
of many of her followers who are troubled by
the same obsession. I have talked with Chris-
tian Scientists, great and small, who seem
more certain of the personality of " M. A. M."
than of the personality of God. I know
directly, and I know of, good people ill who
charge the tardiness of their recovery to the
" M. A. M." which they are sure that un-
believers send their way. Judge Clarkson of
Omaha, Nebraska, left Christian Science be-
cause its " M. A. M." became unbearable.^^
If Christian Science is to grow after Mrs.
Eddy's death, her demonology, which is
all her own and not Quimby's, must die
with her. Otherwise it will drag the entire
system up before that bar which no obsession
ever yet has faced and lived, the bar of the
universal sense of humour.^*

CHAPTER VII

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING

The Supreme Test of Christian Science — Mrs. Eddy's
Claim that Christian Science Cures all Diseases — Her
Followers' Attitude — Venturesome Experiments —
Concessions to Public Opinion — Inadequate Diagnoses
— All Tests Declined — Mrs. Eddy's Attack upon the
Doctors — Reply of Medicine and Surgery — Healing
by Understanding of the Christian Science Theory —
Practical Illustrations — Chemicalisation — Jesus' Way
— Mental Healing through the Centuries — Pseudo-
scientific and True Scientific Mental Healing — Prin-
ciple Common to Both — The Possibilities and Limi-
tations of Suggestion — Christian Science Admits no
Limitations — Consequent Need of State Regulation —
The Duty to the Truth.

T^HOUGH the healing of the sinful may be,
-■' as Mrs. Eddy says, the supreme interest
of Christian Science, the healing of the sick she
makes its supreme test. She stakes her whole
philosophy in fact upon her therapeutics.
The central principle that "Mind is All-in-

169

ijo Christian Science

all " and that matter has no real existence is,
we are assured, " demonstrated by healing the
sick, and thus proven absolute and divine.
This proof once seen, no other conclusion can
be reached."

The critical student of the movement wel-
comes any test. Nothing else so simplifies a
complex situation. And yet Mrs. Eddy's
willingness to submit her philosophy to a
therapeutic test argues a primitive conception
of the relationship between philosophy and
therapeutics. It suggests the Indian " medi-
cine man " " demonstrating " ^ — a favourite
M ord with savages as well as Christian Scien-
tists — the truth of the impossible theology he
holds, by noisily frightening the evil spirits
out of the sick man.

But if Mrs. Eddy can make out a case for
the unparalleled efficacy of Christian- Science
healing, no matter what the facts may prove
or fail to prove, every book on medicine and
theology will be discredited. Every doctor
will abandon his profession, to become possi-
bly a Christian- Science healer. Every cler-
gyman will leave his pulpit, possibly to seek
a readership in Christian Science worship.
And doctors and clergymen, with Mrs. Eddy
in mind, will say to one another what the

da

Christian Science Healing 171

Pharisees said among themselves of Jesus,
*' Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold,
the world is gone after him."

What is Mrs. Eddy's case? She claims
three things for Christian Science healing:

1. That it is " the most effective curative
agent in medical practice."

2. That it is Jesus' way of healing.

3. That, abandoned in the early centuries
by the Christian Church, it

a. was first revived by her in 1866, and,

b. is to-day employed by Christian Sci-
ence alone.

Her first claim rests upon her general prin-
ciple that "Mind is AU-in-all." "Health,"
Mrs. Eddy says, " is not a condition of matter
but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear
reliable testimony on this subject. . . . The
divine Principle of Science, reversing the
testimony of the physical senses, reveals man
as harmoniously existent in Truth, which is
the only basis of health; and thus Science
. . . heals the sick." ^

The principle is all-inclusive. If a man
holds steadily to the belief that " Mind is All-
in-all," if a man follows to the letter Mr. Far-
low's counsel that " though the evidences of
the senses may declare to the contrary we

172 Christian Science

should still stick to the spiritual truth and
should continue to denounce the false evi-
dences," he is certain to get well, no matter
what his illness may appear to be. Organic
diseases, Mrs. Eddy tells us, she has cured
" as readily as functional disease." She has
" healed hopeless disease, and raised the dying
to health and life." She has stopped the
bleeding of a wound in her own arm. " I
healed," she says, " consumption in its last
stages that M. D.'s declared incurable, the
lungs being mostly consumed. I healed ma-
lignant tubercular diphtheria. ... I healed
a cancer that had so eaten the flesh of the neck
as to expose the jugular vein so that it stood
out like a cord." ^

Following closely in the steps of Jesus, she
promises her followers the power to duplicate
her healing work. After a few lessons, they go
forth accredited to heal all manner of diseases.
Consumption, of course, they are to cure since
there are no lungs to become tuberculous.
Children's diseases, even though contagious,
will prove tractable; for the mother's fears
have brought on the disease. Small-pox is not
difficult; "mortal mind, not matter, contains
and carries infection." Leprosy is as easy to
relieve as when Moses made his hand leprous

ta

Christian Science Healing 173

and unleprous at will by Christian Science
methods. Palsy yields at once on the dis-
covery that " muscles have no power to be
lost." Cancer cannot hold its own if the
belief in it be blotted out by " such powerful
eloquence as a legislator would employ to de-
feat the passage of an inhuman law." No fe-
ver can withstand the fearlessness of matter.
Brain diseases, even in advanced stages, dis-
appear before the understanding that "actual
Mind " cannot be overworked. Malformed
limbs and other troubles of the bones, being
"as directly the action of mortal error as in-
sanity," are scarcely worth regarding. If
Christian Science were clearly understood,
" the human limb would be replaced as readily
as the lobster's claw, — not with an artificial
limb, but with the genuine one." Practically
every disease is covered and any possible omis-
sion would seem to be an inadvertence.^

Her followers have accepted all her claims
with the same seriousness with which she has
made them. Many of these her disciples have
by personal experience illustrated, and other
claims their observation has confirmed. Judge
Hanna bears witness to Christian Science
healing of cancers, consumption, and broken
bones. Mr. Carol Norton adds to the list loco-

174 Christian Science

motor ataxia, paresis, and Bright's disease.
Judge Clifford P. Smith solemnly affirms that
Christian Science has cured people of every
kind of disease known to the practice of medi-
cine, whether considered curable or incurable
by that system. And even a magazine writer
like William Allen Johnston is impressed with
the voluminous evidences steadily accumu-
lating of the therapeutic value of Christian
Science. ^

Healers trained by Mrs. Eddy or by
her sanction have proved as daring as
the founder of the system. One has en-
deavoured to lift the drooping head of a wilted
rubber plant. Another has essayed to send
out healing currents from the mental battery
of Christian Science toward horses, cows, and
dogs. Another reports the " good-sized cav-
ity " of an aching tooth filled up by mental
treatment "not with foreign substance, but
the genuine, white and perfect." ^

Mrs. Eddy herself gladly takes advantage
of a dentist's offer of painless treatment of
her teeth and gives the following ingenious
reason why:

Bishop Berkeley and I agree that all is Mind.
Then, consistently with this premise, the conclusion
is, that if I employ a dental surgeon, and he believes

Christian Science Healing 175

that the extraction of a tooth is made easier by
some application of means which he employs, and
I object to the employment of this means, I have
turned the dentist's mental protest against myself,
he thinks I must suffer because his method is in-
terfered with. Therefore, his mental force weighs
against a painless operation, whereas it should be
put into the same scale as mine, thus producing a
painless operation as a logical result. "^

Her accredited healers, encouraged by her
statement that "Science can heal the sick who
are absent from their healers, as well as those
present, since space is no obstacle to mind,"
endeavour in their mental practice to eliminate
all space conditions,^

Mrs. Eddy has learned prudence with the
passing years. Without qualifying her as-
sumption that the cure would always follow
could conditions be controlled, she admits
the temporary presence of unmanageable ele-
ments. Public opinion, which she calls mortal
mind, is so certain, she remarks, that arsenic,
and strychnine in sufficient doses will cause
death, that in spite of himself a Christian
Scientist may die in the fulness of his faith
if a " dose of poison is swallowed through mis-
take. , . . The result is controlled by the
majority of opinions outside, not by the in-

1 76 Christian Science

finitesimal minority of opinions in the sick
chamber." ^

For the same reason, though surgery was
once, when Eve was excised out of Adam's
side, altogether mental and "Christian Science
is always the most skilful surgeon," it is bet-
ter to leave surgery and the adjustment of
broken bones and dislocations, to the fingers
of a surgeon, "until the advancing age
admits the efficacy and supremacy of Mind." ^^

In deference also to the groundless fears
of public opinion, " Mrs. Eddy advises that
Christian Scientists do not at present treat
contagious disease," ^^

What is one to say concerning Mrs. Eddy's
claim that Christian Science is an invariable
specific for all human ills?

This first: A scientific test is needed, and
Mrs. Eddy offers none in the averment that
" the divine Principle of healing is proven
in the personal experience of any sincere
seeker of Truth."^^ That is but to beg the
question.

The growing disposition, voiced lately by
the Committee on Publication, to admit some
sort of diagnosis will not quite suffice. Di-
agnosis is to some extent determined by the
personality of the physician and no diagnos-

Christian Science Healing 177

tician is infallible. While practically all phy-
sicians agree in diagnosing typhoid fever
when the headache, weakness, loss of appetite,
nosebleed, and increasing fever lead up to the
characteristic rose spots and other abdominal
symptoms, there are diseases Christian Sci-
ence professes to cure which are extremely
difficult to diagnose.

When, therefore, Judge Hanna remarks
that Christian Science has cured hundreds of
cases of cancer, one wants to know whether the
diagnosis was in each case made by a capable
doctor or by the patient, whether the growth
was by microscopical examination demon-
strated to be actual cancer or one of those
non-mahgnant tumors which have been known
to disappear without treatment, whether the
cancer was a cancer of the stomach or a case
of ulceration or chronic gastric catarrh in
which. Dr. Osier says, "a positive diagnosis is
impossible." ^^

Seeking a scientific test which Christian
Scientists would accept. Dr. J. B. Huber ^^ of
New York some years ago addressed to Mrs.
Stetson, then first reader in the foremost
Christian Science church in New York city,
a courteous letter containing such questions
as the following:

178 Christian Science

How do you define health?

How do you define disease?

Do you investigate symptoms?

Do you make diagnosis?

In what does your treatment consist?

Do you ever administer a material substance to
a patient?

Do you ever isolate a patient sick of an infectious
disease?

Do you ever treat structural disease, such as
cancer or locomotor ataxia?

Do you consider you have cured such disease?

Can animals be cured by Christian Science
methods?

Mrs. Stetson forwarded the questions to
Mrs. Eddy. Mrs. Eddy passed them on to
Judge Hanna; and this was his reply: "My
conclusion is that it will be wholly imprac-
ticable — ^indeed I may say impossible — to
answer these questions in such a manner as
to make an entire paper fit for publication in
a medical journal or in any other magazine
or periodical."

And yet any well-trained doctor in the land
could and would have given a precise and
comprehensive answer.

An effort has been made by a psychologist ^^
to extract the information needed from
Christian Scientists who have been healed of

Christian Science Healing 179

some disease. One evaded all the questions
thus:

Whereas, before I was healed from chronic inva-
lidism through the teachings of Christian Science
1 used to think much on your topics, I wish never to
think or refer to them again. . . . They are men-
tal poison to me.

The leading questions, and, in another case,
the answers were as follows:

What was the nature of your malady f

It had none.

HoiD long had you heen afflicted with it ?

Ever since the belief that disease was a sub-
stantial reality, instead of a negation.

How did you first discover that you were a victim
of disease f Give fully your symptoms.

By a consciousness of limitation, i. e., finiteness.

How did the idea come to you that you could he
healed f

The conviction . . . that it was right to be well;
and sickness was a wrong.

Was your cure instantaneous f

Yes.

How did you know that you were cured f

By the instant receding of disease, and the cor-
responding increasing of health and strength.

Did you know it at the time, or not until later f

At the time: since Mind first perceiving the
truth, its objective manifestation begins to appear.

Did you have to test it, hefore becoming con-
vinced that a cure had actually taken place f

i8o Christian Science

No: it brought its own self-evident proof with it.

Not content with Judge Hanna's dis-
appointing answer, Dr Huber undertook an
investigation on his own account of Christian
Science heahng. He ehminated, first, the
downright failures which there is some reason
to beheve are numerous. Then he made a
careful examination of twenty so-called cures.
Some were cured, he found, of diseases which
they diagnosed themselves. Some under ex-
amination broke down and resorted to evasion.
In no instance was the cure such as to cause
surprise to any doctor who knows from per-
sonal experience that some get well who were
not really ill, some because they cease to
saturate their systems with unnecessary drugs,
some because a new interest or a new affection
sweeps them out of self, and a considerable
percentage because they have in some way
called up the power of natural recovery in-
herent in the body in many instances.

Mrs. Eddy never stays long on the de-
fensive. She soon grows aggressive. She
asserts that doctors have made no progress in
the treatment of disease, that on the other hand
they are to-day " flooding the world with dis-
eases," and that the fewer the doctors, the less
disease the world will suffer from.^^

Christian Science Healing i8i

On many questions, history speaks with an
uncertain voice, but not on this. History
reports that positive and preventive medicine
has in recent years decreased the death rate
and increased the health and the longevity of
the race beyond all credence. It is due in the
main to medicine in the largest sense that
Europe has no more of that " black death "
which once swept millions out of life and de-
populated cities, that the death rate of London
has fallen from eighty to fifteen a thousand,
and that of the British army in time of
peace from seventeen to eight a thousand, and
that in many sections fifteen years have been
added to the average human life.^^

It is due in the main to medicine that
typhoid fever, which once took off 1228 in a
million, now takes off only 137; that yellow
fever, once a menace to our great seaports, is
now under stern control; that diphtheria, once
often fatal, is now rarely fatal when treated
promptly; that Manila, for the first time in
its history, has gone six months without a case
of infectious disease; and that pneumonia,
hydrophobia, and malaria are ceasing to oc-
casion the alarm they used to bring.

It is due in the main to skilled medicine
that in the recent Oriental war the Japanese

i82 Christian Science

army completely reversed the statistics of the
Russo-Turkish War with its eighty thousand
deaths from disease and twenty thousand from
wounds and of our Spanish-American War
with its 3681 deaths from disease and 293 from
bullets, and that it lost from disease only
11,992, while 52,946 died of wounds received
in battle/^

In surgery, which Mrs. Eddy expects soon
will become merely mental, the facts make
even more convincingly against her. Anaes-
thesia and asepsis have brought the mortality
down in compound fractures from sixty per
cent, to three, and in major amputations from
fifty per cent, to two or three.^^

Deformed bones were once considered hope-
less. A Glasgow surgeon not long ago had
but five failures out of one thousand eight
hundred operations, and all the five were due
to complications. Of hernia, which once was
seldom operated on at all, an Italian surgeon
reports 262 cases with but one death, a French
surgeon 376 with two deaths, and an Amer-
ican surgeon 360 cases with one death.

With these facts, merely of course represen-
tative and not in any way exhaustive, to the
credit of medicine and surgery one may well
stand in pause before Mrs. Eddy's stout

Christian Science Healing 183

assertion that no progress has been made in
medicine and surgery, that doctors are "flood-
ing the world with diseases," that it is "not
scientific to examine the body, in order to
ascertain if we are in health," that the less
known about hygiene the better, that we need
" a body rendered pure by Mind, not by
matter" [i. e. water], that massage "is an-
other medical mistake," that food does not
affect the real existence of man," that "dietetic
theories " are " false reasoning," that " the
daily ablutions of an infant are no more
natural or necessary than would be the process
of taking a fish out of water every day and
covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive
more vigorously thereafter in its native
element." ^^

Were we to act on Mrs. Eddy's strange
assumptions, as we ought if they are war-
ranted, all the beneficence of preventive medi-
cine, and of the sanitary science which goes
with it, would disappear. Filth and contag-
ion would once more hold sway. Health
boards would disappear. Problems of sew-
erage and water-supply would go unsolved.
Slums would continue slums until the end.
Healers and " medicine men " would be the
order of the day to the disorder of the

1 84 Christian Science

body. And in place of Florence Nightingale
and Helen Gould and Anita Newcomb
McGee, the angel of the modern battlefield
would be Mary Baker G. Eddy from the
serene security of Pleasant View radiating
" absent treatment " to the firing line and to
the hospital ward.^^

Pressed to submit the Christian Science
cures to such tests as have in every instance
preceded the statistics offered in respect to
medicine and surgery, Mrs. Eddy answers:
"I submitted my metaphysical system of
treating disease to the broadest practical tests.
Since then this system has gradually gained
ground, and has proved itself, whenever
scientifically employed, to be the most effec-
tive curative agent in medical practice." ^^
Unfortunately, Mrs. Eddy has neglected to
inform us when any test was made, on whom
it was made, the circumstances of its making,
the nature of the disease as determined by
expert diagnosis, the time required to estab-
lish a perfect cure, and whether there was, as
has often happened in her own experience,
a relapse. ^^

If Christian Science has ever cured malig-
nant cancer, we want to know from an expert
diagnostician that the disease was cancer and

Christian Science Healing 185

not a tumor, ulcer, or catarrh. If Christian
Science has ever cured a case of palsy, we have
the right to know whether the case was one
of hysterical paralysis or functional para-
plegia, or on the other hand actual paralysis
due to structural disease of the spinal cord or
of some other part of the motor-nerve system.
If Christian Science has cured true diabetes,
which Dr. Osler^^ says he has never seen cured,
we have a right to know whether Fehling's
test or Trommer's test or the fermentation
test was used and whether it revealed diabetes
or merely polyuria. If Christian Science has
in any instance driven the malarial bacilli from
their feast on the red corpuscles of the blood,
we refuse to be convinced without a micro-
scopic examination both before and after.
And Mrs. Eddy's general statement that
Christian Science healing has already " proved
itself," is beside the mark.

Pressed further, Mrs. Eddy says that no
test is required. " The divine Principle is
proven in the personal experience of any
sincere seeker of Truth," and " those only
quarrel with her method who have not under-
stood her meaning, or, discerning the truth,
come not to the light lest their works should
be reproved." ^^ And then she places all who

1 86 Christian Science

in the interest of society would put Christian
Science heahng to a truly scientific test in an
embarrassing position. She adds to the charge
of insincerity the suggestion that all are mor-
ally unsound who want a scientific test, — an
intimation which stills criticism at a cost which
Christian Science can scarcely want to pay.

Mrs. Eddy has another reason in reserve
for refusing to accept a scientific test for
Christian Science healing. There is, accord-
ing to her theory, no case to test. How can
there be a body to get ill when there is no
matter to constitute a body? Admit the ex-
istence of matter and we admit that mortal-
ity (and therefore disease) has a foundation in
fact. Deny the existence of matter, and we
destroy the belief in these conditions and
with it disappears the foundation of disease.
Fevers are only "pictures depicted by mortal
mind on the body." Inflammatory rheuma-
tism comes not from exposure and infection
but from fear. If you sprain a muscle or
wound your flesh it is the mind that decides
whether there shall be pain. " Colds, coughs,
and contagion are engendered solely by mortal
beHef." " Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, deformed
spines are all dream shadows, dark images of
mortal thought, which will flee before the

Christian Science Healing 187

light." And so all efforts to determine in the
only way we can whether Christian Science is
*' the most effective curative agent in medical
practice " lead to no result, and we pass on
to Mrs. Eddy's next assumption.^^

The Christian Science way of healing,
says Mrs. Eddy, is the way that Jesus took.

What is the Christian Science way of heal-
ing? It is, the text-book indicates, the
complete comprehension of " the Principle of
Christian Science."

Nothing more is needed to effect a cure.
" We never read that Jesus made a diagnosis
of disease, in order to discover some means
of healing it. He never asked if it were
acute or chronic. He never recommended
attention to laws of health, never gave drugs,
never prayed to know if God were willing a
man should live. He understood man to be
inmiortal, whose Life is God, — and not that
man has two lives, one to be destroyed and the
other to be made indestructible." ^^

Christian Science heals, therefore, by giv-
ing patients proper understanding. God is
Principle. Man is God's idea, image, and
reflection.

Your mirrored reflection is your own image, or
likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does

/

i88 Christian Science

this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness
move in accord with yours. Now compare man, be-
fore the mirror, to his divine Principle, God. Call
the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflec-
tion. Then note how true, according to Christian
Science, is the reflection to its original. As in the
mirror the reflection of yourself appears, so you,
being spiritual, are the reflection of God. The sub-
stance, Life, Intelligence, Truth, and Love, which
constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and
we shall see this true likeness and reflection every-
where, when we subordinate the false testimony of
the corporeal senses to the facts of Spirit." ^7

The Christian Science healer learns to do
this therapeutic trick in a very brief time.
After a few lessons he goes forth to banish
illness by denying that there are bodies to be
ill, by erasing " the images of disease from
mortal mind," by convincing mortal mind that
it does not exist and that therefore its beUefs,
which cause trouble, have no real existence.^^

Always begin your treatment by allaying the
fear of patients. ... If you succeed in wholly
removing the fear, your patient is healed. [Plead
the case silently. By naming the disease audibly]
you are liable to impress it upon the thought . . .
Mentally insist that harmony is the everlasting fact,
and sickness the temporal falsity. Realise the
pressure of health, and the fact of harmonious

Christian Science Healing 189

functions and organs until the corporeal senses
correspond with these normal conditions.^^

If the patient seems to grow worse, do not
be alarmed. " Calm the fear and confusion
induced by chemicalisation, which is the alter-
native effect produced by Truth upon error;
and sometimes explain the symptoms and
their cause to the patient." ^^

Mind will win at last. Death itself will
one day be destroyed, for " death is but an-
other phase of the dream that existence can
be structural." "A demonstration of the
facts of Soul, in Jesus' way, resolves the
dark visions of sense into harmony and im-
mortality." ^^

" In Jesus' way." What was Jesus' way?
One cannot be sure. About His methods
Jesus was habitually silent. " Thy faith hath
made thee whole" was as far as Jesus ever
went in explanation of His cures. He never
used the formulas of Mrs. Eddy. He never
set forth any such metaphysical conception
of the relationship of God and man as
Mrs. Eddy entertains. He never even hinted
that matter has no real existence and that in
consequence men have no bodies to get ill.

Jesus always spoke and acted as though
He had a body. He appeared at times to

190 Christian Science

suffer some discomfort from His body. He
seemed to be weary by the well of Jacob and
upon the cross He sighed, " I thirst." He
seemed to be hungry in the wilderness and
on the shore of Galilee. He seemed to feel
the piercing thorns. He seemed to find the
cross a heavy load to bear along the via
dolorosa. Once at least He cried out upon
the cross as though in pain. Did He really
feel the pain? Or did He know what Mrs.
Eddy knows, that pain is non-existent? And
was He therefore acting out a role He knew
was false?

Mrs. Eddy is between the horns of a
dilemma. How can she escape? If the pain
of the crucifixion was as real as it appears to
one who reads the poignant story to have
been, then Jesus did not know, what Mrs.
Eddy knows, that there is no pain in life and
never has been pain. If Jesus felt no pain
then He was the most consunmiate actor in
all history, and since He took pains to create
the impression that He suffered pain He
added to the role of actor that of a deceiver
of the world He came to save.

Mrs. Eddy perceives her dilemma and be-
takes herself again to her pet heresy. Once
more she divides the personality of Jesus

Christian Science Healing 191

Christ into two unequal parts: one of which,
Jesus, suffered; the other, Christ, could not
suffer, because under Mrs. Eddy's treatment
He is resolved into a mere abstraction. She
speaks for herself: "Jesus suffered, but the
eternal Christ never suffered: for Christ is
the idea of truth, and this idea comes to heal
sickness and sin through Christian Science." ^^

Mrs. Eddy escapes from her dilemma, but
she leaves Jesus in a worse plight than she was
in. She degrades Him to a position lower
than her own, lower than that of her followers.
She knows there is no pain. She makes all
healing dependent on the patient's full con-
viction that there is no pain. And yet she
says of Jesus that when He " felt our infirm-
ities He had not conquered all the beliefs of
the flesh, or His sense of material life, nor
had He risen to His final demonstration of
spiritual power." ^^

Mrs. Eddy understands, her followers
understand, the truth about pain; but Jesus
did not understand. He was not so wise as
she. He was a fledgling, not a full-grown
Christian Scientist. Mrs. Eddy saves herself
from the cul de sac into which her novel think-
ing leads her, but she leads Jesus into a worse
one, and, extracting the Christ principle from

192 Christian Science

Him in order to have a Christ to come again
one day in Christian Science, she there leaves
Jesus evermore, less than man according to
the Christian Science pattern, far less than
the woman who interprets Him.

The Christian Science way as Mrs. Eddy
points it out can scarcely be the way which
Jesus took to heal the sick.

Granted in the interest of discussion that
Christian Science healing is the mental healing
of Jesus and the early Church, has there been
no healing like it in the ages since till Mrs.
Eddy's day?

Once more, appeal is possible to facts.^*
All along the Christian centuries, if history
is credible, witnesses have testified in all de-
voutness and sincerity to Christian healing.
Athanasius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Au-
gustine cite instances in the fourth cen-
tury. In the fifth, we have the testimony of
Hilary and Jerome. Gregory the Great,
Augustine of Canterbury, and Cyril testify
for the sixth century. Cuthbert and Bede had
cures accredited to them. Eginhard, an inti-
mate of Charlemagne, set down in a book his
observations of extraordinary cases.

The so-called " false miracles " of the dark
ages, wrought through faith in bones and

Christian Science Healing 193

relics, were works of mental healing if they
were anything at all. Catharine of Siena, in
1373, called a priest back from the gates of
death, and Luther thought he kept two men
from the grave by prayer. Bishop Parkhurst
and D'Aubigne bear witness to the marvels of
the sixteenth century. Charles II. touched
one hundred thousand persons suffering from
the king's evil (scrofula), and Queen Anne
laid her healing hand on young Samuel
Johnson. Moravians, Waldenses, Puritans,
Presbyterians, Huguenots, Baptists, Method-
ists, all in one way or another bridged the
gulf between the Reformation and the nine-
teenth century by their healing works.

There was not a decade in the nineteenth
century but had some testimony to give con-
cerning mental healing, done of tenest in Jesus'
name. The story of Sir Humphry Davy and
his palsy patient, who mistook the clinical
thermometer placed beneath his tongue for a
new remedy and rapidly got well, is a staple
among mental healing stories. Parson Chi-
niquy was cured of typhoid fever in 1837 by
a vision of St. Anne and again in 1858 by the
will to get well. Parson Blumhardt, with his
faith healing on the continent, was matching
Quimby and his work at the same period in

194 Christian Science

this country. And since the httle shepherdess
had her vision of the Virgin fifty years ago
such miracles of Christian heahng have been
worked atLourdes that Charcot in his later life
every year sent patients whom he could not
cure in his hospital to the little town in the
Pyrenees and seldom sent in vain. Mrs.
Eddy, Dowie, Simpson, Schlatter, Schrader,
and Bradley Newell have all been names to
conjure with in recent years. After two
years of patient study, on such terms as were
obtainable, of some sixteen hundred cures
attributed to them. Professor Goddard,
trained psychologist, reports that the dis-
eases, according to the patient's word, covered
almost the whole field of pathology, with
nervous troubles in the lead; 33 per cent, of
the patients claimed to have been instantane-
ously healed, 50 per cent, gradually, and 17
per cent, incompletely.

Professor Goddard's final judgment con-
cerning all such mental healers is:

They aH cure disease and they aH have failures.
They all cure the same kind of diseases and the
same diseases are incurable for them all. In
those classes of disease where the cures are
wrought, there are the same percentages of cures
by all the methods. Stripped of a few character-

Christian Science Healing 19S

istic phrases the reports from all the different forms
are the same. A testimonial to a patent medicine,
for example, reads precisely like one of Dowie's re-
ports of a divine healing cure. Again there are
many records of people going from one school to
another and in this no one practice seems to show
any advantage. Some fail after trying all. Some
fail to get cured by divine healing, but get restored
by Christian Science, and vice versa. Others fail
with Christian Science and are successful in hyp-
notism, and vice versa.^^

But there is, these days, drugless healing
of which it is possible to speak with more
precision. It is the mental healing to the un-
disputed credit of the nervous specialists of
standing in the medical profession. The
diagnosis in each instance is as nearly accurate
as diagnosis can be. The methods have no
mystery enshrouding them. The results are
as beneficial as perhaps can be secured. And
no cure is announced that will not stand the
test to which Christian Science steadily re-
fuses to submit its cures.

Van Rhenterghem reports that of 162 cases
of rheumatism, hysteria, neuralgia, epilepsy,
indigestion, and deafness which he treated
without medicine 91 were cured, 46 im-
proved, and 25 did not improve.^^ Parkyn,
who treats only nervous troubles, reports a

196 Christian Science

cure in every ease of nervous prostration.
Bernheim's De la Suggestion a la Thera-
peutics is a continuous chronicle of the drug-
less cure of cerebral hemorrhage, paresis of
traumatic origin, violent hysteria, nervous
aphonia, general chorea, chronic gastritis,
epigastric pain, rheumatism, neuralgia, and
insomnia. Dubois's book, recently translated,
on The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Dis-
orders^ makes clear — for Dr. Dubois has had
twenty years of successful practice at Berne —
that mental healing is as surely a specific for
neurasthenia, hysteria, hypochondria, melan-
cholia, and the other well-known ills which lie
between normal health and insanity, as quinine
is for malaria.

Including, as we should, hypnotism in the
catalogue of mental healing, we find results
that will stand any test. Of 414 cases, which in-
cluded 29 organic diseases, 39 severe neu-
roses, 60 mental diseases, 233 neuropathic
disorders, and 44 functional derangements, 28
per cent, were permanently cured, 27 per cent,
visibly improved, 26 per cent, received some
benefit, 20 per cent, were not affected one way
or the other, and in one per cent, the result was
unknown.

As to surgery, which Mrs. Eddy would

Christian Science Healing 197

for the present leave to the surgeon, even
major operations have been performed with
hypnotism in the place of etherisation. As
long ago as 1846 Esdaile was by means of
hypnotism amputating arms and legs without
causing pain; and more than a dozen Euro-
pean specialists have repeatedly conducted
women through the perils of childbirth with-
out consciousness, recollection, or any painful
after consequences.^^

But the catalogue of drugless healing is not
to-day complete without a word concerning
the Emmanuel Movement in progress this
year past in Boston, almost within the shadow
of the Christian Science church. The move-
ment is based upon sound principles. It rec-
ognises the limitations of suggestion. It deals
only with functional and nervous disorders.
Diagnosis is invariably made by an expert
physician. Suggestion is reenforced at every
point by faith in the fundamentals of historic
Christianity. It is, in fact, a serious "at-
tempt to weld into friendly alliance the most
advanced medico-psychological knowledge of
our time and a primitive. New Testament
Christianity, as scholarship has disclosed it."

Though results have not as yet been sys-
tematically reported, it seems likely to those

19^ Christian Science

who have made a careful study of the move-
ment that this year past hundreds of cases of
neurasthenia, hysteria, hypochondria, insomnia,
certain forms of paralysis, various functional
disturbances, suicidal tendencies, and im-
moral habits have been permanently cured. It
was with this experiment in mind that Dr.
Llewellys F. Barker, who succeeded Dr. Osier
at the Johns Hopkins University, recently re-
marked: " Men and women, generally, as well
as medicine and science, are coming to a real-
isation of the high part played by the mind
in matters affecting the body. But this know-
ledge can only exert its full and true value
through a proper combination of the best
revealed science and religion." ^*

What is the principle — for there must be
one — which underlies all mental healing,
whether that of Christian Science, the New
Thought, the nervous specialist, the Emman-
uel Movement, or the family doctor who is
constantly employing it without pretension or
profession?

Three hundred years before Mrs. Eddy
announced that " whatever is cherished in
mortal mind as the physical condition is
imaged forth on the body," Spenser wrote:

" For of the soule, the bodie forme doth take,
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."

Christian Science Healing 199

But for a scientific statement we turn
again to the psychologist. Professor God-
dard says; " The idea of health tends to pro-
duce health in proportion to the strength of
the idea to be met, or inversely as the opposi-
tion to be met." ^^

Now the principle emerges into view. It
is the idea of good health that tends to bring
good health. It is the suggestion of the idea
that constitutes the common principle we seek.
Some mental healers resort to one device in
suggesting the idea; others to another.
Whatever gives the greatest impetus to the
^iuggestion is the most effective. Mrs. Eddy's
metaphysics has in itself, probably, no more
therapeutic value than the tom-tom of the
'' medicine man." A false belief, as Paracel-
sas and Pomponazzi remarked centuries ago,
may be as efficacious for therapeutic purposes
as a true one. Christian Science has won a
place in mental therapeutics not because it has
discovered any principle in place of the com-
mon principle of suggestion, but because its
founder, gifted as she is with unusual hypnotic
power> has made its strange metaphysics a
motive power to suggestion.

But suggestion has its limitations. If
every idea does tend to "generate its actu-
ality," the tendency is sometimes checked.

200 Christian Science

There are certain anatomical changes that
frustrate the mind's desire to replace "as
readily as the lobster's claw " the limb lost in
the railway accident. There are certain hard
and stubborn facts which would seem to stay
the mental healing of the wilted rubber plant
and the sick horse.

These limitations are not always easy to
describe. But they are usually recognisable.
Allowance must invariably be made for them.
The way of Christian Science is strewn with
broken hearts and maimed bodies, ruined
health and lives sacrificed, because under the
hypnotic spell of Mrs. Eddy her subjects have
refused, except under compulsion of public in-
dignation or of the law, to make such allow-
ance. Christian Scientists may take comfort
from the words of Professor William James,
pragmatist as he is, that the state is not called
upon to pronounce between rival schools of
medicine, but the intelligent public will not
give to Christian Science the free hand it de-
sires and means to have, until definite assur-
ance has been given that Christian Scientists
do recognise the limitations of the principle of
suggestion and are content to do their work
within those limitations.

It is in the hypnotic treatment of disease

Christian Science Healing 201

that suggestion becomes an actual specific.
Hypnotism is nothing but suggestion so per-
sistent and profound as to induce an artificial
sleep in which all mental opposition is silenced
and all possible untoward influences are ex-
cluded. There are dangers in its use as there
are dangers in the use of all good things. It
can conceivably be put, and sometimes is put,
to questionable purposes; so, too, is arsenic.
But for Mrs. Eddy to fulminate against
hypnotism on the score that it is " error,"
" mental malpractice," " animal magnetism,"
and to threaten excommunication to the fol-
lower who, for instance, may want to read his
Bramwell or his Moll or the new edition of
Lloyd Tuckey's monumental work, is to add
to the tale of evidence steadily accumulating
that Mrs. Eddy knows no science save the
pseudo-science she herself sets up, and is to
disqualify her and her interpreters to speak on
any mental therapeutic question.

The conclusion, then, to which one comes at
last is this: that, Hke all other systems of
mental healing, Christian Science rests upon
the well-established principle of suggestion.
The philosophy of Christian Science is purely
adventitious, as is proved by the career of
Quimby, who, according to his pupil, Dr,

202 Christian Science

Evans, obtained large results merely by sug-
gestion/^ Its exact therapeutic value, in spite
of the amazing testimonials it presents, cannot
be determined till Christian Science is ready
to submit its cures to truly scientific tests.
That Christian Science does call for state
regulation is evident to those who believe the
state has duties to her adult ignorant as well
as to her little children.

One would be as generous as possible to any
faith which can re-enforce suggestion. But
there is a duty to the mind as well as to the
body, and if one must choose between the
good health of mind which always comes from
cleaving to the truth and the good health of
body which may come in certain cases with the
acceptance of a false philosophy, the normal
and the wholesome will prefer to

** Look straight out —
See things — not try to evade them.
Facts shall be facts for me, and the truth the
truth forever." ^1

CHAPTER VIII

MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

The Gravest Defect — Christian Science Ascetic — Mrs.
Eddy's Testimony Prompted by her Personal Ex-
perience — Denies the Sacramental Use of Matter —
Misinterprets Jesus' Words — Teaches Possibility of
Race Perpetuation without Marriage — Some Ex-
planations which do not Explain — Simultaneous Con-
tradictions — The Testimony of the Manual and the
Lesson Quarterly — The Obvious Tendency — Public
Opinion Making Ready for a Final Judgment — The
Alternative — Duty of the Hour.

npHE gravest defect of the Christian Science
^ system yet remains to be considered.
Christian Science is in essence ascetic. I use
the word advisedly. I have read and re-read
in seven editions of Science and Healthy rang-
ing from 1875 to 1906, Mrs. Eddy's chapter
on marriage. I find in it many high ideals,
many practical suggestions. It is gratifying
to hear any woman, and especially a woman

203

204 Christian Science

whose matrimonial experiences have been so
varied and unsatisfying that she writes, mar-
riage " is often convenient, sometimes pleas-
ant, and occasionally a love affair," ^ lift her
voice against divorce and counsel married
people to stay married until death. I know
that some families have been blessed by the
conversion of their members to Christian Sci-
ence. I know that a new conception of the
dignity and spiritual value of self-control has
been lodged in many a mind. I know that
many a husband has been reclaimed from dis-
sipation, many a wife from frivolity, by the
call of the spiritual which in spite of all its
error does echo from Science and Health,

And yet, allowing liberally for all that,
Christian Science is in essence ascetic. Mrs.
Eddy says it is, and she should know. " Is
marriage nearer right than celibacy? " she in-
quires, and then replies, "Human knowledge
inculcates that it is, while Science indicates
that it is not." ^ By its insistence on the un-
reality of matter Christian Science logically
disavows the sacramental character of mar-
riage, makes it but a temporary stage in the
development of the race, and loosens the ties
affection or kinship forms.

I could give instances — for I have made

Marriage and the Family 205

inquiries far and wide — in which famihes that
have for long years known only happiness and
concord have suddenly become the prey of
discord and division,^ in which the love of
husbands for wives and fathers for children
has dissolved into an unfortunate aloofness, in
which wives have ceased, except in name, to
live as wives and mothers have come to think
of children as millstones round their necks, in
which daughters have ceased to be daughters
except before the world, and sisters have
separated for all time from sisters who de-
clined to go with them into Christian Sci-
ence, in which lovers have broken their en-
gagement and friends have given up their
life-long friendship for no reason save a dif-
ference in the point of view concerning what
is nothing after all except a problem in pure
metaphysics.

Some men may for good reasons remain
celibate as Jesus did, and there is on them no
reflection. Some women may be virgins till
the last, and that, too, is apparently the will
of God for some. But the norm is never
celibate or virginal. The norm is marriage,
because only in the perfect union of a man
and woman is there at the same time promise
to the individual of completeness, and to the

2o6 Christian Science

race perpetuation in circumstances that ensure
the proper training of the young.

You will seek in vain in the pages of Science
and Health for any evidence that this fact,
perhaps the most important fact in sociology,
has any place in Mrs. Eddy's mind. Holding
that there is no such thing as matter, she sees
no sacramental use for matter. Believing that
"matter is not the medium through which the
Spirit acts," ^ it is impossible for her to take
the view of marriage which those hold who
have the sacramental view of matter. No
intellect can be big enough to contain two
views that flatly contradict each other.
I With this in mind, it is easy to understand

Mrs. Eddy's treatment of marriage and the
family. She goes back once again to Jesus.
She explains the immaculate conception by
the identification of Christian Science with
the Holy Ghost : " The Science of being
overshadowed the sense of the Virgin mother,
with a full recognition that Spirit is the basis
of being." ^ She calls " His birth what every
one's should be." ^ She says the time is
coming of which Jesus spoke when He de-
clared that there shall be no more marrying
nor giving in marriage. She insists that
'' matrimony must lose its present slippery

Marriage and the Family 207

footing and find permanence in a more spir-
itual adherence." ^ Though " to abohsh mar-
riage at this period, and maintain moraUty
and generation, would put ingenuity to ludi-
crous shifts," she still insists that " this is
possible." ^ She longs for a day when mar-
riage shall have passed away, and adds:
"Proportionately as human generation ceases,
the unbroken links of eternal harmonious be-
ing will be spiritually discerned; and man not
of the earth earthly but coexistent with God
will appear." ^

Now what does all this mean? What can
it mean but this: that as the Holy Ghost,
who Mrs. Eddy says is really Christian Sci-
ence, once overshadowed a woman and the
Virgin Birth was the result, so will it be again
when women submit themselves to Christian
Science as the mother of the Master did.

Mrs. Eddy makes appeal to Scriptures.
She regards marriage, her interpreter remarks,
" in the exact sense in which it is taught in
the Scriptures." He explains that " Christian
Science, like Christianity, points to the higher
spiritual life above and beyond the pale of
marriage as Jesus did in His declaration ' but
they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain
that world, and the resurrection from the dead^

2o8 Christian Science

neither marry, nor are given in marriage.' "
Nothing could be clearer than these words.
The trouble is that they furnish another glar-
ing instance of the proof -text habit which
has often brought the Christian Scientists to
grief. The passage quoted from St. Luke
appears in its essentials also in St. Matthew
and St. Mark, and taken with the context in
each instance evidently means that marriage,
birth, and death belong together in this world,
and will therefore have no place in the world
to come. It means nothing more than that and
cannot be given a Christian Science colouring.
Jesus often spoke about the resurrection life
as though it is to have no sacramental interests
since the body then will be no longer physical
but spiritual. ^^

St. Paul lights up the situation with his
conception, for which many words of Jesus
furnish apparent justification, of the im-
mediate second coming of our Lord. He
writes to the Thessalonians :

For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven
with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and
with the trump of God : and the dead in Christ shall
rise first. Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds,
to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever
be with the Lord. ^^

Marriage and the Family 209

But Mrs. Eddy teaches, as we have long
since learned, that the body is already as
spiritual as it will ever be if we will but believe
it is, and that Christ has already come again in
Christian Science. The time is therefore evi-
dently ripe for all who would live up to the
central principle of Christian Science, to pro-
claim with the mad Hamlet : " We will have
no more marriages: those that are married al-
ready . . . shall live; the rest shall keep as
they are."

In the face of all these facts Mrs. Eddy's
spokesman still insists that she is conventional
in her views of marriage. He says she has
never advocated any other method for the
perpetuation of the species and singles out
in proof a doubtful word from her Retro-
spection and Introspection,^^

The appeal is made to Caesar, To Caesar
let us go.

In the first edition of Science and Healthy
published in 1875, Mrs. Eddy puts herself on
record thus:

The material world, at a future time will become
a spectacle of disorder and dismay on one hand,
and of Science on the other. There will be convul-
sions of mind and consequently of matter, spasms,
earthquakes, famine, and pestilence. Sickness will
14

210 Christian Science

become acute and death more sudden: but to
those who understand this hour, as explained in
the science of being, length of days will increase,
and harmony and immortality be near, even at the
door. Knowledge will then diminish and lose
estimate in the sight of man: and spirit instead of
matter be made the basis of generation. ^^

In 1881 we find her writing: " The time
Cometh when there will be no marrying or
giving in marriage. . . . Soul will ultimately
claim its own, and the voice of personal sense
be hushed." ^^ In 1888 she states that "mar-
riage is the only legal and moral provision
for generation among the higher species";
but then she neutralises her words by the hint
that marriage will no longer be when people
learn that " generation rests on no sexual
basis." ^^ Ten years later she remarks that
reproduction is due to belief, and in illustra-
tion later adds: "The propagation of their
species by butterfly, bee, and moth, without
the customary presence of male companions,
is a discovery corroborative of Science of
Mind." ^«

Troubled by the storm of criticism, in the
latest editions of Science and Healthy Mrs.
Eddy sets herself at the correction of the
reader's true impression of her views. She

Marriage and the Family 211

vows in 1906 that the only person she has
ever known who believed in agamogenesis
" was suffering from incipient insanity," ^^
and hints that she is not that person. But it
is difficult to take Mrs. Eddy seriously when
in the next paragraph appears the sentence
that " proportionately as human generation
ceases, the unbroken links of eternal harmo-
nious being will be spiritually discerned " ^^ ;
when later in the book there reappears the
analogy above of the butterfly and bee and
moth; and when she states outright that "to
no longer marry or be given in marriage" does
not mean race suicide.^^

But if we have failed to grasp the meaning
of Mrs. Eddy's words, if we are to be guided
solely by her latest, not her earlier utterances,
and to assume that the correction of some
passages implies the correction of all, if Mrs.
Eddy does believe with heart and soul in the
perpetuation of the species sacramentally
through marriage in the years to come as in
these ages past, why does not the great organ in
the Mother Church at Boston more frequently
peal out the wedding march? Why is no
Christian Scientist specially commissioned to
solemnise a marriage? Why is the Church
Manual, which is so explicit in its directions

212 Christian Science

on all other themes, silent as to marriage,
except for this one ominous note: "If a
Christian Scientist is to be married, the
ceremony shall be performed by a clergyman
[of some other fold] who is legally author-
ised "? ^^ And why has not the Mother Church
in Boston, with its seating capacity of five
thousand and its resident membership doubt-
less larger, made provisions for a larger Sun-
day-school than one of two hundred and fifty
members ? ^^

Is it conceivable that informed Christian
Scientists are ignorant of these facts which
an outside student has so easily unearthed?
Certainly no Christian Scientist can be unin-
formed who was at a Christian Science service
anywhere on Sunday, May 5, 1907. For
according to the directions of the Christian
Science Lesson Quarterly j, which has the sanc-
tion of the sage of Pleasant View, every
Second Reader in the world read to the
Christian Science thousands everywhere that
day these words from the Bible: "After
this I looked and, behold, a door was opened
in heaven: and the first voice which I heard
was as it were of a trumpet talking with me;
which said Come up hither, and I will shew
thee things which must be hereafter." And

Marriage and the Family 213

then the First Reader antiphoned in voice so-
norous and mellifluous : " Proportionately as
human generation ceases, the unbroken hnks
of eternal harmonious being will be spiritually
discerned."

The American public, which insists upon
publicity on all dark spots in pubhc life to-
day, is beginning to suspect that Mrs. Eddy,
who has had three husbands and one child, has
one view for her followers and another for the
world, that she is secretly encouraging the
dangerous theory that marriage and celibacy
are now possible, or will some day be, in the
same home without race suicide ^^ and disa-
vowing it through her official representatives
when questioned by the now suspicious pub-
lic. If the suspicion is unwarranted, it can
be allayed not by overlaying the objectionable
passages with explanations which do not en-
lighten, but by cutting them out root and
branch.

There is no reason for alarm, 't is said. It
may be centuries before " the world reaches
the point of perfect spirituality where there
will be no flesh to propagate."

The duty is, however, Mrs. Eddy constantly
insists, to make ready for the day. Give up
your sacramental view of life. Put off the

214 Christian Science

obligations it involves. There is a higher es-
tate in marriage than parenthood, and any
woman who can win her husband's consent
may decline motherhood to " win a higher "
married state.^^ " He that loveth father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me," ^*
Mrs. Eddy announces even to prospective ser-
vants. " Jesus," she says, " acknowledged
no ties of the flesh." ^^ Jesus " teaches mor-
tals to lay down their fleshliness in order to gain
spirituality," she remarks in curious confusion
of the flesh with the ties of the flesh. The
duty is to make the least and not the most of
all relationships.^^ God " is man's only real
relative on earth and in heaven." ^^ " Would
existence be to you a blank without personal
friends? " " This vacuum must be filled with
Principle instead of person." ^^ Do you long
for

" . . . the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still " ?

" When our friends pass from our sight and
we lament, that lamentation is needless and
causeless." ^^

" Pain and grief are shards of the poignant dream
That matter is supreme.^' ^^

But why multiply our instances? Now we

Marriage and the Family 215

see whither Christian Science tends. It tends
ultimately, when a generation of pure Chris-
tian Scientists shall have succeeded this, more
Christian after all than Christian Scientist, to-
ward the disintegration of the family.

If there is one cause for which all who love
their kind must stand together in these days
it is the family. Only as we first make the
most of the family can we next make any-
thing of society at large. Only as we give
ourselves devotedly to the relationships of
home, loving ardently, missing unspeakably
when death intervenes, in every way loyal and
obedient to the bonds of pure affection, shall
we have anything to give to man or God out-
side the family. All of Mrs. Eddy's talk
about the love of God apart from love to
those who have first right to our love is beside
the mark. One would think she has never
heard St. John's penetrating question: "He
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen? "

There is no such thing as abstract love.
Love exists only in relationships. That is the
reason why God has always been, before the
world began, a social God, a Trinitarian God.
It is only by becoming so ineffably dear to
one another that the pain of one is another's

2i6 Christian Science

pain, the death of one another's heartbreak,
that society can hold together. Loosen the
family ties by transferring the affections to
a mere abstraction by the name of Principle,
create the suspicion that God has claims on
any one which take precedence of the duties of
the family, twist the words of Jesus to pur-
poses unwarranted by exegesis or steal them
from their context or make them contradict
His life-long policy and His world-wide in-
fluence in the upbuilding of the family, and
civilisation will crumble, the family will fall to
pieces, and any saving remnant there may
chance to be will have to face the sore tempta-
tion of the Gnostics who began by denying
the existence of the flesh and ended by in-
dulging it.^^

Mrs. Eddy may be right and we wrong.
But it will require more than Mrs. Eddy's
word to convince us,

"who live beneath
The shadow of the steeple;
The parson and the parson's wife,
And mostly married people," ^^

that all the tears and blood, the tragedy and
travail of countless years to make love rule
in the sacramental relationships of family and

Marriage and the Family 217

church and state, are mere illusions to be
flung aside whenever Mrs. Eddy thinks we
know enough to do without them.

Furthermore, as the perilous and the per-
nicious in the metaphysics of Christian
Science grow more evident, public opinion,
which always has the final word, will grow
more insistent that Christian Scientists divorce
their philosophy from their healing, recognise
the hmitations of suggestion, submit their
system to an honest scientific test, and give
it a more modest place among the various
forms of mental healing which are perhaps
doing as good work as Christian Science
without detaching people from their normal
church relations or fooling with the funda-
mentals of experience.

If Christian Science, in spite of every
warning, persists along its present course,
public opinion will one day place it legally
in the category where it logically belongs,
with all those subtler types of anarchy which
disappear when men see them as they are.

There are three stages through which many
of us pass who study Christian Science with
the desire to find out what it really is.

1. The stage in which we are somewhat

2i8 Christian Science

amused at its conspicuous absurdities, at
which Christian Scientists themselves have
been known to smile, and yet speak not against
it because we have seen instances in which sick
bodies and sick souls have seemed to improve
under its influence.

2. The stage in which we are for a time
bewildered by the other-worldliness and seren-
ity of many a Christian Science character and
wonder if after all there may not be much in
Christian Science.

3. The stage in which after hard reading
and honest thinking we see the structural
weakness of its philosophy, its frequent mis-
representations of the teachings of our Lord,
its denial of the limitations of suggestion in
the interest of a grotesque theory, and its
insidious attack upon the family at the very
source even while it inculcates many family
virtues.

And when we reach the third stage there
is one thing and one only for those to do who
feel some responsibility to " the God of things
as they are." That is, to state the entire
truth concerning this fatuous folly which
seems to have a weird affinity for crude in-
tellects and undisciplined emotions.

Christian Science will not crush historic

Marriage and the Family 219

Christianity. Truth needs no caretakers.
Truth needs only witnesses. But there are in
every church good people, simple, honest
and devout, who have had little or no training
in philosophy or science. It is they whom
Christian Science oftenest allures from their
allegiance. It is with them in mind that every
thoughtful reader of this book who loves his
fellow man will lose no opportunity to explain
exactly as it is the theory and practice of
Christian Science until in the white light of
pubHcity the error and the evil in it shrivel up
and disappear, and it takes its place among
the far too many sects which justify them-
selves by the pragmatic quickening they give
to souls untouched by other agencies.

If this brings unhappiness to some who
now find comfort in the Christian Science
faith, there is but one word to be said, that
duty to truth comes before the privilege of
happiness. No comfort, no serenity, no
peace can last which does not rest on truth.
As a wise Englishman has said:

Those who flinch from inquiry because they dread
the possible conclusion; who turn aside from the
path as soon as they catch a glimpse of an unwel-
come goal ; who hold their dearest hopes only on the
tenure of a closed eye and a repudiating mind,

220 Christian Science

will, sooner or later, have to encounter that in-
evitable hour when doubt will not be silenced and
inquiry can no longer be put by; when the spectres
of old misgivings, which have been rudely repulsed,
and of questionings, which have been sent empty
away, will return to " haunt, to startle, to waylay,"
and will then find their faith crumbling away at
the moment of greatest need.**^

NOTES

The following abbreviations are used: S. & H. for Sci-
ence and Health; M. W. for Miscellaneous Writings; R. &
I. for Retrospection and Introspection; P. & P. for Pulpit
and Press; C. S. v. P. for Christian Science versus Pan-
theism; and C. S. invariably for Christian Science.

The writer has made use of several editions of S. & H.
When no date is given the edition of 1906 should be as-
sumed. The edition of 1898 is often cited because it
contains an excellent index omitted from recent editions
in the interest — it would seem — of the new Concordance
of which the selling price is five dollars.

References to magazines, weekly journals, and daily
papers are for the year 1907 unless another year is given.
Where more than one book by the same author is men-
tioned the specific reference is always to the first book
listed in the Bibliography, p. ix. under the author's name.

To the Bibliography should be added James's Pragma-
tism and The Christ that is to be, which has appeared
since the Bibliography passed into proof.

CHAPTER I

1. R. & I., 20.

2. S. & H., VII.

3. S. & H., 126.

4. S. & H., 107.

5. McClure's, March, 507.

6. Manual, 3.

7. Letters dated December 5 and 18, 1890, written by
Mrs. Eddy.

8. C. S. Bible Quarterly Lessons, April-June; Ex-
planatory Note, The italics appear in the Quarterly.

221

222 Notes

9. R. & I., 89.

10. S. & H., 202.

11. R. & I., 88.

12. S. & H., 474.

13. S. & H., 131-142. On his visit to Mrs. Eddy,
August 12th, Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton found that Mrs.
Eddy even in her earlier life had the habit of " criticising
the older ministers." — C. S. Sentinel, Aug. 24.

14. S. & H., 142. As the author reads these notes in
proof a new edition of S. & H. appears in which Mrs.
Eddy makes the passage more severe by substituting the
word " worship " for " policy."

15. Manual, 57.

16. M. W., 106.

17. S. & H., 201.

18. McClure's, May, 103. In S. & H., 324, Mrs. Eddy
describes the new convert to C. S. as full of " gladness to
leave the dark landmarks and joy to see them disappear."

19. The Christian Science Publication Committee
(Human Life, January, 1907, p. 5) states that " the Chris-
tian Science Church does not proselyte." Yet Mrs. Eddy
(Manual, 79) appears by implication to encourage prose-
lyting, except among Roman Catholics. It is a self-evi-
dent fact that the C. S. Church is made up largely of
" come-outers." Dr. F. J. Fluno, Christian Science Lect-
urer, says every convert " brings ten." Every clergyman
who has lost members of his flock to C. S. understands the
pervasiveness of C. S. proselyting. While the policy is
not to seem to make it easy to join the C. S. Church, the
way is always indicated by thje constant pressure, especi-
ally in the care of those under C. S. treatment for some
ills, to exclude all intellectual interests except those for
which S. & H. stands, to confine the fellowship to those
of C. S. sympathies, and to give more thought and time
and affection to the development of C. S. friendships than
affinity or the fitness of things would sometimes indicate.
While these are the facts in evidence, the author is glad
to testify that the motive seems to be identical with that
of the early Christians, — to drive out the old in order to

Notes 223

substitute a new faith believed to be the only true faith.
Mrs. Eddy hints (S. & H., 328) that the Bible is errone-
ously interpreted by Christian missionaries in India be-
cause hundreds still die there every year from snake
bites. She is apparently ignorant of the real nature of
the work missionaries are doing everywhere. " They
are," says the New York Evening Post, " physicians as
well as priests. They build hospitals and administer
them. They establish printing presses and direct them.
They are linguists who translate a whole religious litera-
ture into the imperfect dialect of primitive tribes. They
are advisers at the courts of Eastern princes, and instruc-
tors at colleges planted in regions of dense ignorance.
They are usually in advance of traders, and find them-
selves at length opposing the vices of civilisation on the
one hand and those of barbarism on the other." When
Christian Science turns its energies away from winning
Christians to the winning of the heathen it will then be
time enough to criticise the missionary efforts of the
Christian Church.

20. Cushman, 16; Newton, 2; Mark Twain, 286; Broad-
way Magazine, May, 151; Rev. Lewis R. Bates, D.D.,
quoted in C. S. Sentinel, Aug. 10.

21. Snyder, 2.

22. Case.

23. Isaiah 1:13, 14; Micah 6:8.

24. Arena, January, 59.

CHAPTER II

1. S. & H., 456.

2. C. S. B. Q. Lessons, Exp. Note. Rev. Irving C.
Tomlinson, official representative of Mrs. Eddy, thus
comments: "The Bible and the C. S. text-book are our
only preachers. As the discourses are made up wholly of
passages from the Bible and the C. S. text-book, they
contain nothing of human opinion; they are devoid
of man-made theories. They voice the eternal fact
concerning the everlasting Truth. They set forth the
realities of being; they inform, instruct, and enlighten

224 Notes

concerning the verities of God and man." — Reprint from
the C. S. Sentinel,

3. R. & I., 55.

4. Mark Twain, 142.

5. Manual, 31.

6. New York Sun, Feb. 25, 1903.

7. Mark Twain, 257.

8. Northampton (Mass.) Herald, Feb. 16 and 18.

9. Compare successive editions of S. & H.

10. C. S. B. Q. Lessons, Ibid,

11. The author has made the estimate of Mrs. Eddy's
wealth from the affidavits, not altogether clear, filed in
Concord, N. H., May 17 and 18, and published in the C.
S. Sentinel of May 25. In the " Masters " interview, Aug.
14, with Mrs. Eddy as reported in the Boston Herald,
Aug. 15, Mrs. Eddy admitted the transfer of property
amounting to $913,000 to trustees. This apparently does
not include her real estate in Concord now assessed at
$55,000 according to counsel for " next friends " in the
recent lawsuit, and other investments which so far as the
reader can determine are indicated in the C. S. Sentinel
of May 25 and apparently bring her estate up to or be-
yond the million dollar mark. The amount must be a
surprise to Mrs. Eddy's followers as well as others; for
in his C. S. History, published a few years ago, Judge
Hanna after stating that Mrs. Eddy's charities from
1896 to 1899 averaged $88,987 a year, adds that but for
her economical habit of living Mrs. Eddy would be a
millionaire. Her fortune at her death, the C. S. Senti-
nel of Aug. 24 informs us, is to go to her church.

It has been stated that there is no compulsion on
any one to buy S. & H., and that those outside, since they
have access to copies in the public libraries, have no right
to criticise the author of the book for selling it at a price
apparently prohibitive to some. The twofold reply to
this is evident: (1) The ethical sense of the modern
world has advanced beyond the point the C. S. Sentinel
(quoting from the Concord Daily Patriot), Aug. 24, p.
967, makes that " a fortune " is or can be " the logical re-
sult of the teachings" of a great religious leader. It is

Notes 225

now too late in the development of the country*s ethical
instinct to make acquisitiveness a Christian virtue.
Christianity will not to-day consent to put a premium on
the money-getting which Mrs. Eddy's whole career has
illustrated in general, and her management of S. & H. has
emphasised in particular. (2) The ethical sense of the
modern world is now engaged in bringing to justice cer-
tain large corporations which are extracting enormous
profits from the pockets of the poor for the necessities of
life. Mrs. Eddy's constant claim that S. & H. is neces-
sary to man's well-being, to his actual existence if he
happens to fall ill, makes the book to those who follow
in her train as truly a necessity as food and oil are to
the world at large. To hold her book at a price relatively
as high as that the corporations set upon their wares is
logically to invite the same condemnation they are now
receiving. To solve the problem by giving copies gratui-
tously to those obliged to plead their poverty is spiritual
pauperisation. To send them to C. S. reading-rooms or
public libraries is " soup-house " evangelisation. The mod-
ern conscience is not content with the suggestion.

For years Mrs. Eddy steadily encouraged her follow-
ers through the pages of the Journal of Christian Science
in giving her presents. She regularly published in its
columns the list of presents sent her, including once " a
21-pound turkey," again an " eider-down pillow," once
again a " linen handkerchief." A partial list will be
found in McClure^s, October, 689, 690; also a letter, of
which the writer has seen the original, written by Mrs.
Eddy in 1890 to her publisher in protest against his sug-
gestion that she omit her list of Christmas gifts from the
Journal. The following is her ingenious argument:
" Students are constantly telling me how they felt the
mental impression this year to make me no presents, and
when they overcame it were strengthened and blessed.
For this reason, viz., to discourage mental malpractice
and to encourage those who beat it — I want that notice
published." To the inference that Mrs. Eddy was solicit-
ing presents there is but the alternative that, according
to her theory, she was under the dominion of the obsession

226 Notes

of malicious animal magnetism and was therefore not
responsible for her conduct. The italics above are Mrs.
Eddy's.

12. Mark Twain, 254.

13. S. & H. (1898), 443; Cosmopolitan, March, 541;
July, 331.

14. Wood, 146-152; Patterson, 9-22.

15. Wright, 17, 28, and McClure's, October. John
Henry Wiggin was one of the cleverest and most culti-
vated men ever in any capacity associated with Mrs.
Eddy. From 1885 to 1890 he was her literary adviser.
He assisted in the editing of the Journal, and rewrote S.
& H. so that in the edition of 1886 it became practically
a new book in form and phrase. One chapter called
" Wayside Hints," was in thought as well as word the
work of Mr. Wiggin. Mrs. Eddy first used it Jan. 24,
1886, as a sermon without accrediting it to Mr. Wiggin,
and after the service with eyes twinkling inquired of him
in a stage whisper " How did it go? " Then she inserted
it bodily in S. & H. adding in one paragraph two brief
sentences in execrable taste in praise of her late hus-
band. Through the kindness of Mr. Livingston Wright,
the author has seen the very copies of S. & H. which Mr.
Wiggin used in his revision, in connection with a MS,
Mrs. Eddy furnished and therefore speaks with
confidence. Mr. Wiggin, though discharging his full
duty as a literary helper, never took Mrs. Eddy very
seriously. In a letter in 1889 to a college friend he wrote
of her as " an awfully smart woman, acute, shrewd, but
not well read, nor in any way learned." She began to
complain in 1890 of his " most shocking flippancy," and
the relationship a little later was severed.

16. Mark Twain, 289. Nothing is more remarkable
than Mrs. Eddy's steady growth in her old age in the art
of literary expression. She has never wearied of work-
ing on S. & H. Not a day passes, it is said, that she does
not, even now, put some touch on her book. Her sub-
junctive once intractable, as is pointed out in McClure's,
has grown obedient to her will. She no longer gives sub-
jects to participles or antecedents to pronouns, and her

Notes 227

tenses now stay where they belong. There is still vague-
ness in S. & H., but in her recent public letters, barring
an occasional hiatus of thought, there is much to justify
Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton's judgment of Aug. 12, that
" her mode of expression is logical and connected." C. S.
Sentinel, Aug. 24.

17. Micou, 34. Professor George L. Gary calls G. S.
" One Substance Pantheism."

18. R. & I., 20.

19. Irving F. Wood, preface.

20. G. S. Sentinel, June 15.

21. S. & H., Gh. XVII. See also the Expository
Times, London, July, for article by Rev. H. W. Horwill
on Mrs. Eddy's exegesis and Mr. Dixon's inadequate re-
ply quoted in the G. S. Sentinel, Sept. 21.

22. S. & H., 16, 533, 545, 538.

23. Mark Twain, 335-343.

24. Heine quoted in Farrar.

25. S. & H. (1898), 154.

26. S. & H. 12.

27. S. & H. (1898), 476.

28. S. & H. (1875), Ghs. II & IV.

29. S. & H. (1898), 347.

30. S. & H. (1898), 385.

As the author reads proof of these notes there comes
from President David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford
University this confirmation of his judgment: "There is
no element of permanence in the cult. I agree neither
with the metaphysics nor with the English of Mrs. Eddy.
The book and her whole doctrine are unintelligible. She
has enthusiastic followers, to be sure, and they build huge
temples, because there are many who like that which is
unintelligible, and those same ones like to build temples
just for the sake of building them." — The Congregation^
alist, Sept. 14.

CHAPTER III

1. S. ^ H., 110, 107.

2. McClure's, Dec, 1906, 217.

228 Notes

3. Quimby's Scrapbook.

4. McClure's, Feb., 348.

5. McClure's, Feb., 349.

7. H. W. Dresser, 53.

8. New York World, May 31, confirmed by George A.
Quimby.

9. Letters from Mrs. Eddy to P. P. Quimby, which
through the courtesy of George A. Quimby, the author
has read in full. See also McClure's, Feb. 349, 350.

10-18. Quimby Scrapbook: McClure's, Feb. 345; April,
613; interviews with Dr. A. M. Gushing, Messrs. H. T.
Wentworth and Eichard Kennedy. Letters from above;
also from Mrs. J. R. Walcott, Mrs. S. G. Crosby, and
Mr. D. H. Spofford. Mrs. Eddy was then Mrs. Patter-
son but elected to be called Mrs. Glover. See also Mc-
Clure's, March, 523, 520, 524. Mrs. Eddy's explanation
that her letters to P. P. Quimby were written while she
was under mesmeric influence will receive small con-
sideration at the hands of the few, who like the author,
have read not merely the extracts from them published in
McClure's but also the originals in full.

19. H. W. Dresser, 120.

20. McClure's, March, 509.

21. S. & H. (1888), 7.

22. After a careful study of the Quimby Scrapbook,
which has been in the author's possession for a month
through the courtesy of Mr. George A. Quimby, the writer
is convinced that it alone should suffice to close the case.

23. Sybil Wilbur in Human Life, April.

24. Evans, 209, 210.

25. George A. Quimby's refusal to accept Mrs. Eddy's
proposition in the light of the Quimby scrapbook, Quimby
manuscripts, and Mrs. Eddy's letters to Quimby, is en-
tirely commendable as well as discreet, and incidentally
an apt illustration of " timeo Danaos et dona ferentes."

Edward J. Arens was once a devoted student and
helper of Mrs. Eddy. In 1881 he published a pamphlet
in which he quoted extensively from S. & H. Mrs. Eddy
brought suit in 1883 for infringement of copyright.
Arens's defense was that he had borrowed from Mrs,

Notes ^29

Edd/s book what she had taken largely from P. P.
Quimby's manuscripts. Neither being able to produce the
manuscripts in court nor having access to them for com-
parison with Mrs. Eddy's book, Arens could not prove his
case, and the court decided that he had violated Mrs.
Eddy's copyright. The court did not pass upon the origin
of Mrs. Eddy's ideas because the Quimby manuscripts were
not in evidence, and without them the moral question in-
volved could not be decided. Only the legal issue as be-
tween Mrs. Eddy and Arens was, or could be, settled by
the court. Yet Mrs. Eddy has steadily construed the de-
cision as a " vindication in the United States court " of
her claim to be the originator of her healing principle,
and her English representative, Mr. Frederick Dixon, in
The American Queen for July, echoes her claim in a para-
graph based on evident unfamiliarity both with the
Quimby manuscripts and the details of the trial. See J.
A. Dresser, 58; M. W., 249; McClure's, March, August,
September.

26. The Committee claims to be able to support his
statement by affidavits, and July 18th wrote the writer
thus : " I have in my possession numerous statements and
affidavits from reliable persons who were formerly treated
by Mr. P. P. Quimby in 1861, and subsequent thereto.
They invariably affirm that his treatment consisted of
manipulations and that he never attempted to practice or
teach any method of giving a mental treatment, and that
he never ascribed the peculiar power he seemed to possess,
to God. He regarded it as a natural gift and not the re-
sult of education." Having read, as the Committee has
not, Mrs. Eddy's letters to P. P. Quimby, the Quimby
scrapbook, and the Quimby manuscripts, the author is
unable to imagine any evidence, past, present, or to come,
which can seriously affect in any way the Quimby con-
troversy. If, however, such evidence ever comes to light
and proves on careful examination to be pertinent, speci-
fic, and authentic, the author will be prompt in admitting
its significance and revising his estimate. He would like
the reader distinctly to understand that he spared no
effort to find all the evidence there is. If there still is

230 Notes

evidence not considered in this volume the fault, as his
voluminous correspondence proves, can not be charged to
him. He repeatedly sought permission to make a care-
ful study of the evidence the Committee claims to possess,
but he always sought in vain; though the Committee was
generous in giving information on other themes.

Mrs. Eddy has made much of Quimby's recognition of
her aptness as a pupil and of her services to him. But
teachers often speak in terms as glowing of their more
promising pupils. Every right-minded teacher of the
truth likes to regard himself as but a John the Baptist to
the Christ that is to be. Undoubtedly Mrs. Eddy's news-
paper tributes to Quimby did enlarge his reputation and
bring him patients. But his son assures me that Quimby,
like most busy men accustomed to receive effusive letters
from the emotional, gave little heed to Mrs. Eddy's com-
munications, and in his latter days concluded that she had
" no identity in honesty."

The visits here referred to in the text are the ones men-
tioned in more inclusive terms in the Preface.

The following unexpected letter speaks for itself:

Belfast, Maine,
Oct. 18, 1907.
My Dear Mr. Powell:

Having had the pleasure of reading so much of the
proof sheets of your forthcoming book as relates to my
father, I wish to express my pleasure at the way you
have treated your subject, and also state, that the quo-
tations you have made from his manuscripts, which you
copied at my house", are absolutely correct, and were taken
from his writings now in my possession. As you are
aware, most of your extracts were written by him, prior
to his acquaintance with Mrs. Eddy. Thinking that there
might be some who would question the truth of your
quotations, I have without any suggestion from you writ-
ten this explanation which you are at liberty to use in
any way you see fit. With kind regards, I am

Very truly,

Geo. a. Quimby,

Notes 231

27. The author has consulted many of the witnesses
who testify in both McClure's and Human Life and in
every instance he has been informed that McClure's ac-
count is to be accepted. His investigation covers most
closely the issues from January to July inclusive.

28. Mrs. Eddy did not originate the term " Christian
Science." Abram Cowles used it in 1840. Rev. William
Adams in 1850 published a book entitled Elements of
Christian Science. I have found the term in the Quimby
MSS. See H. W. Dresser, 239, 65, and McClure's, March,
513.

" Science of Health " sometimes appears in the
Quimby MSS.

The ten quotations that follow in the parallel are from
the MS. " Questions and Answers " which Mrs. Eddy
used for years and habitually attributed to Quimby. A
copy of this MS. with Mrs. Eddy's own interlineations in
it is in the possession of Mr. H. T. Wentworth who has
kindly shown it to the writer. It is almost word for word
identical — the writer finds — with one of the Quimby MSS.
written by P. P. Quimby, copied by his wife, and bearing
a date several months before Mrs. Eddy's first meeting
with Quimby. This MS., too, he has seen through the
courtesy of Mr. George A. Quimby and McClure's mag-
azine. The writer has copied from the other Quimby
MSS. many pages of quotations which confirm those in
" Questions and Answers," and leave no room to doubt
that the MS. as it stands, with its introductory para-
graphs and its interlineations is as Mrs. Eddy used to
say, the output of Quimby's brain. Mrs. Eddy has made
much of Quimby's failure to draw the distinction as
sharply as she draws it between mind and matter. But
Quimby's conception was more nearly Berkeleyan than
Mrs. Eddy's. See James's Pragmatism, 89, and Hanna's
C. S. History, 33.

The quotations from S. & H. beginning with the third
will be found in editions as follows: (1898), 543; (1881),
169; (1898), 449; (1898), 183; (1881), 169; (1898), 491,
513, 466, 478, 62. The "parallel" itself was first sug-
gested by Peabody, 17ff..

232 Notes

CHAPTER IV

1. McClure'Sy Jan. 237, 238; Moll, 13ff.

2. Mrs. Eddy's published reply to McClure*s; Human
Life, Feb.

3. R. & I., 20.

4. McClure's, Jan. 237, 241.

George Washington Glover disappears from his mother's
life and seldom reappears till in 1907 he figures as one of
the " next friends " in the suit of Mrs. Eddy vs, C. A.
Frye et. al. For a while when a baby, he lived with his
mother at his aunt Tilton's; then with the old nurse, with
whom after her marriage he removed at the age of thir-
teen to Minnesota. He fought through the Civil War,
became U. S. marshal, was prospector and miner for a
time, and settled at last in Lead, South Dakota, where his
mother built for him and furnished, in 1902, a comfort-
able house in which he still resides.

Influenced, Mrs. Eddy's friends claim, by those un-
friendly to her, he and others brought suit as " next
friends," March 1, to gain the legal right to represent her
in the management of her property, which they asserted
she was incompetent to manage. The suit was earnestly
contested. While it was in progress Mrs. Eddy gave sev-
eral interviews to newspaper reporters in which she ap-
peared for a woman of eighty-six to be singularly vig-
orous in mind. The " Masters," too, had an important
interview with her on Aug. 14th, in the presence of the
senior counsel on each side. Two alienists of reputation.
Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton and Dr. Edward French, en-
gaged by Mrs. Eddy or her representatives, pronounced
her competent to manage her affairs though their opin-
ions were not published till after the suit was on August
21st abandoned by the "next friends." The result ap-
peared to be a virtual victory for Mrs. Eddy. As this
book goes to press a book is announced by R. D. Kath-
rens of Kansas City, claiming to give the inside history
of the suit, but of the value of the book the author knows
nothing.

5. 6. New England Magazine, March, 1888; H. W.

Notes 233

Dresser, Chs. I and II; McClure's, Feb.; Arena, May, 1899;
Boston Herald, Aug. 15. The facts concerning P. P.
Quimby have been verified by his son, George A. Quimby.

7. J. A. Dresser. Mrs. Eddy had ample opportunity
to become familiar with Quimby's ideas. She and other
favourite pupil-patients spent many an hour with him
after office hours asking him questions and encouraging
him to talk in his characteristic manner. His son gave
me a vivid word picture of the unconventional doctor as
in the late afternoon, wearied by the long day's work, he
was wont to lie on his sofa in his office talking freely to
the patients he knew best, two of whom were in those
days copying the notes he happened then to be making.

8. C. S. Sentinel, Feb. 16, 1899.

There is another reason why Mrs. Eddy's claim cannot
be substantiated. Though many of Quimby's characteris-
tic phrases lodged in Mrs. Eddy's mind to be reproduced
practically unchanged in her writings and to become cur-
rent coin to-day among Christian Scientists everywhere,
the difference in style between the Quimby manuscripts
and Mrs. Eddy's writings is as marked as between Lin-
coln's Gettysburg address and S. & H. The language of
the Quimby manuscripts is direct. As one of his old
patients writes me, " One did n't need a dictionary
to understand Dr. Quimby." The language of S. & H.
is as already described in Ch. II. The difference is not
alone in vocabulary and structure of sentences but also
in the movement of the mind. Verbosity, vagueness, and
overstatement are the " pinions " — quoting Mrs. Eddy's
favourite word — of her v^ngs (McClure's, Oct., 699), and
Quimby, content to walk on the solid ground of clear and
simple statement, never wanted to use wings.

9. Human Life, March; McClure's, February.

10. Dr. Cushing's affidavit is in McClure's, March,
511. The author had a personal interview with him May
8. See also Human Life, May.

11. Times Magazine, March; McClure's, April, 619;
Sept., 532; Human Life, June.

12. The Stoughton sketch is based on correspondence
and an interview of May 6 and its facts have been veri-

2 34 Notes

fied by Mr. Wentworth and Mrs. Clapp. See also Mc-
Clure's, April, 620-622; Human Life, May.

13. Quoted from an unpublished letter.

14. Letters from, and interviews with Richard Ken-
nedy; also McClure's, May and July; Human Life, June
and September.

15. R. & I., 71. The " strange providence " appar-
ently was a suggestion from Richard Kennedy that stu-
dents would probably be more willing to pay a larger
price for tuition than to mortgage their future by prom-
ising to pay Mrs. Eddy ten per cent, on all their future
earnings.

16. McClure's, May, 103-5.

17. S. & H. (1881), Vol. II, 34.

18. McClure's, May, 109.

19. In Human Life, Sept., p. 14, Mrs. Eddy's explana-
tion is give'n of her break with Mr. Spofford. She puts it
on the ground of his business incompetency and his de-
sire to wrest from her the C. S. leadership.

20-22. Mrs. Eddy sometimes gives an uncommon or
unwarranted import to ordinary words. See McClure's,
July, 343, for instances of confusion of " immorality" and
"disloyalty," "adultery" and "adulteration." All
through the various editions of S. & H., she frequently
confuses " personality " and " corporeality " and sets up
an antagonism between " personality " and " principle "
as unnecessary as it is hurtful to her metaphysics. See
McClure's, July, for full account of the witchcraft case;
also McClure's, August; and Human Life, Sept.

23. R. & I., 60. One of several who knew Mr. Eddy
and have given me their recollections of him informs me
that Mr. Eddy seemed to him slow and over-cautious,
rather than naturally dull or stupid. He thought him
completely overawed and benumbed by his wife's
stronger nature. Dr. Patterson died in 1896.

24, 25. McClure's, May, 115, 116. The italics are Mrs.
Eddy's.

26. The post-mortem examination of Mr. Eddy made
at Mrs. Eddy's request by a reputable physician disclosed
"organic disease of thp heart, the aortic valve beinj^ de-

Notes 235

stroyed and the surrounding tissue infiltrated with cal-
careous matter." To satisfy Mrs. Eddy the physician
showed her the heart, and yet she still insisted that her
husband had died of " malicious mesmerism " or " arseni-
cal poisoning mentally administered." — McClure's, Sept.,
568 ff. See also R. & I., 60.

27. McClure's, Sept., 572-5; Human Life, Jan.; C. S.
Sentinel, May 23, Aug. 24; Philadelphia North American,
July 15.

According to McClure's, Sept., Calvin A. Frye was bom
Oct. 24, 1845, in Frye village, now a part of Andover,
Mass., of good New England ancestry. His father, Enoch
Frye, was graduated from Harvard in the famous class
of 1821, which numbered Emerson among its brightest
stars. After attending public school in Andover he
worked in a machine shop till in 1882 at the age of thirty-
seven in response to a telegram he entered Mrs. Eddy's
service, in which for a quarter of a century he has been
engaged, it is said, without vacation. He has at times
done her marketing; kept her books with honesty she tes-
tifies, and the recent auditor of his accounts reports;
written many of her letters, and, dignified New Eng-
lander as he is, these many years clad in livery he has
sat upon the coachman's box when she has gone out for
her daily drive. He has been faithfulness itself to her
and to her interests because according to his affidavit he
has steadily believed both in her and in her theory. In an
anomalous position, under frequent criticism and not in-
frequent ridicule, he has for a quarter of a century hid
behind an impassive countenance and an unbroken si-
lence, his motives, feelings, and experiences.

28. R. & I., 62; McClure's, Aug.

29. Robinson, 13. The references in the preceding
paragraph are to McClure's, Sept., 581.

Not all who heard Mrs. Eddy in those days were im-
pressed alike. Miss Frances J. Dyer, trained journalist,
frequently attended C. S. services in the early eighties
and has kindly revived for the writer's use the following
recollections written at the time:

Among the novel Sabbath services in this city of

236 Notes

heterodoxy is the gospel according to Mrs. Mary B. G.
Eddy, the chief apostle and expounder of " Christian
Science," so called. In Hawthorne Hall, at three
o'clock on Sunday afternoons, an audience of some 200
intelligent and respectable looking people assemble to listen
to their " pastor." The exercises begin with singing a
hymn. Then follows a moment of silent prayer, and a
most remarkable paraphrasing of the Lord's Prayer.
After each petition by the audience Mrs. Eddy interjects
one of her own. For example, after the people say, " Thy
will be done," she adds, " May the supremacy of spirit
appear, and the dream of matter disappear." " Lead us
not into temptation " is followed by " Deliver us from the
errors of personal sense." The sermon on the last Sab-
bath chanced to be an exposition of the fourteenth of
John. The first two verses were read, and questions
asked : " What is meant by the heart physically and meta-
physically? " Timid voices replied, " A bodily organ "
and " The seat of the affections." After a little prelimi-
nary skirmishing of this sort, the speaker plunged boldly
in medias res as set forth in a written manuscript, and
elucidated the doctrine of original sin by stating that
" man and God are co-existent and eternal ; losing our
sense of this, we gain our mortal sense, and thus become
sinners." If we listen to the realities of sin as preached
from modern pulpits we are hell. This is metaphysics.
When all our sense of being goes into the spiritual, then
only do we begin to live. Our only intelligence and sub-
stance is an apprehension of the great and eternal some-
thingness. Jesus, the great metaphysician, whose mission
is to turn away our thought from a personal Satan and
a personal sinner, is simply the idea of the divine in-
telligence which we call God, or good. Christ always em-
ployed mental methods for bodily healing. We are what
we think we are, and our attitude of thought determines
our bodily condition. There is no such thing as matter —
all in the universe is spirit. And so on, ad absurdam.
Meetings have just been suspended, however, owing to a
" pressure of other duties."

The fountain head whence these amazing sophistries

Notes 237

are promulgated is the Metaphysical College, a chartered
institution at 571 Columbus Avenue, and students flock
there by the score, even at the exorbitant charge of $300
for twelve lessons. Here may be found several other
resident " physicians " and elsewhere in the city are a
dozen others, most of the practitioners being women. A
Journal of Christian Science is published every other
month. Some of the printed testimonials therein to Mrs.
Eddy's book, Science and Health, with Key to the Scrip-
tures, give somewhat doubtful praise. Witness, for in-
stance, this one from Longfellow:

" Having so many occupations and interruptions, I have
not found time to read Science and Health sufficiently,
but will not on that account delay thanking you for its
excellence."

30. McClure's, Sept., 575; May, 1899.

31. Arena, May, 1899.

32. See statement of " next friends " in lawsuit.

33. 34. R. & I., 67; M. W., 271-274; R. & I., 67-72;
Hanna, 40; Clark, 115.

35. P. & P.; Peabody, 40; M. W., 140.

36. M. W., 139-143, 156; also private letter of June
30, 1890.

Christian Science architecture is distinctive. Calm and
dignity, beauty and harmony are the ideals it endeavours
to embody. Of Gothic, Christian Scientists will have no-
thing because Gothic is too closely associated with historic
Christianity. They go back to Athens and the Acropolis
not only because — to quote the architect of the Boston
Church — it is " based on a mathematical inerrancy which
is most fascinating to analyse " but also because " the pur-
est type of the ancient Greek temples was the outgrowth
of a naturalistic and rationalistic religion." — S. S. Beman
in The World To-day, June, 582-590.

37. There are many likenesses between Mrs. Eddy and
Mahomet in temperament, character, and career. See
Stanley Lane-Poole, V-LV for analysis of Mahomet.

38. Letter from the Committee on Publication, dated
June 20.

39. The Committee adds that "the most significant

238 Notes

item bearing on this point is the fact that there are
nearly 450,000 copies of Science and Health in use. If
there are two copies in the average family of five this
would mean more than a million persons studying the
book."

Apparently, however, the Committee has for the mo-
ment forgotten that according to the C. S. Q. Bible Les-
sons no copy of Science and Health before the 226th
edition can be used in following the Sunday services, and
that there is for this reason and other reasons, constant
encouragement given to Christian Scientists to buy new
editions. The latest edition, published in September, con-
taining a portrait — made many years ago — of Mrs.
Eddy, is so alluringly advertised that every Christian
Scientist will want to buy a copy. A Christian Scientist
near Mrs. Eddy has in fact stoutly asserted to me that
no one should read any but the latest editions. A con-
siderable number of copies must be also in the libraries,
and some at least in the hands of those whose only in-
terest is curious or critical.

40. For illustrations see McClure*s for the current
year and the C. S. Sentinel, July 27, p. 910. Note also:
"At the written request of the Pastor Emeritus, Mrs. Eddy,
the Board of Directors shall immediately notify a member
of this Church to go in ten days to her, and it shall be
the duty of the member thus notified to remain with Mrs.
Eddy twelve months consecutively or three years con-
secutively if Mrs. Eddy requires or requests it. A mem-
ber who leaves her in less time without her consent or
who is discharged, shall be dropped from the Church.
Male members who remain with her three years consecu-
tively, shall be paid semi-annually at the rate of twelve
hundred dollars yearly in addition to rent and board.
Female members shall receive one thousand dollars an-
nually with rent and board. Those members, whom she
teaches the course in Divinity, and those who remain with
her three years, receive the degrees of the Massachusetts
Metaphysical College." — Manual, 66,

41. Manual, 18, 3.

42. Mark Twain, 209.

Notes 239

43. William P. Trent.

44. Alfred Farlow.

45. C. S. Sentinel, July 6, 852.

46. Boston Herald, Aug. 17.

47. Human Life, July.

48. The case in question was that of the Aberthaw
Construction Co. vs. Carpenters District Council of Boston
and Vicinity and the Christian Science Church (Owners).
The case was first referred to a " Master," Hon. Wade
Keyes; and when objections and exceptions to his report
were filed by the Christian Science Board of Directors,
his decision after full argument was " unanimously sus-
tained by the Court of Last Resort of the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts," March 27, 1907. The report of much
of the evidence and the court decision have been printed
for distribution by the Master Builders Association of
Boston in a pamphlet, loaned the author by Mr. W. L.
Cook and closing with the following words : " The
amount of money involved in this case was insignifi-
cant, but the principle was great, and the decision ren-
dered is so important and far-reaching that all parties
concerned in industrial issues should take note thereof."
See also editorial in the Springfield Republican, June 20.
McClure's, August, gives other instances of litigation in
which Mrs. Eddy has been involved from time to time.
The explanation in Human Life, Sept., that others have
been in every case at fault is not convincing.

49. Private letter dated Dec. 18, 1890. See McClure's,
Oct., 688, for instance in which Mrs. Eddy claims " divine
origin " and, 692, for instance in which Mrs. Eddy ad-
mits to the Journal, May, 1885, while she was actual
editor, the following claim a disciple makes for her:
" She existed from the beginning before all ages, and will
not cease to exist throughout all ages,"

50. Notes to Chapter II, 2.

51. McClure*s, Sept.

52. New York American, Aug. 26.

53. Punches phrase applied without disparagement to
Mr. Gladstone as it is here to Mrs. Eddy.

240 Notes

CHAPTER V

1. S. & H. (1898), 464; Sturge, 14, 15; Karl Pear-
son's Ethic of Free Thought; J. R. Mosley in Cosmopoli-
tan, July, 331.

2. S. & H. (1898), 481.

3. Cosmopolitan, July, 333.

4. A Critic Answered, 13 if.

5. Peabody, 29; McClure's, Aug., 457.

6. Canon Scott Holland in Sturge, XVIII.

7. The successive editions of S. & H. were numbered
until the 440th appeared a few months ago. The num-
bering was then discontinued.

8. Lodge, VI.

9. A Critic Answered, 16. To understand the unwar-
ranted appropriation made by C. S. of the word " reality "
to a special meaning, see James's Pragmatism,, 212, 244.

10. S. & H. (1898), 110, 170, 189, 484. Since writing
the paragraph to which this refers the author has found
a full description of Soul Senses in a Quimby manuscript
dated May, 1860.

11. Frothingham, 122-127.

12. H. W. Dresser, 97-100.

13. Collect for first Sunday in Lent.

14. Peabody, 34. This was verified by personal letter.

15. S. & H., 331.

16. Newman's Apologia, 144.

17. A Critic Answered, 14.

18. S. & H. (1898), 129.

19. S. & H., 172.

It is profitable to compare Mrs. Eddy's crude view with
the concept of a trained scientist like Sir Oliver Lodge:
" The popular misconception concerning the biological
origin of man, that he is descended from monkeys like
those of the present day, is a trivial garbling of the truth.
The elevated and the degraded branches of a family can
both trace their descent from a parent stock; and though
the distant common ancestor may now be lost in obscurity,
there is certainly in this sense a blood relationship be-
tween the quadrumana and the bimana: a relationship

Notes 241

which is recognised and is practically useful in the in-
vestigations of experimental pathology." — The Substance
of Faith, 17.

20. Christian Science: Humanity's Helper, 17. The
verse which appears immediately before the quotation of
Professor Bering's is from a poem by Professor W. H.
Car ruth.

21. Compare with Mrs. Ward's noble words in David
Grieve, 402, the following doggerel Mrs. Eddy offers in
protest against evolution:

" Thenceforth to evolution's
Geology, we say, —
Nothing have we gained therefrom,
And nothing have to pray." — M. W., V.

22. Cushman, 58, confirms the writer's thesis in his
forceful phrase definitive of C. S. : " It is theoretical
moral anarchism." It has also been admitted by a promi-
nent official of the Church that C. S. is " essentially in-
dividualistic " in opposition to the socialistic tendencies of
the time. See Human Life, January 4.

23. S. & H. (1898), 223.

24. S. & H. (1875), Ch. I.

25. Hutchinson, 32.

26. Wright, 18, 19. Also Ch. IV, note 26.

27. S. & H. (1875), Ch. I.

28. S. & H. (1898), 290.

29. Cambridge Chronicle, Nov. 3, 1906.

30. S. & H. (1898), 316.

31. S. & H., 140.

32. S. & H., 142.

33. S. & H. (1898), 21.

34. S. & H., 126.

35. S. & H., 141.

36. Prayer Book, 38.

CHAPTER VI

1. S. & H. (1898), 461.

2. S. & H. (1881), I, 167; II, 97.

3. Northampton Herald, Oct. 16, 1905.

4. C. S. V, P., 5, 12.

242 Notes

5. S. & H. (1898), 7.

6. S. & H. (1888), 50.

7. Hutchinson, 16.

8. Cosmopolitan, July. It is gratifying to find Mr.
Farnsworth {Arena, July, p. 59) thus confirming the
writer's view of the tendency of C. S. to turn to dual-
ism : " Christian Science . . . drops upon investigation
into a dualism because its utter inability to account for
mortal mind and that error of mortal mind the inhar-
monious, phenomenal world of sense, argues the exist-
ence of an evil principle at war with God."

9. Living Church, July 6, 339. A writer in the C. S.
Sentinel, Sept. 21, p. 57, apparently does not endorse Mr.
Farlow's explanation. She writes : " Principle and not
personality is the only foundation upon which we can
build safely."

10. The italics are the writer's.

11. Letter dated May 31.

12. S. & H., 6.

13. S. & H., XI.

14. S. & H.r, 331. The more specific statement ap-
pears in S. & H., 55 : "In the words of St. John, * He
shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with
you forever.' This Comforter I understand to be Divine
Science."

15. Fluno, 23. Throughout a paragraph C. S. is
identified with the Holy Spirit.

16. S. & H. (1898), 469: See also M. W., 63.

17. H. W. Dresser, 109, 94. In the Quimby manu-
script dated May, 1860, there is also a clear statement of
the case.

18. Quimby Scrapbook.

19-21. S. & H. (1898), 1, 532, 229. Farnsworth in
Arena, July, 60.

22. C. S. Sentinel, June 15, 1899, 6.

23. The note is dated Dec. 22, 1906, and appeared in
the C. S. Sentinel.

24. S. & H. (1898), 513.

25. S. & H. (1898), 550-7. The italics are the
writer's.

Notes 243

26. Searchlights, 45. Mrs. Eddy once at least calls
Jesus the "Way-shower." See M. W., 30.

27. R. & I., 95.

28. S. & H., 569.

29-31. Mark Twain, 334-8; Manual, 63.
32. McClure's, March, 507.
83. McClure's, July, 337.

34. Peabody, 26.

35. Manual, 94, reads : " If the author of the Christian
Science text-book call on this Board for household help
or a handmaid, the Board shall immediately appoint a
proper member of this Church therefor, and the appointee
shall go immediately in obedience to the call. " He that
loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me." (Matt. 10:37).

36. M. W., 309.

37. S. & H. (1875).

38. Lodge, 125.

39. S. & H., 15. Mrs. Eddy's entire theory of prayer,
even to her warning against audible prayer, will be found
substantially in Quimby's language in the Quimby manu-
script dated March, 1860.

40. Cambridge Chronicle, Nov. 3, 1906.

41. S. & H., 16.

42. Lodge, 129.

43. Mt. 28:29; I Cor. 11:23-25.

44. S. & H., 32.

45. S. & H., 35; Arena, May, 1899, 564.

46. S. & H. (1888), 504.

47. S. & H., 35.

48. S. & H., 34. For a scientific statement of the
necessary sacramental relationship of mind and matter,
see Thomson, Chs. IL and VIII.

49. Cushman, 35; S. & H. (1898), 468.

50. A Critic Answered, 19. In the Quimby manu-
script dated July, 1860, the statement is made that God
did not create evil.

51. Browning's Abt Vogler.

52. Campbell's New Theology, 52.

53. S. & H. (1898), 7.

244 Notes

54. Isaiah 45:7; Genesis 1:31 and 1:18,

55. S. & H. (1898), Index on Sin.

56. Rev. C. E. Holmes, Ph.D.

57. Professor Cushman (58) sums up the tendency of
Christian Science to confuse moral distinctions in this
way : " To deny the existence of sin is to deny the exist-
ence of virtue; and to disallow disease is to disallow
health. There cannot be good without ill, virtue without
sin, health without disease, knowledge without ignorance,
heat without cold, white without black. These are cor-
relative terms. They are as mutually necessary as one
pole of a magnet is to the other. To deny sin and dis-
ease is to deny all moral distinctions whatsoever, and
upon moral distinctions is society built."

Professor Barrett Wendell in his France of To-day
(177) notes the same tendency to deny facts and thus
to confuse moral distinctions among Christian Scientists
in his treatment of the Dreyfus case.

The writer knows a clear-headed woman who declined
to become a student of C. S. because she was required at
the beginning to endeavour to persuade herself that black
is white.

58. S. & H. (1898), 38, 443, 486, 588, 589.

59. Human Life, July.

60. S. & H. (1898), 639-641; (1888), 515.

61. Alfred Farlow in the Boston Post, July 2; S. &
H. (1875).

62. McClure's, May, 116.

63. Omaha Daily News, January 7 and 8, 1901.

64. The paragraphs above were written before Mrs.
Eddy's disavowal, Aug. 14, of belief in the power of one
mind to wor-k ill to another and before Dr. Allan McLane
Hamilton, going far beyond the province of an alienist,
declared that " the allegations concerning Mrs. Eddy's be-
lief in * malicious animal magnetism ' are ridiculous." I
am allowing the paragraphs, however, to stand in proof
because the evidences presented in S. & H. (especially the
third edition), in certain personal letters of Mrs. Eddy
with which Dr. Hamilton cannot have been familiar,
and in the conversations and correspondence I have had

Notes 245

— and Dr. Hamilton has not — with those who have known
her during a considerable period of her career leave no
room to doubt the large and lurid place " M. A. M." has
had both in her outward and her inner life. If she no
longer believes in it, Mrs. Eddy deserves to be congratu-
lated on her escape, though late, from the thraldom of
an actual obsession. But that in no wise alters the
evidences of the past. See also McClure's, May to Oc-
tober, and Boston Herald, Aug. 17, in which appear sev-
eral significant letters.

CHAPTER VII

1. Hudson, 7, 8.

2. S. & H., 107, 120. In the " Masters " interview of
Aug. 14th Mrs. Eddy said in explanation of her healing
system : " When I came to the point that it was mind that
did the healing, then I wanted to know what mind that
was. Was it the mind which was in Jesus Christ, or was
it the human mind and human will? Then I went to in-
vestigating spiritualism and mesmerism and hypnotism,
to see if I could find out, and I didn't find God there;
therefore I turned to God in prayer and said : " Guide me,
guide me to that mind which is in Christ," and I took the
Bible and opened it at the words, " Now go write it in a
book." I can show you where it is in the Bible. I then
commenced writing my consciousness of what I had seen,
and I found that human will was the cause of disease
instead of its cure; that hypnotism and mesmerism or hu-
man concepts did not heal — ^they were the origin of dis-"
ease instead of its cure; and that the divine mind was the
healer, and then I found it through the Scripture. " He
healed all our diseases. Go into the field, preach the
Gospel, heal the sick," and I felt there was my line of
labour, and that God did the healing, and I could no more
heal a person through mortal mind or will power than I
could heal then by cutting off their heads, and I could
not heal them by it, for I don't know how to use will
power to hurt the sick; I don't know how to do it." — Bos-
ton Herald, Aug. 15.

246 Notes

3. S. & H., 149; (1898), 426; Oughton, 98; Alfred
I''arlow in the Boston Herald, July 18. I give Mr. Far-
low's report of Mrs. Eddy's statement as she recalls it as
to stopping the bleeding of her arm. Dr. Edward Everett
Hale, to whom she made the statement, wrote me Sept.
27 : " Mrs. Eddy said to me that I might cut through the
main artery of her arm and that she would stop the
effusion of blood by an exertion of will."

4. S. & H. (1898), 422, 423, 47, 217, 374, 375, 385,421,
485.

5. Snyder, 11; C. S. Legislation, 18; Broadway Mag-
azine, May, 163; Casson, 35.

6. Muldoon, 30. Mrs. Eddy admitted over her own
signature in the Boston Herald, Dec. 2, 1900, that she
allowed a dentist to use his painless method in the extrac-
tion of her tooth.

7. Muldoon, 31. For an important correction of Mrs.
Eddy's reference to Berkeley, see James's Pragmatism,
89.

8. S. & H., 179. Absent treatment was an implication
of Quimby's healing theory which especially appealed to
Mrs. Eddy. After she left him in the autumn of 1862 she
was, as I found in her letters to him, ever visualising him.
Once she wrote that she had actually seen him spiritually
present. Again, she besought him to visit her in his
" omnipresence." Once she wrote of him as " Comfor-
ter " and of his " angel visit " to her. She developed a
truth he taught her but it was none the less a truth of his
discovering.

9. S. & H., 177, 178.

10. S. & H. (1888), 451; S. & H., 401.

11. Government, 4.

12. S. & H., X.

13. Osier, 382.

14. Dr. Huber confirms my references to him and in a
letter, dated Aug. 22, adds that he found the C. S. claims
in the instances cited to be " pitifully without foundation."

15. Goddard, 433-7.

16. S. & H., VIII; (1898), 290.

17. Oughton, 85; Casson, 180.

Notes 247

Mrs. Eddy says : " Sickness has been fought for
centuries by doctors using material remedies; but the
question arises, Is there less sickness because of these
practitioners? A vigorous ' No ' is the response deducible
from two connate facts, — the reputed longevity of the
Antediluvians, and the rapid multiplication and increased
violence of diseases since the flood." — S. & H., VIII.

Mrs. Eddy often betrays her unfamiliarity with history,
archaeology, geology, and Biblical criticism as in the above
passage. But one would not press a tactical advantage.

It is difficult, however, to withhold comment from the
following sentence: "The census since 1875 (the date of
the first publication of my work. Science and Health)
shows that longevity has increased." — M. W., 20.

18. Seaman and Suzuki in Review of Reviews, Nov.
1905.

19. Keen, 217-261.

20. S. & H. (1898), 214, 622, 381, 382, 387, 388, 411.

21. Oughton, 83.

22. S. & H., 111.

23. Osier, 302. It would seem pertinent also to in-
quire whether C. S. can cure pleurisy, since in the recent
lawsuit it was admitted, Aug. 8, that Joseph Armstrong,
Mrs. Eddy's publisher and conspicuous supporter, was un-
der treatment for pleurisy by a regular physician. Says
the Boston Herald, Aug. 9, in editorial comment : " The
turning of publisher Armstrong of the Christian Science
coterie of officials to a physician for treatment for pleu-
risy is as if John had been like Judas, as if Melancthon
had left Luther to serve Leo X, as if John Knox had
fallen under the spell of Queen Mary's blandishments and
turned Roman Catholic, as if Asbury and Coke on arriv-
ing in America had preached Calvinism, and as if a
speaker at Northfield should preach agnosticism."

24. S. & H., X.

25. S. & H. (1898), 367, 378, 383, 416, 485. The arti-
cle on C. S. cures in the Broadiuay Magazine for Novem-
ber seems to the author negligible in the light of the tests
he speaks of in the preceding paragraphs and to which
the alleged cures have not been subjected.

248 Notes

26. S. & H., 110; (1898)', 42, 368, 369.

27-30. S. & H., 515, 396, 399, 411, 412, 421.

" Chemicalisation " is coin strange enough to come from
Mrs. Eddy's mint. But George A. Quimby incidentally
remarked, July 16, to the writer that his father was con-
stantly speaking of the " chemical change " which his
ideas produced in patients. " He never sat down by a
patient," said his son, " but he used this phrase. Never ! "

The writer has also found the phrase " chemical change "
in the Quimby MSS. dated March, April, and October,
1860, — ^two years before Mrs. Eddy's first visit to Quimby.

31. S. & H., 427, 428.

32. Hutchinson, 17.

33. S. & H. (1898), 343, 358.

34. Heber Newton, in Mark Twain, 322-7; Schofield,
Ch. II; Huxley, 84-96; Zola's Lourdes; Oughton, 26-32.

35. Goddard, 442-5.

36. Goddard, 472.

37. Goddard, 473; Moll, 389; Bramwell, 161 ff.

38. The Emmanuel Movement was started and is to-
day conducted by Rev. Elwood Worcester, Ph.D., D.D.,
Rector of Emmanuel Protestant Episcopal Church, Bos-
ton, assisted by Rev. Samuel McComb, D.D. For further
account of the Movement see The Homiletic Review, Sept.;
The Open Court, Sept.; The New York Evening Post,
March 30; The Congregationalist, April 6; Good House-
keeping for March, April, Oct., and Nov.; and Harper's
Bazaar, October. See also The Christ that is to be, 215-
274, for detailed consideration of the possibilities and
duties of the Christian church in healing the sick.

The author does not discuss the possibility of the
cure of organic diseases by suggestion. He is acquainted
with the argument for it in Schofield's Forces of Mind,
164, and in The Christ that is to be, 215-225. But he be-
lieves it is too early to determine to what extent sugges-
tion is applicable beyond the range of nervous and func-
tional disorders. He welcomes experimentation but
thinks it ought to be made with caution, under proper
conditions, and that scientific tests should be applied be-
fore and. after. The methods of C. S., especially with

Notes 249

children, seem to him reprehensible and deserving of state
regulation.

39. Goddard, 485.

40. Ch. III. Note 24.

41. Arthur Hugh Clough.

CHAPTER VIII

1. M. W., 52.

2. M. W., 288.

3. The latest concrete instance appeared in the fol-
lowing open letter in the Boston Herald, July 11:

A DIVIDED FAMILY

To the Editor of The Herald:

In your issue of July 5th, you published a letter from
Mr. Alfred Farlow regarding the " Case of Prof. Hart."
In this letter Mr. Farlow says, " The habit of charging
one's family troubles to Christian Science or some other
religion has become about as common nowadays as . . .
when, in fact, these quarrels are due to a want of Chris-
tian Science," and Mr. Farlow also goes on to say, " It
seems to us that if there are any inviolable rights, whether
they concern a husband or a wife, it is the individual
choice of religion and medicine. There is no more reason
why a husband should dominate the religious belief of a
family than that a wife should regulate it, . . . the only
just and perceptible means of harmony in the home re-
garding religious beliefs is to leave each member in the
unmolested entertainment of his own faith."

I agree with Mr. Farlow that it is right and proper to
leave the husband or the wife to the unmolested enter-
tainment of their own views, but how about a family of
children aged from 8 to 16 years; I am the father of
such a family, and my wife became interested a few years
ago in Christian Science. Now during all our married
life we have had a home in which harmony reigned, our
chief desire being to have a home for our children in every
sense of the word, my wife has always been a devout
Christian woman and a good mother, and I am old fash-

250 Notes

ioned enough to be passionately in love with her, there-
fore when she became interested in Christian Science I
at once took up the study of it with her, attending the
church and lectures, following the various lessons, etc.,
etc., with the result that my wife accepted Christian Sci-
ence in all its teachings and I rejected it, while admitting
that the idea back of it (which is in all religions) is good.
Then the first inharmonious note appeared in our home.
I do not desire my children to become Christian Scientists
and my wife does desire it with her whole heart. Who
is to give way, my wife or myself?

My wife has had so-called " claims " and has been in
practitioners' hands, to whom she has explained my posi-
tion in the matter. The practitioner failed to relieve my
wife of her " claims " after " treating " her for a time,
and then declined to treat her further, owing to her hus-
band's (the writer's) thought being so much opposed to
Christian Science. I presume this opposing thought of
mine is another phase of malicious animal magnetism,
which (if my presumption is correct) demonstrates the
fact that Christian Science is not all powerful to protect
from every evil, i. e., opposing thoughts.

Now, it looks to me as if my family was split wide open,
and the split getting wider, not through want of Christian
Science, by any means, but entirely through its presence.

Yours truly,

Brookline, July 8, 1907. J. R. D.

4-9. S. & H. (1875), Ch. VI; S. & H., 64, 65; M. W.,
286; S. & H., 64.

10. St. Luke 20:34; St. Matthew 22:30; St. Mark
12:25. See Bruce in Expositor's Greek Testament and
Plummer in the International Critical Commentary on St.
Luke.

11. I Thess. 4:16 ff.

12. " We do not question the authenticity of the scrip-
tural narrative of the Virgin Mother, and Bethlehem
Babe, and the Messianic Mission of Christ Jesus: but in
our time no Christian Scientist will give chimerical wings
to his imagination, or advance speculative theories as to

Notes 251

the recurrence of such events." — R. & I., 95. And yet
in 1906 we find Mrs. Eddy writing: " Gender also is a
quality, a characteristic of mortal mind, not of matter."
— S. & H., 305.

13-19. S. & H. (1875), 122; S. & H. (1881), II, 160;
S. & H. (1888), 152, 162; S. & H. (1898), 33, 541; S. & H.
(1906), 68, 69, 548. This reference to the butterfly and
bee is omitted from the edition of September, 1907, but
in its place appears a statement apparently meaning the
same thing.

20. Manual, 100.

21. The writer is indebted for his facts about the Sun-
day-school to an usher of the Boston Church who one
Sunday morning kindly acted as his guide through the
colossal church before the appointed hour of service.

22. Richardson. A man formerly high in C. S. circles
writes : " It is an actual fact that if those holding promi-
nent positions in the church and are fired by ambition to
rise higher in executive control are blessed with children,
they will be looked upon with disfavour. Such domestic
blessings are contrary to the process of spiritual refine-
ment promulgated by the pastor emeritus. That ac-
counts for the deploringly low birth rate among Christian
Scientists."

See also Edward C. Farnsworth and John B. Willis
in the Arena for July. To Mr. Farnsworth's charge that
the goal of C. S. is sexlessness, which Mrs. Eddy's sen-
tence, " Spirit will ultimately claim its own, all that really
is, and the voices of physical sense be forever hushed "
(S. & H., 64) clearly confirms, Mr. Willis feebly cites in
refutal various passages to prove that " virtue consists
not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it," —
which is not the point at issue, which is in fact a com-
monplace of Christian ethics.

No one can read Jane Addams's article in the Ladies*
Home Journal, September, on "Why Girls Go Wrong"
without perceiving the social peril lurking in Mrs. Eddy's
unsacramental view of marriage.

23. M. W., 289.

24. Manual, 100.

i

252

Notes

25. S. & H. (1898), 336.

26. S. & H. (1898), 162.

27. M. W., 151.

28. S. & H. (1875)

29. S. & H. (1898), 385.

30. C. S. Journal, April, p. 17.

31. See Paul Elmer More (8) for picture of the perils
of abstract affection.

32. Arthur Hugh Clough.

33. William Rathbone Greg, quoted in Snyder, 16.

INDEX

Abbott, Dr. Lyman, 19

Abdera, 108

Aberthaw Construction Co.,
238

Absent treatment, 246

Adam, and mental surgery,
176

Adams, C. F., 5

Adams, Rev. Wm., 231

Addams, Jane, 251

Advertiser, the Portland, 40

Agamogenesis, 211

Ambrose, 192

Amesbury, 69

Amram, 120

Anarchy, and Christian Sci-
ence, 11, 130,134, 217,241

Anaxagoras, 128

Ancrum, 129

Animal magnetism, see Mag-
netism.

Animals, Christian Science
healing of, 174

Anne, Queen, 193

Apostolic age, 8, 10

Arabian Nights, 91

Architecture, Christian Sci-
ence, 237

Arens, E. J., 46, 80, 228

Armstrong, Joseph, 248

Asceticism, 204
Athanasius, 192
Augustine, 192
Austen, Lady, 63, 64

B

Baker, Albert, 52

Baker, Mark, 52, 53

Baker, Mary A. Morse, 52;

see Mrs. Eddy.
Banner of Light, 70
Baptism, Mrs. Eddy on, 159
Baptists, 193
Barker, Dr. L. F., 198
Bede, 192

Berkeley, 59, 109, 174
Berne, 60, 196
Bernheim, 60, 196
Bible, and Science and

Health., Ch. II; P. P.

Quimby and, 59; on evil,

163
Birth, Virgin, 207
"Black Death," 181
Blumhardt, Parson, 193
Braid, 51

Brain diseases, 173
Bramwell, 201
Bright's disease, 174
Brookins, Miss, 132, 157
Brooks, Phillips, 120

253

254

INDEX

Browning, Robert, 163
Bryce, James, 87
Buckley, Dr. J. M., 19

Campbell, R. J., 163

Cancer, 172, 173, 177, 184

Canterbury, N. H., 51

Carruth, W. H., 126

Catharine of Siena, 193

Celibacy, 204

Chalcedon, Council of, 143

Charcot, 194

Charlemagne, 192

Charles II., 193

Chase, S. P., 72

Chemicalisation, 189

Childbirth, and hypnotism,
197

Chiniquy, Parson, 193

Choate, Mrs. Clara, 87

Christ and Christmas, 153

Christ, Mrs. Eddy's concep-
tion of, 143, 191; see also
Jesus.

Christian Science, see Ta-
ble of Contents.

Christian Science Associa-
tion, 21, 86, 151

Christian Science Journal, 88

Christian Science Quarterly,
88

Christian Science Sentinel, 88

Christian Science versus Pan-
theism, 137

Christian Scientists, and
Christians, Ch. I; total
number of , 96

Christians, and Christian
Scientists, Ch. I

Christianity, apostolic, Ch. I;

and mental healing, 197
Chrysostom, 192
Church, apostolic, and men-
tal healing, 192
Church, Mother, in Boston,

3, 95, 96, 103, 211
Church, the, and Christian

Science, Ch. I
Civil War, 58
Clapp, Mrs. C. I., 69, 71
Clarkson, Judge, 168
Clemens, S. L., 14, 15, 19, 27,

151
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 202,

216
Comforter, see Holy Ghost.
Committee on Publication,

99, 176, 222, 237; see also,

Alfred Farlow.
Comtism, 77
Concord, Mrs. Eddy at, 74,

94, 95, 98, 126
Constantinople, Council of,

143
Consumption, 172
Cosmopolitan, The, 126
Cowles, Abram, 231
Cowper, 63, 64
Crafts, H. S., 33, 69
Crosby, Mrs. S. G., VI, 30,

34, 35, 46, 58, 105
Gushing, Dr. A. M., VI, 33,

66-68
Cushman, H. E., 241, 244
Cuthbert, 192
Cyril, 192

D

Darwin, 125
D'Aubign6, 193

INDEX

255

Davis, A. J., 51

Davy, Sir Humphrey, 193

Democritus of Abdera, 108

Demonology, Mrs. Eddy's,
166-168

Dentistry, 174

Devil, Mrs. Eddy's, 166-8

Diabetes, 185

Diagnosis, 176, 197

Dickens, Charles, 70

Dionysius, 163

Diphtheria, 172, 181

Disease, and Christian Sci-
ence, 172

Divorce, 204

Dixon, Frederick, 229

Doctors, Mrs. Eddy on the,
131

Dods, J. B., 51

Dowie, 194

Dresser, H. W., VI, 31, 32^
61, 63

Dresser, J. A., 43, 46, 61, 62

Dresser, Mrs. J. A., 31, 46

Drugs, Mrs. Eddy on, 131,166

Drummond, Henry, 26

Dualism, 139, 143

Dubois, Dr. Paul, 60, 196

Dunmore, Earl of, 16

Dyer, Miss Frances J., 235

E

East Stoughton, 69

Eddy, Asa Gilbert, 80-84,
86, 152, 167, 234

Eddy, Mrs. M. B. G., 5^^ Ta-
ble of Contents; also, Ba-
ker, Glover, and Patterson.

Eddy vs. Frye et al., case of,
16, 85

Edmonton, 63

Edwards Church, the, 132

Eginhard, 192

Eliot, Prest. C. W., 9, 129

Elizabeth, Queen, 107

Ellises, the, 33, 68

Emerson, R. W., 109, 119

Emmanuel Movement, 197

248
EncyclopcBdia Britannica, 112
Ephesus, Council of, 143
Esdaile, 197

Estate of Mrs. Eddy, 224
Eucharist, the, Mrs. Eddy

on, 161
Evans, Dr. W. F., 43, 46, 202
Eve, and mental surgery,

176
Evil, see Sin.
Evolution, 124, 125, 241
Exegesis, 20
Exodus, 120

Family, the, and Christian
Science, Ch. VIII

Farlow, Alfred, VI, 92, 100,
111, 114, 115, 116, 117,
122, 124, 140, 162, 171,
176, 249; see also Commit-
tee on Publication.

Farnsworth, E. C, 135, 242,
251

Fehling's test, 185

Fevers, 173, 186

Fluno, Dr., 142

Foster-Eddy, Dr. 85, 91, 167

Free Press, the Lebanon, 39

French, Dr. Edward, 85, 232

256

INDEX

Friendship, and Christian

Science, Ch. VIII
Frye, C. A., 84, 85, 92, 235

G

Gautama, 108

Gender, Mrs. Eddy on, 251

Gladstone, 182

Globe, the Boston, 85

Glover, G. W., 55, 232

Glover, Mrs. Mary B., 40;

see also Mrs. Eddy
Gnostics. 216
God, and evolution, 123;

Mrs. Eddy's conception of,

136, 150, 187, 215
Goddard, Professor H. H.,

178, 194
Gordon, Dr. George A., 19,

129
Gould, Helen, 184
Greg, W. R., 219
Gregory the Great, 192
Grieve, David, 129
Grimes, 51

H

Hale, Dr. Edward Everett,

246
Hamilton, Dr. Allen M'Lane,

85, 222, 227, 232, 244
Hamlet, 113, 209
Hanna, Judge, 173, 177, 178,

224
Hawthorne Hall, 89
Healing, Christian Science,

Ch. VII
Healing, mental, Ch. VII
Hegel, 110

Hering, H. S., 92, 126

Hernia, 182

Hilary, 192

Hill, Rev. Edgar P., 140

Holland, Canon Scott, 112

Holmes, Mrs. A. L., 69, 244

Holmes, Dr. C. E., VI, 244

Holy Communion, Mrs. Eddy

on, 160 /f
Holy Ghost, see Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit, and Christian

Science, 142, 206
Huber, Dr. John B., VI.

177-180
Huguenots, 193
Human Life, V., 47, 112
Hypnotism, 98, 196, 197, 200
Hypochondria, 198
Hysteria, 198

Idealism of Mrs. Eddy, 20,
138, Ch. V

Imagination, Tyndall's scien-
tific uses of, 120

Incarnation, the, 142

Independent, the, 3

India, snake bites in, 223

Infinite Mind, 109

Insomnia, 198

Irving, W., 70

Isaiah, 163

Isle of Dreams, the, 148

Jacob, well of, 190

James, Professor William,

200, 221, 231
Jeffersonian, the Bangor, 39
Jerome, 192

INDEX

257

Jesus, 2, 31, 114, 142, 153,

155, 205-208, 216; Mrs.

Eddy and, 105-107, 143;

way of healing, 171, 189
Job, 89, 128
Johns Hopkins University,

126, 198
Johnson, Samuel, 193
Johnston, W. A., 174
Jordan, President David

Starr, 227
Journal, Christian Science,

88, 153
Judas, 106, 107

K

Kant, 109, 119

Kennedy, Richard, VI, 34,

46, 56, 73-75, 137, 165
Keyes, Hon. Wade, 238
King's Evil and Charles II.,

193

Lanier, Sidney, 152
Lawsuit, see Eddy vs. Frye

et al.
Ledger, the New York, 70
Leonardo da Vinci, 100
Leprosy, 172
Libby Prison, 58
Light Brigade, charge of the,

5
Lincoln, Abraham, 72
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 114, 156,

159, 241
Logos, the, Mrs. Eddy's

idea of, 146
Lord's Prayer in Christian

Science, 160

Lotze, 109

Lourdes, 194

Love and Christian Science,

Ch. VIII
Luther, Martin, 193
Lynn, Mass., 58, 66, 72, 78,

86, 111

M

Macleod, Fiona, 148

McClure's, V, 36

McComb, Dr. S., 248

McLellan, A., 92, 147

McGee, Anita Newcomb, 184

Magnetism, Animal, 51, 76,
90, 165-168, 201; "M. A.
M.;" see Animal Magnet-
ism.

Mahomet, 95

Malaria, 185

Man, the reflection of God,
187

Manila, 181

Manual, the, 90, 97-100,
151, 211, 243

Mark Twain, see S. L.
Clemens.

Marriage and Christian Sci-
ence, Ch. VIII

Mary, Virgin, 149, 206

Masons, the Free, 55

Massachusetts Metaphysical
College, 87, 92, 93

Materialism, 136

Matter and Christian Science,
109, 115, 186

Mecca, 95

Medicine, 181

"Medicine Man," the, 199

Medina, 95

258

INDEX

Mental Medicine, Evans's, 43

Mesmer, 51, 91

Mesmerism, see Animal

Magnetism
Methodists, 193
Metaphysical College, Mass.,

87, 92, 93
Milmine, Georgine, V, 34,

38, 77
Mind, Mrs. Eddy on, 109
Mind senses, 118
Miracles, false, 192
Missions, Mrs. Eddy on, 223
Mona Lisa, 100
Moll, Albert, 201
Moody, D. L., 26
Moravians, 193
More, P. E., 251
Mormonism, 77
"Mortal Mind," 166-168
Moses, 120, 151, 172
Mosley, J. R., 125, 139
"Mother Mary," 24, 151
Motherhood of God, 150
Miinsterberg, Prof., 67

N

Nancy, Bernheim at, 60

Napoleon, 50, 97, 107

National Christian Science
Association, 88, 151

"Nature," Emerson's Ad-
dress on, 119

Neo-Platonists, 108

Nero, 76

Nestorianism, 143, 146

Neurasthenia, 198

Newell, Bradley, 194

New England, influence of,
51

Newhalls, the, 68

New Thought, 17, 198

New York, Christian Science

in, 177
Nicaea, Council of, 143
Nightingale, Florence, 184
No and Yes, 137
Norton, Carol, 173

O

Osier, Dr. Wm., 177, 185,
198

Palsy, 173, 185

Pantheism, 20, 138, Ch. V

Paracelsus, 199

Paralysis, 198

Parker Fraternity Building,

87
Parkhurst, Bishop, 193
Parkyn, 195
Patterson, C. B., 17
Patterson, Dr. Daniel, 57, 66,

81
Patterson, Mrs. Daniel (Mrs.

Eddy), 32, 40, 64
Peabody, F. W., VI., 231
Pharisees, 4
Philosophy, Christian Science

20, Ch. V
Pickwick Papers, 70
Pierce, Franklin, 51
Plants, Christian Science

healing of, 174
Plato, 108
Pleasant View, 95, 98, 99,

124, 184, 212

INDEX

259

Pleurisy, 248

"P. M. Society," 90

Poe, E. A., 167

Poisons, and Christian Sci-
ence, 175

Pomponazzi, 199

Portland, Maine, 59

Post, the Boston, 36

Poyen, Charles, 51, 60

Prayer, Mrs. Eddy on, 155

Presbyterians, 193

Principle, 136, 214

Proselyting, 6, 7, 222

Publication, Committee on,
15, 46, 47; see Farlow

Puritans, 193

Q

Quimby, George A., VI, 71,
228, 230

Quimby, P. P., 59, 74, 75,
106,119,139, 143-145,165,
193, 201, 229, 233, Ch. Ill

Quimby, Mrs. P. P., 38

R

Rainsford, W. S., 129

Reality, in Christian Science,
116

Reformation, the, 193

Religion of Christian Science,
Ch. VI

Revelation, Book of, 148

Rheumatism, 186

Richelieu, 107

Rochester Rapping Spiritual-
ism, 32

Rome, 9

Roosevelt, Theodore, 129
Russells, the, 33, 68
Russo-Turkish War, 182

Sacraments, the, 159

St. Anne, 193

St. James, 26

St. John, 215, 242

St. Luke, 208

St. Mark, 208

St. Matthew, 208

St. Paul, 26, 28, 145, 159,

162, 208
Salem witchcraft, 80
Sanbornton Bridge, 53
Sargeant, Mrs. Laura E., 92
Satan, Mrs. Eddy on, 167
Schlatter, 194
Schrader, 194
Science and Health, Ch. II
Scrofula, 193
Senses, soul, 118
Sentinel, Christian Science,

88, 147
Seward, W. H., 72
Shakers, the, 51, 52
Siena, Catharine of, 194
Sin, in Christian Science, 162
Small-pox, 172
Smith College, 132, 133
Smith, Judge C. P., 174
Snake bites in India, 223
Soul senses, 118
South worth, Mrs. 70
Spanish- American War, 182
Spenser, 198
Spinoza, 109
Spirit senses, 118
Spiritualism, 32

20O

INDEX

Spofford, D. H., VI, 34, 45,

78-81, 82, 148, 152, 165
Springfield, Mass., 116
Stanton, Edwin M., 72
Stetson, Mrs., 177, 178
Stone, 51

Stoughton, Mass., 69, 119
Straus, 161

Suggestion in mental heal-
ing, 197-200
Suicidal tendencies, 198
Supreme Court, Mass., 103
Surgery, 176, 182, 196, 197
Swampscott, Mass., 68

Taft, W. H., 129

Theology of Christian Sci-
ence, Ch. VI

Therapeutics, Mental, Ch.
VII

Thessalonians, 208

Thibet, 132

Tityrus, 123

Tilton, N. H., 53, 55

Tomlinson, Rev. Irving C,
92, 223

Town, Dr. F. L., 40

Transcendentalists, the, 109

Trent, W. P., 100

Trinity, the Christian Sci-
ence, 142

Trinity Church, Boston, 120

Trommer's test, 185

Tuckey, C. Lloyd, 201

Tumors, 185. 186

Tyndall, Prof., 120

Typhoid fever, diagnosis of,
177, 181, 193

U

Unity, Mrs. Eddy's search
for, 136

"Universal Substance," Spi-
noza's, 109

V

Van Rhenterghem, 195
W

Walcott, Mrs. J. R., VI, 33,
46

Waldenses, 193

War, Civil, 58: Russo-Turk-
ish, 182; Spanish- Amer-
ican, 182

War in Heaven, 91

Ware, the Misses, 60, 61

Websters, the, 69

Weissman, 125

Welles. Mrs. Benjamin, VI

Wentworths, the, VI, 34, 46,
69-72

Wheelers, the, 68

White House, the, 9

Wiggin, Rev. J. H., 38, 166.
226

Wilbur, Sibyl, 47, 48

Will, the, in Christian Sci-
ence, 165

Willis, John B., 250

Wilson, H. Cornell, 92

Wilson, Woodrow, 129

Wisdom, P. P. Quimby on
the, 144

Witchcraft, the modern Sa-
lem, 80

Wolsey, Cardinal, 107

Wood, Henry, 17

INDEX

261

Worcester, Dr. Elwood, 17,

19, 249
Wright, Livingston, VI, 226

Yellow fever, 181

Young, Bicknell, 116, 117,
122, 137

Zend-Avesta, 108

i

A tnarsbalUng of the evidence pro and con,
A suxnxning up and an impartial judgment

Christian Science

The Faith and Its Founder
By Revo Lyman P, Powell

Second Edition. Crown 8vo. $1,25 net.
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from within or without in the all-important subject of
Christian Science." — Springfield Republican.

" A fine piece of work. . . , I can but feel that
in your book you have a little of the swing of Carlyle and
tlie thrust of Newman. I cannot, for the life of me, see
what you have left for anyone else to say on the subject."
—2?/. ^ev. NatJianiel S. Thomas, D.D., Bishop of
Wyoming.

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G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK LONDON

" My reading of this book lias impressed me with its value"

The Bishop of California.

The
Emmanuel Movement

In a New England Town

A Systematic Account of Experiments and Reflec-
tions Designed to Determine the Proper
Relationship between the Minister
and the Doctor in the Light
of Modern Needs

By Lyman P. Powell

With Illustrations
Crown 6vo, $L25 net By mail, $135

Mr. Powell treats, in his new book, of his own experiences,
in Christian healing, illustrated fully by the history of cases
of various diseases, nervous and other. The book has a
double appeal — to the general public who are interested in
learning about the Emmanuel methods for the sake of putting
them in practice, or from a general interest in the subject,
and to the clergyman, or other person, who desires to help
the sick in accordance with the Emmanuel precedents.

"Valuable because of its sane and reasonable treatment
and its moderate and yet sterling claims."

The Bishop of Connecticut.

" Of all the volumes written on this subject, this is by all
odds the most lucid and readable that has come to the editor's
desk." — Troy Record.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK LONDON

Heavenly Heretics

A Study of Five Representative Preachers

Lyman P. Powell

Crown 8vo. Illustrated. Price, Si. 25 net. By mail, S1.35

Dean Hodges. — *' The title is most felicitous."

The Scotsman. — ** No one will weary who takes up
Heavenly Heretics. ' '

The Aberdeen Free Press. — ** The studies are penetrating
and luminous. Even those who have read the biographies
of the men will find fresh and striking matter here."

The Christian Advocate, — ** For appreciative delineation
and sympathetic insight this little book will be enjoyed by
all its readers."

The Christian Register. — ** Mr. Powell has presented each
life with sympathetic appreciation, bringing out the spirit
of the man."

The Congregationalist. — ** Five admirable biographical
sketches of great preachers."

The Church Militant. — ** These studies are well done."

Buffalo Evening News, — "Short historical studies con-
ceived in the best mood and presented with the fairness
and the skill of the sound and trained thinker."

Louisville Courier Journal. — *' Good examples of succinct
literary portraiture.'*

Chicago Tribune. — " Altogether a delightful and inspiring
book."

Professor C. T. Winchester. — "Admirably discriminating,
just, and sympathetic, and withal charmingly written."

G* P. Putnam's Sons

New York London

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