Christian Science

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV

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

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

She being His little one, as I understand it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Peabody’s comment:

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

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

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

POSTSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V

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

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

This is the paragraph referred to:

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

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

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

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

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

She is the Pastor Emeritus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUMMARY

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE

“Rev. MARY BAKER G. EDDY, PRESIDENT

“571 Columbus Avenue, Boston

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

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

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

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

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

“A limited number of clergymen received free of charge.

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

“No deduction on the others.

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

“Tuition for all strictly in advance.”

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

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