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Christian Science 
 
 THE FAITH AND ITS FOUNDER 
 
 BY / 
 
 LYMAN P. POWELL 
 
 Rector of St. John's Church, Northampton, Massachusetts 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 Zbc Tknicfeerbochcr press 
 1907 
 
Copyright, 1907 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Ube IRnicfterbocftcr press, -ftew Jgorft 
 
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 published, 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 t he g ood in Christianas cience„ 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 
 Health, covering its entire development, to- 
 gether with other writings of INIrs. 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, JNIrs. Benjamin Welles, Mr. George 
 A. Quimby, ]\Ir. F. W. Peabody, Professor 
 R. W. Micou, Rev. Dr. C. E. Holmes, Rev. 
 Dr. A. E. Dunning, Mr. George Perry Mor- 
 ris, JNIr. Horatio W. Dresser, Dr. A. jNI. 
 Gushing, JNIr. 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, JNIrs. 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 Williams I am 
 grateful, as often in the past, for the use of his 
 comprehensive collection of magazine articles 
 
Preface vii 
 
 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. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGES 
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 
 
 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 III 
 
 THE SOURCE OF ITS IDEAS 
 
 Modern Claim of their Originality — The Conflict with 
 the Author's Earlier Words — The Quimby Panegyrics — 
 Teaching Quimby ism — 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 
 
X Contents 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FOUNDER OP THE FAITH 
 
 The World when she was Born — Childhood — Environ- 
 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- 
 era 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 Scientitic — 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 108-184 
 
 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 xl 
 
 CHAPTER vn 
 
 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 Public Opinion — Inadequate Diagnoses — All 
 Tests Declined — 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 
 Healing through the Centuries — Pseudo-Scientific and 
 True Scientific Mental Healing — Principle Common to 
 Both — The PossibiUties and Limitations of Suggestion 
 — Christian Science Admits no Limitations — Consequent 
 Need of State Regulation— The Duty to the Truth. 169-202 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 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 Possibility 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 Christmas. 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. 
 
XIV Bibliography 
 
 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. O., 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. 
 4. Wilbur, Sibyl, in Human Life, serial beginning January, 
 
 1907. 
 Willis, John B., in The Arena, July. 
 Yates, Katherine M., in The Ainerican Queen, March. 
 The list of daily papers will not be given. 
 
 BOOKS OF CRITICISM OR APPRAISAL 
 
 V- Buckley, J. M. , Christian Science and Other Super- 
 stitions. New York, 1902. 
 
Bibliography xv 
 
 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 Un-Christiav 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. 
 
xvi Bibliography 
 
 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 iji 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. 
 
Bibliography xvii 
 
 Hudson, T. J., The Laiv 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. ^ 
 
 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 Quimhy, 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 Revieivs, Nov. 1905. 
 The Spectator, Feb. 16 and 23, 1907, The Power of 
 
 Suggestion. 
 Suzuki, S., Sanitation of the Jajmnese Navy, in Revietv 
 
 of Reviews, Nov., 1905. 
 
xviii Bibliography 
 
 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. 
 
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. 
 
 I 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 not 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 behef 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 believe 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 afiiliation, 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, 
 I who interpret the embarrassment their own 
 i 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/^ 
 
 ]\Iistaking 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. INIistaking 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 
 aUve 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 hfe'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 n 
 
 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 
 everyw^here 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. 
 
 \\fmiljEi 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 pubhshed 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 
 
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 healing, 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 INIrs. 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 Health, 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 al 
 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 27, testifies that 
 his wife was " hterally 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 life. 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, " like 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 revelation 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 sequence both in 
 thought and word. The reader can begii^ 
 anywhere and stop anywhere without serious 
 loss or gain. Mrs. Eddy 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 hterary 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^^X 
 reading into them of meaning necessary to ,' 
 support her strange philosophy. To oblige a 
 commentator so ambitious one w^ould beheve, 
 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." 
 
 Ark 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." 
 
 ISTo 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 
 INIrs. 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 Mary" 
 
 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 lived 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! "^^ 
 
 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. No 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 
 hving God," the psalmist says. Mrs. Eddy 
 mildly hints that " the human capacities are 
 enlarged and perfected, in proportion as; 
 humanity gains the true conception of man 
 and God." ^^ 
 
 " 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 JNIaster to His friends 
 the night before the crucifixion. " Personal 
 love is little 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 ]\Irs. 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 INIark 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. 
 
 C 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 Venus, 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 JNIrs. 
 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 living 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, 
 AH 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; 
 Rest 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 JNIrs. 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. Spofford, 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 JNIrs. 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 
 
 i 
 
The Source of its Ideas 35 
 
 lawyer, to induce INIrs. Crosby to make affida- 
 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 JNIrs. Eddy could bear to write 
 with 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 w^e 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 exactty as 
 described in 1862 by Mrs. Eddy. Two chp- 
 pings, bearing the date of 1856, denj^ that he 
 used mesmerism and picture him as saying 
 that " diseases of the body are caused by a 
 derangement of the mind " and as battling 
 with disease as purely " mental." Another, a 
 year later, from the Ba7igor 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 
 
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 I860, 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 he gives no medi- 
 cines and makes no outicard 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 mnst 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 pubhshed 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 pubhsh 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 Health, 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 Quimby 
 
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, documen- 
 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 
 it 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 JNIrs. 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 
 
48 Christian Science 
 
 suffered disappointment. The author, Hke 
 the Committee on Publication, 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.-^ 
 
 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. 
 
 DR. 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. 
 
 IWlRS. 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 w^as 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, 
 Frankhn 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." JNlary 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 w^as 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 w^omen, 
 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 obhged 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 
 words: " JNIary 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, JNIrs. 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 widowed 
 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 j)ractical 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, JNIrs. Eddy was en- 
 gaged almost continuously in wearing out her 
 w^elcome 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 invalidism, 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 lived 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, follow^ed 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 life 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 JNIrs. Eddy was thinking, 
 she now says, of the possibilities of spiritual 
 release from pain. After Dr. Patterson w^ent 
 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 mearns, 
 he received but Httle 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. JVIr. Horatio W. Dresser, son of 
 ]\Ir. 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 he 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 JNIrs. 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. 
 Edd}^ ever went to Dr. Quimbs^ 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- 
 
^4 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 godliness. 
 
 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 67 
 
 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 
 pow^ers 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 Ellises 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. 
 
 ■/ 
 
JO 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 heahng. 
 
 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 JNIrs. Went- 
 worth, who had a native talent for healing 
 without medicine. In teaching Mrs. Went- 
 worth she used a manuscript, which she allowed 
 her pupil to copy, and which we know was 
 Quimby 's not only because JNIrs. 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 
 
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 
 w^as 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 live 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 
 w^ould 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 worth. 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 77 
 
 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 JNIormonism. 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 QIadstQ pe. 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 b}^ 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- 
 
7^ 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 w^holly 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 3^ears 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 Healthy 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 
 
8o 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- 
 ford, 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 
 prossed, 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 INIr. Spoff ord 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 JVIrs. Glover, and not JVIrs. Patter- 
 son, that Mr. Spoff ord 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. Edd}'- 
 summed 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 unquestioning 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. Spofford, 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." "^ 
 
The Founder of the Faith S2, 
 
 On New Year's Day, 1877, JNIrs. 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 INIrs. 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 IMrs. 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 ah., 
 received in money and jewelry presents 
 
The Founder of the Faith 85 
 
 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 o\\Ti aifairs." 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 ^Irs. 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 IMas- 
 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 INIr. 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 
 alight 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." ^^ 
 
 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 w^as her strategic point 
 for doing things and managing people. 
 Classes were meeting all day long. There was 
 little social intercourse and no idling. Butthere 
 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 mahgn 
 agent to be withstood by the united effort of 
 the little band of her retainers, whom at last 
 she organised into the " P. JNI. Society," to 
 
The Founder of the Faith 91 
 
 present a solid front to the unseen and mahg- 
 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 imj^ossible 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 INIrs. 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 Hst. 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 lines 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, forestalling 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 JNIahomet withdrawn to Medina who 
 later dominated Mecca, and it was ^Irs. 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 
 
96 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 milhon 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 645 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, ''AM 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. INIrs. 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 in the 
 place of a preacher. Science and Health, 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. JNIrs. Edd}^ 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 powders it entrusts 
 to Mrs. Eddy. 
 
 Pastor Emeritus to Science and Health and 
 not to any pastor in the flesh, Mrs. Eddy has 
 all the authority she had when she was pastor 
 w ithout the wxar 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 hfe. No Christian 
 Scientist may read books on hypnotism or may 
 patronise any publishers or booksellers w^ho 
 have books for sale that criticise the cause. No 
 Christian Scientist may make bold to stroll by 
 Pleasant View or to haunt JSlrs. 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 JNIrs. 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 v/ritten 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 arm}^ Mrs. Eddj^ 
 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 
 
 / 
 
a 
 
 1 02 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 
 INIary," 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 
 
 only thing of which anybody could be sure 
 was that JNIrs. Eddy was never to be taken on 
 terms of equaUty 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. JNlrs. 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 INIother Church set- 
 ting all through life a questionable example, it 
 was natural for the directors of the Church to 
 expose Christian Science to the humihation 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 rehgious 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 
 one 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 JNIrs. 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 INIrs. 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 JMan 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 wdll 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 Richeheu, and a Na- 
 poleon. In the life of a true religious leader, 
 they have no proper place, and after JNIrs. 
 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 x^hilosophy 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- 
 
 loS 
 
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 ]VIrs. 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 f alsel}^ fancy that they 
 see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Mrs. Eddy's 
 ardent understudies crack their whips at the 
 recalcitrant. Mr. JNIosley 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 w^ord 
 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 
 
114 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 
 
 ISIrs. 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 hfe 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 reality." 
 
 There are signs of late that some of JNIrs. 
 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: 
 
ii8 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 w^ords 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 INIind 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 JNIrs. 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 INIarch, 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. Quim^by, 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 JNIrs. 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 milHonaires, 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 hke 
 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 
 limitations 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 np to it. How long it mnst 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 
 
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.^^^ 
 
 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 w^histle matter down 
 the wind of life. It is all of a piece with INIr. 
 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 intelHgence 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 beasthness, 
 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. 
 
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, Rainsford 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. 
 What 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.^i 
 
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 
 lost.^^ 
 
 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 131 
 
 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 w^ell 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. 
 
 THE 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 rehgio-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 
 C does save many from their lower self. It does 
 - ♦ 7 kad many to a larger faith in God and a closer 
 V walk with Him. It does impart to many a 
 7 S power and poise, serenity and joy they might 
 "have found before if they had sought them dili- 
 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 Healthy 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 
 Pantheismj she draws such a sharp distinction 
 between principle and personality as practi- 
 cally to eliminate personality from her idea of 
 God. And JNIr. Bicknell Young admits out- 
 right that " ' personal ' is one of the words that 
 has hindei^ed." ^ 
 
138 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 
 JNIrs. 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, 
 JVIr. 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 literal 
 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- 
 
 ■J 
 
I40 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 Health, 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. JMrs. 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 JNIr. 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, ]\Irs. 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 Nic^ea, 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, instantty 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 i47 
 
 With the personality of Jesus Christ divided 
 into a mere man called Jesus, who was not 
 always wise 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 familiarity 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 reporting Mrs. 
 Eddy's address at the annual meeting of the 
 mother Church in 1899, says, " it was not then 
 INIrs. Eddy whom the people heard, but . . . 
 the voice of God." "" 
 
 No later than last December its editor, 
 Mr. Archibald IVIcLellan, sent to her with a 
 
148 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.^^ 
 
 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 womanij 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 INIary. 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." ^^ 
 
I50 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-lMother God " for " Our Father which 
 art in heaven," Mrs. Eddy's followers began 
 wdth one accord to call her " Mother." To 
 hold the vantage ground thus gained in her 
 progressive elevation, INIrs. 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 " JNIother INIary." 
 The President of the National Christian Sci- 
 ence Association on one occasion said, " There 
 is but one iNloses, one Jesus; and there is but 
 one Mary." '^ 
 
 All this deifying went on not without some 
 criticism even in the Christian Science camp. 
 JNIrs. 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. ^^ ]\lark 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. 
 Eddj^ 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 
 parallelism 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 JNIrs. 
 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 " Pie that loveth father or mother 
 more than me is not worthy of me." ^^ 
 
 In an illustrated book called Christ and 
 Christmas, 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 wTote, 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 INIrs. 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- 
 
158 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 j 
 
 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. 
 EnaMe us to Jc7iow, 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.*^ 
 
 Surprising as is INIrs. Eddy's effort to make 
 prayer nothing more than declaration, far 
 more surprising is her treatment of the sacra- 
 m.ents 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 
 literally Jesus' injunction to " teach all na- 
 tions, i)aptising 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: 
 
 yj 
 
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 
 v/ater, 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 calmty sug- 
 gests the substitution of a breakfast for the 
 historic Supper of the Christian Church. 
 Eead 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 heahng of sin; 
 and this task is a milhon 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 omni- 
 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. JNIystics 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 light, 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 INIrs. Eddy's 
 theor}^ 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 
 
 ci'itics 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- 
 sponsibihty 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? " 
 
1 66 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 JNIind." 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 JNlind 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 
 hill 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 HEAIJNG 
 
 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. 
 
 THOUGH 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 AU-in- 
 
 169 
 
I70 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 
 word 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 
 Avill 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 
 
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 JNIrs. 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 All-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 behef that " Mind is All- 
 in-all," if a man follows to the letter JNIr. 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 heahng 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 
 
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 w^ould 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. JNIany 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 ehminate 
 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- 
 
176 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 grow^th 
 was by microscopical examination demon- 
 strated to be actual cancer or one of those 
 non-malignant 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 teas the nature of your malady ? 
 
 It had none. 
 
 Eoiv long had you hcen afflicted with it f 
 
 Ever since the belief that disease was a sub- 
 stantial reality, instead of a negation. 
 
 Hoiv 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 l)e 
 healed f 
 
 The conviction . . . that it was right to be weU; 
 and sickness was a wrong. 
 
 Was your cure instantaneous f 
 
 Yes. 
 
 How did you hnotv that you loere cured f 
 
 By the instant receding of disease, and the cor- 
 responding increasing of health and strength. 
 
 Did you hnoiv it at the time, or not until later ? 
 
 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 froni.^^ 
 
christian Science Healing iSi 
 
 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 JNIanila, 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 JVIrs. Eddy expects soon 
 will become merely mental, the facts make 
 even more convincingly against her. Anes- 
 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 ^lind, 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 Avater 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 w^ar- 
 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 dav 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. Osier ^^ says he has never seen cured, 
 we have a right to know whether Fehling's 
 test or Trommer's test or the fermentation 
 test w^as 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 healing 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 moral- 
 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 
 belief." " 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 ]VIrs. 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 
 immortal, 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 
 
1 88 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 beliefs, 
 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' w^ay? 
 One cannot be sure. About His methods 
 Jesws was habitually silent. " Thy faith hath 
 made thee w^hole" 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 
 
iQO 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 consummate 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." ^^ 
 
 JNIrs. 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. JNIrs. 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 heahng 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 all cure disease and they all 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 195 
 
 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 Bowie'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 heahng 
 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 case 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- 
 orderSj makes clear — for Dr. Dubois has had 
 twenty years of successful practice at Berne — 
 t?iat 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 
 
 I 
 
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 
 
198 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 heahng, 
 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 
 suggestion 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- 
 sus 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 
 
 ^5 
 
 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, like 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." ^^ 
 
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. 
 
 TTHE 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 
 Hve 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. 
 
 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 abolish mar- 
 riage at this period, and maintain morality 
 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 w^omen 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 ^Irs. Eddy's 
 spokesman still insists that she is conventional 
 in her view^s 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 Health, 
 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 
 
2IO 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 w^ill 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 Health, 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 
 i 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, 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 melhfluous : " Proportionately as 
 human generation ceases, the unbroken links 
 of eternal harmonious being will be spiritually 
 discerned." 
 
 The American public, which insists upon 
 publicity on all dark spots in public 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 limitations 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 
 publicity 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. 
 
 2. 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 R. & I., 20. 
 S. & H., VII. 
 S. & H., 126. 
 S. & H., 107. 
 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 
 
22 2 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 the 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 
 
2 24 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 v/as 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 Richard 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 229 
 
 Eddy^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's, 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 Mi^s. 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 Oh. 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 wings (McClure's, Oct., 699), and 
 Quimby, content to walk on the solid ground of clear and 
 simple statement, never wanted to use wings. 
 
 9. Huma7i 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 Hutnan 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- 
 
234 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 given 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 the heart, the aortic valve being 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. McCbire'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 born 
 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 aflfidavit 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. & L, 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 sh« 
 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 Aherthaw 
 Construction Co. vs. Carpenters District Council of Boston 
 and Vici7iity 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. Punch's 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 ff. 
 
 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 Hering'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 Huwcan 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 yi 
 
 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., 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. 
 
f 
 
 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. 
 
 33. 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. II. and VIII. 
 
 49. Cushman, 35; S. & H. (1898), 468. 
 
 50. A Critic Ansiuered, 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 np 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 work 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 
 Farlow 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, 
 archseology, 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 Broadway 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, 889; 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. 
 
2 52 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 
 
 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. 
 
 Kddy 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 
 Encyclopcsdia 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 
 
 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 # 
 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 
 Journals 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 
 Niccea, Council of, 143 
 Nightingale, Florence, 184 
 A^^ and Yes, 137 
 Norton, Carol, 173 
 
 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 
 
 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. Ouimby 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 
 
Date Due