I; 
 
Scctioa 
 
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 SO-CALLED 
 
 AN EXPOSITION AND AN 
 ESTIMATE 
 
 NOV 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY C. SHELDO 
 
 Professor in Boston University 
 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 
 
Copyright, 1913, by 
 HENRY C. SHELDON 
 
PREFACE 
 
 '^Christian Science^^ is much more 
 than a peculiar type of medical theory 
 and practice. It presents itself in the 
 character of a distinct religion no less 
 than does Mormonism, which it 
 strongly resembles both in the scope 
 of the prophetical function assigned to 
 the founder and in the employment of 
 a concentrated money power in the 
 interest of propagandism. It is in this 
 character of a distinct reUgion that 
 Christian Science is examined and 
 judged in the present essay, though, 
 of course, its boasted healing art is so 
 much of a factor in the religion that it 
 must be accorded some attention. 
 
 We offer no apology for borrowing 
 certain statements of fact from the 
 book of Georgine Milmine on the Life 
 of Mary Baker G. Eddy. Whatever 
 may have been the comments of Chris- 
 
 3 
 
4 PREFACE 
 
 tian Science apologists, this volume is 
 replete with documentary evidence, 
 and shows throughout marks of the 
 most painstaking investigation. It 
 should be noticed, however, that the 
 substantial proof of our main proposi- 
 tions is strictly dependent upon noth- 
 ing outside of the statements of Mrs. 
 Eddy herself, as contained in her 
 books or in documents respecting whose 
 authenticity there can be no reason- 
 able doubt. 
 
 It is not expected that this essay 
 will serve in any way as a mes- 
 sage to the adherents of the Christian 
 Science cult. By the decree of the 
 founder a boycott is to be maintained 
 against adverse literature. Unless, 
 then. Christian Scientists are to tres- 
 pass against recognized authority they 
 must forbear genuine investigation, 
 and content themselves with such por- 
 tions of mythology as are passed out 
 through the approved channels. We 
 
PREFACE 5 
 
 have abundance of good will toward 
 them, as being very largely amiable 
 and well-meaning people; but we fail 
 to discover how we can serve them 
 in the discharge of our obligation to 
 truth-telling. Evidence amounting 
 even to demonstration can make no 
 appeal to ears that are pledged not 
 to hear. If, however, any disciple of 
 Mrs. Eddy should hazard a glance into 
 the following pages, let him notice 
 that the author has no appetite what- 
 ever for denunciation, and that any 
 element of severity to which he has 
 given expression lies solely in the facts 
 recorded and in inferences from the 
 facts so obvious as scarcely to need 
 formal statement. 
 
 Boston University, May, 1913. 
 
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 SO-CALLED 
 
 AN EXPOSITION AND AN ESTIMATE 
 
 We intend to be as sparing of bio- 
 graphical details ^s our subject will 
 permit. It wiU be appropriate, how- 
 ever, to notice by way of introduction 
 the following facts: That Mary A. 
 Morse Baker, who later took the name 
 of Glover from her first husband and 
 of Eddy from her third husband, and 
 so came to style herself Mary Baker 
 G. Eddy (her divorced husband, Pat- 
 terson, having been excluded), was 
 born at Bow, New Hampshire, July 
 16, 1821; came in 1835 to reside at the 
 place now called Tilton; had no fur- 
 ther educational advantages than an 
 imperfect course in the district school; 
 suffered much in childhood, as also in 
 later years, from an abnormal condi- 
 tion of the nerves; attracted some at- 
 7 
 
8 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 tention in early womanhood by reason 
 of susceptibility to mesmeric influence 
 and ability to function as a spiritual- 
 istic medium; was very much of the 
 time in an unhappy state by reason of 
 ill health, until in 1862 she received 
 treatment from P. P. Quimby, of 
 Portland, Maine; from that time, 
 though by no means a specimen of 
 normal health, was very much quick- 
 ened in courage and ambition; near 
 the end of the sixties began to shape 
 the ideas which were embodied in her 
 ultimate system; commenced soon to 
 teach these ideas in a small way; in 
 1870 gathered at Lynn her first class 
 of pupils; and in 1875 issued the first 
 edition of ''Science and Health," the 
 volume which was to serve as the 
 authoritative text-book of her peculiar 
 combination of the heaUng art with 
 religion. 
 
 Cutting short the biographical out- 
 line at this point, we turn at once to 
 
SO-CALLED 9 
 
 our proper theme. This consists of 
 the following three topics: (1) The 
 claims of Mary Baker G. Eddy for 
 herself and her system; (2) facts with 
 a moral import which bear upon the 
 merits of the claims; (3) the claims as 
 they appear from a rational point of 
 view. 
 
 I. Claims of the System 
 
 The claims of the founder of so- 
 called ''Christian Science' ' are of the 
 most extraordinary scope. In the first 
 place, though pretending to set forth 
 a fundamental philosophy respecting 
 God and man, she denies that she was 
 under the shghtest obligation to the 
 thinkers of the past, aside from Christ 
 and the biblical writers. ''I have 
 found nothing," she says, ''in ancient 
 or modern systems on which to found 
 my own, except the teachings and 
 demonstrations of our great Master, 
 and the lives of prophets and apos- 
 
10 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 tles."^ In admitting that Christ and 
 the apostles and prophets served as 
 antecedents, Mrs. Eddy makes a quaU- 
 fication on the absolute originality of 
 her scheme; but two considerations 
 greatly reduce the significance of the 
 qualification. On the one hand, she 
 turns the sayings of Christ and of the 
 bibhcal writers into her special prop- 
 erty by claiming a sole prerogative of 
 authentic interpretation. ''It must 
 not be forgotten/' she says, "that in 
 times past arrogant ignorance and pride, 
 in attempting to steady the ark of 
 truth, have dimmed the power and 
 glory of the Scriptures, of which the 
 Christian Science text-book is the 
 key.'^^ Again she remarks, "I read 
 the inspired page through a higher 
 than mortal sense. ^'^ On the other 
 hand, she implies that Christ was not 
 a complete antecedent, and that she 
 
 1 Science and Health, p. 126. Unless otherwise indicated, we 
 cite from the edition of 1902. 
 
 2 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 92. ^ Ibid., p. 58. 
 
SO-CALLED 11 
 
 has improved in important respects on 
 his teaching and practice. ^^Our Mas- 
 ter/' she writes, ^^healed the sick and 
 taught the generalities of its divine 
 Principle; but he left no definite rule 
 for demonstrating his Principle of 
 healing and preventing disease. This 
 remained to be discovered through 
 Christian Science."^ Furthermore, she^ 
 says: ''Even the Scriptures gave no 
 direct basis for demonstrating the 
 spiritual principle of healing until our 
 heavenly Father saw fit through the 
 Key to the Scriptures in Science and 
 Health to unlock the mystery of God- 
 Uness.''^ It appears, accordingly, that 
 the place which Mrs. Eddy asserts for 
 herself in the process of divine revela- 
 tion is not in any emphatic sense 
 secondary. While Christ and the 
 Scriptures preceded her, she interprets 
 the latter with unrivaled authority and 
 
 1 Science and Health, 1898, p. 41. 
 
 2 Retrospection and Introspection, pp. 55, 56. 
 
12 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 improves upon the teaching and ex- 
 ample of the former. 
 
 So exceptional an order of achieve- 
 ment implies, of course, a special divine 
 call and replenishment. In fact, Mrs. 
 Eddy sounds no uncertain note either 
 as respects the divine summons to her 
 mission or her plenary inspiration for 
 its accomplishment. ^'God called her,'' 
 she says, ^^to proclaim his gospel to 
 this age.^'^ More specifically she 
 writes: ^^In the year 1866 I discovered 
 the Christ Science, or divine laws of 
 Life, and named it Christian Science. 
 God had been graciously fitting me, 
 during many years, for the reception of 
 a final revelation of the absolute Prin- 
 ciple of scientific being and healing. ^'^ 
 '^In following these leadings of scien- 
 tific revelation the Bible was my only 
 text-book. The Scriptures were il- 
 lumined, reason and revelation were 
 reconciled; and afterward the truth of 
 
 1 Science and Health, Preface, p. xi. ^ ibid., p. 107. 
 
SO-CALLED 13 
 
 Christian Science was demonstrated. 
 No human pen or tongue taught me || 
 the science contained in this book, f 
 Science and Health; and neither 
 tongue nor pen can overthrow it.'^^ 
 This impUes clearly enough a claim 
 to inerrant inspiration, at least as 
 respects subject-matter; and the Hke 
 claim crops out in other declarations. 
 It is contained implicitly in the asser- 
 tion that a ^'thorough perusal of the 
 author's publications heals sickness";^ 
 for, surely, if any taint of errant 
 mortal mind were upon these writings 
 they could not be thought to have 
 such wonderful virtue. An imphcit 
 claim to infallibility appears, further- 
 more, in Mrs. Eddy's declared in- 
 tolerance for any variety of teaching 
 within the domain of mental healing. 
 'In reahty,'' she says, ^'there is but 
 one school of the science of mind- 
 healing. Any departure from Science 
 
 > Science and Health, p. 110. 2 ibid., p. 446. 
 
14 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 is an irreparable loss of Science. What 
 is said or written correctly on this 
 Science originates from the Principle 
 and practice laid down in Science and 
 Health/'i 
 
 One of the most starthng of the 
 assumptions of Mrs. Eddy lies in the 
 relation which she predicates between 
 Christian Science and the Holy Ghost. 
 The plain import of her statements is 
 that she meant it to be understood 
 that the Holy Ghost is to be identified 
 with her system of teaching. In 
 Science and Health she notes that she 
 uses the terms '^Divine Science'^ and 
 ''Christian Science^' interchangeably.^ 
 But in the seventeenth chapter of the 
 same volume she defines the Holy 
 Ghost as ''Divine Science, the de- 
 velopments of eternal Life, Truth, and 
 Love"f and in the preceding chapter 
 she writes: "John the Baptist prophe- 
 
 1 Rudimental Divine Science, tenth edition, 1897, pp. 29, 30. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 127. 3 Ibid., p. 588. 
 
SO-CALLED 15 
 
 sied the coming of the immaculate 
 Jesus, and John saw in those days the 
 spiritual idea as the Messiah who 
 would baptize with the Holy Ghost — 
 divine Science. '^^ Again, she says: 
 'The ego is revealed in Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost; but the full truth is 
 found only in Divine Science, where 
 we see God as Life, Truth, and Love. 
 . . . The Science of God and Man is 
 the Holy Ghost/'' From this stand- 
 point Mrs. Eddy construes the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost. 'There may 
 be those,'' she remarks, ''who, having 
 learned the power of unspoken thought, 
 use it rather to harm than to heal, and 
 who are using that power against 
 Christian Scientists. This giant sin is 
 the sin against the Holy Ghost spoken 
 of in Matt. xii. 31, 32."^ As supple- 
 menting this statement the following 
 may fitly be added: "A sneer at meta- 
 
 1 Rudimental Divine Science, tenth edition, 1897, p. 562. 
 
 2 Unity of Good, pp. 64, 65. 
 
 ' Miscellaneous Writings, 1897, p. 55. 
 
16 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 physics is a scoff at Deity, at his good- 
 ness, mercy, and might. Christian 
 Science is the unfolding of true meta- 
 physics."^ It would seem thus to be 
 a very serious matter to speak dis- 
 respectfully of Christian Science. Still, 
 the gainsayer may persist in breathing 
 somewhat freely in view of Mrs. 
 Eddy's categorical declaration, ^'Man 
 is incapable of sin.''^ The inference 
 necessarily follows that the liabiHty to 
 commit a real sin against the Holy 
 Ghost reduces to quite harmless pro- 
 portions. 
 
 In further illustration of Mrs. 
 Eddy's claims, various sentences in 
 which rhetoric is put under severe 
 strain to express the glory and worth 
 of Christian Science may fitly be 
 cited. The following are specimens: 
 ^'No person can take the individual 
 place of the Virgin Mary. No person 
 can compass or fulfill the individual 
 
 1 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 69. 2 Science and Health, p. 475. 
 
SO-CALLED 17 
 
 mission of Jesus of Nazareth. No 
 person can take the place of the 
 author of Science and Health, the dis- 
 coverer and founder of Christian 
 Science. Each individual must fill his 
 own niche in time and eternity. The 
 second appearing of Jesus is unques- 
 tionably the spiritual advent of the 
 advancing idea of God as in Christian 
 Science.^'^ ^^Between Christian Science 
 and all forms of superstition a great 
 gulf is fixed, as impassable as that 
 between Dives and Lazarus. . . . 
 Science is immortal and coordinate 
 neither with the premises nor with 
 the conclusions of mortal beHefs.''^ 
 '^Christian Science translates Mind, 
 God, to mortals. It is the infinite 
 calculus defining the line, plane, space, 
 and fourth dimension of Spirit.'^^ ^The 
 teacher of Christian Science needs con- 
 tinually to study this text-book 
 
 1 Retrospection and Introspection, 1900, pp. 95, 96. 
 
 2 Science and Health, 1892, pp. 83, 84. 
 2 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 22. 
 
18 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 [Science and Health]. His work is to 
 replenish thought and to spirituaUze 
 human life from this open fountain of 
 truth and love/'^ ^'Divine Science is 
 not an interpolation of the Scriptures, 
 but is redolent of love, health, and 
 holiness for the whole human race. 
 It only needs the prism of this Science 
 to divide the rays of Truth, and to 
 bring out the entire hues of Deity, 
 which scholastic theology has hidden. 
 . . . This Science is ameliorative and 
 regenerative, delivering mankind from 
 all error through the Ught and love 
 of truth. ''2 ''Understanding is a qual- 
 ity of God, a quality which separates 
 Christian Science from supposition and 
 makes Truth final.''' 'This sacred 
 city, described in the Apocalypse 
 (xxi. 16) as one that 'lieth foursquare' 
 and Cometh 'down from God, out of 
 heaven,' represents the light and glory 
 
 * Miacellaneous Writings, p. 92. 
 
 « Ibid., pp. 194, 235. 
 
 ' Science and Health, p. 506. 
 
SO-CALLED 19 
 
 of divine Science. . . . The four sides 
 of our city are the Word, Christ, 
 Christianity, and divine Science."^ 
 
 The breadth of Mrs. Eddy's claims 
 may furthermore be seen in the radical 
 disparagement in which she indulges 
 against everything outside of Chris- 
 tian Science or coming in anywise into 
 competition therewith. She affirms in 
 so many words, '^Outside of this 
 Science all is unstable error. ''^ This 
 broad maxim she carries out in various 
 directions. Applying it to the cus- 
 tomary medical theory and practice, 
 she brands them as virtually forms of 
 assault against reason, revelation, and 
 God. '^Because God is supreme and 
 omnipotent,'' she asserts, '^ materia 
 medica, hygiene, and animal magnet- 
 ism are impotent; and their only 
 supposed efficacy is in apparently de- 
 luding reason, denying revelation, and 
 
 1 Science and Health, p. 575. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 202. 
 
20 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 dethroning Deity/ '^ She does not 
 hesitate to put the bodily senses out 
 of commission, and to set up the 
 mandates of Christian Science in their 
 place. ^The testimony of the cor- 
 poreal senses/' she writes, '^cannot 
 inform us what is real and what is 
 delusive. But the revelations of Chris- 
 tian Science unlock the treasures of 
 truth. ''2 ^To the five corporeal senses 
 man appears to be matter and mind 
 united; but Christian Science reveals 
 him as the idea of God, and declares 
 the corporeal senses to be mortal and 
 erring illusions.''^ How absolutely in- 
 competent the senses are deemed to 
 offer valid testimony appears in the 
 broad statement: '^Human procrea- 
 tion, birth, life, and death are subjec- 
 tive states of the human erring mind.''^ 
 With the senses rated as incom- 
 petent to offer any testimony, physical 
 
 * Miscellaneous Writings, p. 3. * Science and Health, p. 70, 
 3 Ibid., p. 477. * Miscellaneous Writings, p. 286. 
 
SO-CALLED 21 
 
 sciences, of whatever description, 
 would seem to be sent to the dump- 
 heap of discredited falsities. And 
 various statements of Mrs. Eddy, 
 whether held to with entire consistency 
 or not, imply quite unequivocally that 
 such is the proper disposition of them. 
 ^'The so-called laws of matter,^' she 
 says, ^^are nothing but false beUefs in 
 the presence of inteUigence and life 
 where mind is not.'^^ ^'Minerals and 
 vegetables are found, according to 
 divine Science, to be the creations of 
 erroneous thought, not of matter."^ 
 'Tertebrata, articulata, moUusca, and 
 radiata are evolved by mortal and 
 material thought. By this thought 
 they are classified and supposed to 
 possess life and mind. These beliefs 
 will disappear when the radiation of 
 Spirit destroys forever any belief in 
 intelligent matter''^ — that is, as Mrs. 
 
 1 Science and Health, p. 171. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 543. » Ibid., p. 556. 
 
n CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 Eddy must be understood to mean, 
 bars out all faith in any real associa- 
 tion between mind and matter, soul 
 and body. The plain conclusion is 
 that Christian Science properly negates 
 the whole circle of the sciences as 
 commonly understood. If Mrs. Eddy's 
 claims are valid, the world is clearly 
 obligated to seek light from her can- 
 dle, and from no other source. 
 
 II. The Application of Moral 
 Tests to the Claims 
 
 Taking up our second topic, we 
 have now to consider certain facts 
 which, by reason of their moral im- 
 port, bear upon the merits of Mrs. 
 Eddy's extraordinary claims. We 
 touch here upon a theme which we 
 should greatly prefer to pass by, were 
 it possible to do so with logical con- 
 sistency. But that is out of the ques- 
 tion. Pretensions to a divine mission 
 of such transcendent import as Mrs. 
 
SO-CALLED 23 
 
 Eddy claimed for herself cannot be 
 regarded as indifferently related to 
 character and conduct. There is the 
 less occasion to shut out these mat- 
 ters, since evidence respecting them 
 lies in the open, and there is no need 
 to make inquisition into the more 
 private record of this exacting claimant 
 to the faith and obeisance of Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 In the first place, we notice the very 
 remarkable piece of apparent * men- 
 dacity in Mrs. Eddy's emphatic repu- 
 diation of obhgation to P. P. Quimby, 
 of Portland, Maine, who was an en- 
 thusiast for mental healing, and who 
 wrote extensively in behalf of what he 
 considered his great discovery, leaving 
 his writings, however, in manuscript 
 form. It is in evidence that Mrs. 
 Eddy was in Portland in 1862 for 
 about three weeks, and again in 1864 
 for two or three months, and shared 
 with others the opportunity to copy 
 
m CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 parts of Quimby's writings which the 
 generous-hearted healer freely accorded 
 to his patients.^ Did she use such 
 opportunity and gain any materials to 
 build her own system upon? It suited 
 her thirst for exclusive distinction in 
 her later years to deny that she did. 
 In her book entitled Retrospection and 
 Introspection she calls Quimby a mag- 
 netic doctor and asserts that he was 
 in no wise connected with her dis- 
 covery of the principle of Christian 
 Science.^ In her volume of Miscel- 
 laneous Writings she styles Quimby a 
 magnetic practitioner, represents him 
 as depending upon manipulation in his 
 cures, and invites the reader to believe 
 that her examination of his writings 
 was confined to a casual glance at a 
 slip on which he had penned down 
 some quite indifferent notes on her 
 own case.^ In the Christian Science 
 
 1 Georgine Milmine, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the 
 History of Christian Science, pp. 56-70. , 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 38. 3 Ibid., pp. 378, 379. 
 
SO-CALLED 25 
 
 Journal for June, 1887, she asserted 
 respecting Quimby: ^^I never heard 
 him intimate that he healed disease 
 mentally. . . . His healing was never 
 considered or called anything but 
 mesmerism/' 
 
 Now, the utter falsity of these 
 statements is matter of complete dem- 
 onstration, and that in more than one 
 line. The proof is contained, in the 
 first place, in Quimby's manuscripts, 
 as Georgine Milmine, who had free 
 access to them, testifies and illustrates 
 at length.^ They show that Quimby 
 was emphatically an advocate of men- 
 tal instrumentaUty in healing; that 
 such manipulation as he used was a 
 comparatively indifferent adjunct, a 
 quite dispensable thing, since he be- 
 lieved in the efficacy of absent treat- 
 ment; that he taught that disease has 
 its source in erroneous belief, and that, 
 consequently, the remedy lies in in- 
 
 1 The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy, pp. 46-55, 129, 130. 
 
26 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 stilling the truth; that he believed that 
 Christ had preceded him in the science 
 of heahng; that he distinguished be- 
 tween the embodied Jesus and the 
 principle Christ; that he also dis- 
 tinguished in man between a kind of 
 transcendental personahty, '^the scien- 
 tific man/' as he called him, and the 
 inferior man who is in bondage to 
 sense and error; that, in short, he 
 anticipated cardinal features of Mrs. 
 Eddy's system, so that she needed to 
 do little else than to intensify certain 
 elements of a pseudo-metaphysics on 
 the allness of God and the nothingness 
 of matter. 
 
 In the second place, a scrapbook, 
 prepared by the wife of Quimby, and 
 containing newspaper comments, as 
 also a circular descriptive of the 
 method of cure practiced by her hus- 
 band — both the comments and the 
 circular antedating Mrs. Eddy's first 
 visit to Portland — clearly refutes her 
 
SO-CALLED 27 
 
 later interpretation of the method of 
 the Portland healer. Lyman P. Powell, 
 who cites the circular and specimens 
 of the newspaper comments, which he 
 had abundant opportunity to examine 
 through the courtesy of George A. 
 Quimby, renders the judgment that 
 the scrapbook '^alone should suffice 
 to close the case/'^ 
 
 In the third place, very cogent 
 proof that Mrs. Eddy's statements 
 about the theory and practice of 
 Quimby were false is contained in the 
 testimony of personal disciples of the 
 Portland mental healer, like Julius A. 
 Dresser and W. F. Evans, the former 
 having given substantial evidence in 
 his book on The True History of 
 Mental Science, edited by his son, 
 H. W. Dresser,^ and the latter having 
 
 1 Christian Science, The Faith and Ita Founder, pp. 38-43, 
 228-230. 
 
 2 J. A. Dresser, who visited Quimby in 1860, gives explicit cita- 
 tions from his statements. H. W. Dresser testifies that the Quimby 
 manuscripts, containing over eight hundred cloaely written pages, 
 already in existence six months before Mrs. Eddy's first visit to 
 Portland, were read by him and found to "contain a very original 
 and complete statement of the data and theory of mental healing." 
 
28 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 carried out the principles of the heal- 
 ing art of his master in writings of 
 his own.^ 
 
 Finally, conclusive proof of the 
 falsity of Mrs. Eddy's later version of 
 Quimby's healing art and of her ref- 
 lations to him is contained in her 
 earlier version of the same matters. 
 In 1862, in a contribution to the 
 Portland Evening Courier, expressing 
 the gratitude she felt for benefits 
 received, she eulogized Quimby in a 
 very fervent strain, repudiated the 
 notion that he healed by animal mag- 
 netism, and asserted that it was rather 
 by the truth which he estabhshed in 
 the patient. 'This truth,'' she wrote, 
 'Vhich he opposes to the error of 
 giving intelligence to matter and plac- 
 ing pain where it never placed itself, 
 
 1 Evans, in his book on Mental Medicine, published in 1872, 
 three years before Science and Health was issued, made this 
 statement: "Disease being in its root a wrong belief, change that 
 belief and we cure the disease. The late Dr. Quimby, of 
 Portland, one of the most successful healers of this or any age, 
 embraced this view of the nature of disease" (p. 210, cited by 
 J. Whitehead, The Illusions of Christian Science, pp. 5, 6; also 
 by W. J. Leonard, The Pioneer Apostle of Mental Science). 
 
SO-CALLED 29 
 
 if received understandingly, changes 
 the currents of the system to their 
 normal action; and the mechanism of 
 the body goes on undisturbed/^^ In a 
 second contribution she hkened the 
 method of Quimby to that of Christ, 
 and declared of him, ^^he rolls away 
 the stone from the sepulcher of error 
 and health is the resurrection/^ Her 
 first attempts at teaching were based 
 upon a manuscript which she acknowl- 
 edged to have been derived from 
 Quimby, an extant copy of which cor- 
 responds precisely to twenty closely 
 written pages of one of the Quimby 
 productions — a production certified to 
 have been in existence before Mrs. 
 Eddy ever saw the Portland healer/ 
 As late as 1871, in a letter to W. W. 
 Wright, of Lynn, in answer to the 
 question, ^^Has this theory ever been 
 
 1 J. A, Dresser, The True History of Mental Science, revised 
 edition, 1899, pp. 31, 32. 
 
 ^Milmine, pp. 125-132; F. W. Peabody, The Religio-medical 
 Masquerade, pp. 83-87. Peabody's book may be a very intense 
 polemic, but no one can deny that he had first-class opportunities 
 to get hold of facts. 
 
30 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 advertised and practiced before you 
 introduced it, or by any other indi- 
 vidual?'' Mrs. Eddy wrote: ''Never 
 advertised, and practiced by only one 
 individual who healed me, Dr. Quimby, 
 of Portland, Maine, an old gentleman 
 who had made it a research for twenty- 
 five years, starting from the stand- 
 point of magnetism, thence going for- 
 ward and leaving that behind.''^ So 
 the earlier Mrs. Eddy gives the lie to 
 the later. How did she explain the 
 flagrant contradiction? She could only 
 take refuge in the transparent subter- 
 fuge that if she wrote in her earlier 
 days what was asserted to be in the 
 record, it must have been as the result 
 of the overwhelming mesmeric in- 
 fluence of Quimby. ''Did I write,'' 
 she asks, "those articles in Mr. Dres- 
 ser's pamphlet purporting to be mine? 
 I might have written them twenty or 
 thirty years ago, for I was under the 
 
 1 Milmiue, p. 101. 
 
SO-CALLED SI 
 
 mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby 
 from 1862 until his death in 1865. 
 He was iUiterate and I knew nothing 
 of the science of mind-heahng. . . . 
 Mind-science was unknown to me; 
 and my head was so turned by animal 
 magnetism and will-power, under his 
 treatment, that I might have written 
 something as hopelessly incorrect as 
 the articles now published in the 
 Dresser pamphlet. ^^^ This reference to 
 the mesmeric influence of Quimby, 
 fantastic enough in itself, is thoroughly 
 discredited, on the one hand, by the 
 content of the letter to W. W. Wright, 
 written several years after the death of 
 Quimby, when his mesmeric influence 
 might be supposed to be substantially 
 extinct, and, on the other hand, by the 
 desperate feat to which resort was 
 made in order to gain countenance for 
 the fable that, as between Quimby and 
 
 1 Christian Science Journal, June, 1887, pp. 109, 110. Com- 
 
 Eare the testimony of Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser, Rev. James 
 [enry Wiggin, cited by Milmine, pp. 102, 103. 
 
32 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 the author of Science and Health, the 
 debt was on the side of the former. 
 
 Here we touch upon the darkest 
 phase of the entire historic episode. 
 In June of 1883 Mrs. Eddy sent an 
 attorney to Sarah G. Crosby, of Water- 
 ville, Maine, an acquaintance of 
 hers who had been a patient of 
 Quimby. By the hand of her attorney 
 she conveyed to Mrs. Crosby a letter 
 in which she sought to induce her to 
 sign an affidavit to what a sane his- 
 torical judgment cannot regard as 
 anything else than a downright false- 
 hood. '^Now, my dear one,'' she 
 wrote, ^^I want you to tell this man, 
 the bearer of this note, that you know 
 that Dr. Quimby and I were friends, 
 and that I used to take his scribblings 
 and fix them over for him and give 
 him my thoughts and language, which, 
 as I understand it, were far in advance 
 of his. Will you do this and give an 
 affidavit to this effect and greatly 
 
SO-CALLED S3 
 
 oblige your affectionate sister Mary?''^ 
 As Mrs. Crosby preferred not to swear 
 to what she knew to be absolutely 
 false, the soHcited affidavit was not 
 forthcoming. What Mrs. Eddy got 
 for her pains was simply the creation 
 of documentary means of exposing her 
 attempt to gain manufactured evi- 
 dence and a record of her conviction 
 that matter in the Quimby manu- 
 scripts was quite analogous to that of 
 her own compositions. 
 
 From the letter to Mrs. Crosby it 
 appears that in 1883 Mrs. Eddy was 
 ready to claim that during the period 
 of her acquaintance with Quimby she 
 was able to revise his manuscripts in 
 the direction of an improved exposi- 
 tion of the subject of mental healing. 
 From the statement of the same Mrs. 
 Eddy, in the Christian Science Jour- 
 nal, as quoted above, it appears that 
 in 1887 she was ready to aver that 
 
 1 Included in the afl5davit of Mrs. Crosby, as cited by Milmine, 
 pp. 99-101. 
 
34 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 during the specified period she ^^knew 
 nothing of the science of mind- 
 heahng/' and was too thoroughly 
 swayed by mesmeric influence to have 
 proper control of thought and expres- 
 sion. What less than the desperate 
 straits of its perpetrator does such self- 
 contradiction illustrate? 
 
 Were it possible to explain the ap- 
 parent mendacity of Mrs. Eddy by the 
 supposition that she arrived at such a 
 peculiar mental state that she uncon- 
 sciously reversed the records of the 
 past, we would charitably admit the 
 explanation. But the supposition is 
 not credible. The interval between 
 the primary version of her relations 
 with Quimby and the later version was 
 not long enough naturally to work a 
 thorough metamorphosis of her recol- 
 lections of important turning-points in 
 her life. Then, too, the expedients to 
 which she resorted, and especially her 
 subtle approach to Mrs. Crosby, do 
 
SO-CALLED 35 
 
 not reveal a woman who had simply 
 gotten into cloudland and could not 
 see aright things that had happened 
 on the earth; they show, rather, a 
 woman who was wide awake and 
 keenly cognizant of mundane con- 
 nections. Furthermore, the specific 
 interest which urged Mrs. Eddy to put 
 forth the revised version of her obliga- 
 tions to Quimby is clearly manifest 
 even to common eyesight. It con- 
 sisted in her intemperate thirst for 
 sole distinction in the province of 
 mental healing. 
 
 The same motive wrought with amaz- 
 ing vigor in other connections than the 
 one reviewed. It prompted her in 
 case any of those who had been asso- 
 ciated with her or figured in her ret- 
 inue showed any signs of independent 
 motion, to visit them with her sore 
 displeasure, not to say her venomous 
 hostility. This was strikingly illus- 
 trated in her relations with Richard 
 
36 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 Kennedy, her first pupil of any con- 
 siderable prominence, and the one 
 with whom she was most closely 
 associated in Lynn from 1870 to 1872. 
 At the latter date he saw fit to leave 
 her and to start an independent prac- 
 tice, having become weary of her 
 extravagant claims and domineering 
 temper. For a satellite thus to leave 
 its orbit was regarded by Mrs. Eddy as 
 an unpardonable offense. She began 
 to denounce him as a mesmerist and a 
 traitor to science because he manipu- 
 lated his patients' heads after the 
 Quimby method — the very method 
 which she had taught him and which 
 she herseK practiced for years.^ Worse 
 than this, she went on to picture the 
 kind-hearted and popular young man 
 as a villain of the deepest dye, who 
 with the malignity of the witch used 
 the resources of malicious animal mag- 
 netism to harry and to injure people. 
 
 1 For adequate proofa see Milmine, pp. 143-145. 
 
SO-CALLED 37 
 
 Her feeling against him reached the 
 pitch of hysterical frenzy, as appears 
 in the third edition of Science and 
 Health, where a large section of the 
 extended chapter on demonology is 
 given to the excoriation of Kennedy. 
 She styles him a moral leper, and 
 charges against his demonic art a 
 catalogue of ills which had befallen 
 her. Breaking out into a dramatic 
 strain, she prophesies his ruin in these 
 lurid terms: 'The Nero of to-day, 
 regaling himself with the tortures of 
 individuals, is repeating history, and 
 will fall upon his own sword, and it 
 shall pierce him through. Let him 
 remember this when in the dark re- 
 cesses of his thought he is robbing, 
 committing adultery, or kilHng; when 
 he is attempting to turn friend away 
 from friend, ruthlessly stabbing the 
 quivering heart. ''^ 
 
 An illustration almost rivaling that 
 
 ^ Science and Health, third edition, revised, 1881, vol. ii, chap. vi. 
 
38 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 of the Kennedy ease, as to what a 
 satelUte must expect when deviating 
 from the orbit of perfect subserviency, 
 was furnished by Daniel H. Spofford. 
 In a kind of supplement to the second 
 edition of Science and Health she 
 painted his character and his fate in 
 these somber hues: '^Behold! thou 
 criminal mental marauder, that would 
 blot out the sunshine of earth, that 
 would sever friends, destroy virtue, 
 put out Truth, and murder in secret 
 the innocent, befouHng thy track with 
 the trophies of thy guilt, — I say. Be- 
 hold the cloud, no bigger than a 
 man's hand, already rising in the hori- 
 zon of Truth, to pour down upon thy 
 guilty head the hailstones of doom/' 
 This perfervid tirade was not the only 
 chastisement which was visited upon 
 Spofford. In 1878 an effort was made 
 to bring him to trial for the crime of 
 witchcraft. The charge, it is true, was 
 filed in the name of Miss Lucretia 
 
SO-CALLED 39 
 
 Brown, of Ipswich, but convincing 
 evidence shows that Mrs. Eddy was 
 back of this absurd attempt at prose- 
 cution."^ 
 
 A third illustration of how Mrs. 
 Eddy construed any sign of inde- 
 pendent motion in a disciple was 
 supplied by Edward J. Arens. As 
 soon as he got aside from the line of 
 loyal subserviency, Mrs. Eddy flew to 
 her usual charge of a diabohcal use of 
 mental power, was sure that the sick- 
 ness of her husband was due to his 
 maUgn influence, and, on the death of 
 Mr. Eddy, in 1882, gravely charged 
 the object of her suspicion and hate 
 with the crime of arsenical poisoning 
 mentally administered.^ Further, she 
 attempted to prosecute Arens on this 
 charge. As Russell H. Conwell, who 
 was then practising law in Boston, 
 testifies, she asked him to take the 
 
 iMUmine, pp. 234-241; F. W. Peabody, The Religio-Medical 
 Masquerade, pp. 184, 185. 
 2 Milmine, pp. 284-291. j 
 
40 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 case. ^^I refused/' he says, ^^to be a 
 party to any such nonsensical transac- 
 tions, and tried to dissuade her, but 
 in vain. She obtained the services of 
 another lawyer and actually brought 
 proceedings against the student. Of 
 course, the judge threw the case out 
 of court. "^ 
 
 The facts just stated show inciden- 
 tally how the mind of Mrs. Eddy was 
 obsessed by the witchcraft delusion, 
 and bespeak for her a solitary distinc- 
 tion as the one person in recent times 
 who has attempted to turn the de- 
 lusion into a practical horror by mak- 
 ing it a basis for judicial prosecution. 
 But that is not the point which we are 
 emphasizing. The fact which in the 
 present connection is to be deduced 
 from these cases is the intemperate 
 thirst of Mrs. Eddy for solitary honor 
 in the domain of mental healing, and 
 the fierce intolerance which she ex- 
 
 1 Christian Advocate, New York, December 8, 1910. 
 
SO-CALLED 41 
 
 hibited toward any satellite that ever 
 dared to show a sign of independent 
 movement. They make manifest how 
 she was penetrated through and 
 through with the spirit of egoistic 
 assumption and monopoHstic sover- 
 eignty. 
 
 The three instances that have been 
 recounted by no means complete the 
 list of those which might be put in 
 evidence on the point in hand. Very 
 much in line with them as evidences 
 of Mrs. Eddy^s spirit is the case of 
 Mrs. Josephine C. Woodbury. Doubt- 
 less, it is true that Mrs. Woodbury's 
 high-wrought enthusiasm over the 
 marvels of the Christian Science dis- 
 pensation led her into a capital ab- 
 surdity. Her aberration, however, in- 
 volved no disproof of pure character. 
 In truth, it consisted simply in an 
 overzealous application of a fantastic 
 notion derived from Mrs. Eddy her- 
 seK. But this fact was made no 
 
42 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 ground of forbearance. Mrs. Wood- 
 bury was summarily dismissed from 
 membership in the Christian Science 
 Church. Later, when she saw fit to 
 give to the public her revised estimate 
 of Christian Science of the Eddyite 
 type (May, 1899), she was assailed 
 with a description as outrageously 
 slanderous as ever came from a pen 
 dipped in gall and bitterness. In her 
 annual message to the mother Church, 
 in June, 1899, Mrs. Eddy made place 
 for this envenomed effusion: 'The 
 doom of the Babylonish woman re- 
 ferred to in Revelation is being ful- 
 filled. This woman, drunken with the 
 blood of the saints and with the blood 
 of the martyrs of Jesus, drunk with 
 the wine of her fornication, would 
 enter even the church, and, retaining 
 the heart of the harlot and the pur- 
 pose of the destroying angel, poison 
 such as drink of the Uving water. . . . 
 That which the revelator saw in 
 
SO-CALLED 43 
 
 spiritual vision will be accomplished. 
 The Babylonish woman is fallen: and 
 who shall mourn over the widowhood 
 of lust, of her that hath become the 
 habitation of devils, and the hold of 
 every foul spirit and the cage of 
 every unclean bird?'' That the ''Baby- 
 lonish woman'' was meant to denote 
 Mrs. Woodbury is unmistakable. The 
 fact is placed entirely beyond the pale 
 of reasonable doubt by the circum- 
 stances under which the message to 
 the mother Church was written, by 
 certain phrases in the message, and by 
 its parallehsm to other deliverances of 
 Mrs. Eddy against specific individuals. 
 Furthermore, it is not in the least de- 
 gree likely that she would go out of 
 her way to contradict her own postu- 
 lates on the nonexistence of sin and the 
 necessity of ignoring evil, except in 
 response to a concrete occasion which, 
 from her point of view, called for hot 
 indignation. More specifically, if the 
 
44 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 testimony of a Boston attorney can be 
 trusted, legal evidence is furnished, in 
 letters from Mrs. Eddy which came 
 under his notice, that Mrs. Woodbury 
 was the party commented upon in the 
 message to the mother Church.^ Like 
 the apocalyptic eiBfusions against Ken- 
 nedy and Spofford, this outburst shows 
 with what measureless outrage the 
 founder of Christian Science could 
 assail the character of those who 
 crossed her path. 
 
 Mrs. Eddy's jealous and despotic 
 temper was further illustrated in the 
 case of Mrs. Augusta Stetson, of New 
 York, who was made the victim, in 
 1909, of a sentence of suspension. In 
 this transaction Mrs. Eddy kept in 
 the background, but that the moving 
 impulse came from her autocratic hand 
 cannot fairly be questioned. The im- 
 portance of the matter and the purely 
 instrumental position assigned in the 
 
 1 Peabody, p. 13. 
 
SO-CALLED 45 
 
 constitution of the Christian Science 
 Church to the officials under her to- 
 gether guarantee that without her 
 command, impHcit or explicit, the ad- 
 verse sentence would never have been 
 passed. The real ground of that sen- 
 tence was simply the crime of being 
 too prominent and influential. Mrs. 
 Stetson was charged, it is true, with 
 mental malpractice. But no unprej- 
 udiced observer supposes that the 
 charge was anything more than a 
 pretext for compassing the ends of 
 Mrs. Eddy's jealousy. If it be 
 granted that in any sense Mrs. Stetson 
 was guilty of malpractice, it must be 
 added that she was simply following 
 out a method for which Mrs. Eddy 
 herself had suppUed a superabundance 
 of precedents.^ 
 
 An illustration of the spirit of ex- 
 clusive despotic supremacy in the 
 founder of Christian Science — an illus- 
 
 1 See below, pp. 81-83. 
 
46 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 tration in no wise second to that 
 already given — may be found in the 
 scheme for the government and ad- 
 ministration of the Christian Science 
 communion, as it has been shaped by 
 Mrs. Eddy and placed on record in 
 the Manual of the Mother Church. 
 The way in which the existing organi- 
 zation was effected has the look of a 
 very sinister piece of autocracy. The 
 primitive organization in Boston was 
 dissolved, and in explanation of the 
 dissolution the following note appeared 
 in the Christian Science Journal for 
 February, 1890: 'The dissolution of 
 the visible organization of the Church 
 is the sequence and complement of 
 that of the College Corporation and 
 Association. The College disappeared 
 that the Spirit of Christ might have 
 freer course among its students and all 
 who come into the understanding of 
 Divine Science; the bonds of the or- 
 ganization of the Church were thrown 
 
SO-CALLED 47 
 
 away, so that the members might as- 
 semble themselves together and pro- 
 voke one another to good works in 
 the bond of Love.'' This editorial 
 note, which undoubtedly was printed 
 by the dictation or with the consent 
 of Mrs. Eddy, was naturally taken by 
 the members of the preexisting society 
 as a sign that a relative freedom from 
 the bonds of strict organization, in the 
 interest of a more untrammeled spirit- 
 ual life, was in prospect. They were 
 awakened shortly to the fact that the 
 dissolution had been utilized for the in- 
 stallation of a new organization of the 
 most ironclad character, in the shaping 
 of which they had been granted as a 
 body no part, and in the management 
 of which they were to count as the' 
 veriest ciphers. They discovered that 
 in place of the local society a mother 
 Church central to the whole Christian 
 Science communion had been insti- 
 tuted, and that over the mother 
 
48 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 Church and communion a perfectly 
 autocratic power had been vested in 
 Mrs. Eddy. 
 
 The new plan of church government 
 as expressed in the Manual of the 
 Mother Church, and especially in the 
 later editions, is such a specimen of 
 centralized sovereignty and of am- 
 bitious seK-deification as scarcely finds 
 a parallel in history. By the provi- 
 sions of the Manual all the officials, 
 from the board of directors down to 
 the readers, hold their positions by the 
 approbation or consent of the pastor 
 emeritus, Mrs. Eddy. She judges all, 
 is judged by none. By the provisions 
 of the Manual the reading of the text- 
 book. Science and Health, must form, 
 together with the reading of scriptural 
 passages, a part of every public service 
 in Christian Science churches, and the 
 reading of the text-book must be pref- 
 aced by an announcement of the title 
 of the book and of the name of the 
 
SO-CALLED 4S 
 
 author. Moreover, though the Scrip- 
 tures are to be read first in order of 
 time, the reader of the text-book is to 
 outrank the reader of the Bible, the 
 former being styled First Reader and 
 the latter Second Reader. By the pro- 
 visions of the Manual, for every 
 member of the mother Church ^^the 
 Bible and Science and Health (with 
 other works of its author) must be 
 the only text-books for self-instruction 
 in Christian Science, and for teaching 
 and practicing metaphysical healing/'^ 
 By the provisions of the Manual no 
 preaching is to be allowed in Christian 
 Science churches. The obvious reason 
 for this regulation was the felt neces- 
 sity of shutting out everything which 
 might in anywise come into competi- 
 tion with the teaching function of Mrs. 
 Eddy. The regulation was expressed 
 in these terms: ^'1, Mary Baker G. 
 
 ] Of course by implication this rule would apply to all Christian 
 Scientists and not merely to the numerous members, re^iaent 
 and nonresident, of the mother Church. 
 
50 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 Eddy, ordain the Bible and Science 
 and Health with the Key to the 
 Scriptures Pastor over the Mother 
 Church — the First Church of Christ 
 Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts — 
 which will continue to preach for the 
 Church and the World. The subject 
 of the Lesson-Sermon in the morning 
 service of the mother Church, and of 
 the branch churches of Christ Scien- 
 tist, shall be repeated at their evening 
 service on Sunday.'^^ By the provi- 
 sions of the Manual it is made the 
 duty of the officers of the Church, the 
 editors of periodicals, and the members 
 of the publication committees promptly 
 to comply with any written order of 
 Mary Baker G. Eddy on pain of 
 instant dismission. By the provisions 
 of the Manual no member of the 
 Church shall use written formulas, or 
 permit his patients or pupils to use 
 
 1 Art. xiii. As appears in the concluding part of the citation, 
 and as Mrs. Eddy made it to be understood in other connections, 
 the mandate excluding preaching applied to all Christian Science 
 churches. 
 
SO-CALLED 51 
 
 them, as auxiliaries to teaching Chris- 
 tian Science or for healing the sick. 
 The books of the founder of Christian 
 Science must be honored by being 
 placed on exhibition in connection 
 with the specified functions; such is 
 the plain implication of the context. 
 By the provisions of the Manual a 
 boycott is to be observed against 
 publishing houses and bookstores that 
 place obnoxious books on sale, that is, 
 of course, books adverse to Christian 
 Science. By the provisions of the 
 Manual a Board of Lectureship is 
 established, which has the duty of se- 
 curing that each licensed lecture shall 
 include a true reply to criticisms against 
 Christian Science and ^^bear testimony 
 to the facts pertaining to the life of the 
 Pastor Emeritus.^' 
 
 In short, the Manual could not have 
 been phrased in appreciably different 
 terms had it been devised on purpose 
 to serve as the maximum specimen of 
 
62 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 the most limiting and dwarfing despot- 
 ism. It reduces the members of the 
 mother Church and, by plain imphca- 
 tion, the entire Christian Science con- 
 stituency, to abject mental vassalage 
 to Mary Baker G. Eddy. But the 
 most astounding provision of the Man- 
 ual remains yet to be mentioned. In 
 Article XXII, Section 4, we read: 
 ^^If the author of Science and Health 
 bear witness to the offense of mental 
 malpractice, it shall be considered a 
 sufficient evidence thereof.''^ Now, 
 mental malpractice, as being hidden in 
 the recesses of the mind, is, of course, 
 beyond possible observation except to 
 an omniscient subject, unless the prac- 
 titioner chooses to make a disclosure. 
 Did Mrs. Eddy, in having this article 
 inserted, intend to claim practical 
 omniscience or power infallibly to 
 detect mental secrets? If so, there is 
 imperative need to challenge her san- 
 
 1 Fifty-sixth edition, 1906. 
 
SO-CALLED' SS 
 
 ity. If she did not, then unmistakably 
 she was guilty of a piece of despotic 
 arbitrariness that amounts to a moral 
 infamy. Did the directors of the 
 mother Church believe Mrs. Eddy to 
 be practically omniscient? If so, then 
 they ought to declare their faith and 
 accept such a judgment on their 
 sanity as the declaration would merit. 
 If they did not believe thus, they 
 were guilty of most unworthy abase- 
 ment in consenting to serve under a 
 regulation so infamously despotic. Re- 
 call the fact that Mrs. Eddy in the 
 most positive manner charged Arens 
 with murdering her husband through 
 mental malpractice, and accused others 
 of similar enormities, and then in the 
 light of these events weigh the accep- 
 tance of an obligation to take the tes- 
 timony of the author of Science and 
 Health as conclusive evidence. An item 
 of legislation more monstrously unjust 
 and despotic never saw the hght. 
 
54 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 Another deeply compromising phase 
 in Mrs. Eddy's moral record consists 
 in the extent to which it bears the 
 stamp of remorseless greed. In the 
 most glaring fashion she treated her 
 assumed prophetical vocation as a 
 money asset. The truths of the new 
 dispensation which she heralded were 
 handed out at a high figure. The 
 charge for her teaching was on a 
 progressive scale. At the start it was 
 whatever she could get; then $100 in 
 advance, with ten per cent royalty on 
 the student's subsequent income from 
 practice; then $300 for twelve lessons; 
 and, finally, $300 for seven lessons. 
 According to the rate last named, 
 one hour's teaching of a class of 
 fifty would bring to Mrs. Eddy over 
 $2,000. 
 
 The price put upon her written 
 revelation testified equally to her ap- 
 preciation of the particular form of 
 nothingness which is denominated 
 
SO-CALLED 55 
 
 money, being in striking contrast with 
 the ordinary plan of Bible circulation. 
 From three to six dollars, according 
 to binding, was continuously the 
 charge for Science and Health, and 
 security for a wide circle of purchasers 
 was provided in the requisition that 
 copies should be in the hands of all 
 teachers and students. Nor was this 
 the full extent of the virtual demand. 
 Loyal Scientists were not expected to 
 content themselves with copies of some 
 one edition to the neglect of new 
 matter in a later edition. Sometimes 
 a special stimulus was given to their 
 inclination to make a fresh purchase 
 by formal emphasis on the value of 
 the additional matter contained in the 
 new issue. Thus in February, 1908, 
 this notice was pubUshed over Mrs. 
 Eddy^s signature: ^'l request Christian 
 Scientists universally to read the para- 
 graph beginning at line thirty of page 
 442 in the edition of Science and 
 
56 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 Health which will be issued February 
 29. I consider the information there 
 given to be of great importance at 
 this stage of the workings of animal 
 magnetism, and it will greatly aid the 
 students in their individual experi- 
 ences." Now, what was the im- 
 portant information thus advertised? 
 Simply two lines of perfectly pithless 
 stuff reading as follows: '^Christian 
 Scientists, be a law to yourselves, 
 that mental malpractice can harm 
 you neither when asleep nor when 
 awake." 
 
 Extraordinary expedients were also 
 employed by Mrs. Eddy to create a 
 market for other productions of her 
 pen. In the Christian Science Journal 
 for March, 1897, just after the publi- 
 cation of the volume entitled Mis- 
 cellaneous Writings, the following man- 
 date, signed by Mrs. Eddy, appeared: 
 '^Christian Scientists in the United 
 States and Canada are hereby en- 
 
SO-CALLED 57 
 
 joined not to teach a student of 
 Christian Science for one year, com- 
 mencing on March 14, 1897. Miscel- 
 laneous Writings is calculated to pre- 
 pare the minds of all true thinkers to 
 understand the Christian Science text- 
 book more correctly than a student 
 can. The Bible, Science and Health 
 with the Key to the Scriptures, and 
 my other published works, are the 
 proper instructors for this hour. It 
 shall be the duty of all Christian 
 Scientists to circulate and to sell as 
 many of these books as they can. If 
 a member of the First Church of 
 Christ Scientist shall fail to obey 
 this injunction, it will render him 
 liable to lose his membership in this 
 Church.'' What a spectacle! An in- 
 spired prophetess, a second Messiah, 
 closing the fountain of instruction 
 contained in the voice of the teacher, 
 thrusting her literary wares into the 
 faces of all the faithful, and requiring 
 
68 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 them to be active agents in the circu- 
 lation of those wares under pain of 
 excommunication ! 
 
 Excuse for such mammonish expe- 
 dients no sane understanding can dis- 
 cover. Mrs. Eddy's apologists, it is 
 true, have offered the plea that, while 
 she took in large sums of money, she 
 also gave away large sums. But the 
 plea, apart from the proper specifica- 
 tions, counts for next to nothing. 
 These apologists have been challenged 
 to specify the large sums and the 
 objects for which they were given, and 
 to the best of our information they 
 have not found it convenient to reply. 
 Some bestowments of relatively mod- 
 erate amounts can very likely be 
 named; but the available evidence 
 points to the conclusion that it better 
 suited the temper of Mrs. Eddy to 
 devote her growing fortune to the 
 perpetuation of a scheme of virtual 
 self-deification than to cut it down by 
 
SO-CALLED 59 
 
 generous benefactions to any outside 
 interest. 
 
 Out of the orders of facts which have 
 been noticed the proper inferences leap 
 forth unsohcited. It is as plain as the 
 day what disposition must be made 
 of the high claims of the author of 
 Science and Health. Not until men 
 can gather grapes from thorns and figs 
 from thistles will there be any excuse 
 for imagining that an authoritative 
 revelation could come through such a 
 person as Mary Baker G. Eddy is 
 proved to have been by indisputable 
 documentary evidence. No doubt, as 
 a woman of extraordinary nervous ten- 
 sion, she could be rather fascinating in 
 her happier moods. But what could 
 be more foolish and aberrant than to 
 permit impressions derived from any 
 superficial self-manifestation to weigh 
 against the moral blemishes with which 
 her career is broadly streaked? In- 
 sight into the nature of the actual 
 
60 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 record must make it appear as one of 
 the most amazing misadjustments in 
 all religious history that this woman 
 should be brought into temples of wor- 
 ship and placed there, as respects the 
 authority of her teaching, on a level 
 with Jesus Christ. 
 
 III. Testing the Claims on 
 Rational Grounds 
 
 Having considered the claims of 
 Mrs. Eddy from a moral point of 
 view, it is in order now to subject 
 them to rational tests. In this con- 
 nection the first inquiry naturally 
 concerns the sort of justification which 
 she is able to offer for her sweeping 
 negation of the material universe, of 
 the human body, of disease and sin, 
 and even of finite personality. Some 
 hint has already been given of the 
 way in which she sweeps these by the 
 board. But it will not be amiss to 
 take note of some additional speci- 
 
SO-CALLED 61 
 
 mens of her peculiar propositions. 
 Anyone who has read her writings 
 knows how they teem with such sen- 
 tences as the following: 
 
 ^'Matter disappears under the micro- 
 scope of spirit.''^ ^^Divine metaphys- 
 ics explains away matter/ ^^ ^ ^Mat- 
 ter and its beUef — sin, sickness, and 
 death — are states of mortal mind. . . . 
 They are not facts of mind. They are 
 not ideas, but illusions.''^ 'The no- 
 tion of a material universe is utterly 
 opposed to the theory of man as 
 evolved from mind.'^^ ''Both the ma- 
 terial senses and their reports are 
 unnatural, impossible, and unreal. ^'^ 
 ''AH sensible phenomena are merely 
 subjective states of mortal mind.''^ 
 "If God is Spirit and God is all, surely 
 there can be no matter. ^'^ 
 
 "As mind is immortal, the phrase 
 mortal mind impHes something untrue 
 
 » Science and Health, p. 264. « Ibid., p. 113. 
 
 » Ibid., p. 283. * Ibid., p. 545 ^ ibid., p. 551. 
 
 » No and Yes, p. 22. ? Unity of Good, p. 39. 
 
62 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 and therefore unreal; as the phrase is 
 used in teaching Christian Science it is 
 meant to designate something which 
 has no real existence/'^ ^^In reahty, 
 there is no mortal mind, and, conse- 
 quently, no transference of mortal 
 thought and will power.''^ ^'Reduced 
 to its proper denomination, matter is 
 mortal mind, for mind is immortal, 
 and is not matter, but Spirit/^^ 
 * ^Really, there is no such thing as 
 mortal mind, though we are compelled 
 to use the phrase in the endeavor to 
 express t'he underlying thought. '^^ 
 ''We have learned that the erring or 
 mortal thought holds in itself all sin, 
 sickness, and death, and imparts these 
 states to the body/^^ 
 
 ''Evil is neither a primitive nor a 
 derivative, but is suppositional; in 
 other words, a he that is incapable of 
 
 1 Science and Health, p. 114. 
 
 2 Retrospection and Introspection, p. 93. 
 
 » Unity of Good, p. 44. * Ibid., pp. 62, 63. 
 
 * Miscellaneous Writings, p. 3. 
 
SO-CALLED 63 
 
 proof/ '^ ^^In Christian Science the 
 fact is made obvious that the sinner 
 and the sin are ahke simply nothing- 
 ness/^2 ^The sinner created neither 
 himself nor sin, but sin created the 
 sinner; that is, error made the man 
 mortal, and this mortal was the image 
 and likeness of evil, not of good/'^ 
 ''God could never impart an element 
 of evil, and man possesses nothing 
 which he has not derived from God. 
 How then has man a basis for wrong- 
 doing?''* ''Man is incapable of sin, 
 sickness, or death/'^ "There is no sin, 
 for God's kingdom is everywhere and |) 
 supreme/'^ "What seem to be disease, j 
 vice, and mortality are illusions of the \ 
 physical senses/'^ "Man is God's re- I 
 flection, needing no cultivation, but i 
 ever beautiful and complete.''® 
 
 1 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 14. 
 
 2 Retrospection and Introspection, p. 87. s Ibid., p. 92. 
 * Science and Health, p. 539. * Ibid., p. 475. 
 
 " No and Yes, p. 45. 
 
 7 Rudimental Divine Science, p. 22. 
 
 8 Science and Health, p. 527. 
 
64 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 ^'Some time it will be learned that 
 mind constructs the body, and with its 
 own materials. Hence no breakage or 
 dislocation can really occur/^^ ^^Every 
 sort of sickness is a degree of insanity; 
 that is, sickness is always hallucina- 
 tion. "^ ''Material life, with all its sin, 
 sickness, and death, is an illusion, 
 against which Divine Science is en- 
 gaged in a war of extermination.''^ 
 
 ''Spirit is infinite. There is but one 
 Spirit, because there is but one In- 
 finite.''* "Soul or Spirit signifies Deity 
 and nothing else. There is no finite 
 soul or spirit."^ "Man is the idea of 
 God. ... He is above mortal frailty. 
 ... He coexists with God and the 
 universe. . . . Man is and forever was 
 God's reflection. . . . Immortal man 
 was and is God's image or ideal, even 
 the infinite expression of infinite mind, 
 and coexistent and coetemal with 
 
 1 Science and Health, p. 402. « Ibid., pp. 407, 408. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 543. * Ibid., p. 334. ^ Ibid., 466. 
 
SO-CALLED 65 
 
 that mind/^^ ^There is but one primal 
 cause. Therefore there can be no 
 effect from any other cause/^^ ^Will- 
 power is not science. It belongs to the 
 senses and its use is to be condemned. '^^ 
 ^ 'Human will is an animal propensity, 
 not a faculty of soul. Hence it cannot 
 govern man aright.''^ 
 
 From these excerpts it is evident 
 that the founder of so-called Christian 
 Science negates, not only matter, sick- 
 ness, sin, and death, but man also as a 
 proper concrete personahty. In mak- 
 ing God the one Soul, the only Spirit, 
 and the only cause, and in defining 
 man as simply his idea or reflection, 
 located apart from the sphere of 
 growth, sin, evil, sickness, and death, 
 she reduces the human individual logi- 
 cally to a selfless shadow. She speaks, 
 indeed, of a will-power as in some way 
 attached to him, but indicates that it 
 
 1 Science and Health, pp. 200, 266, 471, 336. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 207. 8 Ibid., p. 144. * Ibid., p. 490. 
 
66 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 is no true characteristic, since she stig- 
 matizes it as an aberrant animal pro- 
 pensity. As a real agent, gifted with 
 even the smallest fragment of personal 
 autonomy, man is eliminated. 
 
 We are not unaware that Christian 
 Scientists occasionally yield to the 
 temptation to pare down, in their in- 
 terpretations, the force of Mrs. Eddy's 
 negations. Sometimes they make bold 
 to assert that what these apparent 
 negations mean is the innocent propo- 
 sition that in the sphere of reality the 
 spiritual and invisible is the abiding 
 and worthful, while the tangible and 
 visible is the transient and unsatisfy- 
 ing. But they should understand that 
 in saying this they as much as confess 
 that the teacher to whom they ascribe 
 plenary authority could not write Eng- 
 lish without using expressions clear out 
 of sight of her meaning. And what 
 could be more ridiculous than to be 
 tied to such an oracle? Then, too, 
 
SO-CALLED 67 
 
 exegesis of this sort makes by far too 
 tame an affair of the '^divine meta- 
 physics'^ of the founder to be at all 
 credible. She evidently meant it to 
 be understood that she was not teach- 
 ing a mere commonplace, but some- 
 thing quite out of the ordinary groove. 
 In short, her declarations, repeated 
 over and over again, make it perfectly 
 plain that she had embraced and was 
 striving with full energy to inculcate 
 an acosmistic or world-denying pan- 
 theism — a fanciful scheme of thought 
 which was at home in India thousands 
 of years before she set pen to paper. 
 Her formal rejection of pantheism in 
 no wise refutes this statement, being 
 based on ignorance of the truth that 
 genuine pantheism can be radically 
 ideaUstic as well as materialistic. 
 
 It is incumbent upon us, therefore, 
 to ask for Mrs. Eddy's proofs of her 
 sweeping negations. Formally she 
 offers almost none, and substantially 
 
68 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 none at all. The sum of her argumen- 
 tation that calls for any sort of recog- 
 nition lies in two or three items. In 
 the first place, she claims that God's 
 omnipresence and omnipotence exclude 
 matter, evil, and whatever else belongs 
 in her list of forbidden things.^ Now, 
 as for omnipresence, manifestly, unless 
 it is construed as space-fiUing bulk, it 
 would in no wise involve the exclusion 
 either of matter or of finite spirit. 
 God is wherever his efficiency operates, 
 and matter and finite spirit do not bar 
 out his efficiency nor limit it otherwise 
 than he wills or permits. Rather, as 
 subsisting by the constant energizing of 
 God, matter and spirit testify to his 
 omnipresence. As for omnipotence, it 
 cannot be asked to work contradic- 
 tions. If God wants free beings, chil- 
 dren, citizens, he must create some- 
 thing besides selfless shadows or au- 
 
 ^ Retrospection and Introspection, p. 77; Unity of Good, pp. 4, 
 16, 17. 
 
SO-CALLED 69 
 
 tomatons. He must endow men with a 
 measure of real autonomy; and that 
 involves the liability of sin and a con- / 
 sequent requirement for discipline in ; 
 the shape of sickness or even death. \ 
 Nothing in this line rules out omnipo- 
 tence so long as a false demand is not 
 made upon omnipotence to work con- 'o . 
 tradictions. j^^ 
 
 The second point in Mrs. Eddy's \ji^ 
 argumentation consists in the plea 
 that the senses confessedly deceive in 
 some matters, and that, consequently 
 they are to be accounted in general 
 false witnesses. Alleging that they re- 
 port the earth to be flat and stationary, 
 she declares: ^^If man's ipse dixit as to 
 the stellar system is correct, this is 
 because science is true, and the evi- 
 dence of the senses false."^ Mrs. 
 Eddy assumes here that the senses 
 had nothing to do in gaining the evi- 
 dence for the scientific induction which 
 
 1 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 65. 
 
70 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 corrects the hasty naive inference that 
 the earth is flat and stationary. The 
 truth is that the senses had to be 
 industriously employed in the whole 
 process of accumulating the evidence, 
 that it was a case in which wide, de- 
 liberate observation mended the con- 
 clusion flowing from narrow and 
 uncritical observation. So this item 
 in Mrs. Eddy's argumentation gives 
 no sort of justification to her cata- 
 logue of negations. 
 
 Equally empty is her appeal to the 
 fact that the mind can frame an 
 imaginary object, or dream about a 
 nonexistent object.^ Because men can 
 mentally figure a house or dream 
 about a house, it does not follow that 
 there are no real houses. Indeed, if 
 there were no experience of real houses 
 there would be no rational occasion to 
 speak of the imaginary structure or 
 dream product. It is just because 
 
 1 Science and Health, p. 71. 
 
SO-CALLED 71 
 
 there are realities which obtrude 
 themselves as realities, not being 
 subservient to individual fancy, and 
 commanding recognition from every 
 normally endowed person, that men 
 feel justified and are justified in distin- 
 guishing objects of sense perceptions 
 from the ghostly products of the 
 mental reverie or the dream. Before 
 resorting to this sort of illustration 
 Mrs. Eddy would have done well 
 to consider its logical bearing upon 
 matters of most vital concern to 
 herself. In all history there is no 
 record of a writer who felt more pride 
 in a mental offspring than Mrs. 
 Eddy took in her book entitled Science 
 and Health.^ As we have seen, she 
 did not hesitate to resort to a flagrant 
 falsification of the facts in order to 
 
 * In calling the book Mrs. Eddy's offspring, I do not wish to 
 ignore the fact that other hands than hers had to do with shaping 
 the form in which it gained wide circulation. In particular, the 
 Rev. James Henry Wiggin, who for four years served as her lit- 
 erary adviser, and worked over to the best of his opportimity the 
 phraseology of the fifth, sixth, and seventh editions, helped to 
 give the production a more tolerable literary aspect. 
 
72 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 arrogate sole credit to herself for its 
 underlying ideas, and she was ready- 
 to appeal to the courts to punish any 
 trespass upon her property right in 
 the book. But if the senses are to be 
 utterly spumed as false witnesses, how 
 can the pubhc know that Mrs. Eddy 
 ever had anything to do with such a 
 book? Indeed, how can the pubhc 
 know that either Mrs. Eddy or her 
 book ever existed? How was Mrs. 
 Eddy herself able to gain any valid 
 ground of confidence in the existence 
 of the book? We submit that having 
 gone on with her a priori theorizing to 
 eUminate the world, or at least to 
 turn it into a lying phantom, she 
 should have reconciled herself to rating 
 Science and Health as the baseless 
 fabric of a dream. 
 
 We judge that the entire argumen- 
 tative ground offered by Mrs. Eddy 
 for her negations can be adequately 
 stated in a single sentence. What it 
 
SO-CALLED 73 
 
 amounts to is simply this: ^1, Mary 
 Baker G. Eddy, say thus and so, and 
 let all the earth keep silence before 
 me/' 
 
 It requires no searching investiga- 
 tion of Mrs. Eddy's attempt at meta- 
 physical construction to discover that 
 it is involved in a tangle of nugatory 
 and contradictory statements. The 
 amount of agency which is imputed 
 therein to the nonexistent is quite 
 amazing. Mortal mind has no real 
 existence, and yet it generates, or is 
 the seat of, beliefs in matter, sin, 
 sickness, and death. There is no mat- 
 ter, but matter reduced to its proper 
 denomination is mortal mind, and this 
 mortal mind imposes upon the body 
 sin, sickness, and death. Sin is noth- 
 ingness and the sinner is nothingness, 
 yet we are told that sin created the 
 sinner. What is this but an absurd 
 bandying about of terms, an utterly 
 fantastic skipping back and forth be- 
 
\x^ 
 
 74 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 tween something and nothing? It is 
 perfectly evident that Mrs. Eddy had 
 no competency for consistent think- 
 ing on fundamental questions. Re- 
 peatedly her attempts in that domain 
 placed her on record as either directly 
 or indirectly canceling her own propo- 
 
 . V sitions. 
 
 \|> ^ An illustration is afforded on so 
 capital a theme as the personality of 
 God. Here the recipient of the ^^final 
 revelation of the absolute Principle of 
 scientific being and healing' ' runs into 
 open contradiction with herself. In 
 the treatise entitled No and Yes she 
 wrote: '^God is Love; and Love is Prin^j 
 ciple, not person. . . . Limitless per- 
 sonality is inconceivable. ... Of God 
 as person, human reason, imagination, 
 and revelation give us no knowledge.''^ 
 In the first edition of Science and 
 Health we read : ^^Doctrines and opin- 
 ions based on a personal God are noth- 
 
 1 Pp. 28, 29. 
 
SO-CALLED 75 
 
 ing more nor less than beliefs of intel-. 
 ligent matter, that we must yield or spill | 
 the inspiration and wine of Truth. . . J 
 The Scriptures inform us that God is 
 Love, Truth, and Life, and these cer- 
 tainly imply that he is Principle, not\j 
 person. . . . Our beUefs of a personal^ 
 Deity place infinite Life and Love with- 
 in the stature of a man, make man God, 
 or put God into matter, which is athe- 
 ism.''^ Equivalent statements are con- 
 tained in the third edition.^ On the 
 other hand, in the later editions the 
 declaration was inserted: '^If the term 
 'personaUty,' as appHed to God, means 
 infinite personality, then God is in- 
 finite personJ^^ Furthermore, God is 
 defined as the "only Ego''' — a defini- 
 tion which ought to be regarded as 
 distinctly assertive of personality, since 
 the term ego in any warrantable use 
 can m ean nothing less. Thus the 
 
 J Edition of 1873, pp. 17-20. 
 
 « Third edition revised, pp. 22, 24, 57. 
 
 » Edition of 1902, p. 116. * Ibid., p. 588. 
 
76 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 prophetess comes round to assert what 
 she had excluded and even declared 
 to be inconceivable and of atheistic 
 tendency. 
 
 In dealing with the allness of God 
 Mrs. Eddy is no more successful in 
 avoiding collision with herself than on 
 the subject of divine personahty. She 
 will have it that there is nothing in 
 existence except God and the ideas 
 in which he is reflected or expressed. 
 At the same time she is compelled to 
 take account of a vast sphere of error 
 or illusion. Her very negations com- 
 pel her to magnify this and to represent 
 that it incloses about the whole life 
 of men. Now, whence comes this 
 mighty sphere, this well-nigh measure- 
 less totaUty of illusion? It could not 
 possibly have come from God, since 
 he could not create anything so unlike 
 himself as mortal mind or its deceptive 
 products.^ It could not have come 
 
 1 Unity of Good, pp. 24, 29. 
 
SO-CALLED 77 
 
 from man or the universe as derived 
 from God, since they reflect his spirit- 
 ual essence; neither could it result 
 because of their falling away from God, 
 since they are incapable of lapse and 
 are eternally perfect;^ furthermore, the 
 fact that God is sole cause and sole 
 Creator^ would debar them from the 
 power to originate on their own ac- 
 count. Thus, on Mrs. Eddy's prem- 
 ises, the sphere of illusion could not 
 have been originated. But it is here 
 and cannot be disposed of by calUng 
 it a mere nothing. A mere nothing 
 cannot play any practical role. Illu- 
 sions, however, if our oracle may be 
 trusted, play an immense role. The 
 whole vast sphere of them is in the 
 realm of fact. As having, according to 
 the fundamental postulates of Chris- 
 tian Science, no conceivable origin, 
 that sphere falls logically under the 
 
 1 Unity of Good, p. 13. 
 
 « Science and Health, pp. 207, 514. 
 
78 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 category of the unoriginated or eternal. 
 So a rival is set over against the good 
 Creator, and the attempt to overpress 
 the allness of God results logically in 
 an equivalent of Persian duaUsm. 
 
 A further instance of failure to make 
 things match — and a specially curious 
 one — appears in Mrs. Eddy's defini- 
 tion of man. On one page she makes 
 him ^^an immortal mode of the divine 
 mind" — a form of words correspondent 
 to her usual description of man as an 
 ''idea of God." But on another page 
 of the same treatise she writes, ''Man 
 is a celestial body."^ The inference 
 seems to be unavoidable that bodies 
 are included among the modes or ideas 
 of the divine mind. Accordingly, space 
 dimensions apply to the contents of 
 that mind, and ideas are conceivably 
 subjects for measurement in feet and 
 inches. In line with this exhibition of 
 philosophical acumen is that afforded 
 
 1 No and Yes, pp. 34, 36. 
 
SO-CALLED 79 
 
 by the proposition cited in the early 
 part of this essay: ^'Christian Science 
 is the infinite calculus, defining the 
 line, plane, space, and fourth dimen- 
 sion of Spirit/'^ If this strange heap 
 of words means anything, it carries 
 the conclusion that its fabricator at- 
 tached to spirit the properties appro- 
 priate to the material being which she 
 professed to contemn. 
 
 Space cannot well be refused to one 
 more illustration of Mrs. Eddy's unique 
 faculty for self-contradiction. As ap- 
 pears in a sentence cited above, she 
 lays down this proposition: ^^In reahty 
 there in no mortal mind, and, conse- 
 quently, no transference of mortal 
 thought and will power. '^^ By deny- 
 ing the transference of mortal thought 
 and will power she did not mean, of 
 course, to deal with the nonsensical 
 assumption that the faculties of think- 
 
 1 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 22. 
 
 * Retrospection and Introspection, p. 93. 
 
80 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 ing and willing can be taken out of 
 one person and literally conveyed into 
 the possession of another person. 
 There could be no occasion to object 
 to what the wildest imagination never 
 fancied. The given statement must 
 have been designed to affirm that 
 thought and will power in one indi- 
 vidual cannot act as a determining 
 force over thought and will power in 
 another individual. With this neces- 
 sary interpretation in mind, we are 
 led to ask, What, then, did Mrs. Eddy 
 mean by mental malpractice? Why 
 did she describe it as a perversion of 
 mental power for the purpose of 
 tyranny, a form of baleful influence 
 which could be appHed by the prac- 
 titioner to a distant victim, and be 
 utihzed to make the victim beHeve a 
 he, to suffer tortures, and to perform 
 acts quite contrary to his habitual dis- 
 position?^ The plain fact is, her 
 
 1 Science and Health, third edition, chap. vi. 
 
SO-CALLED 81 
 
 whole diatribe against mental mal- 
 practice, otherwise called mahcious 
 mesmerism, or mahcious animal mag- 
 netism, assumes a facile abihty in one 
 person to control thought and vohtion 
 in another, and to control them by 
 means of '^mortal mind,'' which in- 
 deed is formally characterized by her 
 as the source of sickness, sin, and 
 death; in other words, of all that is 
 counted evil or afflictive. When, there- 
 fore, she denies to mortal mind all 
 abiUty to transfer thought or will- 
 power, she denies what is inwrought 
 with her theory of mental malpractice. 
 With the theoretical contradiction a 
 practical was conjoined. While Mrs. 
 Eddy, in her formal maxims, very 
 worthily accentuated the obhgation al- 
 ways to give a benevolent direction to 
 thought as opposed to a malicious, she 
 was far from consistently exemplifying 
 these good maxims. On the contrary, 
 as has been shown, she wrote diatribes 
 
82 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 against specific individuals in which a 
 perfect fury of ill will and virtual 
 malediction came to expression. More- 
 over, she had a group of her students 
 practice adversely against these hated 
 persons. So have explicitly affirmed 
 some of those who had part in these 
 transactions.^ One of them, a resi- 
 dent in the metaphysical college with 
 Mrs. Eddy and her family for nearly 
 a year, has rendered this testimony: 
 '^Mrs. Eddy was constantly having 
 attacks of illness. We were often 
 called up about eleven o'clock at 
 night to treat her, and were obliged 
 to remain up until about two o'clock 
 in the morning. These attacks, we 
 were told, were brought on by the 
 'enemy,' working through us, as her 
 students. She claimed that the only 
 way the 'enemy' could reach her was 
 through her students, she being so 
 strong and so pure that their malicious 
 
 1 MUmiue, pp. 231. 239, 240; Peabody. pp. 175-194. 
 
SO-CALLED 83 
 
 animal magnetism could not reach her 
 in any other way. So we used to go 
 into the parlor, after breakfast and 
 supper, each day and mentally 'take 
 up the enemy.' ... I was told to treat 
 the enemy' (Kennedy, Ames, Choate, 
 and Childs) to cause their 'old beliefs' 
 to return, and prostrate them at once. 
 'Old beUefs' meant former diseases 
 from which they had been healed, in 
 some cases even tumors and cancers."^ 
 Other concrete evidences could be 
 adduced. So it stands in the histori- 
 cal record that the founder of Christian 
 Science flagrantly contradicted in prac- 
 tice the better side of her own teaching 
 relative to mental malpractice. 
 
 A brief reference to Mrs. Eddy's 
 interpretation of the Scriptures will 
 not be irrelevant to an estimate of the 
 intellectual aspect of her system. In 
 the Key to the Scriptures (incorporated 
 with Science and Health) she com- 
 
 1 Cited by Peabody, pp. 180, 181. 
 
84 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 ments on portions of Genesis and of 
 the book of Revelation; that is, she 
 pretends to comment upon them. In 
 reaUty, she merely uses the scriptural 
 texts as pegs upon which to hang her 
 stock phrases. Her exegetical notes 
 might just as well have been attached 
 to almost any other writings — say, to 
 passages of the Gilgamesch epic writ- 
 ten in old Babylon or to chapters 
 of the Upanishads composed in an- 
 cient India. Indeed, a much more 
 congenial subject-matter could have 
 been furnished by the latter than that 
 lodged in the biblical books, a subject- 
 matter very close to Mrs. Eddy's 
 pantheistic postulates, whereas she can 
 read those postulates into the bibHcal 
 texts only by sheer violence. Her exe- 
 getical method is soberly characterized 
 as interpretation by fiat. A specimen 
 is furnished by her rendering of the 
 word beginning in the first line of 
 Genesis. This word, she says, signi- 
 
SO-CALLED 85 
 
 fies ^Hhe only — that is, the eternal 
 verity and unity of God and man/' 
 It means that, not because any He- 
 braist in the world would so declare, 
 but simply because the founder of 
 Christian Science wants it to mean 
 that. Other interpretations have a 
 like basis. By an intemperate scheme 
 of allegorizing, text after text is made 
 to repeat one or another of the Eddyite 
 aphorisms. To one who has any real 
 knowledge of bibhcal science the whole 
 concoction can appear as nothing bet- 
 ter than a heap of vagaries. Nor will 
 his appreciation be helped by running 
 across sentences which, taken as they 
 stand, contain no intelligible proposi- 
 tion. Let a couple of examples suffice: 
 '^Understanding," Mrs. Eddy says, 'Is 
 the hne of demarcation between the 
 real and the unreal.''^ Now, under- 
 standing may be a power qualified to 
 discern a hne of demarcation, but 
 
 » Science and Health, p. 505.1 
 
86 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 what mind that is capable of clear 
 thinking would care to identify it 
 with a line? Again, our exegete re- 
 marks, ^^God gathers unformed 
 thoughts into their proper channels, 
 and unfolds these thoughts.''^ How 
 unformed thoughts can be gathered 
 into channels is very much of a 
 puzzle, since thoughts exist only in 
 being formed by a mental agent, and 
 as they exist are already where they 
 belong, and are not a kind of baggage 
 needing transportation. Of sentences 
 like these in Mrs. Eddy's writings 
 there is no dearth. Their name is 
 legion. 
 
 In relation to the Christian Science 
 scheme of heahng, the founder has 
 given ample illustration of her fertile 
 gift for_^-self-Gontradiction. She has 
 refuted in her own person the extrava- 
 gant claims put forth for that scheme. 
 
 1 Science and Health, p. 506. 
 
SO-CALLED 87 
 
 The testimony cited above from one of 
 her students affords proof, and much 
 more is available. Up to the time of ~^, 
 her relative seclusion — ^whatever may 1 
 have been the case after that date — 
 she was subject to nervous crises, at ' 
 times so acute as to result in sus- 
 pended consciousness.^ Nor was her 
 mental condition any more normal. 
 Christian Science was far from secur- 
 ing to her constant interior serenity. 
 Close up to the end of her career there 
 were recurring intervals in which her 
 mind was fairly ridden by the witch- 
 craft delusion. No person of equal 
 prominence in recent times has shown 
 anything Uke the same degree of this 
 baleful obsession. 
 
 The inabihty of Christian Science to 
 make good its claim was thus clearly 
 demonstrated in the person of its 
 founder. Moreover, she was com- 
 pelled in a wider range practically to 
 
 1 Milmine, pp. 21, 159, 301, 302. 
 
88 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 admit the powerlessness of the Chris- 
 tian Science method to fulfill its 
 vaunted office in healing aU manner 
 of bodily ills. The incompetency of 
 her practitioners to wrestle success- 
 fully with breaks and dislocations 
 compelled her to admit the propriety 
 of passing over such matters to the 
 regular surgeon.^ The peril involved 
 to communities in the attempts of 
 her healers to treat contagious dis- 
 eases as simply false beliefs forced her, 
 as means of protection against the 
 rising wrath of an outraged people, to 
 advise the said healers not to deal 
 with such cases, and to obey the law 
 in reporting them.^ Once more, the 
 pertinacity of disease, as frequently 
 manifested in resisting the healing art 
 of Christian Science, led her to grant 
 permission to her practitioners to call 
 in an M. D. to diagnose obstinate 
 
 1 Science and Health, 1886, p. 328. 
 
 2 Christian Science Journal, March, 1901; December, 1902. 
 
SO-CALLED 89 
 
 cases. ^ Now, such a list of concessions 
 amounts practically to a breakdown 
 of the exclusive claims of Christian 
 Science, and licenses the pubHc to rate 
 its therapeutic value at a very mod- 
 erate figure. Mrs. Eddy, in her easy- 
 going, sophistical, and lordly fashion, 
 may throw the blame of these failures 
 of her scheme on the existing condi- 
 tion of the world. But what we want 
 of medical science is ability to deal 
 with the actual world. A scheme 
 which cannot do this, and yet boasts 
 of sole legitimacy, advertises itseK as 
 a humbug. 
 
 In view of the threefold slump from 
 her high-sounding premises, on the 
 part of Mrs. Eddy, Christian Scien- 
 tists cannot be regarded as earning 
 serious rebuke when, as often happens, 
 they resort to regular physicians in 
 search of rehef from their ailments. 
 With their leader going ahead at such 
 
 ». Manual of the Mother Church, 1906, Article X, Section 3. 
 
90 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 a pace in the role of inconsistency, why 
 should it be thought that they are 
 under obligation to pay respect to the 
 claims of consistency? 
 
 What is to be said about the numer- 
 ous cures claimed for Christian Science? 
 In the first place, it is to be said with all 
 emphasis that no reliable conclusion 
 can be drawn by merely giving atten- 
 tion to the apparently successful at- 
 tempts at cure. Every quack who has 
 ever gained considerable notoriety has 
 been able to make a brilliant showing 
 by parading his successes and leaving 
 out of sight the vast catalogue of his 
 failures. That Christian Science should 
 be able to exhibit a specially ample list 
 of cures is no proper occasion for 
 either surprise or admiration, since 
 Mrs. Eddy, instead of occupying her- 
 self with practicing her method, de- 
 voted herself to the manufacturing of 
 practitioners. As her course occupied 
 only two or three weeks, it naturally 
 
SO-CALLED 91 
 
 appealed to those who wished to be 
 equipped for earning a UveUhood in 
 short order. Thus a considerable corps 
 of healers was set to work, all of them 
 interested in glorifying their calling. 
 Naturally, reports of cures mounted to 
 a high figure, and even included some 
 instances of horses and dogs receiving 
 mental treatment very much to their 
 advantage. But what about the cases 
 in which the Christian Science method 
 proved to be a failure? What about 
 the cases in which it was shown up as 
 nothing better than homicidal foolish- 
 ness? No advertising agency has been 
 in operation to keep such cases in 
 view. No induction, however, which 
 leaves them out of consideration can 
 claim respect, and they make a tre- 
 mendous offset. 
 
 Furthermore, in any true estimate, 
 instances of temporary relief must be 
 distinguished from true and permanent 
 cures. The stimulus of a specially 
 
92 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 potent form of suggestion will often 
 cause an inward elation which is able 
 to offset the power of disease or in- 
 firmity for the time being. But the 
 sphere of the efficacious working of 
 such an agency is intrinsically limited, 
 so that the permanency of the ap- 
 parent benefit is made problematical. 
 As a matter of fact, many Christian 
 Science cures have been transient. A 
 typical case is that of the British earl 
 who was reported by competent medi- 
 cal advice to be suffering from fatty 
 degeneration of the heart. He believed 
 that he was cured by Christian Science 
 and wrote about the marvel in the Cos- 
 mopolitan. In ninety days, however, 
 fatty degeneration of the heart took him 
 out of the land of the living.^ Instances 
 of this order, we contend, must enter 
 into the basis of any true estimate, 
 and the so-called science which ignores 
 them is simply a pseudo-science. 
 
 » C. R. Brown, Faith and Health, p. 95. 
 
SO-CALLED 93 
 
 That now and then one whom an 
 adept in medical science has pro- 
 nounced to be suffering from a serious 
 ailment should seem to be permanently 
 cured under Christian Science treat- 
 ment affords obviously no sure proof 
 that this treatment is ever adequate 
 for organic disease, since medical 
 science does not claim that the diag- 
 nosis even of the skilled physician is 
 invariably correct. It is quite possible 
 that in individual instances it should 
 result in a too unfavorable judgment 
 of the patient^s condition. 
 
 By granting that, within a cer- 
 tain range, actual cures may be 
 wrought through the agency of Chris- 
 tian Science practitioners, we make no 
 real approach to conceding the truth 
 of Mrs. Eddy's system. These cures 
 no more prove the vahdity of her 
 rehgio-medical dogmatics than the sim- 
 ilar cures wrought at mediaeval shrines 
 prove the presence of a supernatural 
 
94 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 virtue in the relics of the saints. So 
 far as an efficacious ground is con- 
 cerned, the cures of the practitioners 
 belong in a common class with those 
 still wrought at Lourdes or at the 
 sanctuary of Saint Anne de Beaupre. 
 In all these instances we have illustra- 
 tion of what the psychological factor 
 can accomphsh; that is, of what can 
 be done by agencies and conditions 
 which are specially stimulating to the 
 hope, expectation, and faith of the 
 patient. That in deahng with certain 
 forms of functional as opposed to 
 organic ailments this factor can be 
 operated with good effect is com- 
 monly recognized by medical science, 
 and had begun to be recognized be- 
 fore Mrs. Eddy appeared upon the 
 scene. The founder of Christian 
 Science made no real discovery. She 
 simply (following Quimby) laid hold of 
 a truth which, in this age of indus- 
 trious psychological and physical re- 
 
SO-CALLED 95 
 
 search, was bound to come to its 
 own, and surrounded it with a mass 
 of fantastic, exaggerated, and mu- 
 tually contradictory assertions. To 
 take her shallow and pretentious 
 scheme, and make it a substitute for 
 genuine medical science, with its dem- 
 onstrated efficacy to ameliorate suf- 
 fering, to master various forms of 
 disease, and to arrest contagion, is 
 little less than a sacrilege against sane 
 intelligence. 
 
 One more consideration enters into 
 a fair estimate of the healing art of 
 Christian Science. Not only is its 
 power for good limited; there is in it a 
 certain intrinsic tendency to mischief. 
 It directs its votaries to create for 
 themselves a fooFs paradise, from 
 which all sickness, sin, pain, and death 
 are barred out by mental fiat. Now, 
 it may be possible in many individual 
 instances to follow out this prescrip- 
 tion temporarily. A man may think 
 
96 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 away all that is afflictive and ex- 
 perience a kind of exaltation above all 
 mortal ills for a time. But realities 
 are stubborn things. To mentally re- 
 peat the equation, ^ ^Accident, sickness, 
 sin, disease, pain, and death are equal 
 to zero," does not make them equal to 
 zero. They are here and have to be 
 reckoned with. They come right up 
 to the door of the fictitious paradise in 
 which a man thinks to intrench him- 
 self, and no lock or bolt will keep 
 them out. To negate them as baseless 
 phantoms, to keep on negating them 
 year in and year out, must involve a 
 decided strain, and a strain that in the 
 more delicately organized is likely to 
 be perilous to mental balance. It is 
 enough to make the head swim to be 
 under requisition to deny persistently 
 the existence of the most obtrusive 
 reahties, to keep on turning the world 
 into a ghost world, a concatenation of 
 empty illusions. Through this feature 
 
SO-CALLED 97 
 
 Christian Science teaching and prac- 
 tice are intrinsically fitted to aggravate 
 liabiKties to insanity. The period of 
 trial has been too short to give ade- 
 quate illustration of the given tend- 
 ency, but it is logically in the phase of 
 the system upon which we have been 
 commenting; and it finds means of 
 nourishment in another phase. 
 
 As has been noticed, the mind of the 
 founder was fairly obsessed with the 
 notion of the power of mind over 
 mind in an adverse sense. Personal 
 idiosyncrasy may have had something 
 to do with the obsession. But there is 
 a certain basis for this sort of ex- 
 perience in Christian Science postu- 
 lates. If a benevolent direction of 
 thought by the healer has such un- 
 limited efficacy to work benefit, why 
 may not a malevolent direction of 
 thought have a corresponding power to 
 work mischief? Herein a ground of 
 apprehension and uneasiness is pro- 
 
98 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 vided. This may be counteracted in 
 considerable part by the action of the 
 common sense of the general com- 
 munity; but this wholesome outside 
 restraint is not certain to be alto- 
 gether effectual. A liability remains 
 that something of that acute suspicion 
 and horror which afflicted their founder 
 should invade the ranks of Christian 
 Scientists. However, we will not press 
 this point, and content ourselves with 
 urging that an ultra attempt to frame 
 a fictitious paradise, persistently car- 
 ried on, involves a certain hazard to 
 the mental balance of the more deli- 
 cately organized. 
 
 It may be granted that a measure 
 of quietistic teaching, or emphasis on 
 the repose of faith, is adapted to the 
 condition in which people are often 
 found. It serves a good purpose to 
 tell those who have been wrestling 
 with their burdens and difficulties 
 that something besides wrestling is in 
 
SO-CALLED 99 
 
 order; that it is their high privilege 
 to cast their cares upon Him who 
 careth for them, and to rest in the 
 infinite goodness and love. In this 
 hne of procedure the ills of hfe, if not 
 eliminated outright, will be made to 
 lose much of their bitterness, and a 
 serenity of soul will be gained which 
 no self-assertive striving could procure. 
 But who needs to go to Christian 
 Science for a salutary quietism of this 
 sort? It is a commonplace of ordinary 
 Christianity, a remedy for overanxiety 
 which the gospel has ever been offering 
 to the burdened and the troubled. 
 The enjoyment of its benefit is in no 
 wise dependent on saddling oneself with 
 Mrs. Eddy's arbitrary and fantastic 
 dogmas. 
 
 A word will not be out of place on 
 the merits of Mrs. Eddy's system in 
 relation to young subjects. Medical 
 authority has often remarked on the 
 signal unfitness of the methods of 
 
100 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 Christian Science to meet the physical 
 needs of infants. What about the 
 adaptation of its pecuHar tenets to the 
 moral needs of children and youth? 
 Take such maxims as the following: 
 '^Man is incapable of sin'^; ^^God would 
 never impart an element of evil, and 
 man possesses nothing which he has 
 not derived from God''; 'There is no 
 sin, for God's kingdom is everywhere 
 and supreme.'^ Will it tend to put 
 good fiber into the consciences of the 
 young to be familiarized with such 
 propositions? Christian Scientists in 
 general have come out of communions 
 which repeat the bibhcal emphasis on 
 the reality, turpitude, and genuine 
 demerit of sin; and the benefit of their 
 antecedent training has been carried 
 with them. How will it be with a 
 generation that from the start is 
 taught to regard sin as nothing more 
 than one of the illusions of the mortal 
 mind which itself is declared to be in 
 
SO-CALLED 101 
 
 reality nonexistent? Will there not be 
 a liability that the theoretical anti- 
 nomianism will result in practical 
 antinomianism or indifference to moral 
 distinctions? Plainly, if a different 
 outcome is provided for, it will be on 
 the score of expedients quite other 
 than the instilling of the tenets of 
 '^divine metaphysics^' as taught by 
 Mrs. Eddy. 
 
 We conclude that the claims of 
 Christian Science, as a heahng art, 
 ought to be cut down to a modest 
 residuum, while the high pretensions of 
 Mrs. Eddy as the founder of a final 
 rehgio-medical system are utterly base- 
 less. It does not follow, however, that 
 we think of Christian Science as des- 
 titute of all competency to maintain 
 and advance itself. The money in- 
 terest of the movement, so conspicuous 
 from the start, may be expected to 
 work as an efficient spur to propagand- 
 ism, so long as anything like a compact 
 
102 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 organization is maintained. And new 
 recruits will not fail to come forward, 
 so long as there are people whose 
 slender logic permits them to suppose 
 that heaUng expedients, which the 
 author of Science and Health was at 
 length compelled practically to admit 
 to be of limited efficacy, and which are 
 essentially paralleled in numerous his- 
 toric connections, can prove that 
 Christian Science as taught by the 
 founder is a divinely inspired and 
 authoritative system. 
 

 Date 
 
 Due 
 
 
 ^ -&'' 
 
 13 
 
 
 
 ^ ' ' , 
 
 
 
 
 ".■-, 
 
 
 
 
 Mp:-- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
BP955 .S54 
 
 Christian science so-called; 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00010 5199