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What is
Christian
Science ?
BY
M. M. MANGASARIAN
In this brochure the author makes
an earnest endeavour to understand
Christian Science and define its
mission. He scrupulously verifies all
his citations and references, and
appeals to the judgment of those
who are willing^ to hear both sides of
the question.
LONDON ; WATTS k CO.
WHAT IS CHKISTIAN
SCIENCE P
ISSUED FOR
THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCUTION, LIMITED
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WHAT IS CHRISTIAN
SCIENCE ?
BY
M. M MANGASARIAN
London :
WATTS & CO.,
JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.4
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£/^ <-
. « . .
First impression, September, 1922
CONTENTS
PAGE
Christl\n Science ..... 9
Why I Discuss Christian Science - - - 10
Mrs. Eddy's Mentality - - - - 10
** Mortal Mind" ----- 17
Mrs. Eddy's Prayer ..... 21
Is Christl^ Science Scientific ? - - - 22
Is Christian Science Christun ? - - - 23
Arrested Mentation . ... - 27
Do Christian Scientists Use Their Minds? - - 29
Examples of "Reasoning" - - - - 81
Do Christlaj^ Scientists Practise What They Preach ? 36
Christian Science Cures - - - - 43
Christun Science Testimonials - - - 45
Get- Well- Quick - - - - - 46
Christian Science Fashionable - - - 48
Christian Science and Witchcraft - - - 49
Marriage and Death in Christla.n Science - - 51
" Suffer it to Be So Now " - - - - 52
The New Autocracy - - - - - 53
The Menace of Christian Science - - - 56
Christian Science and Morals - - - 58
5174o3
FROM MRS. EDDY'S WRITINGS
" The blood, heart, lungs, brain, have nothing to
do with life."
"The daily ablutions of an infant are no more
natural than taking a fish out of water and covering
it with dirt would be natural."
" Christian Science is more safe and potent than
any other sanitary method."
" The condition of food, stomach, bowels, clothing,
etc., is of no serious import to your child."
" Gender is also a quality or characteristic of
mind, not of matter."
" Until it is learned that generation (birth) rests
on no sexual basis, let marriage continue."
" To abolish marriage and maintain generation is
possible in (Christian) science."
What is Christian Science?
*' You do not understand Christian Science" is the usual reply
of the followers of Mrs. Eddy to any one disputing their
claims, or trying to point out the many inconsistencies in
their creed. If it is impossible to understand Christian
Science, how does it expect to propagate itself ? To answer
that one must accept the doctrine before one can understand
it would be like asking a man to see before he opens his eyes,
or to think after he has made up his mind. It is just as
useless to try to understand Christian Science after it has
been accepted as true as it would be for a judge to examine
the evidence after a verdict has been pronounced. And if
Christian Scientists can understand the beliefs which they
reject, why may not other people have intelligence and
honesty enough to understand Christian Science without
believing in it ?
But can a person who is not a mathematician under-
stand or discuss profitably the intricate problems of mathe-
matics ? No ; hence no one but a Christian Scientist may
discuss its doctrines and interpret its metaphysics. Neither
has that defence any value. We do not have to be expert
mathematicians to know that twice two make four. It is
possible to detect an error in an example of addition,
multiplication, or subtraction presented by the greatest
mathematician without possessing equal knowledge or
ability. Mrs. Eddy may be more advanced in metaphysics
than any of her critics, but twice two make four in *' Divine
science " as well as in human science. Square your state-
ments with the facts, and you disarm criticism. Ignore,
suppress, or tamper with the facts, and you will have the
universe against you.
9
10 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE?
Why I Discuss Christian Science
If asked why I devote time and labour to the discussion
of such seemingly foolish propositions as those propounded
by Mrs. Eddy, my defence is that I am very much interested
in the people who accept Christian Science, and would like
to be of service to them, even though they may hold me
and my motives in derision. Then, again, I feel that if we
stand idly by while the Christian Scientists are concentrating
all their efforts, sparing neither time nor money to spread
their doctrine, we may wake up some morning to find that
all our institutions — newspapers, courts, schools, etc. — have
passed under the control of Mrs. Eddy's followers. That,
in my opinion, would be a national menace.
If the teachings of Christian Science prevail, there will
come into prominence the type of mentality which will
dispense with all forms of inquiry, and accept for authority
the " say-so " of a book, a man, or a woman as all-sufficient
and final.
The passive mind easily becomes the plaything or instru-
ment of every kind of imposture — political, economic, or
religious. Non-resistance will prove the death of free
institutions. I am opposed to Christian Science because I
am opposed to the least departure from sanity. I have no
other motive in this propaganda against the new cult.
Whatever undermines the morale of the nation or is hurtful
to the free and rational development of humanity should be
combated again and again until it ceases to be a menace.
Mrs. Eddy's Mentality
The founder of Christian Science was, indeed, one of
the busiest women of her day. She was preacher, writer,
teacher, missionary, organizer, manager, etc. But even a
superficial reading of her books will show that her activity
resembled that of children at play rather than of men at
work. Mrs. Eddy's mind displayed all the qualities and
defects of primitive man. Though incessantly active, she
followed in all her mental efforts the line of least resist-
MRS. EDDY'S MENTALITY 11
ance. Children are never at rest of their own will ; they
run and romp almost continually ; but it is the activity ol
play, not of work, which they enjoy. To work requires
concentration and effort in a definite direction, and sub-
mission to rules and regulations ; while in play one is at
liberty to follow one's own fancy, moving in any direction
and at any speed one pleases. Again, the worker is
expected to show results ; the player, on the other hand,
though equally busy, keeps going round and round, or back
and forth, just for the pleasure of being in motion.
Mrs. Eddy had the child's fondness for activity and the
child's dislike for work. She rebelled against discipline.
Rules and restrictions were as distasteful to her as to
children who have been allowed to ** grow up " without
discipline, while logic and reason meant no more to her
than they would to primitive man.
Science and Health is a book consisting largely of extra-
ordinary claims put forth with the most provoking indiffer-
ence to the universally accepted rules of evidence, and with
an abandon suggesting that of the steed who has thrown
his rider. If her readers ask for proofs, she points to the
authority of her name. Has she not received a revelation ?
Is she not '* the Comforter " whom Jesus promised to send
into the world ? And if there are obscure passages in her
writings, it is not because these are really "dark," but
because there is not enough light in the eyes of the readers
of her books. This free-and-easy method carries her
through seven hundred pages of her ** masterpiece," Science
and Healthy without encountering the least obstacle or being
checked for an instant by a single dijBQculty. Writing was
like play to her, and sentences and phrases flow copiously
and swell into a veritable flood in her pages, because what
satisfied her was that she could say so much, and not
whether what she said had any basis in fact.
In the Preface to Science and Healthy Mrs. Eddy, in order
to prove the usefulness of medical knowledge, quotes the
example of the antediluvians who knew nothing of drugs,
and yet some of whom lived to be nearly a thousand years
12 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
old. Mrs. Eddy makes this statement with as little concern
as a boy tosses a ball. The reasoning that men were
healthier and lived longer before the Deluge because there
were then no physicians, whose presence in our times
has shortened human life, may do for the '* child-mind,"
but is it permitted to a full-grown person to make such
careless use of his or her faculties? How does Mrs. Eddy
know that the antediluvians would not have lived longer if
they could also have had the services of trained and skilful
physicians ? It would be just as reasonable to assert that
there would have been no Deluge had there been doctors to
prevent it, as to say that the antediluvians owed their
longevity to the lack of them. Without caring to make sure
of her data, or to look into the truth of the statement that
there was a flood, or that before this terrible downpour men
lived to be a thousand years old, Mrs. Eddy accepts the
rumour of the tradition as if it were a demonstrated fact,
and proves by it, to her own satisfaction at least, the utter
uselessness and positive menace to the human race of
medical science. What an argument and what a conclusion !
.^ I am not accusing Mrs. Eddy of insincerity, but of mental
indolence. Nothing, for example, but a distaste for work
could account for her failure to verify her references in the
following instances, or to supply to her readers the means
of verifying them for themselves. She had to choose
between making assertions and offering proofs, and she
chose the easier of the two. "I have healed Infidels"
(p. 859).^ What were their names ? Where did they live ?
Of what maladies were they healed? "One whom I
rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion in which the senses
had engulphed him " (p. 382). And what sort of a disease
is that, and who was the person suffering from it? "A
little girl who had badly wounded her finger " (p. 237) ;
"A woman whom I cured of consumption" (p. 184); "A
famous naturalist says " (p. 548) ; " One of our ablest
* The quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from Mrs. Eddy's Science
and Health, uith Key to the Scriptures.
MRS. EDDY'S MENTALITY 13
laturalists has said " (p. 553) ; ** It is related that a father "
p. 556), etc., etc. All these stories and illustrations fail
ompletely to impress the inquiring reader, for the simple
eason that Mrs. Eddy did not take the trouble to furnish
he details to render her testimony admissible. In no court
svould such statements as "I heard a man say," or **I
knew some one who heard a man say," or "It has been
3aid by so and so," be accepted as evidence. Very likely
Mrs. Eddy possessed the data, names, addresses, etc., of
the patients and the naturalists she writes about, but she \^ X
was too indolent to reach for her note-book, if she kept one. ^ .;
A.gain, only mental fatigue or sheer indolence can explain r .V
a statement like the following, from which all the important
items which alone could give it force and effectiveness are
left out : —
I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost —
sight and teeth. A woman of eighty-five whom I knew
had a return of sight. Another woman of ninety had new
teeth, incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and one molar. One man
at sixty had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth
without a decaying cavity (p. 247).
Evidently these cases are cited to carry conviction with
the reader of her book ; would it not, then, have greatly
enhanced their evidential value had she made it possible
for her readers to verify their claims ? But how can they
do so when no names or addresses are given ! If Christian
Science does not need demonstration, why cite these cases
of remarkable cures at all ; if it needs demonstration,
why not supply the details necessary to complete the
demonstration 7
** I knew a person," writes again Mrs. Eddy, ** who when
a child adopted the Graham system to cure dyspepsia"
(p. 221) ; and then she proceeds to relate how this led him
to death's door and he was ready to die, ** having exhausted
the skill of the doctors, who kindly informed him that
death was indeed his only alternative," and how ** Christian
Science saved him, and he is now in perfect health without
a vestige of the old complaint" (p. 221). Surely this
fortunate person would have no objection to have his name
14 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE?
announced and his case investigated. Why, then, suppress
his identity ?
Printed in italics at the foot of page xii of Science and
Health will be found the following notice or advertisement: —
The author (Mrs. Eddy) takes no patients, and declines
medical consultation.
The above offers an excellent illustration of the distinction
between work and play. Mrs. Eddy, with the mentality she
possessed, found it easier to compose phrases and make
vague statements about past cures than actually to grapple
with ** patients " or to take part in " medical consultation,"
whatever that may mean in Christian Science. After
repeatedly asserting that the only way to demonstrate the
truth of her science is by healing the sick, she herself
positively declines to give this demonstration. It is really
puzzling. Here is a woman who had discovered the only
power that can heal the sick as nothing else can, and no
other person understands the modus operandi of this power
better or even as well as she does, and yet she will take no
patients — that is, she will under no circumstances apply
her remedy, however urgent the need for it may be !
Some people might be led to think that Mrs. Eddy's
refusal to practise healing was due to her fear that she
might not always succeed, which would greatly diminish
her prestige and prejudice the public against her discovery.
To claim, as we have explained elsewhere, that Mrs. Eddy's
motive in refusing to heal the sick herself was that she
might have more time and strength for matters of higher
importance would imply that she was not strong enough to
do both. But would not such an admission prove fatal to
the claim that all is divine Mind, and that in divine Mind
there is no sin, sickness, fatigue, or limitation of any kind ?
The husband of Mrs. Eddy died; that was an event
calling for an explanation from the discoverer of an unfail-
ing remedy for all maladies who happened to be the widow
of the deceased. How could any one so closely related to
Mrs. Eddy, and taking her treatment, succumb to sickness
MRS. EDDY'S MENTALITY 15
of any kind ? Mrs. Eddy looked about for an answer to
that question. **My husband died from the effects of
arsenical poisoning mentally administered " was her first
effort at self-defence.
But Mrs. Eddy was quick to realize that she could ill
afford to admit that an imaginary dose of arsenic mentally
administered could deprive a Christian Scientist of his life,
for she hastened to explain further that unfortunately
** circumstances debarred me from taking hold of my hus-
band's case." ** Circumstances," then, killed her husband,
since had she not been debarred by them she would have
come to his rescue with her ** divine " science and prevented
his death. To further exonerate and defend herself she is
inclined to blame her husband a little. *'My husband
declared himself perfectly capable of carrying himself
through, and I was so entirely absorbed in business that I
permitted him to try, and when I awakened to the danger
it was too late." Now we know why Christian Science
failed in this particular case. Mrs. Eddy was too busy,
and she awoke to the seriousness of her husband's condition
too late. Besides, the patient himself believed he was quite
able to cope with the trouble without his wife's help. In
short, ** circumstances " proved too much for Christian
Science. That is why Mrs. Eddy's husband died.
The more Mrs. Eddy explained, the more she had to
explain. If Mr. Eddy was murdered by means of mesmeric
poison (whatever that may be), mentally administered by
an absent practitioner who, Mrs. Eddy believed, was one of
her own apostate disciples — that is, if some one could from
a distance kill her husband — what prevented her, by the
same absent treatment, and without taking any time from
her other duties, from defeating the work of the mal-
practitioner by a thought or two of her own? If this could
not be done, and since there is a possibility of other divine
healers being so entirely absorbed in business as to neglect
their patients, had we not better hold on to the doctors a
little longer, at least until Christian Science has become a
match for ** circumstances, etc." ? And if a healer equipped
16 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE?
with " divine " science can have more to do than he or she
has the strength to attend to, in what sense is ** divine "
science more resourceful than plain, ordinary science ?
But there is more to come. Mrs. Eddy declares that one
of her rejected students tried to kill her in the same
way as her husband had been killed. But he could not,
** because I instantly gave myself the same treatment that
I would give in a case of arsenical poisoning (mentally
administered), and so I recovered, just the same as I could
have caused my husband to recover had I taken the case in
time." There is no such thing as failure with Mrs. Eddy.
Her husband would never have died had she given him the
same treatment as she gave herself. Of course, years later
Mrs. Eddy died too ; but there, again, *' circumstances "
must have proved too formidable for Christian Science,
otherwise both the Eddys might be living still.
The founder of this popular cult believed that she had
now explained the death of her husband to the satisfaction
of her faithful flock. She certainly could have saved
Mr. Eddy's life had she not been too busy with other matters,
or ** too late " in taking hold of his case. To prove this she
goes on to give examples of her wonderful powers, as will
be seen by the following : '* Only a few days ago I disposed
of a tumour in twenty-four hours that the doctors had said
must be removed by the knife. I changed the course of
the mind to counteract the effect of the disease " ; and of
course the malignant tumour took wings and flew away,
twenty- four hours of Christian Science being all it could
stand. It was really unfortunate that so powerful a healer
was prevented by pressure of "business" from lending a
thought to her sick husband. It was not because she did
not want to help him, nor because her *' divine " science was
not equal to his trouble, but because of ** circumstances."
We hope that in the near future some advanced practitioner
of Christian Science will discover a cure for that terrible
malady called ** circumstances," which reduced Mrs. Eddy
to impotency at the bedside of a dying husband ; a cure
which will be as effective against ** circumstances " as
"MORTAL MIND" 17
against tumours, cancer, etc. In comparison with such
sophistry or make-believe, how refreshing is the intellectual
honesty which sees true and aims straight.
" Mortal Mind '»
Mrs. Eddy's efforts to explain what she calls *' mortal
mind " give us an even better insight into her mentality.
Though constantly denouncing mortal mind as the source
of all human ills, the author of Christian Science makes no
serious attempt to account for its origin. The fundamentals
of Christian Science as expounded by its author are summed
up in the following statements : —
God is All in AIL
God is Good, God is Mind.
God Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
Life, God, omnipotent good deny death, evil, sin, disease
(p. 113).
The important deduction which the founder of Christian
Science draws from these assertions is that sin, suffering,
sickness, and death do not exist, since there is no room for
them in God, who is All in All, or in a universe where
Mind is the sole reality and ** Nothing is matter." Our
experience and our senses may testify to the contrary, but,
replies Mrs. Eddy, *' I find that God is true, and every
(mortal) man a liar" (p. 113).
In the opinion of Christian Scientists, that ought to end
the discussion. ** God is true," never mind what men may
say. But what is the proof that Mrs. Eddy is speaking for
the Deity ? Calvin and Mohammed too claimed to speak
for the Deity.
If God is the All, whence comes mortal mind ? The All
plus mortal mind would give us more than the All. God
cannot be the all unless he is immortal and mortal mind
at the same time. It is true that Mrs. Eddy denies reality
to mortal mind. By mortal mind she means false beliefs
about God and man. But how did false beliefs originate
in a universe where God or Good is the only reality ?
B
18 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
Mrs. Eddy's efforts to make room for mortal mind in her
perfect world are really amusing, as will be seen by what
follows.
Man is defined as " God's spiritual idea, individual,
perfect, eternal " (p. 115). She explains further that,
while man is not God, he is nevertheless made in God's
image, and is therefore God-like. The distinction between
God and man, according to Mrs. Eddy, is one of quantity
and not of quality. Jesus Christ was not God, she writes ;
he was only '' the ideal of God, now and for ever, here
and everywhere" (p. 361). It is true Jesus said, "I and
my father are one"; but, explains Mrs. Eddy, what is
meant is one in quality, not in quantity. Jesus was God in
the sense that a drop of water is the ocean, or a ray of light
is the sun — in essence, not in size. In that sense man too
is God, or a little god. Both man and Jesus possess all the
qualities of divinity, but in limited proportions.
"The science of being," our prophetess goes on to say,
" reveals man as perfect, even as the Father is perfect,
because the Soul and Mind of the spiritual man is God "
(p. 302), but in quality only, since '* man is in a degree as
perfect as the Mind that forms him" (p. 337). It follows
that if man were God-like in quantity as well as in quality
— that is, if he were not undersized or underweighted
spiritually, there would have been no mortal mind, and
therefore no sin or sickness in the world. But who clipped
man's divinity, or made him an underling? In a perfect
world how does man happen to be a dwarf ?
Forgetting her own statement, that man is not so
" bulky " as God, Mrs. Eddy insists that, as there is no
error or sickness in God, there can be none in man, who is
"God's spiritual idea." Yet, in order to justify Christian
Science healing, she is compelled to make a further dis-
tinction between God and man. God is one, but there are
two kinds of men — the spiritual and the mortal, and it is
the latter who need the high-priced services of healers.
" God is not corporeal mortals are corporeal " (p. 116).
If we ask Mrs. Eddy how man could possess a body and yet
"MORTAL MIND" 19
be '* the reflection of God," who is incorporeal, she replies
that this body of which she speaks is only a make-believ&;«=s;"
body; the real man is all soul, as is the Deity. "The
description of man as both material and spiritual is the
Pandora box from which all ills have gone forth. Matter
is a fiction " (pp. 170-1). From which it follows that man
is as incorporeal as God ; but the former thinks he has a
body, and hence the sufferings from which the Deity is
immune. "Mistaking his origin and nature, man believes
himself to be combined matter and spirit " (p. 171). This,
Mrs. Eddy considers, is as great an absurdity as to think
of Christ as both God and Devil (Belial and Christ). How,
then, did man come to have a body ? He has none ; he
has only come to think he has one. And how did that
happen? "The human mortal mind, by an inevitable
perversion, makes all things start from the lowest." That
is the way, according to the author of Science and Healthy
in which man came to believe in matter. This false belief
is "mortal mind" (pp. 172-89), the Dragon which the
St. George of New England offers to slay for what she
considers a moderate price.
Let it be observed that Mrs. Eddy attributes the exist-
ence or the belief in the existence of " mortal mind " to the
"inevitable perversion" of the human mind. Mark the
use of the word " inevitable." Does she mean that " mortal
mind " — that is to say, sin, suffering, and death — were
predestined ? If she does not mean that, what made man's
departure from truth, or his " perversion," inevitable ?
Was there another power, greater than the All, who pulled
man down into error? And how can Christian Science, if it
could not prevent the " perversion " which called into exist-
ence the worst of all as well as the parent of all diseases —
" mortal mind " — be a remedy against the innumerable ills
which flow from it ?
In pronouncing "mortal mind" or the "perversion"
which called it into existence inevitable, Mrs. Eddy has
virtually created a power greater than her "All in All,"
since the latter could not prevent the catastrophe.
20 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
Once more : the reply that man is God-like in every
respect except in size, and that the body is a myth, does
not help Mrs. Eddy's argument in the least. Real or
unreal, the human body, or the belief in it, which causes
so much suffering, should have no place in a system founded
upon the dogmatic declaration that all is Mind, and all is
Good, and all is God. The question remains : "Why did Mrs.
Eddy make room in this perfect universe for the serpent —
mortal mind? As already suggested, without this -false
belief in materiality Christian Science would have been a
useless discovery. Mrs. Eddy was debarred by her creed
from admitting the existence of matter ; hence she compro-
mised on *' a belief in matter," which works just as great a
havoc as real matter. This arrangement has given to her
army of Christian Science practitioners many (imaginary)
ills to heal. Like Don Quixote, Christian Scientists to-day
go forth to do battle, even though for enemies they have
nothing more formidable than windmills. Physicians treat
what they believe to be real maladies ; Christian Scientists
combat maladies which they say do not exist — that is to
''""^say, they fight phantoms.
Not only does the author of Science and Health utterly
fail, as all metaphysicians before her have failed, to account
for the origin of evil or mortal mind, in a universe created
and governed by Infinite Goodness, but her doctrine that
man, like the Deity, is free from sickness, etc., involves her
in new contradictions. For example, on page 204 (1910
edition) Mrs. Eddy says that ** in Christian Science it can
never be said that man has a mind of his own, distinct
from God, the ALL-Mind " ; and more than once she has
asserted that man "has neither birth nor death" (p. 244).
Of course, this is no more than a theory; but, even as
such, Mrs. Eddy makes only a limited application of it —
that is to say, she does not follow her theory to its logical
consequences. If man has no mind of his own, but is a
replica of the Divine mind, why did the Deity make so
many copies of himself ? Was this self-multiplication of
the Divine mind from necessity or from choice? If the
MRS. EDDY'S PRAYER 21
former, then necessity was greater than the Deity; if
the latter, then man was an accident, since the Deity
could just as well not have created him at all, being free to
do as he pleased. And if man is a copy of the Deity,
why did He reproduce himself more freely among the
inferior races — the blacks and the yellows — than among
the white peoples?
Again, if man has no mind distinct from the Divine, the
All-Mind, he ought to have all the attributes of God. God
is painless, sinless, deathless ; and so is man, according
to Mrs. Eddy. But why stop there? God is omniscient;
is man omniscient too ? Then why does he go to school ?
God is almighty; is man almighty? Then why does he
have to use tools or ask for help ? God is omnipresent ;
why is man dependent upon the means of transportation
to go from place to place ? How, then, does man, who is
not distinct from the All- Mind — God, come to possess only
one or two of the Divine attributes ?
A
)
Mrs. Eddy's Prayer
It is reported of Mrs. Eddy that every morning as she
arose from her bed she repeated the following prayer : ** Clad
in the panoply of Divine love, human hatred cannot reach
me." Her followers have expressed great admiration for
this, the *' Mother's daily prayer." But to be forever
thinking of human hatred, and to live in constant dread of
it, shows a broken-down mind. Only a person haunted by
the fear of human hatred would beg daily to be delivered
from it. If on getting up every morning a man were to
say, ** To-day my liver shall not hurt me," one would have
reason to conclude that he was suffering from liver trouble.
To deny human hatred every morning is also proof positive ^-
of an alarmed conscience. Macbeth saw Banquo's ghost
everywhere and dared it with his "avaunt" and "hence,"
even as Mrs. Eddy, seeing so much of human hatred, ran
under cover of "the Divine panoply" the first thing every
morning. Is that the way to prove that " ah is mind," and
that there is nothing to fear ?
22 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
Is Christian Science Scientific?
Two words spell the name of this so-called ** health
religion" — ** Christian" and " Science." Let us see if there
is anything scientific about Christian Science. To begin
with, men of science never try to suppress inquiry, because
inquiry only helps to advance their cause, which can
advance in no other way.
Science is investigation. Eddyism, on the other hand,
is a dogma.
Science is knowledge, verified, classified, and placed
within the reach of all. Eddyism is a copyrighted cult.
Science is free ; in science we do not have to secure per-
mission before observing, stud3'ing, inventing, or teaching.
But Mrs. Eddy reads out of church the independent thinker
or practitioner.
Science is open to new truths. Christian Science claims
to be a final revelation. For any man or woman to profess
to be the custodian of the last word on religion, and then
to copyright the same, is not only the negation of all
science, which means increasing research and unhampered
discovery, but it is also the most objectionable kind of
monopoly.
Science always accepts truth for authority, and never
authority for truth. Christian Science, on the contrary^
rests on the sole authority of Mrs. Eddy's Science and
Health, ivith Key to the Scriptures.
The fundamental difference between Mrs. Eddy and a
scientist like Charles Darwin, for example, is that, while
the latter confines himself to such statements as are
investigable, Mrs. Eddy puts forth claims which defy
investigation. Let me give an example. The founder of
Christian Science solemnly declares that even the price she
should charge for a course of instruction in metaphysics
was dictated to her by the Deity himself: ''When God
impelled me to set a price on Christian Science — mind
healing — I was led to name §300 as the price." And she
adds : " This amount greatly troubled me. I shrank from
IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE "CHRISTIAN"? 23
asking it, but was finally led by a strange providence to
accept this fee." It must have been a strange providence,
indeed ! But can a claim of that nature be verified ? If
we desired to make sure whether the Supreme Being, with
the destinies of ten thousand worlds upon His mind, found /
the time to fix also the dividend rate upon Mrs. Eddy's
investment in Christian Science, how would he go about
it? How shall we make sure that the Deity did not, on the
contrary, plead with her to be satisfied with a more moderate
profit ?
While in Salt Lake City I enjoyed the opportunity of an
interview with a prominent Mormon. Finding me willing
to listen, the gentleman told me how Joseph Smith had
received a visit from the angels who delivered to him the
originals from which were copied the articles of the Mormon
belief. When I expressed a desire to see the "heavenly"
documents, my informant replied that Joseph Smith had
returned them to the angels. Is such a statement investi-
gable? And what is not investigable lies outside the
province of science. Neither Mrs. Eddy nor Joseph Smith
can be put in the same class with Charles Darwin, who
advances no propositions which forbid verification.
Is Christian Science "Christian"?
Eddyism is no more Christian than it is scientific.
Between the teachings of Jesus and those of the Boston
lady there are irreconcilable differences.
It is the claim of practitioners in Christian Science that
they are following the example and applying the method of
the founder of Christianity in the healing of the sick.
This is one of the " telling " arguments used by Christian
Science lecturers in their appeals for converts. But if it
can be shown that the method of Jesus was in many respects
radically different from that prescribed by Mrs. Eddy, the
claim that her religion is founded upon the teachings and
practice of Jesus falls to the ground. In a pamphlet issued
by the Christian Science Publication Society and copy-
righted we read as follows ; " Jesus proved for all tinie and
24 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
for all Christendom that the origin of disease was mental^
and He healed it with mental medicine .'' Can that state-
ment be squared with the practice of Jesus as we find it
described in the Gospels ? The evangelist St. John relates
the cure of the man born blind as follows: "When he
[Jesus] had thus spoken, He spat on the ground and made
clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind
man with the clay and said unto him, ' Go, wash in the
pool of Siloam.' " Is that the Christian Science way of
healing the sick? Do Christian Scientists use clay or
spittle ? Do they " anoint " the sick with salve of any kind ?
Do they counsel bathing or washing for curative purposes ?
Moreover, Jesus, in reply to the question of His apostles
as to the cause of the man's blindness, clearly states that
the origin of this man's disease was not in human error or
mentality : —
And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin,
this man, or his parents, that ho was born blind ?
Jesus answered. Neither hath this man sinned, nor his
parents ; but that the works of God should be made
manifest in him. (John ix, 2-3.)
The meaning of this text is that the man was born blind,
not as a punishment for his or his parents' sin, nor because
of mortal mind, but that through him God may be glorified.
Could that text be quoted to show that blindness is a
*' mental" disease caused by unbelief or selfishness? or
could it be quoted to prove that the man was not born
blind, but only thought he was blind? Where is the
evidence, then, that ** Jesus proved for all time and for all
Christendom that * disease w^as caused by mortal mind,'
and that * mental medicine ' was the only remedy he
used?"
Was Jesus in the habit of using words to mislead his
hearers, of saying things the real meaning of which would
remain hidden for nearly twenty centuries — until Mrs. Eddy
could place her key (from three to six dollars a key) upon
the market?
The evangelist St. Mark gives another instance of Jesus's
IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ''CHRISTIAN"? 25
method of healing which is again totally different from
Mrs. Eddy's : —
And they bring unto him one that was deaf and had an
impediment in his speech, and they beseech him to put his
hand upon him.
And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his
fingers into his ears, and he spit and touched his tongue.
Will the Christian Science healers explain the functions
of the ''hand," the ''fingers," and the "spit" in "mental
medicine"? If it be answered that Jesus resorted to
material means to illustrate the power of the spirit, etc., it
would follow that material means may be used to advantage,
and that there is no such feud between matter and mind
as the Eddyites proclaim. X
Many other texts could be quoted to show that Jesus used
material means. He touched the bier, he laid his hands on
the patient, which is the kind of manipulation vehemently
denounced by Mrs. Eddy in her comments on mesmerism.
The " touch " so frequent in the miracles performed by
Jesus is downright heresy in Mrs. Eddy's system of healing.
Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick
with divers diseases brought them unto him ; and he laid
his hands on every one of them. (Luke iv, 40.)
Again, Jesus recommends to his disciples dieting by way
of abstinence from food — that is, fasting — for the healing
of obstinate diseases. Evidently he believed that dieting
increased one's healing power.
In the same pamphlet published and copyrighted by the
Christian Science Publication Society, the author, William
R. Rathbon, member of the Board of Lectureship of the
First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, writes : " He
[Jesus] gave himself no concern about physical symptoms.
He cared little about what the sick man had been
eating, but much about what he had been thinking." In
the New Testament, however, nearly every patient's symp-
toms are described, to which Jesus listened without a word
of protest and with apparent consent. Had the evangelists
believed, as the Christian Science lecturers teach, that
26 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
disease is purely mental, they would not have gone into
details in describing physical symptoms.
"And a certain woman, which had an issue oi blood
twelve years" (Mark v, 25.) Does not that describe the
nature and duration, as well as the physical effects, of the
woman's disease?
**Lord, have mercy upon my son, for he is a lunatic"
(Matt, xvii, 15).
"And one of the multitude said, Master, I have brought
unto thee my son"; and then the father proceeds to
describe the symptoms of his son's malady: "He foameth
and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away " (Mark
ix, 17).
In all these cases there was not a word of rebuke from
the great healer because of the symptoms described.
Jesus himself, on one occasion, asked for certain physical
details before proceeding to heal the patient : —
And he [Jesus] asked his father [the father of the sick
youth], How long is it ago since this came unto him ?
(Mark ix, 21.)
What difference did it make when or how the disease
was contracted if it is true that " Jesus proved for all time
and for all Christendom that the origin of disease was
mental, and he healed it with mental medicine "? Perhaps
the motive for representing Jesus as indifferent to the
physical condition of his patient is to excuse the Christian
Science practitioner for his ignorance of the human body and
his contempt for physical science.
But the most irreconcilable difference between Jesua
Christ and Mary Baker Eddy is in the spirit in which they
performed their miracles. Jesus does not appear to have
had any financial schemes in his head. He tells his
followers to give freely the power which they have them-
selves freely received. The idea of taking money for a cure,
or charging a large sum for the purpose of encouraging
appreciation for his gifts, would have shocked the Jesus of
the Gospels. The mere suggestion that some day a woman
would copyright and commercialize this " divine " power
ARRESTED MENTATION 27
would have made him indignant beyond expression. It is
impossible to believe that the Jesus who said, ** Get you no
gold, no silver, nor brass, neither two coats, nor shoes,"
and also, ''Freely ye received, freely give," could have the
remotest sympathy with a woman who not only sells what
she calls ** the power of God," but has also secured by legal
procedure "a corner" on it. Mrs. Eddy's religion, then,
is no more Christian than it is scientific. Had she been
dealing in food products instead of in religion, the use of
a false label would have made her liable to prosecution.
Arrested Mentation
Perhaps the term which best describes the thinking
which leads so many to accept Mrs. Eddy's teaching as
both scientific and Christian is what the psychologists call
** arrested mentation." The majority of people reason
admirably up to a certain point, and then they suddenly
come to a full stop. Having followed the right path to
a considerable distance, they then deliberately refuse to
follow it further. To speak more plainly, there are many
people who reason correctly enough on some subjects, but
on other subjects they manifest a credulity beyond belief.
The Moslem, for instance, uses his reason against the
claims of every religion but his own. The Christian
Scientist argues like a trained logician against all alien
cults, but when it is a question of his own faith he bids his
reason to hush. For example, he observes, accurately
enough, as we all do, that the mind frequently creates the
conditions of the body. A man may at times think
himself sick, or he may think himself into health. The
will, too, is a factor to be reckoned with. The truth of the
saying, "Where there's a will there's away," has more than
once been demonstrated. In the same way, we all admit,
since experience compels it, that the greater thoughts or
sensations often crowd out of the mind the lesser ones.
That is an axiom. If I am suffering from a toothache, the
sudden appearance of a burglar in my room, pointing
28 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
a revolver at me, will in all probability make me forget my
J- toothache instantly. The cavity or the affected nerve which
caused my pain is as real as ever, but for the time being I
have a more intense sensation elsewhere in my system which
renders me quite oblivious to the comparatively lesser pain.
Within certain limits and in connection with certain
maladies this principle— namely, the creating of a more
powerful emotion in the mind than the one which is
absorbing attention— could be, and is, utilized with thera-
peutic results. For people who worry, who imagine things,
a complete diversion is usually all the medicine needed.
So far, so well.
But the Christian Scientists who keep their eyes open
to the evidences of the mind controlling the body, and
know very well how to use these as arguments, shut their
eyes completely to the equally convincing proofs of the
power of the body over the mind. Hunger or insomnia, if
prolonged, will put the mind out of commission. Destroy
the optic nerve, and all the mentality in the world cannot
make the eyes see. Stop the full flow of blood into the
brain, and every one of our mental faculties — memory,
perception, judgment, as well as the power of speech —
becomes crippled, if not totally destroyed. Will any sensible
person dispute these statements? The Christian Scientist,
who sees how many things the mind can do, deliberately
ignores the things it cannot do. Can mind, as Herbert
Spencer asks, change a field sown in wheat into a cotton
field ? Can it make a horse into a cow ? Can it transform
an African into an Anglo-Saxon? Can it convert copper
or brass into gold ? Can we, by thinking, make the sun go
around the earth ? At one time people did think that the
Bun moved and that the earth stood still. Did thinking
make it so ?
It would be easier to prove that the mind would be
helpless without the body than that the body would be
helpless without the mind. Take away from man his erect
posture or his hands, and not even the mentality of a
Prometheus would prevent the decline and deterioration of
DO CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS USE THEIR MINDS? 29
the human race. What a wonderful instrument ia the
hand ! It has no doubt contributed much towards the
evohition of man. The thumb meeting each finger sep-
arately, or all four of them combined, enables one to take
hold of things.
The ability to feel things with the hands, to turn them
over, to take them apart, to bring them nearer to the eyes
for a more minute examination, started the mind into action,
just as the same hands, by putting food into the mouth,
started the machinery of life into going. Deprive man ol
his hands, and he will slowly slip to the foot of the ladder^
no matter how much mind he may have. On the other
hand, endow an oyster with the human frame, and in time
it will develop a mind and a civilization. An oyster with
the mind of a Shakespeare would still be an oyster, while
a Shakespeare with the body of an oyster would have no
use for his *' thousand souls." Why do not the converts of
Mrs. Eddy see all sides of a question ? Because they think
so far and no farther.
Do Christian Scientists Use their Minds?
Despite the frequent use of the word **mind," there are
perhaps few people who use their minds less than Mrs.
Eddy's disciples. Mental development is possible only
where there is freedom to think, to experiment, to differ, and
to originate. Are Christian Scientists permitted to think
for themselves ? Are they at liberty to differ or to express
original views? To repeat or imitate another very little^
mind is required. All the Christian Science topics, lessons,
and instructions are issued from headquarters, and the
official readers in the denomination merely repeat these
verbatim. In their Sunday meetings no original or even
individual word is allowed. Of what use, then, is mentality
to a consistent Christian Scientist, who believes that the
truth, the only truth, the final truth, has been discovered
and brought to him once for all ?
In the Kentucky cave of darkness fishes and mice are
30 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
found without eyes. What use could they make of sight ia
the darkness ? Mind may become as superfluous to human
beings who have nothing more to discover as eyes are to
the denizens of Mammoth Cave.
The following from a letter sent to Mrs. Eddy and printed
in Science and Health (p. 615) shows what small use
some people have for their minds. The writer, whose
initials alone are given, " L. C. L., Salt Lake City, Utah,"
writes how he fell from his bicycle while riding down a hill
"at a rapid pace; and, falling on my left side with my
arm under my head, the bone was broken about halfway
between the shoulder and elbow. While the pain was
intense, I lay in the dust declaring the truth, and denying
that there could be a break or accident in the realm of
Divine Love." So saying, he remounts his wheel and rides
home and orders Science and Health to be brought to him
immediately, "which I read for about ten minutes, when
all pain left." When he told his story his hearers would
not believe that his arm could have been broken. To prove
that it had he goes to an X-ray physician, who says : " Yes,
it has been broken, but whoever set it made a perfect job of
it, and you will never have any further trouble from that
break." The writer concludes his letter with: "This is
the first of several cases of mental surgery that have come
under my notice."
What shall we think of the mentality which can be the
parent of such contradictions ! Here is a man who admits
that he fell, though " there are no accidents in the realm of
Divine Love." He also admits that he broke his arm while
" denying that there could be a break in the realm of
Divine Love." The broken bone is set by the reading of
Science and Health, although it could not have been broken,
for he did not fall, seeing that there are "no accidents in
the realm of Divine Love." If he did not fall, he did not
break his bone. But if the bone was not broken, it was not
set ; and if it was not set, there was nothing to prove the
healing power of Christian Science. Therefore, he did fall
and did break his bone " while denying that there could be
EXAMPLES OF ''REASONING" 31
|a break or an accident in the realm of Divine Love"; and
|a physician, a man of material science, is called in to prove
that the broken bone was admirably set by " mental
[surgery."
Let me add that if Science and Health could set a broken
bone, it could also have prevented the accident. If it could
not, then Christian Science is insufficient ; if it could have
prevented the fall and the breaking of the bone, and did
not, then it was responsible for the misfortune. The
further fact that the X-ray discovered that the bone had
been set proves that Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health had
[not been able to obliterate all the marks of the fall and the
break; which again shows that accidents do happen and
bones do break "in the realm of Divine Love." People
who make no better use of their minds than "L. C. L." of
Salt Lake City does might just as well have no more mind
than the cave fishes have eyes.
Examples of "Reasoning/'
On the fly-leaf of Mrs. Eddy's now "famous" book
appears this quotation from Shakespeare: " There is nothing
either good or bad but thinking makes it so." This is
given a place of honour in her book because it is supposed
to prove the truth of Christian Science. But a wee bit of
clear thinking or of the power of analysis would have
helped Mrs. Eddy to see that her opening quotation
completely destroys all that she advocates in the rest of
her book. The doctrine of Mrs. Eddy is that all is God ;
that God or the good alone exists, and that evil, etc., is
mere illusion. According to her teaching, sickness, sin,
and death do not exist except for those who believe in them.
The only reality is God or goodness. But the text from
Shakespeare which she so prominently displays upon her
banners denies God or goodness, just as effectually as it
does evil and the devil. " There is nothing — ," says the
great poet. Mark that. Christian Scientists ! Is that any
text to quote to prove that there is truth, and there is
32 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
goodness, and there is God? ** There is nothing either
good — ." Pause again : Are Mrs. Eddy's troops of voiceless
followers willing to subscribe to that statement? If
Shakespeare, Mrs. Eddy's authority, is right, the good is
as illusory as the bad, for he says plainly that " there is
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,"
which should make God, goodness, health, and truth as
much an unreality as sickness or sin.
Moreover, the Shakespearean argument makes man the
creator of both the good and the evil in the world, since it
is bis thinking which determines the nature of things.
Mrs. Eddy, on the contrary, maintains that man is merely
a reflection of the Deity, who alone exists and is the only
reality. It must have been the greatness of Shakespeare's
name which tempted Mrs. Eddy to quote from him on the
very first page of her book. But metaphysical arguments
are like balloons : the bladders burst, and nothing remains.
In order to prove that all disease is mental, the following
argument is frequently used. I shall give it precisely aa
I find it in Christian Science : Its Results (p. 14 ; copyright,
1918, by the Christian Science Publication Society) : —
If, then, it is considered that the state of mind may
disturb the secretions, causing the tears to flow ; or that the
state of mind may quicken the action of the heart, causing
the blood to rush to the face or awav from it ; or if the
state of mind can affect the organs of the throat, causing
huskiness, then it is plain that the state of mind may bo
held accountable for other derangements of the organs of
secretion, of circulation, and of speech. And if of these,,
why not of other organs of the body ?
It is not denied that mental conditions often become i
manifest in their effects upon the body. But, first, what
produces these mental conditions ? The Eddyites do not
seem to care to penetrate into that question at all. Is it
not true that in the majority of cases it is some physical or'
material cause which has either depressed or exalted the
mind — brought tears to the eyes or dried them ? The sight
of a sudden and terrible accident to a child while crossing
the street will, for the moment, rob onlookers of their power
EXAMPLES OF ''REASONING" 33
of speech, blanch their cheeks and daze them beyond the
ability to move or to think. In the same way, the news
that a dear son has been gassed or killed in battle will
change a happy home into a house of mourning, depriving
its inmates of sleep and appetite. On the other hand, the
unexpected discovery of a vein of gold on one's farm will
exhilarate the mind and banish a hundred fears. These
mental moods have physical causes. Just as heat passes
into motion and motion again into heat, material events
produce mental moods ; and these mental moods resolve
themselves once more into physical manifestations, such as
laughter or tears.
The Christian Scientist observes accurately enough that
depression and discouragement cause sickness, but he is too
impatient to learn that these mental states are often the
result of bad circulation or mal-assimilation of food. Lack
of fresh air, defective vision, or a dull but constant
physical pain very often lowers the mental tone, proving
thereby the interdependence of mind and matter.
The lecturer from whose pamphlet I have quoted realizes
" that salt water will flow from the eyes if he is subjected
to great grief," and " that the state of mind may disturb
the secretions, causing the tears to flow," and concludes
therefrom that ** dyspepsia and all other bodily diseases
and derangements" should be treated ''with truth rather
than with tabloids and powders." But what if the secretions
are disturbed by purely physical causes ? A child cries for
something to eat, and not from unbelief or fear, which are
supposed to be purely mental states ; and a piece of cake will
relieve bis hunger and dry his tears. A splinter in the eye
will provoke tears, as will also a sharp, cold wind ; the
removal of the one, and protection from the other, will
immediately dry the eyes. Peeling onions starts the
secretions. Do onions come under the class of mental-
causes ?
Let me give another illustration. Wishing to prove that
the material world is an illusion of the senses, Mrs. Eddy
tells us that on a wet day, when there is a downpour of
c
1
34 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE?
rain, and when mist and fog shroud land and sea, we can
easily assure ourselves that our senses are not telling us
the truth, that the weather is really fine, by consulting
a barometer, which in the midst of cloud and rain points to
clear weather. What shall we think of the mentality of a
woman who appeals to a barometer to prove that matter
does not exist? If Mrs. Eddy had not suddenly stopped
thinking, she would have seen that if our senses betray us
when they report wet weather, neither would we have any
assurance that what they say about the barometer is
dependable. Does she think that our senses are not
trustworthy except when they refer us to the barometer ?
Inconsistent thinking is often also responsible for incon-
sistency in conduct. The Christian Scientist, for example,
objects to the physician, but patronizes the dentist. Yet
dental surgery is not different from medicine, but is one of
its many branches. It is by the science of medicine that
the trouble in the body is located, diagnosed, and remedied
by the knife, if it cannot be by medication. Besides, the
wound or incision is treated medicinally, which requires
medical knowledge on the part of the surgeon, just as it
does on the part of the regular physician. Can a dentist
practise surgery without a knowledge of the human anatomy
— that is to say, of how many bones and muscles there are
in the body, where the nerves are located, to what sort of
treatment they will respond, and to what laws of growth
and decay they are subject ? Does he not treat an abscess
or receding gums with medicine ? And does this not
require a knowledge of medicine which to Christian
Scientists is nothing but "error"? Why do not these
people invite a novice or their cooks or barbers to work on
their teeth if a knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and
medicine is not necessary to make a man a good dentist?
The mere fact that Christian Scientists will not allow any
one but a man with a diploma from a dental college to
attend to their teeth proves conclusively that they regard
knowledge of medicine just as necessary as we do — only
we admit it frankly, and they deny it foolishly. If the
EXAMPLES OF *' REASONING" 35
Christian Scientists have not progressed sufficiently to
demonstrate against surgery, they should at least be grateful
to us for taking care of their needs in the meantime, and
help support the physical sciences until they are able to
dispense with them.
In her Science and Health Mrs. Eddy ridicules those who
think that vegetation or flowers can cause sickness, or that
there can be such a thing as a ** rose cold." ** The rose," she
writes, ** is the smile of God," and to accuse it of producing
fevers or colds is to make God the author of disease. This
is strange reasoning. If the rose represents **the smile of
God," what do the bugs and crawling insects on its petals
represent? And whose smile are its thorns which prick
and draw blood ? Further, if a rose, a material flower, can
represent the *' Divine" smile, why may not other equally
material things have a mission in life — such as representing
and imparting health ? If the Deity can use the rose to
reveal his smile, why may he not use herbs or minerals for
curative purposes? Why may not soap and water,
cleanliness, fresh air, temperance in food and drink and
exercise, have as useful a purpose in the/* Divine" economy
of things as the rose ?
On p. 488 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes : —
Christian Science sustains with immortal proof the
impossibility of any material sense, and defines these so-
called senses as mortal beliefs, the testimony of which
cannot be true. Nerves have no more sensation, apart from
what belief bestows upon them, than the fibres of a plant.
In the above, as also in innumerable other passages, the
founder of Christian Science advises her readers to deny the
testimony of their senses. They are urged to deny *' that
matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed." Never mind the
witness of our senses ; ** bones cannot break, nerves cannot
feel, the nose cannot smell, and the eyes cannot see." But
did she stop to think where such advice would carry us ?
I smell something burning in the kitchen or in the basement;
but no, the senses lie. There is nothing burning ; there is
nothing to burn. I feel and see smoke filling the room. I
36 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
can hardly breathe ; but no, the senses are " a fraud." There
is no smoke in the room, and I am not choking ; for has
not Mrs. Eddy demonstrated with ** immortal proof" that
*' corporeal senses defraud and lie," and that they are *' the
only source of evil or error " (pp. 488 and 489) ? If the
infant is crying in the nursery because it has fallen from
its cradle, or because it has stumbled into the fire, there is
no need to rush for help, because the report of our senses
that the child is in danger is a lie. ** Christian Science
shows them [our senses] to be false" (p. 489). Fortunate
it is that not many parents are consistent Christian Scientists.
It is said that Christian Science does not deal with man
as he appears, but man as he is — ** unborn and undying."
Very well ; is what Mrs. Eddy and her followers write or
say about *'man unborn and undying" debatable or un-
debatable ? If debatable, we have a right to ask the
Eddyites to conform to the canons of human reason ; but
if Christian Science is non-debatable — that is, if it cannot
be understood by such minds as we possess, then why write
or talk about it at all ?
Do Christian Scientists Practise what they Preach?
Mrs. Eddy teaches that the material universe is an
illusion. Do the Christian Scientists try to live up to
this ? I say, do they try^ because to try is about all that
any one can do, as it is an utter impossibility to really live
up to such a belief.
Let us see if there is any difference between the way we
treat our bodies and the way Mrs. Eddy's followers treat
theirs. We believe the body exists, and therefore we
protect it with clothing. The Christian Scientists do the
same, although they should not believe such material things
as flesh and bone exist. We sleep to be refreshed ; so do
they. We have a roof over our heads ; so have they. We
close our windows in the winter and build a fire ; they do
the same. We are growing older ; so are they. Now and
then we feel unwell, and apply to a helper of some kind for
PRACTICE VERSUS PREACHING 37
treatment, when we cannot cope with the trouble ourselves ;
the Christian Scientists do the same. We die from some
cause or other ; so do they. If Christian Scientists never
need any treatment, why are there so many practitioners
among them ? How do they make a living if no one of
their circle is ever taken sick? I admit that we do not
take the same treatment, or go to the same helper, or call
our troubles by the same name ; but, dear me ! why make
such an ado over mere names ?
In what respect, then, do Christian Scientists, who do
not believe in the body, treat theirs differently from the
way we treat ours ? We have to eat to keep ourselves
alive ; so do they. We have to take liquids with our
food ; so do they. We bathe our bodies because to do so
is refreshing and cleanly. Why do they bathe theirs?
We need fresh air ; Mrs. Eddy rode out every day for the
same purpose. And does not the Eddyite, like every one
else, repair his house or weed his garden ? Does he not
Paris Green his vegetables ? Does he not screen his
windows ? Does he not scrub his floors ? Why may he
not, with equal reason, resort to certain means to protect
his teeth, his eyes, or his digestive organs ? If Mind is
Ally Mrs. Eddy's disciples should dispense with the use
of powders and cosmetics, and their houses and gardens
should be free from wear and tear, as their persons are
supposed to be. Are not tree and plant, house and land,
face and teeth, included in the All which is Mind? And
do Christian Scientists use ** Divine" healing also for the
horse and the dog ? Do they employ dressmakers to clothe
their minds or their bodies ? If Mind is All, why do not
our trains run without engineers, or our ships sail without
pilots ? Are physicians the only people the Deity will not
tolerate ? If engineers and pilots represent Mind, why not
doctors?
It is admitted by leaders in Christian Science that many
among their followers insure, not only their buildings
against fire, but also their lives against accident, sickness,
and death. Of course, death can be caused only by sick-
88 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
ness, accident, or old age. It follows that the Christian
Scientist takes thought of accident, sickness, and old
age, and guards against them precisely as non-Christian
Scientists do. I know also of Christian Scientists who are
in the life insurance business — that is to say, while they
deny sickness and accident they argue with their clients
that it is the part of wisdom, as well as a duty they owe
their families, to buy insurance. Is that the way to practise
what one professes ?
Let us continue. Mrs. Eddy declares there is no matter,
and then she proceeds to write a book. Why could not
Mrs. Eddy communicate her revelation to her pupils without
the help of a book ? Would not that have been a real
miracle ? Why should Absolute Mind be dependent upon
ink and type ? Is not a book — its paper, its cloth, its ink,
its glue and boards — as material as any drug which the
chemist manufactures ? If Mrs. Eddy is not able to reach
the minds of her disciples without appealing to their senses
of touch and sight, why condemn the doctors for using
equally material means to influence their patients ?
But Mrs. Eddy goes beyond the physician in her mate-
rialism. A doctor, for example, invents an instrument to
render surgical operations less painful, but he does not
patent his idea to protect his profits. Mrs. Eddy discovers
** Divine healing" and copyrights it. Moreover, the physician
is the inventor of his own instrument. Mrs. Eddy declares
that her book is from God, and then proceeds to copyright
what does not belong to her.
The hosts of people who proclaim Mrs. Eddy's name and
bend the knee to her do not seem to reflect that to copy-
right God's thoughts is an attempt to copyright the Deity.
A New England woman plans to secure a corner on the
Divine mind for commercial purposes, else why does she
charge such high prices for her book ? And yet not one of
her admiring followers breathes even a murmur against it.
It has been said that the lady copyrighted her books and
asked a big price for them, netting her nearly five hundred
per cent, profit, not because she wanted the money, but to
PRACTICE VERSUS PREACHING 39
make the buyers appreciate the book. But what becomes
of "Divine" science if it must count on money to make
people appreciate its merits ? If the Eddyites may use
money to influence minds, why may not a doctor use drugs
to get results ?
Really the metaphysical fraternity, instead of being suffi-
ciently advanced in ** Divine" science to dispense with medical
help, are often compelled to employ the services of more
than one doctor. The devout follower of Mrs. Eddy, if he
has a tooth to be extracted or a decayed root to be removed,
or an abscess in the ear to be treated, engages, besides the
services of an expert physician, also some metaphysical
practitioner. Thus, while the non-Christian Scientist
employs only one kind of doctor, the believer in ** Divine"
mind employs two. When a Christian Scientist goes to a
hospital for an operation, he either takes a practitioner of
his own faith with him and instals him in a room near-by
to give him ** Divine" treatment while the surgeon is
operating on him, or he goes to the 'phone just before
going under the knife to ask his favourite practitioner for
absent treatment. Two doctors instead of one — that is
how Christian Science has done away with doctors. Of
course, it is true that only in serious cases do Christian
Scientists ,'call upon outside help ; but, then, in cases
not serious anybody can get along without expert assis-
tance.
In Science and Health (p. 463) Mrs. Eddy gives the
following explanation of her seclusion from the world :
*'It has been said to the author: *The world has been
benefited by you, but it feels your influence without seeing
you. Why do you not make yourself more widely known ? '
Could her friends know how little time the author has had
in which to make herself outwardly known except through
her laborious publications — and how much time and thought
are still required to establish the stately operations of
Christian Science — they would understand why she is so
secluded." Is not this an admission of her limitations?
And can a woman, claiming to be one with God, ** unborn
40 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
and undying," afford to confess that she has neither the
time nor the ability to do all that is required of her ?
On p. 464 of her book Mrs. Eddy advises her followers
to let a surgeon give them a hypodermic injection to
relieve their pain, and a few sentences after she writes :
** Adulterating Christian Science makes it void. Falsity
has no foundation." She advises her followers, when
** Divine " science fails, to take a hj^podermic for help, and
then she tells them that ** adulterating Christian Science
makes it void," which leaves her disciples between *' the
devil and the deep sea."
And what if there were no hypodermics to relieve the
pain which Mrs. Eddy's doctrine had failed to cope with ?
What if there were no surgeons to administer the drug ?
Under Christian Science all these material means are to be
abolished, leaving the whole field to Mrs. Eddy. To whom,
then, will ** a Christian Scientist, seized with pain so violent
that he cannot treat himself mentally," go for relief ?
Mrs. Eddy knows very well that physicians and not
surgeons give hypodermic injections ; but she has not the
courage, nor, I regret to say, the honesty, to say anything
good of a physician. Is not such a mind as Mrs. Eddy's a
menace ?
Observe again that when a Christian Scientist is in
intense pain he must not seek instant relief by an appeal
to real science, but must first try Mrs. Eddy's remedy ;
only when that fails may he resort to a hypodermic
injection. How long a trial should the sufferer of intense
pain give to Mrs. Eddy's remedy is not stated ; but this
much is certain, he is to suffer the intense pain as long as
he can bear it before trying any other remedy. Knowing
very well that a hypodermic might give instant relief to
a patient in intense agony, Mrs. Eddy nevertheless insists
that the patient shall try her uncertain remedy first.
But what follows is really debasing : ** When the belief
of pain is lulled [by the hypodermic] he, the sufferer, can
handle his own case mentally. Thus it is that we * prove
all things and hold fast that which is good.'" Could there
PRACTICE VERSUS PREACHING 41
be anything more hypocritical than such reasoning ? After
the pain has been reheved by a physician, the Christian
Scientist will treat himself mentally — for what ? It is very
much like saying that after a starving man has been fed
let him proceed to demonstrate that food is not necessary
for the relief of hunger. But the real motive for demanding
that mental treatment should follow the hypodermic injec-
tion is to be able to claim that the cure, after all, was not
effected by the physician, but by Mrs. Eddy's remedy.
Moreover, if hypodermic injections are permitted for the
relief of intense pain, why may not antiseptics be allowed
for protection against germs, anaesthetics to deaden sensa-
tion, and antidotes to counteract poisons? After the
antidote has killed the effects of the poison, the Christian
Scientist, following Mrs. Eddy's instructions, may treat
himself mentally and deny the reality of both poison and
antidote.
Instead of recommending the services of a surgeon, would
it not have been better for Mrs. Eddy to have advised her
followers to go about equipped, not only with her Science
and Healthy but also with a pocket apparatus or instrument
for giving to one's self or others hypodermic injections in
cases where Christian Science failed them ?
Really, when Mrs. Eddy says, " If from an injury, or
from any cause, a Christian Scientist were seized with pain
so violent that he could not treat himself mentally — and
the Christian Scientist had failed to relieve him — the
sufferer could call a surgeon, who w^ould give him a hypo-
dermic injection," she surrenders everything, and her
metaphysics collapses like a bubble. It goes to prove that,
despite her many bizarre somersaults in the air, she cannot
avoid landing upon matter.
When Christian Science fails, there is still the surgeon
with his *' hypodermic injection." What an anti-climax!
Like all metaphysicians, Mrs. Eddy emerges from the
same door wherein she entered.
Again Mrs. Eddy practically overthrows the foundations
of her faith when she writes ; '* If a dose of poison is
42 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
swallowed through mistake, and the patient dies does
human belief, you ask, cause this death ? Even so, and
as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken.
In such cases a few persons believe the potion swallowed
by the patient to be harmless ; but the vast majority of
mankind, though they know nothing of this particular case
and this special person, believe the arsenic, strychnine, or
whatever the drug used, to be poisonous, for it is set down
as a poison by mortal mind. Consequently the result is
controlled by the majority of opinions, not by the in-
finitesimal minority of opinions in the sick chamber"
(pp. 177-78). With that statement it may be said that
Christian Science commits suicide. Only a logic-proof
mind could fail to see that to admit the helplessness of
Christian Science when in the minority against " the
majority of opinions," as Mrs. Eddy does in the above
passage, is tantamount to saying that at present, at least,
no patient can be healed by Christian Science, since " the
result is controlled by the majority of opinions, not by the
infinitesimal minority of opinions in the sick chamber."
Not only does the statement quoted deny to Christian
Science the power to cope successfully with "the majority
of opinions," but it also destroys faith in the testimonials
from patients who claim to have been cured by Mrs. Eddy's
discovery. So long as the four hundred millions of China,
the three hundred millions of India, and the hosts of
Africa, to which should be added the multitudes in Europe
and America, *' believe the potion swallowed to be poisonous,"
or the sickness complained of to be real, ** for it is set down
as a poison," or as sickness ** by mortal mind," a handful
of Eddyites representing **an infinitesimal minority" can
effect no cures, seeing that *^the result is controlled by the
majority of oimiions.'" On page 162 of her book Mrs. Eddy
writes: ''I have restored what is called the lost substance
of lungs Christian Science heals organic disease as
surely as it does what is called functional." She also
claims to have ** elongated shortened limbs," etc.
But how could she perform the latter miracle against
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE CURES 48
the opinion held by the majority that shortened limbs
cannot be elongated, and after admitting, as she does, that
in the sick chamber ** the result is controlled by the majority
of opinions, and not by the infinitesimal minority of
opinions " ? In her attempt to answer the question, why
Christian Science fails to cure the patient who has acciden-
tally swallowed a deadly drug, Mrs. Eddy strips her
*' discovery "of all its power to heal and makes ** the majority
of opinions the controlling factor." In one and the same
breath she announces the supremacy of Infinite Mind,
** who never endowed matter with power to disable life, or
to chill harmony since such a power without the Divine
permission is inconceivable," and admits the helplessness
of this "Infinite Mind" against '*the majority of opinions
dictated by mortal mind." And the same woman writes :
** In this volume of mine there are no contradictory state-
ments" (p. 345).
Christian Science Cures
It is urged, however, that Mrs. Eddy's teachings have
been demonstrated to be true by the remarkable cures they
have eftected. I need not question these cures. I hope all
of them are genuine. I love humanity too well to wish
that its ills were not cured at all rather than that they
should be cured by Christian Science. But when every
claim is conceded, all that will be proved is that Christian
Science has cured some sick people. Of course it has.
I hope the Christian Scientists will be equally generous to
admit that during the past thousands of years cures have
been effected also by other agencies. Mohammedanism has
cured the sick ; Catholic saints have cured the sick ; holy
places have performed cures — else why do multitudes go
on pilgrimages to shrines ? Patent medicines have helped
the sick, otherwise the inventors and vendors of them could
not have made such big fortunes ; and the least tolerant
Christian Scientist must admit that even physicians
occasionally succeed in curing the sick. Evidently, then,
Mrs. Eddy is not the only healer ; which, if admitted, will
44 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
prove that she has not performed any cures with her
**ism" which others have not performed without it. If it
be said that other cures are cures only in name, the same
is said by unbelievers of Christian Science cures. One
objection balances the other. Christian Science would be
unique if it never failed to cure. But as it fails in some
cases from one cause or another, and as it limits its
practice to complaints which do not require a knowledge
of surgery, and, again, as it has never accomplished ichat
^ihe other agencies have failed to accomplish — restoring a lost
limb, for instance — it follows without the possibility of
contradiction that it is at its best no more than any other
human agency.
At a Sunday morning meeting in San Francisco, as the
audience was leaving, a cripple in her invalid's chair was
being wheeled out of the building. Stepping up to one of
the ushers who seemed to possess considerable authority,
I asked why the cripple had been brought to the Christian
Science meeting. *' To be healed, of course," was the
unhesitating reply. But as she was being wheeled out in
the same condition as she was in when wheeled into the
meeting, would it not follow, I asked, that she was not
cured ? Had the occasion permitted, the Christian Science
usher would have argued that one or two treatments are
not always enough to effect a cure. Admitted. But if
" Divine " science must have more than one chance to hit the
mark, how does it differ from human science ? To prove
^ its Divine origin, Christian Science must meet the following
"^conditions : First, it must cure diseases which all other
agencies have pronounced incurable ; second, it must never
fail to cure ; third, it must prove itself the only power that
can cure. Not one of these conditions has been met by
Christian Science. It has failed to cure many ; it has not
cured the incurables; and other agencies have cured at
least as many patients as has Christian Science. In what
respect, then, is Mrs. Eddy's doctrine the absolute or the
only truth ?
CHKISTIAN SCIENCE TESTIMONIALS 45
Christian Science Testimonials
Mrs. Eddy devotes one hundred pages of her Science and
Health to testimonials from people who have used her
" nostrum," very much as vendors of patent medicines are
in the habit of doing. But while, as a rule, testimonials
in patent medicine books are signed in full, those in Science
and Health give only initials. Rheumatism, hernia, fibroid
tumour, insanity and epilepsy, cancer and consumption,
Bright's disease, and many other diseases, according to
these testimonials, have been *' quickly cured," often by
the mere reading of Mrs. Eddy's book. But there are
equally numerous witnesses to prove that these same
maladies have been cured by other equally fantastic
remedies. I do not feel myself under obligation, however,
to take notice of these claims, for the excellent reason that
I am not bound to explain alleged facts, but only real facts.
Let the healers first prove that their patients had real
cancer, and that Christian Science cured them permanently,
and then I will consider their claims. But some one might
say : '* I ought to be an authority on my own case. Every
doctor had given me up ; I was told nothing could save me.
My disease was pronounced incurable, yet I am now in the
best of health through Christian Science." If a person
may be misinformed about others, he may be about himself.
It is the most natural thing to imagine one's self sick or
cured. It is equally a matter of experience that doctors
often fail to diagnose the case of a patient correctly. Their
pronouncing any one incurable is not a final or infallible
judgment. Before a miracle is claimed in the case of any
patient it has to be shown, by expert and disinterested
testimony, that the disease in question really existed, that
it was really incurable, and that Christian Science really
cured it. But is such testimony forthcoming ? Do healers
invite investigation of their cures by outsiders ?
In 1898 Mrs. Eddy announced some miraculous per-
formances. " I challenge the world to disprove," she said,
** what I hereby declare ! I healed malignant tubercular
46 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
diphtheria and carious bones that could be dented in by
the fingers. I have healed at one visit a cancer that had
60 eaten the flesh of the neck as to expose the jugular vein
BO that it stood out like a cord." Who made the diagnosis?
How could a novice tell one disease from another ? If it
was a physician's report Mrs. Eddy is quoting, who was
the physician ? Besides, for Mrs. Eddy to accept a doctor's
verdict would be to put faith in medical science, which,
according to her, is no science at all. Neither does this
Divine practitioner give the name and the address of her
patients. Who witnessed the treatment applied to the case
she describes ? Who pronounced the patient cured ? I hope
Mrs. Eddy cured all her cancer patients ; but a hope is not
a proof, nor is assertion an argument. The only way to
demonstrate a power is to submit to all the tests. Compare
Mrs. Eddy's story of how she cured an unnamed patient
with the following accomplishment by a man of real
science : '* A remarkable case of curvature of the spine
was announced at a Philadelphia hospital. The case was
that of Adele Weinberg, a young girl hunchback. The
surgeon removed part of one of the lumbar vertebrae, found
it to be diseased, and in its place used a section of leg bone.
She is as erect as though her spine had been normal from
birth." That operation took place in a hospital in Phila-
delphia, before nurses and assisting physicians, who may
be summoned as witnesses. But Mrs. Eddy mentions no
witnesses whom we may interview in connection with the
cancer cure she describes.
Get-Well-Quick
Christian Science, instead of being either scientific or
Christian, comes very near being, and in fact is, a sort of
get-well-quick system, suggestive of the get-rich-quick
scheme of the speculating fraternity. The gambler does not
have to learn a trade or to build up a business in order to
secure a footing in the commercial world, or to establish
a reputation for honesty and efficiency. He does not
depend upon these things for a living, since the throw of
GET-WELL-QUICK 47
a dice, the colour of a card, or a lucky bet may bring to
hiiQ in a few minutes more than patient work can offer in
years. The Christian Science practitioner likewise does
not have to study the human body, the properties of drugs,
the nature of anoBsthetics or of antiseptics, the germ theory
of disease, the effect of diet and climate upon the human
organism, the causes of epidemics, the means of control
of contagious maladies — nothing at all of this. A few
lessons in metaphysics, a copy of Mrs. Eddy's book, and
a number of texts on the tip of his tongue, and he may
begin practising and collecting fees from patients.
Should a call come to the Christian Science healer in
the middle of a cold, wintry night, he need not even rise
out of bed, much less walk or ride through the storm to
see and examine his patient ; and if he should fall asleep
while giving absent treatment, who would be the wiser
for it ?
There is yet another close resemblance between the get-
rich-quick and the get-well-quick systems. What makes
gambling attractive is the wealth there is in the world.
If labour did not create wealth, there would be nothing to
gamble with or to gamble for. The gambler is a parasite.
He thrives on the labour of others. In the same way, the
get-well-quick practitioner profits from the conquests of
material science. If the Eddyites really desired to give a
demonstration of their ** science," they should go to those
Asiatic countries where sanitary measures are unknown
where there are no facilities for the proper ventilation of
dwellings or for personal cleanliness ; where the waters are
impure, the streets are foul, the food insufficient, the climate
merciless ; where modern hygienic precautions are unknown ;
where the cholera, the black death, or some other plague
works unhindered, and where there are no physicians to be
sent for at the last hour. Let them, I say, w^ork in such
an environment to show what Christian Science can do.
But to operate in Europe and America — where science, like
a watch dog, is guarding the health of the people, inventing
a thousand devices for the comfort and security of life,
48 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
hurrying to the aid of the injured almost with the alacrity
of thought, building hospitals equipped with all the weapons
which disease dreads, and training men and women to
march at any moment in full phalanx and armed to the
teeth against the first plague germ that lands on our shores
from foreign lands — is nothing to boast of. Indeed, it is
the progress of the physical sciences which has made the
Christian Scientist's profession profitable. "Divine healers"
eat of the golden fruits of the tree of science, and then turn
round and stone the tree.
Christian Science Fashionable
How, then, explain the remarkable growth of Christian
Science ? But the imposing edifices, the prosperous looking
disciples, the number of automobiles in front of their
churches, prove only that Christian Science is fashionable
— that is all. The question we are discussing is not Is
Christian Science fashionable, but Is it true? Does the
rapid growth and wealth of Mohammedanism, for instance,
with its Alhambra and Alcazar, its illustrious and extensive
conquests, prove its Divine origin ? Does the progress of
Mormonism, which reared a great city as if by magic in
the Western wilderness, prove Mormonism to be of God ?
The Catholic Church at one time owned everything in
Europe and ruled every one. To her belonged all the
wealth, the culture, the art, and the power of Christendom.
Yet Christian Scientists do not consider the Catholic Church
Divine. Why should the rapid spread of one creed surprise
us any more than that of another ?
Moreover, it takes less courage to follow the crowd than
to resist it. The crowd picks up the weak and carries them
along. Was it not Horace Walpole who said, '* The greater
the imposition the greater the crowd"? What Matthew
Arnold said of the multitude in England is true also of
the American multitude : *' Probably in no country is the
multitude more unintelligent, more narrow-minded, and
more passionate than in this. In no country is so much
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND WITCHCRAFT 49
nonsense so firmly believed." Alas, that is true ol the
multitude in every country.
Again, the faith habit is an older heredity, exerting upon
us the accumulated force of thousands of years, while the
inquiry habit is too recent an acquisition to have much
force upon the generality of peoples. That is another
explanation of the greater popularity of dogma, which
requires only belief, and the comparative unpopularity of a
movement which demands individual thinking. ** Super-
stition," as Goethe says, " is so intimately and anciently
associated with man that it is one of the hardest things to
get rid of." The only progress most people are capable of
is to part with one superstition for another. The Pope is
given up for Mrs. Eddy, but the idea of an infallible teacher
to tell us what to believe is not outgrown. The keys of
heaven and hell placed in the hands of the Vicar of Christ
provoke scepticism in a Christian Scientist, but he accepts
without the shadow of a doubt the key to the Scriptures
delivered to Mrs. Eddy.
But how account for the presence of so many judges and
lawyers among the converts of Christian Science ? And
how account for the judges and lawyers who are not
Christian Scientists ? It was not so long ago when judges
condemned innocent women as witches, and sentenced
them to be tortured to death. Did that make witchcraft a
fact, or can it be quoted to justify the belief in witchcraft?
The late Chief Justice of the United States was a Catholic.
What does that prove ?
Christian Science and Witchcraft
Without wanting to give offence, I would say that Chris-
tian Science is, in many respects, the modern version of
the witchcraft belief, which smote New England some three
or four hundred years ago. If mental treatment can cure,
according to Mrs. Eddy's admissions, it can also kill. Over
her own signature Mrs. Eddy declares that her last husband
was killed by poison "mentally administered." The devil-
D
50 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
possessed witches, too, were supposed to be able to injure
and kill people mentally. Mrs. Eddy teaches that, ** If the
right mental practice can restore health, it is self-evident
that mental malpractice can impair health." She also
contends that a person may commit mental murder or
** mental assassination." In the Christian Science Journal
of February, 1889, she demands that ** mental assassins"
be turned over to the executioner.
On May 14, 1878, Mrs. Eddy, her attorney, and some
twenty witnesses, appeared at the opening of the Supreme
Judicial Court in Salem and practically accused a certain
Mr. Daniel Harrison Spoffard of sorcery and witchcraft.
Mrs. Eddy's bill of complaint recited the injuries which
Spoffard was mentally, and of course by absent treatment,
inflicting upon one of Mrs. Eddy's students, a Miss Lucretia
Brown, and begged the Court to restrain him from giving
malicious mental treatment to said Miss Brown. Does not
that suggest darkest Africa ? Let me give a few lines from
Mrs. Eddy's bill of complaint : —
By the power of his mind he (Mr. Spoffard) influences
and controls the minds and bodies of other persons, and
uses his said power and art for the purpose of injuring
the persons and property of others. Among the injuries
Mr. Spoffard has communicated to Miss Brown are severe
spinal pains, neuralgia, temporary suspension of mind.
Fortunately for the reputation of our courts. Judge Gray
dismissed the charges against Mr. Spoffard, declaring, with
a twinkle in his eye, that it was not within the jurisdiction
ol the courts to control Mr. Spoffard's mind. Had the
Judge been of Mrs. Eddy's persuasion, the old regrettable
Salem persecutions against so-called witches might have
been revived. How well has it been explained by John
Fiske that " one of the most primitive shapes which the
relation of cause and effect takes in the savage mind is the
assumed connection between disease or death and some
malevolent personal agency."
MARRIAGE & DEATH IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 51
Marriage and Death in Christian Science
Let us now investigate some of the other teachings of
Mrs. Eddy, which are at present more or less kept in the
background, or which are presented only to those who have
become adepts or advanced students of the cult. A careful
perusal of Mrs. Eddy's miscellaneous literature will show
that she practically denies sex, marriage, birth, death, the
home, the family, as well as education and morality. It
seems a serious accusation to bring against any one posing
as a reformer or as the founder of a religion, but the
evidence warrants the charge. Has no one ever observed
that Christian Science journals do not announce marriages,
births, or deaths ? Of course, like other people, Christian
Scientists are born, marry, and die ; but no official recog-
nition of such events is permitted. There must be a reason
for it. In Christian Science there is no room for sex
relations and for children, even as there is no recognition
of that other natural phenomenon, death. But do not
Mrs. Eddy's disciples die ? Is not her body buried in a
cemetery, and marked by a monument raised over her
remains by her admirers ?
The explanation for this apparent contradiction between
the profession and the practice, from the Christian Science
point of view, is as follows : Every believer in Mrs. Eddy's
revelation is expected to demonstrate over death as over
sickness ; and just as, when a practitioner fails to demon-
strate over sickness, it is because of some error or belief
somewhere, and not because of the insufficiency of Divine
power, likewise, if a Christian Scientist dies, it is because
he has not applied the new doctrine rightly, and not because
the doctrine is not strong enough to prevent death. This
teaching really makes of death not a beneficent economy of
nature, but a crime, or a miscarriage, as it were, of Christian
Science.
In the State of Michigan there is a religious sect called
** the House of David." One of their doctrines is that a
Christian cannot die. ** But," I asked the man whom I was
L
62 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
interviewing in Michigan, " do not the members of your
sect die like other people?" His answer was that they
die only when they fall from grace.
In the same way, if a Christian Scientist dies, it is
because he has departed from the truth as taught by
Mrs. Eddy, or because some one has killed him mentally
by ** malicious animal magnetism " or " mortal mind."
That was how, Mrs. Eddy asserts, her husband was assas-
sinated. If one member of a family is a Christian Scientist
and the treatment he receives from a practitioner does not
cure him of the complaint, the blame is liable to be thrown
upon the non-Christian Science members of the family,
who, by resisting the operations of ** Divine" power, pre-
vent its manifestation. It is witchcraft come back. Could
anything be more inhuman than to hold an unbelieving
parent responsible for the failure of Christian Science to
save his child from an attack of typhus or scarlet fever
after the practitioner has deprived the patient of the services
of medical care and treatment ? But can a " Divine " healer
admit failure ? Rather than confess defeat, he will accuse
the nearest relatives of the patient of malpractice. I am
sorry to conclude that at times Christian Science is as
cowardly as it is cruel.
*• Suffer it to Be So Now "
According to Mrs. Eddy, marriage, like death, suggests
materiality, and is therefore an error. The words of Jesus,
that in heaven they shall be like the angels who do not
marry nor are given in marriage, are quoted to prove that
sex is an illusion of mortal mind. Of course, the Eddyites
marry, but only for the same reason that they die — because
they are not sufficiently advanced in Christian Science to
demonstrate over these errors.
In the Christian Science Sentinel^ June 16, 1906, and in
the Christian Science Journal, July, 1906, Mrs. Eddy calls
marriage "legalized lust" — this from a woman who had
been three or four times married !
THE NEW AUTOCRACY 53
** Suffer it to be so now " is the text quoted by Christian
Scientists to defend their inconsistency. But how long a
time does the word *' now " cover ? Jesus, in using the
word **now," must have meant his own day, which was
nearly two thousand years ago. But is it still "now"?
A "now" that lasts so long might just as well mean
" indefinitely." " Suffer it to be so indefinitely " would
be the real meaning of the text as the Eddyites interpret it.
Accordingly, when the Christian Science dispensation shall
be in full swing, marriage, birth, children, the family, as
also sickness and death, will be no more. That will be,
I suppose, when it is no longer " now."
I have already quoted Mrs. Eddy's belief in regard to
sex : " Gender is also a quality characteristic of mind, and
not of matter." She will wink at marriages " until it is
learned that generation [birth] rests on no sexual basis."
I do not know what kind of reasoning led her to say:
" To abolish marriage and maintain generation is possible
in Christian Science." Are not such foolish as well as
mischievous doctrines a menace to the community ? Can
a man, can a woman, believe in such absurdities without
becoming unbalanced mentally sooner or later ?
The New Autocracy
Mrs. Eddy has banished all freedom of thought from her
Church, as Luther and Calvin did from theirs. Christian
Science is as distinctly hostile to the liberty of teaching as
were the dogmatists of the Reformation.
In the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons definite
instructions are given to read the following explanatory
note before reciting the lesson-sermon : —
Friends, — The Bible and the Christian Science Text-book
are our only preachers The canonical writings, together
with the word of our text-book, corroborating and explaining
the Bible texts in their spiritual import and application
to all ages, past, present, and future, constitute a sermon
undivorced from Truth, wicontaminated and unfettered by
human hypotheses^ and divinely authorized.
54 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
It is absolutely necessary to repeat this at every Sunday
meeting. It will be seen from the formula imposed upon
her followers that only Mrs. Eddy's voice is tolerated in
Christian Science churches. But does she not also permit
the reading of the Bible ? Only as she interprets it, no
other interpretation being allowed, which makes the Bible
nothing more than a medium for Mrs. Eddy's thought.
Outside of ;her book all is contamination. Science and
Health and the book to which it is the key are alone
Divine, everything else being ** human hypotheses " which
enslave and corrupt. Has the intellect of man ever been
subjected to a greater pinch than that?
*'He who does not believe my doctrine is sure to be
damned," said Luther (Professor E.M. Hulme, The Renais-
sance ^ p. 363). Will Mrs. Eddy admit that there is any
salvation outside her church, or that there is any other
infallible guide than her own Science and Health ? And
just as both John Calvin and Martin Luther called upon
the civil authorities to draw the sword against heretics,
so Mrs. Eddy repeatedly summoned the State to punish
** mental assassins." Where there is no freedom persecution
is inevitable, since there is no other effective way to suppress
freedom. It was the great Swiss reformer, Beza, who
congratulated Calvin on the burning of Servetus : ** To
claim that heretics ought not to be punished is the same
as saying that those who murder father and mother ought
not to be punished, seeing that heretics are infinitely worse
than they." Mrs. Eddy, nearly four hundred years later,
appealed to the courts in the United States to punish one
Bichard Kennedy, a former disciple of hers, for malicious
animal magnetism^ and called upon the police to avenge the
death of her husband by arresting the culprit who adminis-
tered poison to him ** mentally."
*'0h, why does not somelDody kill him?" Mrs. Eddy
was heard to exclaim when she imagined herself the victim
of the malpractice of one of her rivals. In Science and
Health, chap, vi, p. 88, 1881 edition, Mrs. Eddy, writing
of another of her dissenting disciples with all the theo-
THE NEW AUTOCRACY 55
logical fury of the Dark Ages, calls him the '*Nero of
to-day he is robbing, comraitting adultery, and killing,"
etc. And on page 2, in the same chapter, she calls Kennedy
a '' moral leper," to be ** shunned as the most prolific cause
of sickness and sin." Listen to this language of Love : —
Behold I 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, befouling thy track with the trophies of thy
guilt.
Then she predicts *' a hailstorm of doom upon the guilty
head " of Daniel Spoffard, another of her former students
(Science and Healthy 1878 edition).
Christian Science shows many of the symptoms of the
early stages of the Protestant Reformation. ** Justification
by faith alone " was the slogan of Luther and his associates.
Good works were not necessary at all. Salvation was a
divine gift, and all that the sinner had to do was to accept
it. Doing was a deadly thing.
Mrs. Eddy, like another Martin Luther, preached the
doctrine of salvation and health by faith alone. "Quit
trying to get well by your own efforts and trust in Divine
Mind" was her ultimatum. Mrs. Eddy had no more use
for sanitary measures or for self-help than the German
reformers had for good works. And just as Mrs. Eddy
taught that to resort to material means destroyed the
patient's chances of being healed by Christian Science, the
Lutherans declared that good works were prejudicial to
salvation because they made man self-confident and
boastful.
Another resemblance between Luther and Mrs. Eddy is
to be found in their common contempt for human science.
To Luther the intellect was the devil's bride. When he
used stronger language he denounced reason as a whore.
He had no use for the universities, and prayed to see them
pulverized. More than once he boasted openly that there
was not a dogma of Christianity that did not offend human
reason. But what is human reason worth? What is it
56 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
but, as Mrs. Eddy would reply, ''mortal mind"? The
founder of Christian Science showed even less respect for
human intellect than did the reformers of the sixteenth
century.
The words of Erasmus, the distinguished scholar of
Holland, " The triumph of the Lutherans is the death of
good learning," could also be said of the followers of Mrs.
Eddy. The cause of culture, of intellectual achievements,
of discovery, of political and physical advancement, is sure
to be, and is, neglected by people who are too eager to
demonstrate the wonders of metaphysics. Any movement
which does not include the entire field of human knowledge
is bound to be both narrow and sterile. Goethe believed
that the Lutheran doctrine, which confined the world to
one book, upon the meaning of which no two interpreters
agreed, postponed the emancipation of the human intellect
for a thousand years. Luther led the world out of the
Catholic darkness into the Protestant fog. Of Mrs. Eddy
it could be said that she has brought her people out of the
land of Egypt into a pathless wilderness.
The Menace of Christian Science
Imagine again what would happen to our educational
system if it were to pass under the control of Mrs. Eddy's
party. The majority of studies now pursued would be
eliminated from the course. No Christian Scientist would
see the need of knowing anything about physiology,
anatomy, chemistry, biology, botany, geology, or any of
the fundamental physical sciences. To teach these would
be an admission of the reality of the material universe and
a denial of the doctrine that all is illusion and error except
"Divine" mind. But what would become of a nation
reared in ignorance of the physical world and the laws
which govern it ? Industrially such a nation must slip to
the bottom of the line, leaving the commerce of the world
in the hands of those who study and master the physical
sciences. The Eddyites would not care, since they are not
THE MENACE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 57
interested in the material life, and would be glad to demon-
strate that it is possible to maintain life without food, as
it is possible to maintain generation without sex.
With the Christian Science dogma in force, every book
out of harmony with it would be excluded from our public
libraries. Think you a Christian Science librarian, if free
to do as he thought best, would permit the reading of books
filled with ** mortal error," the cause of disease and death,
and thereby postpone the coming of the kingdom of Mrs.
Eddy ? If to-day you can scarcely find a Christian Scientist
who will read or hear anything opposed to his creed, and if
at present Christian Scientists allow in their churches only
two books — the Bible and the works of Mrs. Eddy — are they
going to allow more than two books in our schools, libraries,
and homes, should they acquire control of the government ?
People think that Eddyism is only a sort of drugless cure
and no more; on the contrary, Eddyism, with its over-
emphasis on the divine, is the sworn foe of everything
human. Huxley has well said that modern civilization
rests upon physical science. '* Take away her gifts, and
our country's position among the civilized nations of the
world is gone to-morrow. It is physical science that makes
intelligence and morality stronger than brute force." How
splendidly true, and how refreshing is common sense after
so much nonsense !
The physical sciences are not the only studies which
Christian Scientists will suppress should they come into
power. History, ethics, and the humanities will also be
forbidden. To a Christian Scientist the history of the
centuries before Mrs. Eddy's discovery is summed up in
one word — error. No Christian Scientist will teach the
history of error — of illusion and ''mortal mind." Even
the late World War was to them only an unreality. There
was, according to Mrs. Eddy's followers, no war at all, for •
war means disharmony, and in God's universe there is \
room only for harmony. It is true that young men of this
faith went to war, and some of them, unfortunately, were
killed in battle. Nevertheless, no Christian Scientist could
58 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
be conscious of anything but harmony, and therefore no
Christian Scientist] logically could write of the War or of
any event in history which would necessitate the recognition
of evil. God himself, who is perfect harmony, did not
know there was a war in Europe, said the committee on
Christian Science publications in explaining the attitude of
their Church on the War.
Christian Science and Morals
Morality, too, as a scientific study, will be banished from
the schools under Eddyism. In the Infinite there is no
more room for sin than there is for disease, and, since man
is but the image of the Infinite, he is as free from sin as he
is from disease. Mrs. Eddy practically denies the possi-
bility of sin in Christian Science.
At the age of fifty-six, on January 1, 1877, Mrs. Eddy
contracted a new marriage, this time with Mr. Asa G.
Eddy, giving her age as forty, as shown by her marriage
licence. With a gesture Mrs. Eddy swept aside the charge
that she had suppressed the truth about her age, and
justified the misrepresentation on metaphysical grounds.
In her Science and Health, pp. 245-6, she asserts that a
woman could not age while believing herself to be young.
Eternity, according to her, has nothing to do with chrono-
logy, and *' time-tables of birth and death are so many
conspiracies against manhood and womanhood." *' Never
record ages," she advises. But if it makes no difference to
a Christian Scientist how old or how young she is, so far
as the number of years is concerned, why did Mrs. Eddy
under-state her age ? In pretending to be younger than
she really was did she not show her fear of advancing
years ? Perhaps Mrs. Eddy also believed that truth as well
as time had lost all claims upon Christian Scientists. To
change a lie into a truth, all that is necessary is to deny
that *' time-tables and calendars " have any meaning to the
believer in eternity.
One could even commit murder and deny that a bullet or
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MORALS 59
a knife could possibly deprive a man, who is all mind, of his
life. Mrs. Eddy and her book, I suppose, will be about
all the protection we shall have against the lightning, the
storm, or the cold, or against hunger, ignorance, and crime.
It is not difficult to imagine the kind of world this would
be when stripped of everything but Mrs. Eddy's " inspired "
metaphysics.
In the State of Washington the Christian Scientists, as
soon as they had acquired sufficient political power to do
it, abolished the law requiring the medical inspection of
children in the public schools. But w^ho will be the greatest
sufferers from this foolish ordinance? The children, of
course ; the pupils afflicted with defective vision or throat
and nose maladies will be deprived of the benefits of human
knowledge and experience. Their prayer for better sight,
for freer breathing and unhampered speech, will remain
unheeded, upon the plea that sight, hearing, and speech
are of the Mind, and that bodily obstructions cannot inter-
fere with them. The Washington state law abolishing the
physical examination of public -school children gives us an
idea of what to expect under a metaphysical government.
And under Christian Science who, for example, will care
for the deaf and dumb unfortunates in the community ?
Material science, seconded by human sympathy, has greatly
helped to rob deafness and dumbness of more of their power
to discourage and depress. I have met deaf people who
were so well trained to read the movement of the lips as to
be able to converse freely. What will Christian Science
do for these unfortunates ? Has it ever taken thought of
them ? And has Christian Science ever planned or built
homes for crippled children — the poor little ones who
cannot walk or move without pain? And what has meta-
physics ever done in the fight against the white plague ?
Has it made a single discovery, or given a new weapon to
man against any of the evils human flesh is heir to ? With
this Asiatic superstition or fatalistic belief, masquerading
as Christian and scientific, in control of our institutions,
all sanitary laws, such as the pure food law, the law
60 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ?
requiring the fumigation of houses or the isolation of
their inmates suffering from contagious diseases, the laws
requiring the inspection of ships from plague-ridden ports,
those requiring fireproof public buildings or providing for
fire escapes and a hundred other safety-first measures, will
^receive scant attention.
' To see and fight evil is wiser than to shut our eyes to it.
The rose is no more real than the thorns which guard it.
The tear is as natural as the smile, and equally divine.
To be able to suffer for those we love, and for a cause we
prize, is a privilege.
Christian Science robs people of the feeling of sympathy,
without which man and marble become alike. But sym-
pathy is born of the consciousness that there are pain and
suffering, evil and error, in the world. Cognizance of evil
is not permitted to a Christian Scientist. Being in Nirvana
himself, the disciple of Mrs. Eddy neither sees nor feels,
or at least he pretends not to see or feel, the sorrow that
draws the tear. Are there not times when, as the poet
Hood in his Ode to Melancholy says, the genuine tear is
nobler than the artificial smile ?
Oh, give her, then, her tribute just.
Her sighs and tears and musings holy !
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely.
" Christian Science makes people happy " is an argument
often advanced. No doubt it does. But we are not dis-
cussing "Is Christian Science Comforting?" but "Is it
true?" Ignorance is bliss, it has been said; but does that
prove that ignorance should be cultivated and knowledge
suppressed ?
I met a young woman just the day before her mother's
funeral who behaved as if she and the woman who had
borne her, nursed her, carried her in her arms, who had
watched day and night over her cradle and risked her life
for her a hundred times, were total strangers. The young
woman was a Christian Scientist. Eliminate the sympathy
which consciousness of a struggling and suffering world
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MORALS 61
inspires, and art, literature, poetry, morality, and the
humanities wither like a branch deprived of the quickening
sap.
Jesus was called the man of sorrows. Could he have
been a Christian Scientist ?
" Jesus wept " is written in the Gospel of John. Sorrow
and tears are heresies to the perpetually smiling followers
of Mrs. Eddy.
Let us have men and women who fear neither the thorn
nor the tear, but who use them as stepping-stones to greater
strength. The way to meet evil is to grapple with it soldier-
like. Man is not an ostrich, and burying one's head in the
sand is a coward's policy.
To live is to act, and to act is to combat.
But darkness cannot be overcome with jargon. To con-
quer we need the weapons of Prometheus — knowledge and
courage !
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