The writings of Mark Twain; author's national edition

Auifjor s Natumal Ifcttton

THE WRITINGS OF

MARK TWAIN
Volume XXV

M VRK TWAIN, I<)06

Hillllllllillllllllilllll

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE I

WITH NOTES CONTAINING
CORRECTIONS TO DATE

BY

MARK TWAIN

(samuel l. clemens)

ILLUSTRATED

HARPER & BROTHERS
EDITION

PUBLISHED BY

P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY

New York

1

Christian Science

Copyright, 1899, by Cosmopolitan Publishing Co.

Copyright, 1902, 1903, by The North American Review Publishing Co.

Copyright, 1907, by Harper & Brothers

Printed in the United States of America

F-S

PS

PREFACE

BOOK I of this volume occupies a quarter or
a third of the volume, and consists of matter
written about four years ago, but not hitherto pub-
lished in book form. It contained errors of judg-
ment and of fact. I have now corrected these to
the best of my ability and later knowledge.

Book II was written at the beginning of 1903,
and has not until now appeared in any form. In it
my purpose has been to present a character-portrait
of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own acts and words
solely, not from hearsay and rumor; and to explain
the nature and scope of her Monarchy, as revealed
in the Laws by which she governs it, and which she
wrote herself.

Mark Twain.
New Yore, January, 1907.

X — Vol. 25 — M. T.

BOOK I

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

"It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice
has gone crashing through space with such placid and com-
placent confidence and command."

CHAPTER I

Vienna, 1899.

THIS last summer, when I was on my way-
back to Vienna from the Appetite Cure in the
mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and
broke some arms and legs and one thing or another,
and by good luck was found by some peasants who
had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest
habitation, which was one of those large, low,
thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the
garret for the family, and a cunning little porch
under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright-
colored flowers and cats; on the ground-floor a
large and light sitting-room, separated from the
milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the
front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride
of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is
Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort
of mastery of the art and spirit of the language

3

MARK TWAIN

which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence
without changing cars.

There was a village a mile away, and a horse-
doctor lived there, but there was no surgeon. It
seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a sur-
gery case. Then it was remembered that a lady
from Boston was summering in that village, and she
was a Christian Science doctor and could cure any-
thing. So she was sent for. It was night by this
time, and she could not conveniently come, but
sent word that it was no matter, there was no hurry,
she would give me "absent treatment" now, and
come in the morning; meantime she begged me to
make myself tranquil and comfortable and remem-
ber that there was nothing the matter with me. I
thought there must be some mistake.

"Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five
feet high?"

"Yes."

"And struck a boulder at the bottom and
bounced?"

"Yes."

"And struck another one and bounced again?"

"Yes."

"And struck another one and bounced yet again?"

"Yes."

"And broke the boulders?"

"Yes."

"That accounts for it; she is thinking of the
boulders. Why didn't you tell her I got hurt, too?"

"I did. I told her what you told me to tell her:
that you were now but an incoherent series of com-

4

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

pound fractures extending from your scalp-lock to
your heels, and that the comminuted projections
caused you to look like a hat-rack."

"And it was after this that she wished me to re-
member that there was nothing the matter with me?''

"Those were her words."

"I do not understand it. I believe she has not
diagnosed the case with sufficient care. Did she
look like a person who was theorizing, or did she look
like one who has fallen off precipices herself and
brings to the aid of abstract science the confirmations
of personal experience?"

"Bitter

It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's
vocabulary; she couldn't call the hand. I allowed
the subject to rest there, and asked for something to
eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a
basket to pile my legs in; but I could not have any of
these things.

"Why?"

"She said you would need nothing at all."

"But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate
pain."

"She said you would have these delusions, but
must pay no attention to them. She wants you to
particularly remember that there are no such things
as hunger and thirst and pain."

"She does, does she?"

"It is what she said."

"Does she seem to be in full and functionable
possession of her intellectual plant, such as it is?"

"Bitter

5

MARK TWAIN

"Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her
up?"

"Tie her up?"

"There, good night, run along; you are a good
girl, but your mental Geschirr is not arranged for
light and airy conversation. Leave me to my
delusions."

6

CHAPTER II

IT was a night of anguish, of course — at least,
I supposed it was, for it had all the symptoms
of it — but it passed at last, and the Christian
Scientist came, and I was glad. She was middle-
aged, and large and bony, and erect, and had an
austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak
and was a widow in the third degree, and her
name was Fuller. I was eager to get to business
and find relief, but she was distressingly deliberate.
She unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled her
upholsteries one by one, abolished the wrinkles
with a flirt of her hand, and hung the articles
up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them,
got a book out of her hand-bag, then drew a chair
to the bedside, descended into it without hurry,
and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity
but without passion:

"Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the
mind only, not with its dumb servants."

I could not offer my pulse, because the connection
was broken; but she detected the apology before I
could word it, and indicated by a negative tilt of her
head that the pulse was another dumb servant that
she had no use for. Then I thought I would tell
her my symptoms and how I felt, so that she would

7

MARK TWAIN

understand the case; but that was another" incon-
sequence, she did not need to know those things;
moreover, my remark about how I felt was an abuse
of language, a misapplication of terms.

''One does not feel," she explained; "there is no
such thing as feeling: therefore, to speak of a non-
existent thing as existent is a contradiction. Matter
has no existence ; nothing exists but mind ; the mind
cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it."

"But if it hurts, just the same — "

"It doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot
exercise the functions of reality. Pain is unreal;
hence, pain cannot hurt."

In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act
of shooting the illusion of pain out of the mind, she
raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said "Ouch!"
and went tranquilly on with her talk. "You should
never allow yourself to speak of how you feel, nor
permit others to ask you how you are feeling; you
should never concede that you are ill, nor permit
others to talk about disease or pain or death or
similar non-existences in your presence. Such talk
only encourages the mind to continue its empty
imaginings." Just at that point the Stubenmadchen
trod on the cat's tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of
cat profanity. I asked, with caution:

"Is a cat's opinion about pain valuable?"

"A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from
mind only; the lower animals, being eternally
perishable, have not been granted mind; without
mind, opinion is impossible."

"She merely imagined she felt a pain — the cat?"

8

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

"She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is an
effect of mind ; without mind, there is no imagination.
A cat has no imagination."

"Then she had a real pain?"

"I have already told you there is no such thing as
real pain."

"It is strange and interesting. I do wonder
what was the matter with the cat. Because, there
being no such thing as a real pain, and she not being
able to imagine an imaginary one, it would seem
that God in His pity has compensated the cat with
some kind of a mysterious emotion usable when her
tail is trodden on which, for the moment, joins cat
and Christian in one common brotherhood of — "

She broke in with an irritated —

"Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian
feels nothing. Your empty and foolish imaginings
are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an
injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recog-
nize and confess that there is no such thing as
disease or pain or death."

"I am full of imaginary tortures," I said, "but I
do not think I could be any more uncomfortable if
they were real ones. What must I do to get rid
of them?"

"There is no occasion to get rid of them, since
they do not exist. They are illusions propagated
by matter, and matter has no existence; there is
no such thing as matter."

"It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a
degree elusive; it seems to slip through, just when
you think you are getting a grip on it."

9

MARK TWAIN

"Explain."

"Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as1
matter, how can matter propagate things?"

In her compassion she almost smiled. She would
have smiled if there were any such thing as a smile.

"It is quite simple," she said; "the fundamental
propositions of Christian Science explain it, and they
are summarized in the four following self-evident
propositions: i. God is All in all. 2. God is good.
Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is
matter. 4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny
death, evil, sin, disease. There — now you see."

It seemed nebulous; it did not seem to say any-
thing about the difficulty in hand — how non-exist-
ent matter can propagate illusions. I said, with
some hesitancy:

"Does — does it explain?"

11 Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will
do it."

With a budding hope, I asked her to do it back-
ward.

'Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good
omnipotent God life matter is nothing all being
Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is
God. There — do you understand now?"

"It — it — well, it is plainer than it was before;
still—"

"Well?"

"Could you try it some more ways?"

"As many as you like; it always means the same.
Interchanged in any way you please it cannot be
made to mean anything different from what it

zo

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

leans when put in any other way. Because it is
perfect. You can jumble it all up, and it makes no
difference: it always comes out the way it was be-
fore. It was a marvelous mind that produced it.
As a mental tour de force it is without a mate, it de-
fies alike the simple, the concrete, and the occult."

"It seems to be a corker."

I blushed for the word, but it was out before I
could stop it.

"A what?"

"A — wonderful structure — combination, so to
speak, of profound thoughts — unthinkable ones —
un— "

"It is true. Read backward, or forward, or per-
pendicularly, or at any given angle, these four prop-
ositions will always be found to agree in statement
and proof."

"Ah — proof. Now we are coming at it. The
statements agree; they agree with — with — anyway,
th^y agree; I noticed that; but what is it they
prove — I mean, in particular?"

"Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove:
i. God— Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit,
Mind. Do you get that?"

"I — well, I seem to. Go on, please."

"2. Man — God's universal idea, individual, per-
fect, eternal. Is it clear?"

"It — I think so. Continue."

"3. Idea — An image in Mind; the immediate ob-
ject of understanding. There it is — the whole sub-
lime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell. Do
you find a weak place in it anywhere?"

11

MARK TWAIN

«<■

'Well — no; it seems strong."

"Very well. There is more. Those three con-
stitute the Scientific Definition of Immortal Mind.
Next, we have the Scientific Definition of Mortal
Mind. Thus. First Degree : Depravity, i. Physi-
cal— Passions and appetites, fsar, depraved will,
pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin, disease,
death."

"Phantasms, madam — unrealities, as I under-
stand it."

"Every one. Second Degree: Evil Disappear-
ing, i. Moral — Honesty, affection, compassion,
hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?"

"Crystal."

"Third Degree: Spiritual Salvation, i. Spirit-
ual— Faith, wisdom, power, purity, understanding,
health, love. You see how searchingly and co-
ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it
all is. In this Third Degree, as we know by the
revelations of Christian Science, mortal mind dis-
appears."

"Not earlier?"

"No, not until the teaching and preparation for
the Third Degree are completed."

"It is not until then that one is enabled to take
hold of Christian Science effectively, and with the
right sense of sympathy and kinship, as I under-
stand you. That is to say, it could not succeed dur-
ing the processes of the Second Degree, because there
would still be remains of mind left; and therefore —
but I interrupted you. You were about to further
explain the good results proceeding from the erosions

12

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

id disintegrations effected by the Third Degree.
It is very interesting; go on, please."

"Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal
mind disappears. Science so reverses the evidence
before the corporeal human senses as to make this
scriptural testimony true in our hearts, 'the last
shall be first and the first shall be last,' that God
and His idea may be to us — what divinity really is,
and must of necessity be — all-inclusive."

"It is beautiful. And with what exhaustive
exactness your choice and arrangement of words
confirm and establish what you have claimed for
the powers and functions of the Third Degree. The
Second could probably produce only temporary
absence of mind ; it is reserved to the Third to make
it permanent. A sentence framed under the aus-
pices of the Second could have a kind of meaning —
a sort of deceptive semblance of it — whereas it is
only under the magic of the Third that that defect
would disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the
Third Degree that contributes another remarkable
specialty to Christian Science — viz., ease and flow
and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and
smoothness. There must be a special reason for
this?"

"Yes— God-all, all-God, good God, non-Matter,
Matteration, Spirit, Bones, Truth."

"That explains it."

"There is nothing in Christian Science that is
not explicable; for God is one, Time is one, In-
dividuality is one, and may be one of a series, one
of many, as an individual man, individual horse;

13

MARK TWAIN

whereas God is one, not one of a series, but one alone
and without an equal."

"These are noble thoughts. They make one burn
to know more. How does Christian Science ex-
plain the spiritual relation of systematic duality to
incidental deflection?"

"Christian Science reverses the seeming relation
of Soul and body — as astronomy reverses the human
perception of the movement of the solar system —
and makes body tributary to the Mind. As it is
the earth which is in motion, while the sun is at
rest, though in viewing the sun rise one finds it
impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising,
so the body is but the humble servant of the restful
Mind, though it seems otherwise to finite sense;
but we shall never understand this while we admit
that soul is in body, or mind in matter, and that
man is included in non-intelligence. Soul is God,
unchangeable and eternal; and man coexists with
and reflects Soul, for the All-in-all is the Altogether,
and the Altogether embraces the All-one, Soul-
Mind, Mind-Soul, Love, Spirit, Bones, Liver, one
of a series, alone and without an equal."

"What is the origin of Christian Science? Is it a
gift of God, or did it just happen?"

"In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say,
its powers are from Him, but the credit of the dis-
covery of the powers and what they are for is due
to an American lady."

"Indeed? When did this occur?"

"In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain
and disease and death disappeared from the earth

14

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

to return no more forever. That is, the fancies for
which those terms stand disappeared. The things
themselves had never existed ; therefore, as soon as it
was perceived that there were no such things, they
were easily banished. The history and nature of the
great discovery are set down in the book here, and — "

"Did the lady write the book?"

"Yes, she wrote it all, herself. The title is
Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures —
for she explains the Scriptures; they were not under-
stood before. Not even by the twelve Disciples.
She begins thus — I will read it to you."

But she had forgotten to bring her glasses.

"Well, it is no matter," she said. "I remember
the words — indeed, all Christian Scientists know the
book by heart; it is necessary in our practice. We
should otherwise make mistakes and do harm. She
begins thus: 'In the year 1866 I discovered the
Science of Metaphysical Healing, and named it
Christian Science.' And she says — quite beauti-
fully, I think — 'Through Christian Science, religion
and medicine are inspired with a diviner nature and
essence, fresh pinions are given to faith and under-
standing, and thoughts acquaint themselves intelli-
gently with God.' Her very words."

"It is elegant. And it is a fine thought, too
— rnarrying religion to medicine, instead of medicine
to the undertaker in the old way; for religion and
medicine properly belong together, they being the
basis of all spiritual and physical health. What
kind of medicine do you give for the ordinary
diseases, such as — "

IS

MARK TWAIN

"We never give medicine in any circumstances
whatever ! We—' '

"But, madam, it says — "

"I don't care what it says, and I don't wish to talk
about it."

"I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the
mention seemed in some way inconsistent, and — "

"There are no inconsistencies in Christian Science.
The thing is impossible, for the Science is absolute.
It cannot be otherwise, since it proceeds directly
from the All-in-all and the Everything-in- Which,
also Soul, Bones, Truth, one of a series, alone and
without equal. It is Mathematics purified from
material dross and made spiritual."

"I can see that, but — "

"It rests upon the immovable basis of an Apodic-
tical Principle."

The word flattened itself against my mind in trying
to get in, arid disordered me a little, and before I
could inquire into its pertinency, she was already
throwing the needed light:

"This Apodictical Principle is the absolute Prin-
ciple of Scientific Mind-healing, the sovereign
Omnipotence which delivers the children of men
from pain, disease, decay, and every ill that flesh
is heir to."

"Surely not every ill, every decay?"

"Every one; there are no exceptions; there is no
such thing as decay — it is an unreality, it has no
existence."

"But without your glasses your failing eyesight
does not permit you to — "

16

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

«c

'My eyesight cannot fail; nothing can fail; the
Mind is master, and the Mind permits no retro-
gression."

She was under the inspiration of the Third Degree,
therefore there could be no profit in continuing this
part of the subject. I shifted to other ground and
inquired further concerning the Discoverer of the
Science.

"Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klon-
dike, or after long study and calculation, like
America?"

"The comparisons are not respectful, since they
refer to trivialities — but let it pass. I will answer
in the Discoverer's own words: 'God had been
graciously fitting me, during many years, for the
reception of a final revelation of the absolute Prin-
ciple of Scientific Mind-healing.'"

"Many years. How many?"

' ' Eighteen centuries ! ' '

"All-God, God good, good God, Truth, Bones,
Liver, one of a series, alone and without equal — it is
amazing!"

"You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the
truth. This American lady, our revered and sacred
Founder, is distinctly referred to, and her coming
prophesied, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse;
she could not have been more plainly indicated by
St. John without actually mentioning her name."

"How strange, how wonderful!"

"I will quote her own words, from her Key to the
Scriptures: 'The twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse
has a special suggestiveness in connection with this

17

MARK TWAIN

nineteenth century. * There — do you note that?
Think— note it well."

"But — what does it mean?"

"Listen, and you will know. I quote her in-
spired words again: 'In the opening of the Sixth
Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam,
there is one distinctive feature which has special
reference to the present age. Thus:

"'Revelation xii. i. And there appeared a great wonder in
heaven — a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under
her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.'

"That is our Head, our Chief, our Discoverer of
Christian Science — nothing can be plainer, nothing
surer. And note this:

"'Revelation xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness,
where she had a place prepared of God.' "

"That is Boston. I recognize it, madam. These
are sublime things, and impressive; I never under-
stood these passages before; please go on with the
— with the — proofs."

"Very well. Listen:

"'And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven,
clothed with a cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and
his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.
And he held in his hand a little book.'

"A little book, merely a little book — could words
be modester? Yet how stupendous its importance!
Do you know what book that was?"

"Was it—"

"I hold it in my hand — Christian Science!"

18

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

"Love, Livers, Lights, Bones, Truth, Kidneys,
one of a series, alone and without equal — it is beyond
imagination for wonder!"

"Hear our Founder's eloquent words: 'Then will
a voice from harmony cry, "Go and take the little
book: take it and eat it up, and it shall make thy
belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as
honey." Mortal, obey the heavenly evangel. Take
up Divine Science. Read it from beginning to end.
Study it, ponder it. It will be, indeed, sweet at its
first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over
Truth, if you find its digestion bitter.' You now
know the history of our dear and holy Science, sir,
and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its
discovery. I will leave the book with you and will
go, now; but give yourself no uneasiness — I will
give you absent treatment from now till I go to
bed."

19

CHAPTER III

UNDER the powerful influence of the near treat-
ment and the absent treatment together, my
bones were gradually retreating inward and disap-
pearing from view. The good work took a brisk
start, now, and went on swiftly. My body was dili-
gently straining and stretching, this way and that,
to accommodate the processes of restoration, and
every minute or two I heard a dull click inside and
knew that the two ends of a fracture had been suc-
cessfully joined. This muffled clicking and gritting
and grinding and rasping continued during the next
three hours, and then stopped — the connections had
all been made. All except dislocations; there were
only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees, neck;
so that was soon over; one after another they
slipped into their sockets with a sound like pulling
a distant cork, and I jumped up as good as new, as
to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor.

I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-
ache and a cold in the head, and I was not willing
to trust these things any longer in the hands of a
woman whom I did not know, and in whose ability
to successfully treat mere disease I had lost all
confidence. My position was justified by the fact
that the cold and the ache had been in her charge

20

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

from the first, along with the fractures, but had ex-
perienced not a shade of relief; and, indeed, the
ache was even growing worse and worse, and more
and more bitter, now, probably on account of the
protracted abstention from food and drink.

The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full
of hope and professional interest in the case. In
the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic — in fact,
quite horsy — and I tried to arrange with him for
absent treatment, but it was not in his line, so, out
of delicacy, I did not press it. He looked at my
teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and
general condition were favorable to energetic meas-
ures; therefore he would give me something to turn
the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the
head into the blind staggers; then he should be on
his own beat and would know what to do. He made
up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful of it
every two hours, alternated with a drench with tur-
.pentine and axle-grease in it, would either knock my
■ailments out of me in twenty -four hours, or so in-
terest me in other ways as to make me forget they
were on the premises. He administered my first
dose himself, then took his leave, saying I was free
to eat and drink anything I pleased and in any
quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more,
and did not care for food.

I took up the Christian Science book and read half
of it, then took a dipperful of drench and read the
other half. The resulting experiences were full of
interest and adventure. All through the rumblings
and grindings and quakings and effervescings ac-

21

MARK TWAIN

companying the evolution of the ache into the botts
and the cold into the blind staggers I could note the
generous struggle for mastery going on between the
mash and the drench and the literature; and often
I could tell which was ahead, and could easily dis-
tinguish the literature from the others when the
others were separate, though not when they were
mixed ; for when a bran-mash and an eclectic drench
are mixed together they look just like the Apodicti-
cal Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it
from that. The finish was reached at last, the
evolutions were complete, and a fine success, but I
think that this result could have been achieved with
fewer materials. I believe the mash was necessary
to the conversion of the stomach-ache into the botts,
but I think one could develop the blind staggers out
of the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers
produced in this way would be of a better quality and
more lasting than any produced by the artificial
processes of the horse-doctor.

For of all the strange and frantic and incompre-
hensible and uninterpretable books which the imag-
ination of man has created, surely this one is the
prize sample. It is written with a limitless confi-
dence and complacency, and with a dash and stir
and earnestness which often compel the effects of
eloquence, even when the words do not seem to
have any traceable meaning. There are plenty of
people who imagine they understand the book; I
know this, for I have talked with them; but in all
cases they were people who also imagined that there
were no such things as pain, sickness, and death,

22

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

and no realities in the world; nothing actually exist-
ent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value
of their testimony. When these people talk about
Christian Science they do as Mrs. Fuller did: they
do not use their own language, but the book's; they
pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave
you to find out later that they were not originating,
but merely quoting; they seem to know the volume
by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible —
another Bible, perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the
book was written under the mental desolations of the
Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the
membership of that Degree can discover meanings
in it. When you read it you seem to be listening to
a lively and aggressive and oracular speech delivered
in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you
get but not the particulars; or, to change the figure,
you seem to be listening to a vigorous instrument
which is making a noise which it thinks is a tune,
but which, to persons not members of the band, is
only the martial tooting of a trombone, and merely
stirs the soul through the noise, but does not convey
a meaning.

The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost
seem to smack of a heavenly origin — they have no
blood-kin in the earth. It is more than human to
be so placidly certain about things, and so finely
superior, and so airily content with one's perform-
ance. Without ever presenting anything which
may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evi-
dence, and sometimes without even mentioning a
reason for a deduction at all, it thunders out the

23

MARK TWAIN

startling words, "I have Proved" so and so. It
takes the Pope and all the great guns of his Church
in battery assembled to authoritatively settle and
establish the meaning of a sole and single unclarified
passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time
and study and reflection, but the author of this
work is superior to all that: she finds the whole
Bible in an unclarified condition, and at small ex-
pense of time and no expense of mental effort she
clarifies it from lid to lid, reorganizes and improves
the meanings, then authoritatively settles and es-
tablishes them with formulas which you cannot
tell from "Let there be light!" and "Here you have
it!" It is the first time since the dawn-days of
Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through
space with such placid and complacent confidence
and command.1

1 January, 1903. The first reading of any book whose terminol-
ogy is new and strange is nearly sure to leave the reader in a
bewildered and sarcastic state of mind. But now that, during the
past two months, I have, by diligence, gained a fair acquaintance-
ship with Science and Health technicalities, I no longer find the bulk
of that work hard to understand. — M. T.

P. S. The wisdom harvested from the foregoing thoughts has
already done me a service and saved me a sorrow. Nearly a month
ago there came to me from one of the universities a tract by Dr.
Edward Anthony Spitzka on the "Encephalic Anatomy of the
Races." I judged that my opinion was desired by the university,
and I was greatly pleased with this attention and wrote and said
I would furnish it as soon as I could. That night I put my plodding
and disheartening Christian Science mining aside and took hold of
the matter. I wrote an eager chapter, and was expecting to finish
my opinion the next day, but was called away for a week, and my
mind was soon charged with other interests. It was not until
to-day, after the lapse of nearly a month, that I happened upon
my Encephalic chapter again. Meantime, the new wisdom had
come to me, and I read it with shame. I recognized that I had

24

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

entered upon that work in far from the right temper — far from the
respectful and judicial spirit which was its due reverence. I had
begun upon it with the following paragraph for fuel:

"Fissures of the Parietal and Occipital Lobes (Lateral
Surface). — The Postcentral Fissural Complex. — In this hemicere-
brum, the postcentral and subcentral are combined to form a
continuous fissure, attaining a length of 8.5 cm. Dorsally, the
fissure bifurcates, embracing the gyre indented by the caudal limb
of the paracentral. The caudal limb of the postcentral is joined
by a transparietal piece. In all, five additional rami spring from the
combined fissure. A vadum separates it from the parietal; another
from the central."

It humiliates me, now, to see how angry I got over that; and
how scornful. I said that the style was disgraceful; that it was
labored and tumultuous, and in places violent, that the treatment
was involvt d and erratic, and almost, as a rule, bewildering; that to
lack of sin.plicity was added a lack of vocabulary; that there was
quite too much feeling shown; that if I had a dog that would get so
excited and incoherent over a tranquil subject like Encephalic
Anatomy I would not pay his tax; and at that point I got excited
myself and spoke bitterly of these mongrel insanities, and said a
person might as well try to understand Science and Health.

I know, now, where the trouble was, and am glad of the inter-
ruption that saved me from sending my verdict to the university.
It makes me cold to think what those people might have thought
of me. — M. T.

25

CHAPTER IV

NO one doubts — certainly not I — that the mind
exercises a powerful influence over the body.
From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the inter-
preter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan,
the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated
physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have
made use of the client's imagination to help them in
their work. They have all recognized the potency
and availability of that force. Physicians cure many
patients with a bread pill; they know that where
the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence
in the doctor will make the bread pill effective.

Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire
thing. It seems to look like it. In old times the
King cured the king's evil by the touch of the royal
hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures.
Could his footman have done it? No — not in his
own clothes. Disguised as the King, could he have
done it ? I think we may not doubt it. I think we
may feel sure that it was not the King's touch that
made the cure in any instance, but the patient's
faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and
remarkable cures have been achieved through con-
tact with the relics of a saint. Is it not likely that
any other bones would have done as well if the sub-

26

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

stitution had been concealed from the patient?
When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five
miles from our village had great fame as a faith-
doctor — that was what she called herself. Sufferers
came to her from all around, and she laid her hand
upon them and said, "Have faith — it is all that is
necessary," and they went away well of their ail-
ments. She was not a religious woman, and pre-
tended to no occult powers. She said that the pa-
tient's faith in her did the work. Several times I
saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches.
My mothrr was the patient. In Austria there is a
peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of in-
dustry, and has both the high and the low for pa-
tients. He gets into prison every now and then for
practising without a diploma, but his business is as
brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is un-
questionably successful and keeps his reputation
high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed
so many great cures that he had to retire from his
profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet
the demand of his constantly increasing body of
customers. He goes on from year to year doing his
miracles, and has become rich. He pretends to no
religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks
there is something in his make-up which inspires the
confidence of his patients, and that it is this con-
fidence which does the work, and not some mysteri-
ous power issuing from himself.1

1 January, 1903. I have personal and intimate knowledge of the
''miraculous" cure of a case of paralysis which had kept the patient
helpless in bed during two years, in spite of all that the best medical

27

MARK TWAIN

Within the last quarter of a century, in America,
several sects of curers have appeared under various
names and have done notable things in the way of
healing ailments without the use of medicines.
There are the Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer
Cure, the Mental-Science Cure, and the Christian-
Science Cure; and apparently they all do their
miracles with the same old, powerful instrument —
the patient's imagination. Differing names, but no
difference in the process. But they do not give that
instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way
differs from the ways of the others.

They all achieve some cures, there is no question
about it; and the Faith Cure and the Prayer Cure
probably do no harm when they do no good, since
they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure
with medicines if he wants to; but the others bar
medicines, and claim ability to cure every conceiv-
able human ailment through the application of their
mental forces alone. There would seem to be an
element of danger here. It has the look of claiming
too much, I think. Public confidence would prob-
ably be increased if less were claimed.1

The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my
stomach-ache and my cold; but the horse-doctor

science of New York could do. The traveling "quack" (that is
what they called him) came on two successive mornings and lifted
the patient out of bed and said "Walk!" and the patient walked.
That was the end of it. It was forty-one years ago. The patient
has walked ever since. — M. T.

1 February, 1903. I find that Christian Science claims that the
healing-force which it employs is radically different from the force
used by any other party in the healing business. I shall talk
about this toward the end of this work. — M. T.

28

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

did it. This convinces me that Christian Science
claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let
diseases alone and confine itself to surgery. There
it would have everything its own way.

The horse-doctor charged me thirty kreutzers,
and I paid him; in fact, I doubled it and gave him
a shilling. Mrs. Fuller brought in an itemized bill
for a crate of broken bones mended in two hundred
and thirty-four places — one dollar per fracture.,

"Nothing exists but Mind?"

"Nothing," she answered. "All else is sub-
stanceless, all else is imaginary."

I gave her an imaginary check, and now she is
suing me for substantial dollars. It looks incon-
sistent.

Note. — The foregoing chapters appeared originally in the
Cosmopolitan Magazine, about three years ago. — M. T.

29

CHAPTER V

LET us consider that we are all partially insane.
j It will explain us to each other; it will un-
riddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple
many things which are involved in haunting and
harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not
demonstrably due there, are nevertheless, no doubt,
insane in one or two particulars. I think we must
admit this; but I think that we are otherwise
healthy-minded. I think that when we all see one
thing alike, it is evidence that, as regards that one
thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there
are really several things which we do all see alike;
things which we all accept, and about which we do
not dispute. For instance, we who are outside of the
asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the
sun gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that
fog is damp ; that six times six are thirty-six, that two
from ten leaves eight; that eight and seven are
fifteen. These are, perhaps, the only things we are
agreed about; but, although they are so few, they
are of inestimable value, because they make an
infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts
them him we know to be substantially sane; suf-
ficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane. Who-

A — Vol. 25 — M. T.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

ever disputes a single one of them him we know to
be wholly insane, and qualified for the asylum.

Very well, the man who disputes none of them we
concede to be entitled to go at large. But that is
concession enough. We cannot go any further than
that; for we know that in all matters of mere
opinion that same man is insane — just as insan?
as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was*
We know exactly where to put our finger upon
his insanity: it is where his opinion differs from
ours.

That is a simple rule, and easy to remember.
When I, a thoughtful and unbiased Presbyterian,
examine the Koran, I know that beyond any ques-
tion every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things,
but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and
unbiased Mohammedan examines the Westminster
Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I
am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that
he is insane, because you never can prove any-
thing to a lunatic — for that is a part of his in-
sanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove
to me that I am insane, for my mind has the
same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are
insane, but not one of them knows it; none but
the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All
the Republicans are insane, but only the Demo-
crats and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule
is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries
are insane. When I look around me, I am often
troubled to see how many people are mad. To
mention only a few:

31

B — Vol. 25— M. T.

MARK TWAIN

The Atheist
The Infidel
The Agnostic
The Baptist
The Methodist
The Christian

Scien-

The Theosophists

The Swedenborgians

The Shakers

The Millerites

The Mormons

The Laurence Oliphant

Harrisites
The Grand Lama's people

tist

The Catholic, and the

115 Christian sects, the The Monarchists
Presbyterian excepted The Imperialists

The 72 Mohammedan The Democrats

sects
The Buddhist
The Blavatsky-Buddhist
The Nationalist
The Confucian
The Spiritualist
The 2,000 East Indian

sects
The Peculiar People

The Republicans (but not

the Mugwumps)
The Mind-Curists
The Faith-Curists
The Mental Scientists
The Allopaths
The Homeopaths
The Electropaths
The

But there's no end to the list; there are millions
of them! And all insane; each in his own way;
insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but otherwise
sane and rational.

This should move us to be charitable toward
one another's lunacies. I recognize that in his
special belief the Christian Scientist is insane, because
he does not believe as I do; but I hail him as my
mate and fellow, because I am as insane as he —
insane from his point of view, and his point of view
is as authoritative as mine and worth as much.

32

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

That Is to say, worth a brass farthing. Upon a
great religious or political question, the opinion of
the dullest head in the world is worth the same as
the opinion of the brightest head in the world — a brass
farthing. How do we arrive at this ? It is simple.
The affirmative opinion of a stupid man is neutral-
ized by the negative opinion of his stupid neighbor —
no decision is reached ; the affirmative opinion of the
intellectual giant Gladstone is neutralized by the
negative opinion of the intellectual giant Newman —
no decision is reached. Opinions that prove nothing
are, of course, without value — any but a dead person
knows that much. This obliges us to admit the
truth of the unpalatable proposition just mentioned
above — that, in disputed matters political and re-
ligious, one man's opinion is worth no more than his
peer's, and hence it follows that no man's opinion
possesses any real value. It is a humbling thought,
but there is no way to get around it: all opinions
upon these great subjects are brass-farthing opinions.

It is a mere plain, simple fact — as clear and as
certain as that eight and seven make fifteen. And
by it we recognize that we are all insane, as con-
cerns those matters. If we were sane, we should all
see a political or religious doctrine alike; there
would be no dispute : it would be a case of eight and
seven — just as it is in heaven, where all are sane and
none insane. There there is but one religion, one
belief; the harmony is perfect; there is never a
discordant note.

Under protection of these preliminaries, I suppose
I may now repeat without offense that the Chris-

33

MARK TWAIN

tian Scientist is insane. I mean him no discourtesy,
and I am not charging — nor even imagining — that he
is insaner than the rest of the human race. I think
he is more picturesquely insane than some of us.
At the same time, I am quite sure that in one im-
portant and splendid particular he is much saner
than is the vast bulk of the race.

Why is he insane? I told you before: it is be-
cause his opinions are not ours. I know of no other
reason, and I do not need any other; it is the only
way we have of discovering insanity when it is not
violent. It is merely the picturesqueness of his in-
sanity that makes it more interesting than my kind
or yours. For instance, consider his "little book";
the "little book" exposed in the sky eighteen cen-
turies ago by the naming angel of the Apocalypse,
and handed down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker
G. Eddy, of New Hampshire, and translated by her,
word for word, into English (with help of a polisher),
and now published and distributed in hundreds of
editions by her at a clear profit per volume, above
cost, of seven hundred per cent. ! 1 — a profit which
distinctly belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse,
and let him collect it if he can ; a " little book ' ' which
the C. S. very frequently calls by just that name,
and always inclosed in quotation-marks to keep its
high origin exultantly in mind; a "little book"
which "explains" and reconstructs and new-paints

1 February, 1903. This has been disputed by novices. It is not
possible that the copy possessed by me could have cost above
thirty-seven and a half cents. I have been a printer and book-
maker myself. I shall go into some particulars concerning this
matter in a later chapter. — M. T.

34

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

and decorates the Bible, and puts a mansard roof
on it and a lightning-rod and all the other modern
improvements; a "little book" which for the present
affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friend-
ly to it, and within half a century will hitch the
Bible in the rear and thenceforth travel tandem*
itself in the lead, in the coming great march of
Christian Scientism through the Protestant do-
minions of the planet.

35

CHAPTER VI

"'Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection
with the text-book of Christian Science, Science and Health, with
Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker G. Eddy. These are our
only preachers. They are the word of God." — Christian Science
Journal, October, 1898.

IS that picturesque? A lady has told me that
in a chapel of the Mosque in Boston there is a
picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before it
burns a never-extinguished light.1 Is that pic-
turesque? How long do you think it will be before
the Christian Scientist will be worshiping that pic-
ture or image and praying to it? How long do you
think it will be before it is claimed that Mrs. Eddy
is a Redeemer, a Christ, and Christ's equal?2 Al-
ready her army of disciples speak of her reverently
as "Our Mother." How long will it be before they
place her on the steps of the Throne beside the
Virgin — and, later, a step higher? First, Mary the
Virgin and Mary the Matron; later, with a change
of precedence, Mary the Matron and Mary the
Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas
and his brushes ; the new Renaissance is on its way,

1 February, IQ03. There is a dispute about that picture. I will
render justice concerning it in the new half of this book. — M. T.

8 This suggestion has been scorned. I will examine the matter
in the new half of the book. — M. T.

36

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

and there will be money in altar-canvases — a
thousand times as much as the Popes and their
Church ever spent on the Old Masters; for their
riches were poverty as compared with what is going
to pour into the treasure-chest of the Christian-
Scientist Papacy by and by, let us not doubt it.
We will examine the financial outlook presently and
see what it promises. A favorite subject of the new
Old Master will be the first verse of the twelfth
chapter of Revelation — a verse which Mrs. Eddy
says (in her Annex to the Scriptures) has "one dis-
tinctive feature which has special reference to the
present age" — and to her, as is rather pointedly
indicated :

" And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman
clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet," etc.

The woman clothed with the sun will be a por-
trait of Mrs. Eddy.

Is it insanity to believe that Christian Scientism
is destined to make the most formidable show that
any new religion has made in the world since the
birth and spread of Mohammedanism, and that
within a century from now it may stand second to
Rome only, in numbers and power in Christendom?

If this is a wild dream it will not be easy to prove
it so just yet, I think. There seems argument that
it may come true. The Christian-Science "boom,"
proper, is not yet five years old; yet already it has
two hundred and fifty churches.1

1 February, 1903. Through misinformation I doubled those fig-
ures when I wrote this chapter four years ago. — M. T.

37

MARK TWAIN

It has its start, you see, and it is a phenomenally
good one. Moreover, it is latterly spreading with a
constantly accelerating swiftness. It has a better
chance to grow and prosper and achieve permanency
than any other existing "ism"; for it has more to
offer than any other. The past teaches us that in
order to succeed, a movement like this must not be a
mere philosophy, it must be a religion; also, that it
must not claim entire originality, but content itself
with passing for an improvement on an existing
religion, and show its hand later, when strong and
prosperous — like Mohammedanism.

Next, there must be money — and plenty of it.

Next, the power and authority and capital must
be concentrated in the grip of a small and irrespon-
sible clique, with nobody outside privileged to ask
questions or find fault.

Next, as before remarked, it must bait its hook
with some new and attractive advantages over the
baits offered by its competitors.

A new movement equipped with some of these en-
dowments— like spiritualism, for instance — may
count upon a considerable success ; a new movement
equipped with the bulk of them — like Moham-
medanism, for instance — may count upon a widely
extended conquest. Mormonism had all the req-
uisites but one — it had nothing new and nothing
valuable to bait with. Spiritualism lacked the im-
portant detail of concentration of money and au-
thority in the hands of an irresponsible clique.

The above equipment is excellent, admirable,
powerful, but not perfect. There is yet another

38

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

detail which is worth the whole of it put together —
and more; a detail which has never been joined (in
the beginning of a religious movement) to a su-
premely good working equipment since the world
began, until now: a new personage to worship}
Christianity had the Saviour, but at first and for
generations it lacked money and concentrated power.
In Mrs. Eddy, Christian Science possesses the new
personage for worship, and in addition — here in the
very beginning — a working equipment that has not
a flaw in it. In the beginning, Mohammedanism
had no money; and it has never had anything to
offer its client but heaven — nothing here below that
was valuable. In addition to heaven hereafter,
Christian Science has present health and a cheerful
spirit to offer; and in comparison with this bribe all
other this-world bribes are poor and cheap. You rec-
ognize that this estimate is admissible, do you not?

To whom does Bellamy's "Nationalism" appeal?
Necessarily to the few: people who read and dream,
and are compassionate, and troubled for the poor and
the hard-driven. To whom does Spiritualism appeal?
Necessarily to the few; its "boom" has lasted for
half a century, and I believe it claims short of four
millions of adherents in America. Who are attracted
by Swedenborgianism and some of the other fine
and delicate ' ' isms ' ' ? The few again : educated peo-
ple, sensitively organized, with superior mental en-
dowments, who seek lofty planes of thought and find

1That has been disputed by a Christian-Science friend. This
surprises me. I will examine this detail in the new half of the book.

— M. T.

39

MARK TWAIN

their contentment there. And who are attracted
by Christian Science? There is no limit; its field
is horizonless; its appeal is as universal as is the
appeal of Christianity itself. It appeals to the rich,
the poor, the high, the low, the cultured, the igno-
rant, the gifted, the stupid, the modest, the vain, the
wise, the silly, the soldier, the civilian, the hero, the
coward, the idler, the worker, the godly, the god-
less, the freeman, the slave, the adult, the child;
they who are ailing in body or mind, they who have
friends that are ailing in body or mind. To mass it
in a phrase, its clientage is the Human Race. Will
it march? I think so.

Remember its principal great offer: to rid the
Race of pain and disease. Can it do so? In large
measure, yes. How much of the pain and disease
in the world is created by the imaginations of the
sufferers, and then kept alive by those same imagi-
nations? Four-fifths? Not anything short of that,
I should think. Can Christian Science banish that
four-fifths? I think so. Can any other (organized)
force do it ? None that I know of. Would this be a
new world when that was accomplished? And a
pleasanter one — for us well people, as well as for
those fussy and fretting sick ones? Would it seem
as if there was not as much gloomy weather as there
used to be? I think so.

In the mean time, would the Scientist kill off a
good many patients? I think so. More than get
killed off now by the legalized methods ? I will take
up that question presently.

At present, I wish to ask you to examine some of

40

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

the Scientist's performances, as registered in his
magazine, The Christian Science Journal — October
number, 1898. First, a Baptist clergyman gives us
this true picture of "the average orthodox Christian"
— and he could have added that it is a true picture
of the average (civilized) human being:

Re is a worried and fretted and fearful man; afraid of
himself and his propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid
of treading on serpents or drinking deadly things.

Then he gives us this contrast:

The average Christian Scientist has put all anxiety and
fretting under his feet. He does have a victory over fear and
care that is not achieved by the average orthodox Christian.

He has put all anxiety and fretting under his feet.
What proportion of your earnings or income would
you be willing to pay for that frame of mind, year in,
year out? It really outvalues any price that can be
put upon it. Where can you purchase it, at any
outlay of any sort, in any Church or out of it, except
the Scientist's?

Well, it is the anxiety and fretting about colds, and
fevers, and draughts, and getting our feet wet, and
about forbidden food eaten in terror of indigestion,
that brings on the cold and the fever and the indiges-
tion and the most of our other ailments; and so, if
the Science can banish that anxiety from the world
I think it can reduce the world's disease and pain
about four-fifths.1

1 February, IQ03. In a letter to me, a distinguished New York
physician finds fault with this notion. If four-fifths of our pains
and diseases are not the result of unwholesome fears and imagings,
the Science has a smaller field than I was guessing; but I still think
four-fifths is a sound guess. — M. T.

41

MARK TWAIN

In this October number many of the redeemed
testify and give thanks; and not coldly, but with
passionate gratitude. As a rule they seem drunk
with health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of
it, the unspeakable glory and splendor of it, after a
long, sober spell spent in inventing imaginary diseases
and concreting them with doctor-stuff. The first
witness testifies that when "this most beautiful
Truth first dawned on him" he had "nearly all the
ills that flesh is heir to"; that those he did not
have he thought he had — and this made the tale
about complete. What was the natural result?
Why, he was a dump-pit "for all the doctors, drug-
gists, and patent medicines of the country." Chris-
tian Science came to his help, and "the old sick con-
ditions passed away," and along with them the "dis-
mal forebodings" which he had been accustomed to
employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a
healthy and cheerful man, now, and astonished.

But I am not astonished, for from other sources I
know what must have been his method of applying
Christian Science. If I am in the right, he watch-
fully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy
channels and compelled it to travel in healthy ones.
Nothing contrivable by human invention could be
more formidably effective than that, in banishing
imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances
against subsequent applicants of their breed. I
think his method was to keep saying, "I am well ! I
am sound! — sound and well! well and sound! Per-
fectly sound, perfectly well! I have no pain; there's
no such thing as pain! I have no disease; there's

42

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind;
all is Mind, All-Good-Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver,
Bones, one of a series, ante and pass the buck!"

I do not mean that that was exactly the formula
used, but that it doubtless contains the spirit of it.
The Scientist would attach value to the exact formula,
no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was
used. I should think that any formula that would
divert the mind from unwholesome channels and
force it into healthy ones would answer every purpose
with some people, though not with all. I think it
most likely that a very religious man would find the
addition of the religious spirit a powerful reinforce-
ment in his case.

The second witness testifies that the Science
banished "an old organic trouble," which the doctor
and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs and the
knife for seven years.

He calls it his "claim." A surface-miner would
think it was not his claim at all, but the property of
the doctor and his pal the surgeon— for he would be
misled by that word, which is Christian-Science
slang for "ailment." The Christian Scientist has no
ailment; to him there is no such thing, and he will not
use the hateful word. All that happens to him is that
upon his attention an imaginary disturbance some-
times obtrudes itself which claims to be an ailment
but isn't.

This witness offers testimony for a clergyman
seventy years old who had preached forty years in a
Christian church, and has now gone over to the new
sect, He was ''almost blind and deaf." He was

43

MARK TWAIN

treated by the C. S. method, and "when he heard the
voice of Truth he saw spiritually." Saw spiritually?
It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him
again. Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-
basketed, since there is evidently no lack of definite
ones procurable; but this C. S. magazine is poorly
edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.
The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War.
When Christian Science found him, he had in stock
the following claims:

Indigestion Atrophy of the muscles

Rheumatism of

Catarrh Arms )

Chalky deposits in Shoulders j

Stiffness of all those joints
Excruciating pains most of
the time

Shoulder- joints
Arm- joints
Hand- joints
Insomnia

These claims have a very substantial sound.
They came of exposure in the campaigns. The
doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but "I never realized any physical relief
from that source." After thirty years of torture, he
went to a Christian Scientist and took an hour's
treatment and went home painless. Two days later,
he "began to eat like a well man." Then "the
claims vanished — some at once, others more grad-
ually"; finally, "they have almost entirely disap-
peared." And — a thing which is of still greater
value — he is now "contented and happy " That is a
detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist-

44

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Church specialty. And, indeed, one may go further
and assert with little or no exaggeration that it is a
Christian-Science monopoly. With thirty-one years'
effort, the Methodist Church had not succeeded in
furnishing it to this harassed soldier.

And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness
bulletins his claims, declares their prompt abolish-
ment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the praise.
Milk-leg is cured ; nervous prostration is cured ; con-
sumption is cured; and St. Vitus's dance is made a
pastime. Even without a fiddle. And now and
then an interesting new addition to the Science slang
appears on the page. We have ' ' demonstrations over
chilblains ' ' and such things. It seems to be a curtailed
way of saying ' ' demonstrations of the power of Chris-
tian-Science Truth over the fiction which masquerades
under the name of Chilblains." The children, as well
as the adults, share in the blessings of the Science.
"Through the study of the 'little book' they are learn-
ing how to be healthful, peaceful, and wise." Some-
times they are cured of their little claims by the
professional healer, and sometimes more advanced
children say over the formula and cure themselves.

A little Far- Western girl of nine, equipped with
an adult vocabulary, states her age and says, "I
thought I would write a demonstration to you."
She had a claim, derived from getting flung over a
pony's head and landing on a rock-pile. She saved
herself from disaster by remembering to say "God
is All" while she was in the air. I couldn't have
done it. I shouldn't even have thought of it. I
should have been too excited. Nothing but Chris-

45

MARK TWAIN

tian Science could have enabled that child to do
that calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in
those circumstances. She came down on her head,
and by all the rules she should have broken it; but
the intervention of the formula prevented that, so
the only claim resulting was a blackened eye.
Monday morning it was still swollen and shut. At
school "it hurt pretty badly — that is, it seemed to."
So "I was excused, and went down to the basement
and said, ' Now I am depending on mamma instead of
God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma.' "
No doubt this would have answered ; but, to make
sure, she added Mrs. Eddy to the team and recited
"the Scientific Statement of Being," which is one of
the principal incantations, I judge. Then "I felt my
eye opening." Why, dear, it would have opened an
oyster. I think it is one of the touchingest things
in child - history, that pious little rat down cellar,
pumping away at the Scientific Statement of Being.
There is a page about another good child — little
Gordon. Little Gordon "came into the world with-
out the assistance of surgery or anesthetics." He
was a "demonstration." A painless one; therefore,
his coming evoked "joy and thankfulness to God
and the Discoverer of Christian Science." It is a
noticeable feature of this literature — the so frequent
linking together of the Two Beings in an equal bond;
also of Their Two Bibles. When little Gordon was
two years old, "he was playing horse on the bed,
where I had left my 'little book.' I noticed him
stop in his play, take the book carefully in his little
hands, kiss it softly, then look about for the high-

46

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

est place of safety his arms could reach, and put it
there." This pious act filled the mother "with such
a train of thought as I had never experienced before.
I thought of the sweet mother of long ago who kept
things in her heart," etc. It is a bold comparison;
however, unconscious profanations are about as
common in the mouths of the lay membership of the
new Church as are frank and open ones in the
mouths of its consecrated chiefs.

Some days later, the family library — Christian-
Science books — was lying in a deep-seated window.
This was another chance for the holy child to show
off. He left his play and went there and pushed
all the books to one side, except the Annex. "It
he took in both hands, slowly raised it to his lips,
then removed it carefully, and seated himself in the
window." It had seemed to the mother too won-
derful to be true, that first time; but now she was
convinced that "neither imagination nor accident
had anything to do with it." Later, little Gordon
let the author of his being see him do it. After that
he did it frequently; probably every time anybody
was looking. I would rather have that child than
a chromo. If this tale has any object, it is to inti-
mate that the inspired book was supernaturally able
to convey a sense of its sacred and awful character
to this innocent little creature, without the inter-
vention of outside aids. The magazine is not edit-
ed with high-priced discretion. The editor has a
"claim," and he ou^ht to get it treated.

Among other witnesses there is one who had a
"jumping toothache," which several times tempted

47

MARK TWAIN

her to "believe that there was sensation in matter,
but each time it was overcome by the power of
Truth." She would not allow the dentist to use
cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and drill
and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its
ulcerations, and pull out the nerve, and dig out
fragments of bone; and she wouldn't once confess
that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't,
and I have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right,
and that her Christian-Science faith did her better
service than she could have gotten out of cocaine.

There is an account of a boy who got broken all
up into small bits by an accident, but said over the
Scientific Statement of Being, or some of the other
incantations, and got well and sound without having
suffered any real pain and without the intrusion of
a surgeon.

Also, there is an account of the restoration to per-
fect health, in a single night, of a fatally injured
horse, by the application of Christian Science. I
can stand a good deal, but I recognize that the ice
is getting thin, here. That horse had as many as
fifty claims; how could he demonstrate over them?
Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good, Good-
Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down but Nine,
Set them up on the Other Alley? Could he intone
the Scientific Statement of Being? Now, could he?
Wouldn't it give him a relapse? Let us draw the
line at horses. Horses and furniture.

There is plenty of other testimonies in the maga-
zine, but these quoted samples will answer. They
show the kind of trade the Science is driving. Now

48

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

we come back to the question, Does the Science kill
a patient here and there and now and then? We
must concede it. Does it compensate for this? I
am persuaded that it can make a plausible showing
in that direction. For instance: when it lays its
hand upon a soldier who has suffered thirty years of
helpless torture and makes him whole in body and
mind, what is the actual sum of that achievement?
This, I think: that it has restored to life a subject
who had essentially died ten deaths a year for thirty
years, and each of them a long and painful one. But
for its interference, that man, in the three years
which have since elapsed, would have essentially died
thirty times more. There are thousands of young
people in the land who are now ready to enter upon
a lifelong death similar to that man's. Every time
the Science captures one of these and secures to him
lifelong immunity from imagination-manufactured
disease, it may plausibly claim that in his person it
has saved three hundred lives. Meantime, it will
kill a man every now and then. But no matter, it
will still be ahead on the credit side.

Note. — I have received several letters (two from educated and
ostensibly intelligent persons), which contained, in substance, this
protest: "I don't object to men and women chancing their lives
with these people, but it is a burning shame that the law should
allow them to trust their helpless little children in their deadly
hands." Isn't it touching? Isn't it deep? Isn't it modest? It is
as if the person said: "I know that to a parent his child is the core
of his heart, the apple of his eye, a possession so dear, so precious
that he will trust its life in no hands but those which he believes,
with all his soul, to be the very best and the very safest, but it
is a burning shame that the law does not require him to come to
me to ask what kind of healer I will allow him to call." The public
is merely a multiplied "me." — M. T.

49

CHAPTER VII1

"We consciously declare that Science and Health, with Key
to the Scriptures, was foretold, as well as its author, Mary Baker
Eddy, in Revelation x. She is the 'mighty angel,' or God's
highest thought to this age (verse i), giving us the spiritual
interpretation of the Bible in the 'little book open1 (verse 2).
Thus we prove that Christian Science is the second coming
of Christ — Truth — Spirit." — Lecture by Dr. George Tomkins,
D.D.C.S.

THERE you have it in plain speech. She is the
mighty angel; she is the divinely and officially
sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the present,
she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that
before she has been in her grave fifty years she will
be regarded by her following as having been herself
the Second Advent. She is already worshiped, and
we must expect this feeling to spread, territorially,
and also to deepen in intensity.2

Particularly after her death; for then, as any
one can foresee, Eddy-Worship will be taught in the
Sunday-schools and pulpits of the cult. Already

1 Written in Europe in 1899, but not hitherto published in book
form.— M. T.

2 After raising a dead child to life, the disciple who did it writes an
account of her performance to Mrs. Eddy, and closes it thus: "My
prayer daily is to be more spiritual, that I may do more as you would
have me do, . . . and may we all love you more, and so live it
that the world may know that the Christ is come." — Printed in the
Concord, N. H., Independent Statesman, March 9, 1899. If this is
not worship, it is a good imitation of it. — M. T.

So

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

whatever she puts her trade-mark on, though it be
only a memorial spoon, is holy and is eagerly and
gratefully bought by the disciple, and becomes a
fetich in his house. I say bought, for the Boston
Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; every-
thing it has is for sale. And the terms are cash; and
not only cash, but cash in advance. Its god is Mrs.
Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual Dollar,
but a real one. From end to end of the Christian-
Science literature not a single (material) thing in the
world is conceded to be real, except the Dollar.
But all through and through its advertisements that
reality is eagerly and persistently recognized.

The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways;
the Christian-Science Mother Church and Bargain-
Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of spiritual
wares to the faithful, and always on the one con-
dition— cash, cash in advance. The Angel of the
Apocalypse could not go there and get a copy of his
own pirated book on credit. Many, many precious
Christian-Science things are to be had there — for
cash: Bible Lessons; Church Manual; C. S. Hymnal;
History of the building of the Mother Church; lot of
Sermons; Communion Hymn, "Saw Ye my Sa-
viour," by Mrs. Eddy, half a dollar a copy, "words
used by special permission of Mrs. Eddy." Also
we have Mrs. Eddy's and the Angel's little Bible-
Annex in eight styles of binding at eight kinds of
war-prices; among these a sweet thing in "levant,
divinity circuit, leather-lined to edge, round corners,
gold edge, silk -sewed, each, prepaid, $6," and if
you take a million you get them a shilling cheaper

Si

MARK TWAIN

— that is to say, "prepaid, $5.75." Also we have
Mrs. Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings, at 'andsome big
prices, the divinity-circuit style heading the extor-
tions, shilling discount where you take an edition.
Next comes Christ and Christmas, by the fertile Mrs.
Eddy — a poem — would God I could see it! — price
$3, cash in advance. Then follow five more books
by Mrs. Eddy, at highwayman's rates, some of them
in "leatherette covers," some of them in "pebbled
cloth," with divinity circuit, compensation-balance,
twin-screw, and the other modern improvements;
and at the same bargain-counter can be had The
Christian Science Journal.

Christian-Science literary discharges are a monop-
oly of the Mother-Church Headquarters Factory in
Boston ; none genuine without the trade-mark of the
Trust. You must apply there and not elsewhere.1

The Trust has still other sources of income.
Mrs. Eddy is president (and proprietor) of the
Trust's Metaphysical College in Boston, where the
student of C. S. healing learns the game by a three
weeks' course, and pays one hundred dollars for it.2
And I have a case among my statistics where the
student had a three weeks' course and paid three
hundred for it.

1 February, 1903. I applied last month, but they returned my
money, and wouldn't play. We are not on speaking terms now-

— M. T.

2 An error. For one hundred, read three hundred. That was for
twelve brief lessons. But this cheapness only lasted until the end
of 1888 — fourteen years ago. [I am making this note in December,
1902.] Mrs. Eddy — over her own signature — then made a change;
the new terms were three hundred dollars for seven lessons. See
Christian Science Journal for December, 1888. — M. T,

52

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

The Trust does love the Dollar, when it isn't a
spiritual one.

In order to force the sale of Mrs. Eddy's Bible-
Annex, no healer, Metaphysical-College-bred or
other, is allowed to practise the game unless he
possesses a copy of that book. That means a large
and constantly augmenting income for the Trust.
No C. S. family would consider itself loyal or pious
or pain-proof without an Annex or two in the house.
That means an income for the Trust, in the near
future, of millions; not thousands — millions a year.

No member, young or old, of a branch Christian-
Scientist church can acquire and retain membership
in the Mother Church unless he pay ''capitation
tax" (of "not less than a dollar," say the By-Laws)
to the Boston Trust every year. That means an
income for the Trust, in the near future, of — let us
venture to say — millions more per year.

It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in
1920 there will be ten million1 Christian Scientists,
and three millions in Great Britain ; that these figures
will be trebled in 1930; that in America in 1920 the
Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1930
politically formidable, and in 1940 the governing
power in the Republic — to remain that, permanently.
And I think it a reasonable guess that the Trust
(which is already in our day pretty brusque in its
ways) will then be the most insolent and unscrupu-
lous and tyrannical politico-religious master that has

'Written in 1899. It is intended to include men, women, and
children. Although the calculation was based upon inflated staj
tistics, I believe to-day that it is not far out. — M. T.

53

MARK TWAIN

dominated a people since the palmy days of the
Inquisition. And a stronger master than the strong-
est of bygone times, because this one will have a
financial strength not dreamed of by any prede-
cessor; as effective a concentration of irresponsible
power as any predecessor has had;1 in the railway,
the telegraph, and the subsidized newspaper, better
facilities for watching and managing his empire than
any predecessor has had; and, after a generation or
two, he will probably divide Christendom with the
Catholic Church.

The Roman Church has a perfect organization,
and it has an effective centralization of power — but
not of its cash. Its multitude of Bishops are rich,
but their riches remain in large measure in their own
hands. They collect from two hundred millions of
people, but they keep the bulk of the result at home.
The Boston Pope of by and by will draw his dollar-a-
head capitation tax from three hundred millions of
the human race,2 and the Annex and the rest of his
book-shop stock will fetch in as much more; and his
Metaphysical Colleges, the annual pilgrimage to
Mrs. Eddy's tomb, from all over the world — admis-
sion, the Christian-Science Dollar (payable in ad-
vance)— purchases of consecrated glass beads, can-
dles, memorial spoons, aureoled chromo-portraits and
bogus autographs of Mrs. Eddy; cash offerings at her

*It can be put stronger than that and still be true. — M. T.

2 In that day by force; it is voluntary now. In the new half of
this book the reader will perceive that all imaginable compulsions
are possible under the Mother Church's body of Laws. To-day
more is expected than the one dollar. This is indicated in the wording
of the By-Law, Much more comes, from many members. — M. T.

54

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

shrine — no crutches of cured cripples received, and
no imitations of miraculously restored broken legs
and necks allowed to be hung up except when made
out of the Holy Metal and proved by fire-assay; cash
for miracles worked at the tomb; these money-
sources, with a thousand to be yet invented and
ambushed upon the devotee, will bring the annual
increment well up above a billion. And nobody but
the Trust will have the handling of it. In that day,
the Trust will monopolize the manufacture and sale
of the Old and New Testaments as well as the Annex,
and raise their price to Annex rates, and compel the
devotee to buy (for even to-day a healer has to have
the Annex and the Scriptures or he is not allowed to
work the game) , and that will bring several hundred
million dollars more. In those days, the Trust will
have an income approaching five million dollars a
day, and no expenses to be taken out of it ; no taxes
to pay, and no charities to support. That last detail
should not be lightly passed over by the reader;
it is well entitled to attention.

No charities to support. No, nor even to con-
tribute to. One searches in vain the Trust's ad-
vertisements and the utterances of its organs for
any suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans,
widows, discharged prisoners, hospitals, ragged
schools, night missions, city missions, libraries, old
people's homes, or any other object that appeals to
a human being's purse through his heart.1

*In two years (1898-99) the membership of the Established
Church in England gave voluntary contributions amounting to
seventy-three millions of dollars to the Church's benevolent enter-
prises. Churches that give have nothing to hide. — M. T,

55

MARK TWAIN

I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by corre-
spondence and otherwise, and have not yet got upon
the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent upon
any worthy object. Nothing makes a Scientist so
uncomfortable as to ask him if he knows of a case
where Christian Science has spent money on a
benevolence, either among its own adherents or
elsewhere. He is obliged to say "No." And then
one discovers that the person questioned has been
asked the question many times before, and that
it is getting to be a sore subject with him. Why a
sore subject? Because he has written his chiefs and
asked with high confidence for an answer that will
confound these questioners — and the chiefs did not
reply. He has written again, and then again — not
with confidence, but humbly, now — and has begged
for defensive ammunition in the voice of supplica-
tion. A reply does at last come — to this effect:
"We must have faith in Our Mother, and rest con-
tent in the conviction that whatever She l does
with the money it is in accordance with orders from
Heaven, for She does no act of any kind without
first 'demonstrating over' it."

That settles it — as far as the disciple is concerned.
His mind is satisfied with that answer; he gets down
his Annex and does an incantation or two, and that
mesmerizes his spirit and puts that to sleep — brings
it peace. Peace and comfort and joy, until some
inquirer punctures the old sore again.

Through friends in America I asked some ques-

II may be introducing the capital S a little early — still, it is on
its way. — M. T.

56

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

tions, and in some cases got definite and informing
answers; in other cases the answers were not definite
and not valuable. To the question, "Does any of
the money go to charities?" the answer from an
authoritative source was: "No, not in the sense usu«
ally conveyed by this word." (The italics are mine.)
That answer is cautious. But definite, I think —
utterly and unassailably definite — although quite
Christian-Scientifically foggy in its phrasing. Chris-
tian-Science testimony is generally foggy, generally
diffuse, generally garrulous. The writer was aware
that the first word in his phrase answered the ques-
tion which I was asking, but he could not help adding
nine dark words. Meaningless ones, unless explained
by him. It is quite likely, as intimated by him, that
Christian Science has invented a new class of objects
to apply the word "charity" to, but without an
explanation we cannot know what they are. We
quite easily and naturally and confidently guess that
they are in all cases objects which will return five
hundred per cent, on the Trust's investment in them,
but guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this
case, a sort of nine-tenths certainty deducible from
what we think we know of the Trust's trade prin-
ciples and its sly and furtive and shifty ways.1

Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands
its business. The Trust does not give itself away.

1 February, 1903. A letter has come to me, this month, from a
lady who says that while she was living in Boston, a few years ago,
she visited the Mother Church and offices and had speech with
Judge Septimus J. Hanna, the "first reader," who "stated positively
that the Church, as a body, does no philanthropic work what-
ever."—M. T.

57

MARK TWAIN

It defeats all the attempts of us impertinents to get
at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our dili-
gence, we have not been able to get it to confess what
it does with the money. It does not even let its
own disciples find out. All it says is, that the
matter has been "demonstrated over." Now and
then a lay Scientist says, with a grateful exultation,
that Mrs. Eddy is enormously rich, but he stops
there ; as to whether any of the money goes to other
charities or not, he is obliged to admit that he does
not know. However, the Trust is composed of hu-
man beings; and this justifies the conjecture that if
it had a charity on its list which it was proud of, we
should soon hear of it.

' ' Without money and without price . " Those used
to be the terms. Mrs. Eddy's Annex cancels them.
The motto of Christian Science is, "The laborer is
worthy of his hire." And now that it has been
"demonstrated over," we find its spiritual meaning
to be, ' ' Do anything and everything your hand may
find to do; and charge cash for it, and collect the
money in advance." The Scientist has on his
tongue's end a cut-and-dried, Boston-supplied set of
rather lean arguments, whose function is to show
that it is a Heaven-commanded duty to do this, and
that the croupiers of the game have no choice but to
obey.1

i February, 1903. If I seem to be charging any one outside of the
Trust with an exaggerated appetite for money, I have not meant
to do it. The exactions of the ordinary C. S. "healer" are not
exorbitant. If I have prejudices against the Trust — and I do feel
that I have — they do not extend to the lay membership. "The
laborer is worthy of his hire." And is entitled to receive it, too,

58

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

The Trust seems to be a reincarnation. Exodus
xxxii. 4.

and charge his own price (when he is laboring in a lawful calling).
The great surgeon charges a thousand dollars, and no one is justified
in objecting to it. The great preacher and teacher in religion
receives a large salary, and is entitled to it; Henry Ward Beecher's
was twenty thousand dollars. Mrs. Eddy's Metaphysical College
was chartered by the state, and she had a legal right to charge
amazing prices, and she did it. She allows only a few persons to
teach Christian Science. The calling of these teachers is not illegal.
Mrs. Eddy appoints the sum their students must pay, and it is a
round one; but that is no matter, since they need not come unless
they want to.

But when we come to the C. S. "healer," the practitioner, that
is another thing. He exists by the hundred; his services are prized
by his C. S. patient, they are preferred above all other human help,
and are thankfully paid for. As I have just remarked, his prices
are not large. But there is hardly a state wherein he can lawfully
practise his profession. In the name of religion, of morals, and
of Christ — represented on the earth by Mrs. Eddy — he enters upon
his trade a commissioned law-breaker.

A law-breaker. It is curious, but if the Second Advent should
happen now, Jesus could not heal the sick in the state of New
York. He could not do it lawfully; therefore He could not do it
morally; therefore He could not do it at all. — M. T.

March 12, IQ03. While I am reading the final proofs of this
book, the following letter has come to me. It is not marked private,
therefore I suppose I may without impropriety insert it here, if I
suppress the signature:

"Dear Sir, — In the North American Review for January is the
statement, in effect, that Christian Scientists give nothing to
charities. It has had wide reading and is doubtless credited. To
produce a true impression, it seems as if other facts should have
been stated in connection.

"With regret for adding anything to the burden of letters from
strangers, I am impelled to write what I know from a limited acquain-
tance in the sect. I am not connected with it myself.

"The charity freely given by individual practitioners, so far as
I know it, is at least equal to that of regular physicians. Charges
are made with much more than equal consideration of the means
of the patient. Of course druggists' bills and the enormous expenses
involved in the employment of a trained nurse, exist in small degree
or not at all.

"As to organized charities: It is hard to find one where the

59

MARK TWAIN

I have no reverence for the Trust, but I am not
lacking in reverence for the sincerities of the lay
membership of the new Church. There is every
evidence that the lay members are entirely sincere
in their faith, and I think sincerity is always en-
titled to honor and respect, let the inspiration of
the sincerity be what it may. Zeal and sincerity
can carry a new religion further than any other
missionary except fire and sword, and I believe that
the new religion will conquer the half of Christen-
dom in a hundred years. I am not intending this
as a compliment to the human race; I am merely
stating an opinion. And yet I think that perhaps
it is a compliment to the race. I keep in mind that

most intelligent laborers in it feel that they are reaching the root
of an evil. They are putting a few plasters on a body of disease.
Complaint is made, too, that the machinery, by which of necessity
systematic charity must be administered, prevents the personal
friendliness and sympathy which should pervade it throughout.

"Christian Science claims to be able to abolish the need for
charity. The results of drunkenness make great demands upon the
charitable. But the principle of Christian Science takes away the
desire for strong drink. If sexual propensities were dominated, not
only by reason, but by Christian love for both the living and the
unborn — Christian Science is emphatic on this subject — many
existing charitable societies would have no reason to be. So far as
Christian Science prevents disease, the need for hospitals is lessened.
Not only illness, but poverty, is a subject for the practice of Christian
Science. If this evil were prevented there would be no occasion to
alleviate its results.

"The faith, hope, and love which the few Christian Scientists I
have known have lived and radiated, made conditions needing
organized charity vanish before them.

"With renewed apology for intrusion upon one whose own
'Uncle Silas' was 'loved back' to sanity,

"Woburn, Mass.,
"March 10, igoj."

60

'I am, etc., etc.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

saying of an orthodox preacher — quoted further back.
He conceded that this new Christianity frees its
possessor's life from frets, fears, vexations, bitterness,
and all sorts of imagination-propagated maladies and
pains, and fills his world with sunshine and his heart
with gladness. If Christian Science, with this stu-
pendous equipment — and final salvation added —
cannot win half the Christian globe, I must be badly
mistaken in the make-up of the human race.

I think the Trust will be handed down like the
other Papacy, and will always know how to handle
its limitless cash. It will press the button; the
zeal, the energy, the sincerity, the enthusiasm of its
countless vassals will do the rest.

61

CHAPTER VIII

THE power which a man's imagination has over
his body to heal it or make it sick is a force which
none of us is born without. The first man had it,
the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man
is most likely to use only the mischievous half of the
force — the half which invents imaginary ailments for
him and cultivates them; and if he is one of these
very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the
beneficent half of the force and deny its existence.
And so, to heal or help that man, two imaginations
are required: his own and some outsider's. The
outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are
the healing-power that is curing A, and A must
imagine that this is so. I think it is not so, at all;
but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the
main thing. The outsider's work is unquestionably
valuable; so valuable that it may fairly be likened to
the essential work performed by the engineer when
he handles the throttle and turns on the steam; the
actual power is lodged exclusively in the engine, but
if the engine were left alone it would never start of
itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or
Bob, or Tom, it is all one — his services are necessary,
and he is entitled to such wage as he can get you
to pay. Whether he be named Christian Scientist,

62

From a stereograph, copyright, 1906. by H. C. White Co., N. Y.

THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, BOSTON, MASS.,
KNOWN AS THE MOTHER-CHURCH

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or King's-Evil
Expert, or Hypnotist, it is all one; he is merely the
Engineer; he simply turns on the same old steam and
the engine does the whole work.

The Christian-Scientist engineer drives exactly
the same trade as the other engineers, yet he out-
prospers the whole of them put together.1

Is it because he has captured the takingest name?
I think that that is only a small part of it. I think
that the secret of his high prosperity lies elsewhere.

The Christian Scientist has organized the business.
Now that was certainly a gigantic idea. Electricity,
in limitless volume, has existed in the air and the
rocks and the earth and everywhere since time
began — and was going to waste all the while. In our
time we have organized that scattered and wandering
force and set it to work, and backed the business
with capital, and concentrated it in few and compe-
tent hands, and the results are as we see.

The Christian Scientist has taken a force which
has been lying idle in every member of the human
race since time began, and has organized it, and
backed the business with capital, and concentrated
it at Boston headquarters in the hands of a small and
very competent Trust, and there are results.

Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is
going to extend its commerce wide in the earth. I
think that if the business were conducted in the
loose and disconnected fashion customary with such

1 February, 1903. As I have already remarked in a foot-note, the
Scientist claims that he uses a force not used by any of the others.

— M. T.

C — Vol. 25— M. T,

MARK TWAIN

things, it would achieve but little more than the
modest prosperity usually secured by unorganized
great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe
that so long as this one remains compactly organized
and closely concentrated in a Trust, the spread of
its dominion will continue.

04

CHAPTER IX

FOUR years ago I wrote the preceding chapters.1
I was assured by the wise that Christian Science
was a fleeting craze and would soon perish. This
prompt and all-competent stripe of prophet is always
to be had in the market at ground-floor rates. He
does not stop to load, or consider, or take aim, but
lets fly just as he stands. Facts are nothing to him,
he has no use for such things; he works wholly by
inspiration. And so, when he is asked why he con-
siders a new movement a passing fad and quickly
perishable, he finds himself unprepared with a
reason and is more or less embarrassed. For a
moment. Only for a moment. Then he waylays the
first specter of a reason that goes flitting through the
desert places of his mind, and is at once serene again
and ready for conflict. Serene and confident. Yet
he should not be so, since he has had no chance to
examine his catch, and cannot know whether it is
going to help his contention or damage it.

The impromptu reason furnished by the early
prophets of whom I have spoken was this:

"There is nothing to Christian Science; there is

nothing about it that appeals to the intellect; its

market will be restricted to the unintelligent, the

mentally inferior, the people who do not think."

i That is to say, in 1898.

65

MARK TWAIN

They called that a reason why the cult would not
flourish and endure. It seems the equivalent of
saying :

"There is no money in tinware; there is nothing
about it that appeals to the rich; its market will be
restricted to the poor."

It is like bringing forward the best reason in the
world why Christian Science should flourish and
live, and then blandly offering it as a reason why it
should sicken and die.

That reason was furnished me by the complacent
and unfrightened prophets four years ago, and it
has been furnished me again to-day. If conversions
to new religions or to old ones were in any consider-
able degree achieved through the intellect, the
aforesaid reason would be sound and sufficient, no
doubt; the inquirer into Christian Science might go
away unconvinced and unconverted. But we all
know that conversions are seldom made in that
way; that such a thing as a serious and painstak-
ing and fairly competent inquiry into the claims of
a religion or of a political dogma is a rare occurrence;
and that the vast mass of men and women are far
from being capable of making such an examination.
They are not capable, for the reason that their
minds, howsoever good they may be, are not trained
for such examinations. The mind not trained for
that work is no more competent to do it than are
lawyers and farmers competent to make successful
clothes without learning the tailor's trade. There
are seventy-five million men and women among us
who do not know how to cut out and make a dress-

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

suit, and they would not think of trying; yet they
all think they can competently think out a political
or religious scheme without any apprenticeship to
the business, and many of them believe they have
actually worked that miracle. But, indeed, the
truth is, almost all the men and women of our nation
or of any other get their religion and their politics
where they get their astronomy — entirely at second
hand. Being untrained, they are no more able to
intelligently examine a dogma or a policy than they
are to calculate an eclipse.

Men are usually competent thinkers along the
lines of their specialized training only. Within
these limits alone are their opinions and judgments
valuable; outside of these limits they grope and are
lost — usually without knowing it. In a church
assemblage of five hundred persons, there will be
a man or two whose trained minds can seize upon
each detail of a great manufacturing scheme and
recognize its value or its lack of value promptly;
and can pass the details in intelligent review, sec-
tion by section, and finally as a whole, and then
deliver a verdict upon the scheme which cannot be
flippantly set aside nor easily answered. And there
will be one or two other men there who can do the
same thing with a great and complicated educational
project; and one or two others who can do the like
with a large scheme for applying electricity in a new
and unheard-of way; and one or two others who
can do it with a showy scheme for revolutionizing
the scientific world's accepted notions regarding
geology. And so on, and so on. But the manu-

67

MARK TWAIN

facturing experts will not be competent to examine
the educational scheme intelligently, and their
opinion about it would not be valuable; neither of
these two groups will be able to understand and
pass upon the electrical scheme; none of these three
batches of experts will be able to understand and
pass upon the geological revolution; and probably
not one man in the entire lot will be competent to
examine, capably, the intricacies of a political or
religious scheme, new or old, and deliver a judg-
ment upon it which any one need regard as precious.
There you have the top crust. There will be
four hundred and seventy-five men and women
present who can draw upon their training and de-
liver incontrovertible judgments concerning cheese,
and leather, and cattle, and hardware, and soap, and
tar, and candles, and patent medicines, and dreams,
and apparitions, and garden truck, and cats, and
baby-food, and warts, and hymns, and time-tables,
and freight-rates, and summer resorts, and whisky,
and law, and surgery, and dentistry, and black-
smithing, and shoemaking, and dancing, and Huy-
ler's candy, and mathematics, and dog-fights, and
obstetrics, and music, and sausages, and dry-goods,
and molasses, and railroad stocks, and horses, and
literature, and labor-unions, and vegetables, and
morals, and lamb's fries, and etiquette, and agri-
culture. And not ten among the five hundred —
let their minds be ever so good and bright — will be
competent, by grace of the requisite specialized
mental training, to take hold of a complex abstraction
of any kind and make head or tail of it.

68

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

The whole five hundred are thinkers, and they are
all capable thinkers — but only within the narrow
limits of their specialized trainings. Four hundred
and ninety of them cannot competently examine
either a religious plan or a political one. A scatter-
ing few of them do examine both — that is, they think
they do. With results as precious as when I exam-
ine the nebular theory and explain it to myself.

If the four hundred and ninety got their religion
through their minds, and by weighed and measured
detail, Christian Science would not be a scary
apparition. But they don't; they get a little of it
through their minds, more of it through their feel-
ings, and the overwhelming bulk of it through their
environment.

Environment is the chief thing to be considered
when one is proposing to predict the future of
Christian Science. It is not the ability to reason
that makes the Presbyterian, or the Baptist, or the
Methodist, or the Catholic, or the Mohammedan, or
the Buddhist, or the Mormon; it is environment. If
religions were got by reasoning, we should have the
extraordinary spectacle of an American family with
a Presbyterian in it, and a Baptist, a Methodist, a
Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, and a
Mormon. A Presbyterian family does not produce
Catholic families or other religious brands, it pro-
duces its own kind ; and not by intellectual processes,
but by association. And so also with Mohammed-
anism, the cult which in our day is spreading with
the sweep of a world-conflagration through the
Orient, that native home of profound thought and

69

MARK "TWAIN

of subtle intellectual fence, that fertile womb whence
has sprung every great religion that exists. In-
cluding our own; for with all our brains we cannot
invent a religion and market it.

The language of my quoted prophets recurs to us
now, and we wonder to think how small a space in
the world the mighty Mohammedan Church would
be occupying now, if a successful trade in its line of
goods had been conditioned upon an exhibit that
would "appeal to the intellect" instead of to "the
unintelligent, the mentally inferior, the people who
do not think."

The Christian Science Church, like the Moham-
medan Church, makes no embarrassing appeal to the
intellect, has no occasion to do it, and can get along
quite well without it.

Provided. Provided what? That it can secure
that thing which is worth two or three hundred
thousand times more than an "appeal to the in-
tellect"— an environment. Can it get that ? Will it
be a menace to regular Christianity if it gets that?
Is it time for regular Christianity to get alarmed?
Or shall regular Christianity smile a smile and turn
over and take another nap? Won't it be wise and
proper for regular Christianity to do the old way,
the customary way, the historical way — lock the
stable door after the horse is gone ? Just as Protes-
tantism has smiled and nodded this long time (while
the alert and diligent Catholic was slipping in and
capturing the public schools), and is now beginning
to hunt around for the key when it is too late ?

Will Christian Science get a chance to show its

70

CHRISTIAN • SCIENCE

wares? It has already secured that chance. Will it
flourish and spread and prosper if it shall create foi
itself the one thing essential to those conditions —
an environment ? It has already created an environ-
ment. There are families of Christian Scientists in
every community in America, and each family is a
factory; each family turns out a Christian Science
product at the customary intervals, and contributes
it to the Cause in the only way in which contribu-
tions of recruits to Churches are ever made on a
large scale — by the puissant forces of personal
contact and association. Each family is an agency
for the Cause, and makes converts among the
neighbors, and starts some more factories.

Four years ago there were six Christian Scientists
in a certain town that I am acquainted with ; a year
ago there were two hundred and fifty there; they
have built a church, and its membership now num-
bers four hundred. This has all been quietly done;
done without frenzied revivals, without uniforms,
brass-bands, street parades, corner oratory, or any of
the other customary persuasions to a godly life.
Christian Science, like Mohammedanism, is "re-
stricted" to the "unintelligent, the people who do
not think." There lies the danger. It makes
Christian Science formidable. It is "restricted" to
ninety-nine one-hundredths of the human race, and
must be reckoned with by regular Christianity.
And will be, as soon as it is too late.

7i

BOOK II

" There were remarkable things about the stranger called the
Man-Mystery — things so very extraordinary that they monop-
olized attention and made all of him seem extraordinary; but
this was not so, the most of his qualities being of the common,
every-day size and like anybody else's. It was curious. He
was of the ordinary stature, and had the ordinary aspects; yet
in him were hidden such strange contradictions and dispro-
portions! He was majestically fearless and heroic; he had the
strength of thirty men and the daring of thirty thousand;
handling armies, organizing states, administering governments
— these were pastimes to him; he publicly and ostentatiously
accepted the human race at its own valuation — as demigods —
and privately and successfully dealt with it at quite another
and juster valuation — as children and slaves; his ambitions were
stupendous, and his dreams had no commerce with the humble
plain, but moved with the cloud-rack among the snow -summits.
These features of him were, indeed, extraordinary, but the rest
of him was ordinary and usual. He was so mean-minded, in
the matter of jealousy, that it was thought he was descended
from a god; he was vain in little ways, and had a pride in trivial-
ities; he doted on ballads about moonshine and bruised hearts;
in education he was deficient, he was indifferent to literature,
and knew nothing of art; he was dumb upon all subjects but
one, indifferent to all except that one — the Nebular Theory.
Upon that one his flow of words was full and free, he was a
geyser. The official astronomers disputed his facts and derided
his views, and said that he had invented both, they not being
findable in any of the books. But many of the laity, who
wanted their nebulosities fresh, admired his doctrine and adopted
it, and it attained to great prosperity in spite of the hostility of
the experts."— The Legend of the Man-Mystery, ch. i.

75

CHAPTER I

JANUARY, 1903. When we do not know a public
man personally, we guess him out by the facts of
his career. When it is Washington, we all arrive at
about one and the same result. We agree that his
words and his acts clearly interpret his character to
us, and that they never leave us in doubt as to the
motives whence the words and acts proceeded. It
is the same with Joan of Arc, it is the same with two
or three or five or six others among the immortals.
But in the matter of motives and of a few details
of character we agree to disagree upon Napoleon,
Cromwell, and all the rest; and to this list we must
add Mrs. Eddy. I think we can peacefully agree as
to two or three extraordinary features of her make-
up, but not upon the other features of it. We can-
not peacefully agree as to her motives, therefore her
character must remain crooked to some of us and
straight to the others.

No matter, she is interesting enough without an
amicable agreement. In several ways she is the most
interesting woman that ever lived, and the most
extraordinary. The same may be said of her career,
and the same may be said of its chief result. She
started from nothing. Her enemies charge that she
surreptitiously took from Quimby a peculiar system

77

MARK TWAIN

of healing which was mind-cure with a Biblical
basis. She and her friends deny that she took any-
thing from him. This is a matter which we can
discuss by and by. Whether she took it or in-
vented it, it was — materially — a sawdust-mine when
she got it, and she has turned it into a Klondike; its
spiritual dock had next to no custom, if any at all:
from it she has launched a world-religion which has
now six hundred and sixty-three churches, and she
charters a new one every four days. When we do
not know a person — and also when we do — we have
to judge his size by the size and nature of his achieve-
ments, as compared with the achievements of others
in his special line of business — there is no other way.
Measured by this standard, it is thirteen hundred
years since the world has produced any one who
could reach up to Mrs. Eddy's waist-belt.

Figuratively speaking, Mrs. Eddy is already as
tall as the Eiffel tower. She is adding surprisingly
to her stature every day. It is quite within the
probabilities that a century hence she will be the
most imposing figure that has cast its shadow across
the globe since the inauguration of our era. I
grant that after saying these strong things, it is
necessary that I offer some details calculated to
satisfactorily demonstrate the proportions which I
have claimed for her. I will do that presently; but
before exhibiting the matured sequoia gigantea, I be-
lieve it will be best to exhibit the sprout from which
it sprang. It may save the reader from making
miscalculations. The person who imagines that a
Big Tree sprout is bigger than other kinds of sprouts

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

is quite mistaken. It is the ordinary thing; it makes
no show, it compels no notice, it hasn't a detectible
quality in it that entitles it to attention, or suggests
the future giant its sap is suckling. That is the kind of
sprout Mrs. Eddy was. From her childhood days up to
where she was running a half -century a close race and
gaining on it, she was most humanly commonplace.

She is the witness I am drawing this from. She
has revealed it in her autobiography. Not inten-
tionally, of course — I am not claiming that. An
autobiography is the most treacherous thing there
is. It lets out every secret its author is trying to
keep; it lets the truth shine unobstructed through
every harmless little deception he tries to play; it
pitilessly exposes him as a tin hero worshiping him-
self as Big Metal every time he tries to do the
modest-unconsciousness act before the reader. This
is not guessing; I am speaking from autobiographical
personal experience ; I was never able to refrain from
mentioning, with a studied casualness that could
deceive none but the most incautious reader, that an
ancestor of mine was sent ambassador to Spain by
Charles I., nor that in a remote branch of my family
there exists a claimant to an earldom, nor that an
uncle of mine used to own a dog that was descended
from the dog that was in the Ark; and at the same
time I was never able to persuade myself to call a
gibbet by its right name when accounting for other
ancestors of mine, but always spoke of it as the
"platform" — puerilely intimating that they were out
lecturing when it happened.

It is Mrs. Eddy over again. As regards her minor

79

MARK TWAIN

half, she is as commonplace as the rest of us. Vain
of trivial things all the first half of her life, and still
vain of them at seventy and recording them with
naive satisfaction — even rescuing some early rhymes
of hers of the sort that we all scribble in the innocent
days of our youth — rescuing them and printing them
without pity or apology, just as the weakest and
commonest of us do in our gray age. More — she
still frankly admires them; and in her introduction
of them profanely confers upon them the holy name
of "poetry." Sample:

' And laud the land whose talents rock
The cradle of her power,
And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock
From erudition's bower.

Minerva's silver sandals still
Are loosed and not effete.

You note it is not a shade above the thing which
all human beings churn out in their youth.

You would not think that in a little wee primer —
for that is what the Autobiography is — a person with
a tumultuous career of seventy years behind her
could find room for two or three pages of padding
of this kind, but such is the case. She evidently
puts narrative together with difficulty and is not at
home in it, and is glad to have something ready
made to fill in with. Another sample:

Here fame-honored Hickory rears his bold form,
And bears > a brave breast to the lightning and storm,
While Palm, Bay, and Laurel in classical glee,
Chase Tulip, Magnolia, and fragrant Fringe-tree.

leaning bares? I think so.— M. T.
80

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Vivid? You can fairly see those trees galloping
around. That she could still treasure up, and print,
and manifestly admire those Poems, indicates that the
most daring and masculine and masterful woman that
has appeared in the earth in centuries has the same
soft, girly-girly places in her that the rest of us have.

When it comes to selecting her ancestors she is
still human, natural, vain, commonplace — as com-
monplace as I am myself when I am sorting an-
cestors for my autobiography. She combs out some
creditable Scots, and labels them and sets them aside
for use, not overlooking the one to whom Sir William
Wallace gave "a heavy sword incased in a brass
scabbard," and naively explaining which Sir William
Wallace it was, lest we get the wrong one by the
hassock;1 this is the one "from whose patriotism
and bravery comes that heart-stirring air, 'Scots what
hae wi' Wallace bled.' " Hannah More was related to
her ancestors. She explains who Hannah More was.

Whenever a person informs us who Sir William
Wallace was, or who wrote "Hamlet," or where the
Declaration of Independence was fought, it fills us
with a suspicion well-nigh amounting to conviction,
that tha' person would not suspect us of being so
empty oi knowledge it he wasn't suffering from the
same "claim" himself. Then we turn to page 20
of the Autobiography and happen upon this pas-
sage, and that hasty suspicion stands rebuked:

I gained book-knowledge with far less labor than is usually
requisite. At ten years of age I was as familiar with Lindley

il am in some doubt as to what a hassock is, but anyway it
sounds good. — M. T.

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MARK TWAIN

Murray's Grammar as with the Westminster Catechism; and
the latter I had to repeat every Sunday. My favorite studies
were Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral Science. From
my brother Albert I received lessons in the ancient tongues,
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

You catch your breath in astonishment, and feel
again and still again the pang of that rebuke. But
then your eye falls upon the next sentence but one,
and the pain passes away and you set up the sus-
picion again with evil satisfaction:

After my discovery of Christian Science, most of the knowledge
I had gleaned from school-books vanislied like a dream.

That disappearance accounts for much in her mis-
cellaneous writings. As I was saying, she handles
her "ancestral shadows," as she calls them, just as
I do mine. It is remarkable. When she runs
across "a relative of my Grandfather Baker, General
Henry Knox, of Revolutionary fame," she sets him
down; when she finds another good one, "the late
Sir John Macneill, in the line of my Grandfather
Baker's family," she sets him down, and remembers
that he "was prominent in British politics, and at
one time held the position of ambassador to Persia";
when she discovers that her grandparents "were like-
wise connected with Captain John Lovewell, whose
gallant leadership and death in the Indian troubles
of 1722-25 caused that prolonged contest to be known
historically as Lovewell's War," she sets the Cap-
tain down; when it turns out that a cousin of her
grandmother "was John Macneill, the New Hamp-
shire general, who fought at Lundy's Lane and won

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

distinction in 1814 at the battle of Chippewa," she
catalogues the General. (And tells where Chip-
pewa was.) And then she skips all her platform
people; never mentions one of them. It shows
that she is just as human as any of us.

Yet, after all, there is something very touching
in her pride in these worthy small-fry, and some-
thing large and fine in her modesty in not caring to
remember that their kinship to her can confer no
distinction upon her, whereas her mere mention of
their names has conferred upon them a fadeless
earthly immortality.

83

CHAPTER II

WHEN she wrote this little biography her great
life-work had already been achieved, she was
become renowned; to multitudes of reverent dis-
ciples she was a sacred personage, a familiar of God,
and His inspired channel of communication with the
human race. Also, to them these following things
were facts, and not doubted:

She had written a Bible in middle age, and had
published it ; she had recast it, enlarged it, and pub-
lished it again; she had not stopped there, but had
enlarged it further, polished its phrasing, improved
its form, and published it yet again. It was at last
become a compact, grammatical, dignified, and work-
man-like body of literature. This was good train-
ing, persistent training; and in all arts it is train-
ing that brings the art to perfection. We are now
confronted with one of the most teasing and baffling
riddles of Mrs. Eddy's history — a riddle which may
be formulated thus:

How is it that a primitive literary gun which be-
gan as a hundred-yard flintlock smooth-bore muzzle-
loader, and in the course of forty years has acquired
one notable improvement after another — percussion
cap; fixed cartridge; rifled barrel; efficiency at half
a mile — how is it that such a gun, sufficiently good
on an elephant-hunt (Christian Science) from the

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

beginning, and growing better and better all the
time during forty years, has always collapsed back to
its original flintlock estate the moment the huntress
trained it on any other creature than an elephant?

Something more than a generation ago Mrs.
Eddy went out with her flintlock on the rabbit-
range, and this was a part of the result:

After his decease, and a severe casualty deemed fatal by
skilful physicians, we discovered that the Principle of all healing
and the law that governs it is God, a divine Principle, and a
spiritual not material law, and regained health. — Preface to
Science and Health, first revision, 1883.

N.B. Not from the book itself; from the Preface.

You will notice the awkwardness of that English.
If you should carry that paragraph up to the Supreme
Court of the United States in order to find out for
good and all whether the fatal casualty happened to
the dead man — as the paragraph almost asserts —
or to some person or persons not even hinted at in the
paragraph, the Supreme Court would be obliged to
say that the evidence established nothing with
certainty except that there had been a casualty —
victim not known.

The context thinks it explains who the victim was,
but it does nothing of the kind. It furnishes some
guessing-material of a sort which enables you to
infer that it was "we" that suffered the mentioned
injury, but if you should carry the language to a
court you would not be able to prove that it neces-
sarily meant that. "We" are Mrs. Eddy; a funny
little affectation. She replaced it later with the
more dignified third person.

8S

MARK TWAIN

The quoted paragraph is from Mrs. Eddy's preface
to the first revision of Science and Health (1883).
Sixty-four pages further along — in the body of the
book (the elephant-range), she went out with that
same flintlock and got this following result. Its
English is very nearly as straight and clean and
competent as is the English of the latest revision of
Science and Health after the gun has been improved
from smooth-bore musket up to globe-sighted, long-
distance rifle:

Man controlled by his Maker has no physical suffering.
His body is harmonious, his days are multiplying instead of
diminishing, he is journeying toward Life instead of death, and
bringing out the new man and crucifying the old affections,
cutting them off in every material direction until he learns the
utter supremacy of Spirit and yields obedience thereto.

In the latest revision of Science and Health (1902),
the perfected gun furnishes the following. The
English is clean, compact, dignified, almost perfect.
But it is observable that it is not prominently better
than it is in the above paragraph, which was a prod-
uct of the primitive flintlock:

How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life
and hastening to death, and at the same time we are com-
muning with immortality? If the departed are in rapport with
mortality, or matter, they are not spiritual, but must still be
mortal, sinful, suffering, and dying. Then wherefore look to
them — even were communication possible — for proofs of immor-
tality and accept them as oracles? — Edition of IQ02, page 78.

With the above paragraphs compare these that
follow. It is Mrs. Eddy writing — after a good long
twenty years of pen-practice. Compare also with

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

the alleged Poems already quoted. The prominent
characteristic of the Poems is affectation, artificiality;
their make-up is a complacent and pretentious out-
pour of false figures and fine writing, in the sopho-
moric style. The same qualities and the same style
will be found, unchanged, unbettered, in these
following paragraphs — after a lapse of more than
fifty years, and after — as aforesaid — long literary
training. The italics are mine:

i. "What plague spot or bacilli were [sic] gnawing [sic\ at the
heart of this metropolis . . . and bringing it [the heart] on
bended knee? Why, it was an institute that had entered its
vitals — that, among other things, taught games," et cetera. —
C. S. Journal, p. 670, article entitled "A Narrative— by Mary
Baker G. Eddy."

2. "Parks sprang up [sic] . . . electric cars run [sic] merrily
through several streets, concrete sidewalks and macadamized
roads dotted [sic] the place," et cetera. — Ibid.

3. "Shorn [sic] of its suburbs it had indeed little left to
admire, save to [sic] such as fancy a skeleton above-ground
breathing [sic] slowly through a barren [sic] breast." — Ibid.

This is not English — I mean, grown-up English.
But it is fifteen-year-old English, and has not
grown a month since the same mind produced the
Poems. The standard of the Poems and of the
plague-spot-and-bacilli effort is exactly the same.
It is most strange that the same intellect that
worded the simple and self-contained and clean-cut
paragraph beginning with "How unreasonable is the
belief," should in the very same lustrum discharge
upon the world such a verbal chaos as the utterance
concerning that plague-spot or bacilli which were
gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing

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MARK TWAIN

its heart on bended knee, thus exposing to the eye
the rest of the skeleton breathing slowly through a
barren breast.

The immense contrast between the legitimate
English of Science and Health and the bastard
English of Mrs. Eddy's miscellaneous work, and be-
tween the maturity of the one diction and the
juvenility of the other, suggests — compels — the ques-
tion, Are there two guns? It would seem so. Is
there a poor, foolish, old, scattering flintlock for
rabbit, and a long-range, center-driving, up-to-date
Mauser-magazine for elephant? It looks like it.
For it is observable that in Science and Health (the
elephant-ground) the practice was good at the start
and has remained so, and that the practice in the
miscellaneous, outside, small-game field was very
bad at the start and was never less bad at any later
time.

I wish to say that of Mrs. Eddy I am not requiring
perfect English, but only good English. No one can
write perfect English and keep it up through a
stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done.
It was approached in the "well of English un-
dented"; it has been approached in Mrs. Eddy's
Annex to that Book; it has been approached in
several English grammars; I have even approached
it myself; but none of us has made port.

Now, the English of Science and Health is good.
In passages to be found in Mrs. Eddy's Autobiography
(on pages 53, 57, 101, and 113), and on page 6 of her
squalid preface to Science and Health, first revision,
she seems to me to claim the whole and sole author-

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ship of the book. That she wrote the Autobiography,
and that preface,1 and the Poems, and the Plague-
spot-Bacilli, we are not permitted to doubt. Indeed,
we know she wrote them. But the very certainty
that she wrote these things compels a doubt that she
wrote Science and Health. She is guilty of little
awkwardnesses of expression in the Autobiography
which a practised pen would hardly allow to go un-
corrected in even a hasty private letter, and could
not dream of passing by uncorrected in passages
intended for print. But she passes them placidly
by; as placidly as if she did not suspect that they
were offenses against third-class English. I think
that that placidity was born of that very unaware-
ness, so to speak. I will cite a few instances from
the Autobiography. The italics are mine:

I remember reading in my childhood certain manuscripts
containing Scriptural Sonnets, besides other verses and enigmas
[etc.]. [Page 7.]

[On page 27.] Many pale cripples went into the Church
leaning on crutches who came out carrying them on their
shoulders.

It is awkward, because at the first glance it seems
to say that the cripples went in leaning on crutches
which went out carrying the cripples on their shoul-
ders. It would have cost her no trouble to put her
"who" after her "cripples." I blame her a little;
I think her proof-reader should have been shot. We
may let her capital C pass, but it is another awk-
wardness, for she is talking about a building, not
about a religious society.

*See Appendix A for it.— M. T.
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MARK TWAIN

"Marriage and Parentage" [Chapter-heading.
Page 30.] You imagine that she is going to begin a
talk about her marriage and finish with some account
of her father and mother. And so you will be
deceived. "Marriage" was right, but "Parentage"
was not the best word for the rest of the record.
It refers to the birth of her own child. After a
certain period of time "my babe was born." Mar-
riage and Motherhood — Marriage and Maternity —
Marriage and Product — Marriage and Dividend —
either of these would have fitted the facts and made
the matter clear.

Without my knowledge he was appointed a guardian.
[Page 32.]

She is speaking of her child. She means that a
guardian for her child was appointed, but that isn't
what she says.

If spiritual conclusions are separated from their premises,
the nexus is lost, and the argument with its rightful conclusions,
becomes correspondingly obscure. [Page 34.]

We shall never know why she put the word
"correspondingly" in there. Any fine, large word
would have answered just as well: psychosuperin-
tangibly — electroincandescently — oligarcheologically
— sanchrosynchrostereoptically — any of these would
have answered, any of these would have filled the void.

His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon silenced portrai-
ture. [Page 34.]

Yet she says she forgot everything she knew,
when she discovered Christian Science. I realize

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that noumenon is a daisy; and I will not deny that
I shall use it whenever I am in a company which I
think I can embarrass with it ; but, at the same time,
I think it is out of place among friends in an auto-
biography. There, I think a person ought not to
have anything up his sleeve. It undermines con-
fidence. But my dissatisfaction with the quoted
passage is not on account of noumenon; it is on
account of the misuse of the word "silenced." You
cannot silence portraiture with a noumenon; if
portraiture should make a noise, a way could be
found to silence it, but even then it could not be
done with a noumenon. Not even with a brick,
some authorities think.

It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages [etc.]. [Page 3 5 .J

That is clumsy. Battles do not wage, battles are
waged. Mrs. Eddy has one very curious and inter-
esting peculiarity: whenever she notices that she is
chortling along without saying anything, she pulls
up with a sudden "God is over us all," or some other
sounding irrelevancy, and for the moment it seems
to light up the whole district; then, before you can
recover from the shock, she goes flitting pleasantly
and meaninglessly along again, and you hurry hope-
fully after her, thinking you are going to get some-
thing this time ; but as soon as she has led you far
enough away from her turkeylet she takes to a tree.
Whenever she discovers that she is getting pretty
disconnected, she couples up with an ostentatious
" But" which has nothing to do with anything that
went before or is to come after, then she hitches

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some empties to the train — unrelated verses from
the Bible, usually — and streams out of sight and
leaves you wondering how she did that clever thing.
For striking instances, see bottom paragraph on
page 34 and the paragraph on page 35 of her Auto-
biography. She has a purpose — a deep and dark
and artful purpose — in what she is saying in the
first paragraph, and you guess what it is, but that is
due to your own talent, not hers; she has made it as
obscure as language could do it. The other para-
graph has no meaning and no discoverable intention.
It is merely one of her God-over-alls. I cannot
spare room for it in this place.1

I beheld with ineffable awe our great Master's marvelous
skill in demanding neither obedience to hygienic laws nor [etc.],
[Page 41.]

The word is loosely chosen — skill. She probably
meant judgment, intuition, penetration, or wisdom.

Naturally, my first jottings were but efforts to express in
feeble diction Truth's ultimate. [Page 42.]

One understands what she means, but she should
have been able to say what she meant — at any time
before she discovered Christian Science and forgot
everything she knew — and after it, too. If she had
put "feeble" in front of "efforts" and then left out
"in" and "diction," she would have scored.

... its written expression increases in perfection under the
guidance of the great Master. [Page 43.]

It is an error. Not even in those advantageous
circumstances can increase be added to perfection.

'See Appendix B for it.— M. T.
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Evil is not mastered by evil; it can only be overcome with
Good. This brings out the nothingness of evil, and the eternal
Somethingness vindicates the Divine Principle and improves
the race of Adam. [Page 76.]

This is too extraneous for me. That is the
trouble with Mrs. Eddy when she sets out to explain
an over-large exhibit: the minute you think the
light is bursting upon you the candle goes out and
your mind begins to wander.

No one else can drain the cup which I have drunk to the
dregs, as the discoverer and teacher of Christian Science.
[Page 47.]

That is saying we cannot empty an empty cup.
We knew it before; and we know she meant to tell
us that that particular cup is going to remain empty.
That is, we think that that was the idea, but we
cannot be sure. She has a perfectly astonishing
talent for putting words together in such a way as
to make successful inquiry into their intention im-
possible.

She generally makes us uneasy when she begins
to tune up on her fine-writing timbrel. It carries
me back to her Plague-Spot and Poetry days, and
I just dread those:

Into mortal mind's material obliquity I gazed and stood
abashed. Blanched was the cheek of pride. My heart bent low
before the omnipotence of Spirit, and a tint of humility soft as
the heart of a moonbeam mantled the earth. Bethlehem and
Bethany, Gethsemane and Calvary, spoke to my chastened
sense as by the tearful lips of a babe. [Page 48.]

The heart of a moonbeam is a pretty enough
Friendship's-Album expression — let it pass, though

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MARK TWAIN

I do think the figure a little strained; but humility
has no tint, humility has no complexion, and if it
had it could not mantle the earth. A moonbeam
might — I do not know — but she did not say it was
the moonbeam. But let it go, I cannot decide it,
she mixes me up so. A babe hasn't "tearful lips,"
it's its eyes. You find none of Mrs. Eddy's kind of
English in Science and HeaW — not a line of it.

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CHAPTER III

SETTING aside title-page, index, etc., tha little
Autobiography begins on page 7 and ends on
page 130. My quotations are from the first forty
pages. They seem to me to prove the presence of
the 'prentice hand. The style of the forty pages
is loose and feeble and 'prentice-like. The movement
of the narrative is not orderly and sequential, but
rambles around, and skips forward and back and
here and there and yonder, 'prentice-fashion. Many
a journeyman has broken up his narrative and
skipped about and rambled around, but he did it for
a purpose, for an advantage; there was art in it,
and points to be scored by it; the observant reader
perceived the game, and enjoyed it and respected
it, if it was well played. But Mrs. Eddy's perform-
ance was without intention, and destitute of art.
She could score no points by it on those terms, and
almost any reader can see that her work was the
uncalculated puttering of a novice.

In the above paragraph I have described the first
third of the booklet. That third being completed,
Mrs. Eddy leaves the rabbit-range, crosses the
frontier, and steps out upon her far-spreading big-
game territory — Christian Science — and there is an
instant change! The style smartly improves, and

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MARK TWAIN

the clumsy little technical offenses disappear. In
these two-thirds of the booklet I find only one such
offense, and it has the look of being a printer's error.

I leave the riddle with the reader. Perhaps he
can explain how it is that a person — trained or un-
trained— who on the one day can write nothing bet-
ter than Plague-Spot-Bacilli and feeble and stum-
bling and wandering personal history littered with
false figures and obscurities and technical blunders,
can on the next day sit down and write fluently,
smoothly, compactly, capably, and confidently on a
great big thundering subject, and do it as easily and
comfortably as a whale paddles around the globe.

As for me, I have scribbled so much in fifty years
that I have become saturated with convictions of one
sort and another concerning a scribbler's limitations ;
and these are so strong that when I am familiar with
a literary person's work I feel perfectly sure that I
know enough about his limitations to know what he
can not do. If Mr. Howells should pretend to me
that he wrote the Plague-Spot-Bacilli rhapsody, I
should receive the statement courteously, but I
should know it for a — well, for a perversion. If the
late Josh Billings should rise up and tell me that he
wrote Herbert Spencer's philosophies, I should an-
swer and say that the spelling casts a doubt upon
his claim. If the late Jonathan Edwards should rise
up and tell me he wrote Mr. Dooley's books, I should
answer and say that the marked difference between
his style and Dooley's is argument against the
soundness of his statement. You see how much I
think of circumstantial evidence. In literary matters

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

— in my belief — it is often better than any person's
word, better than any shady character's oath. It
is difficult for me to believe that the same hand that
wrote the Plague-Spot-Bacilli and the first third of
the little Eddy biography wrote also Science and
Health. Indeed, it is more than difficult, it is im-
possible.

Largely speaking, I have read acres of what pur-
ported to be Mrs. Eddy's writings, in the past two
months. I cannot know, but I am convinced, that
the circumstantial evidence shows that her actual
share in the work of composing and phrasing these
things was so slight as to be inconsequential. Where
she puts her literary foot down, her trail across her
paid polisher's page is as plain as the elephant's in
a Sunday-school procession. Her verbal output,
when left undoctored by her clerks, is quite un-
mistakable. It always exhibits the strongly dis-
tinctive features observable in the virgin passages
from her pen already quoted by me:

Desert vacancy, as regards thought.

Self-complacency.

Puerility.

Sentimentality.

Affectations of scholarly learning.

Lust after eloquent and flowery expression.

Repetition of pet poetic picturesquenesses.

Confused and wandering statement.

Metaphor gone insane.

Meaningless words, used because they are pretty,
or showy, or unusual.

Sorrowful attempts at the epigrammatic.

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MARK TWAIN

Destitution of originality.

The fat volume called Miscellaneous Writings of
Mrs. Eddy contains several hundred pages. Of the
five hundred and fifty-four pages of prose in it I
find ten lines, on page 319, to be Mrs. Eddy's;
also about a page of the preface or "Prospectus";
also about fifteen pages scattered along through the
book. If she wrote any of the rest of the prose, it
was rewritten after her by another hand. Here I
will insert two-thirds of her page of the prospectus.
It is evident that whenever, under the inspiration
of the Deity, she turns out a book, she is always
allowed to do some of the preface. I wonder why
that is? It always mars the work. I think it is
done in humorous malice. I think the clerks like
to see her give herself away. They know she will,
her stock of usable materials being limited and her
procedure in employing them always the same,
substantially. They know that when the initiated
come upon her first erudite allusion, or upon any one
of her other stage-properties, they can shut their
eyes and tell what will follow. She usually throws
off an easy remark all sodden with Greek or Hebrew
or Latin learning; she usually has a person watching
for a star — she can seldom get away from that poetic
idea — sometimes it is a Chaldee, sometimes a Walk-
ing Delegate, sometimes an entire stranger, but be
he what he may, he is generally there when the train
is ready to move, and has his pass in his hat-band;
she generally has a Being with a Dome on him, or
some other cover that is unusual and out of the
fashion* she likes to fire off a Scripture verse where

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

it will make the handsomest noise and come nearest
to breaking the connection; she often throws out a
Forefelt, or a Foresplendor, or a Foreslander where
it will have a fine nautical foreto'gallant sound and
make the sentence sing ; after which she is nearly sure
to throw discretion away and take to her deadly
passion, Intoxicated Metaphor. At such a time the
Mrs. Eddy that does not hesitate is lost:

The ancient Greek looked longingly for the Olympiad.
The Chaldee watched the appearing of a star; to him no higher
destiny dawned on the dome of being than that foreshadowed
by signs in the heavens. The meek Nazarene, the scoffed of
all scoffers, said, "Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye
not discern the signs of the times?" — for He forefelt and foresaw
the ordeal of a perfect Christianity, hated by sinners.

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

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

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

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

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CHAPTER IV

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

The divine hand led me into a new world of light and
Life, a fresh universe — old to God, but new to His " little one. "

She being His little one, as I understand it.

The divine hand led her. It seems to mean "God
inspired me"; but when a person uses metaphors
instead of statistics — and that is Mrs. Eddy's com-
mon fashion — one cannot always feel sure about the
intention.

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

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

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

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

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

She was not able to think of a "financial equiva-
lent"— meaning a pecuniary equivalent — for her
"instruction in Christian Science Mind-healing."
In this emergency she was "led" to charge three
hundred dollars for a term of "twelve half -days."
She does not say who led her, she only says that the
amount greatly troubled her. I think it means that
the price was suggested from above, "led" being a
theological term identical with our commercial
phrase "personally conducted." She "shrank from
asking it, but was finally led, by a strange providence,
to accept this fee." "Providence" is another theo-
logical term. Two leds and a providence, taken
together, make a pretty strong argument for in-
spiration. I think that these statistics make it clear

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MARK TWAIN

that the price was arranged above. This view is
constructively supported by the fact, already quoted,
that God afterward approved, "in multitudinous
ways," her wisdom in accepting the mentioned fee.
"Multitudinous ways" — multitudinous encoring —
suggests enthusiasm. Business enthusiasm. And
it suggests nearness. God's nearness to His "little
one." Nearness, and a watchful personal interest.
A warm, palpitating, Standard-Oil interest, so to
speak. All this indicates inspiration. We may as-
sume, then, two inspirations: one for the book, the
other for the business.

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

I am aware that it is not Mr. Tomkins that is
speaking, but Mrs. Eddy. The commissioned lec-
turers of the Christian Science Church have to be
members of the Board of Lectureship. (By-laws,
Sec. 3, p. 70.) The Board of Lectureship is selected
by the Board of Directors of the Church. (By-laws,
Sec. 5, p. 70.) The Board of Directors of the
Church is the property of Mrs. Eddy. (By-laws,
p. 22.) Mr. Tomkins did not make that statement
without authorization from headquarters. He nec-
essarily got it from the Board of Directors, the
Board of Directors from Mrs. Eddy, Mrs. Eddy from
the Deity. Mr. Tomkins would have been turned

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down by that procession if his remarks had been
unsatisfactory to it.

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

When the demand for this book increased . . . the copy-
right was infringed. I entered a suit at Law, and my copyright
was protected.

Thus it is plain that she did not plead that the
Deity was the (verbal) Author; for if she had done
that, she would have lost her case — and with rude
promptness. It was in the old days before the Berne
Convention and before the passage of our amended
law of 1 89 1, and the court would have quoted the
following stern clause from the existing statute and
frowned her out of the place :

"No Foreigner can acquire copyright in the
United States."

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

1. That Mrs. Eddy claims the verbal authorship
for herself.

2. That she denies it to the Deity.

3. That — in her belief — she wrote the book under
the inspiration of the Deity, but furnished the lan-
guage herself.

In one place in the Autobiography she claims both

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MARK TWAIN

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

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

Mr. Peabody's comment :

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

It does seem to amount to that. She was only a
"scribe." Confound the word, it is just a confusion,
it has no determinable meaning there, it leaves us in
the air. A scribe is merely a person who writes. He
may be a copyist, he may be an amanuensis, he may
be a writer of originals, and furnish both the language
and the ideas. As usual with Mrs. Eddy, the con-
nection affords no help — "echoing" throws no light
upon "scribe." A rock can reflect an echo, a wall
can do it, a mountain can do it, many things can do
it, but a scribe can't. A scribe that could reflect an
echo could get over thirty dollars a week in a side-
show. Many impresarios would rather have him
than a cow with four tails. If we allow that this
present scribe was setting down the "harmonies of
Heaven" — and certainly that seems to have been
the case — then there was only one way to do it that
I can think of : listen to the music and put down the
notes one after another as they fell. In that case
Mrs. Eddy did not invent the tune, she only entered
it on paper. Therefore — dropping the metaphor —
she was merely an amanuensis, and furnished neither

MARK TWAIN

the language of Science and Health nor the ideas. It
reduces her to eight per cent, (and the dividends on
that and the rest).

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

Postscript

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

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

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

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

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

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

i. Mrs. Eddy furnished "the ideas and the
language."

2. God furnished the ideas and the language.

It is a great comfort to have the matter authori-
tatively settled.

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CHAPTER V

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

1. The Virgin Mary.

2. Jesus of Nazareth.

3. Mrs. Eddy.

This is the paragraph referred to :

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

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

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

an ascending scale of Importances, with Mrs. Eddy
ranking the other two and holding first place.

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

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

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

She is the Pastor Emeritus.

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

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MARK TWAIN

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

Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her be-
half that she herself was the chosen successor to and equal
of Jesus.

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

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

1. Jesus of Nazareth. — 1. Our Mother.

2. The Virgin Mary.

Summary

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

My readings of Mrs. Eddy's uninspired miscel-
laneous literary efforts have convinced me of several
things :

1. That she did not write Science and Health.

2. That the Deity did (or did not) write it.

3. That She thinks She wrote it.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

4. That She believes She wrote it under the
Deity's inspiration.

5. That She believes She is a Member of the Holy
Family.

6. That She believes She is the equal of the Head
of it.

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

in

CHAPTER VI

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

That a commonplace person should go climbing
aloft and become a god or a half -god or a quarter-god
and be worshiped by men and women of average
intelligence, is nothing. It has happened a million
times, it will happen a hundred million more. It
has been millions of years since the first of these
supernaturals appeared, and by the time the last

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

One — in that inconceivably remote future — shall
have performed his solemn little high-jinks on the
stage and closed the business, there will be enough of
them accumulated in the museum on the Other Side
to start a heaven of their own — and jam it.

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

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

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

She began to teach her Science, she began to heal,
she began to gather converts to her new religion —
fervent, sincere, devoted, grateful people. A year

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MARK TWAIN

or two later she organized her first Christian Science
"Association," with six of her disciples on the roster.

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

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

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The new Church was not born loose- jointed and
featureless, but had a denned plan, a definite char-
acter, definite aims, and a name which was a chal-
lenge, and defied all comers. It was "a Mind-
healing Church." It was "without a creed." Its
name, "The Church of Christ, Scientist."

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

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

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MARK TWAIN

and hurt my leg. Cipher it; you will see that it is
a grand sum for a woman to earn in seven years.
Yet that was not all she got out of her college in the
seven.

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

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

MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE

REV. MARY BAKER G. EDDY, PRESIDENT

571 Columbus Avenue, Boston

The collegiate course in Christian Science metaphysical heal-
ing includes twelve lessons. Tuition, three hundred dollars.

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

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

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

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

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

A limited number of clergymen received free of charge.

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

No deduction on the others.

Husband and wife, entered together, three hundred dollars.

Tuition for all strictly in advance.

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

I was in error as to one matter: there are no
charity students. Gratis-taught clergymen must
not be placed under that head; they are merely an
advertisement. Pauper students can get into the
infant class on a two-third rate (cash in advance),
but not even an archangel can get into the rest of the
game at anything short of par, cash down. For it is
"in the spirit of Christ's charity, as one who is joyful
to bear healing to the sick " * that Mrs. Eddy is work-
ing the game. She sends the healing to them outside.

She cannot bear it to them inside the college, for
the reason that she does not allow a sick candidate
to get in. It is true that this smells of inconsistency,2

1Mrs. Eddy's Introduction to Science and Health.
2 "There is no disease"; "sickness is a belief only." — Science and
Health, vol. ii, page 173, edition of 1884. — M. T.

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MARK TWAIN

but that is nothing; Mrs. Eddy would not be Mrs.
Eddy if she should ever chance to be consistent
about anything two days running.

Except in the matter of the Dollar. The Dollar,
and appetite for power and notoriety. English
must also be added; she is always consistent, she is
always Mrs. Eddy, in her English: it is always and
consistently confused and crippled and poor. She
wrote the Advertisement; her literary trade-marks
are there. When she says all "students" are subject
to examination, she does not mean students, she
means candidates for that lofty place. When she
says students are "liable" to leave the class if found
unfit to remain in it, she does not mean that if they
find themselves unfit, or be found unfit by others,
they will be likely to ask permission to leave the
class; she means that if she finds them unfit she will
be "liable" to fire them out. When she nobly offers
"tuition for all strictly in advance," she does not
mean "instruction for all in advance — payment for
it later." No, that is only what she says, it is not
what she means. If she had written Science and
Health, the oldest man in the world would not be
able to tell with certainty what any passage in it was
intended to mean

118

CHAPTER VII

HER Church was on its legs.
She was its pastor. It was prospering.

She was appointed one of a committee to draft
By-laws for its government. It may be observed,
without overplus of irreverence, that this was larks
for her. She did all of the drafting herself. From
the very beginning she was always in the front seat
when there was business to be done; in the front
seat, with both eyes open, and looking sharply out
for Number One; in the front seat, working Mortal
Mind with fine effectiveness and giving Immortal
Mind a rest for Sunday. When her Church was
reorganized, by and by, the By-laws were retained.
She saw to that. In these Laws for the government
of her Church, her empire, her despotism, Mrs.
Eddy's character is embalmed for good and all. I
think a particularized examination of these Church
laws will be found interesting. And not the less so
if we keep in mind that they were "impelled by a
power not one's own," as she says — Anglice, the in-
spiration of God.

It is a Church "without a creed." Still, it has
one. Mrs. Eddy drafted it — and copyrighted it.
In her own name. You cannot become a member
of the Mother Church (nor of any Christian Science

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MARK TWAIN

Church) without signing it. It forms the first chap-
ter of the By-laws, and is called "Tenets." "Tenets
of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ,
Scientist." It has no hell in it — it throws it over-
board.

THE PASTOR EMERITUS

About the time of the reorganization, Mrs. Eddy
retired from her position of pastor of her Church,
abolished the office of pastor in all branch Churches,
and appointed her book, Science and Health, to be
pastor-universal. Mrs. Eddy did not disconnect her-
self from the office entirely, when she retired, but
appointed herself Pastor Emeritus. It is a mis-
leading title, and belongs to the family of that
phrase "without a creed." It advertises her as
being a merely honorary official, with nothing to do,
and no authority. The Czar of Russia is Emperor
Emeritus on the same terms. Mrs. Eddy was
Autocrat of the Church before, with limitless au-
thority, and she kept her grip on that limitless au-
thority when she took that fictitious title.

It is curious and interesting to note with what an
unerring instinct the Pastor Emeritus has thought
out and forecast all possible encroachments upon
her planned autocracy, and barred the way against
them, in the By-laws which she framed and copy-
righted— under the guidance of the Supreme Being.

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

For instance, when Article I speaks of a Presi-
dent and Board of Directors, you think you have

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

discovered a formidable check upon the powers and
ambitions of the honorary pastor, the ornamental
pastor, the functionless pastor, the Pastor Emeritus,
but it is a mistake. These great officials are of the
phrase-family of the Church- Without-a-Creed and
the Pastor- With-Nothing-to-Do ; that is to say, of
the family of Large-Names-Which-Mean-Nothing.
The Board is of so little consequence that the By-
laws do not state how it is chosen, nor who does
it; but they do state, most definitely, that the
Board cannot fill a vacancy in its number "except
the candidate is approved by the Pastor Emeritus. "

The "candidate." The Board cannot even pro-
ceed to an election until the Pastor Emeritus has
examined the list and squelched such candidates as
are not satisfactory to her.

Whether the original first Board began as the per-
sonal property of Mrs. Eddy or not, it is foreseeable
that in time, under this By-law, she would own it.
Such a first Board might chafe under such a rule as
that, and try to legislate it out of existence some
day. But Mrs. Eddy was awake. She foresaw
that danger, and added this ingenious and effective
clause :

This By-law can neither be amended nor annulled, except by
consent of Mrs. Eddy, the Pastor Emeritus.

THE PRESIDENT

The Board of Directors, or Serfs, or Ciphers,
elects the President.

On these clearly worded terms: "Subject to the
approval of the Pastor Emeritus."

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MARK TWAIN

Therefore She elects him.

A long term can invest a high official with influence
and power, and make him dangerous. Mrs. Eddy
reflected upon that; so she limits the President's term
to a year. She has a capable commercial head, an
organizing head, a head for government.

TREASURER AND CLERK

There are a Treasurer and a Clerk. They are
elected by the Board of Directors. That is to say,
by Mrs. Eddy.

Their terms of office expire on the first Tuesday
in June of each year, "or upon the election of their
successors." They must be watchfully obedient
and satisfactory to her, or she will elect and in-
stall their successors with a suddenness that can
be unpleasant to them. It goes without saying
that the Treasurer manages the Treasury to suit
Mrs. Eddy, and is in fact merely Temporary Deputy
Treasurer.

Apparently the Clerk has but two duties to per-
form: to read messages from Mrs. Eddy to First
Members assembled in solemn Council, and provide
lists of candidates for Church membership. The
select body entitled First Members are the aris-
tocracy of the Mother Church, the Charter Members,
the Aborigines, a sort of stylish but unsalaried little
College of Cardinals, good for show, but not indis-
pensable. Nobody is indispensable in Mrs. Eddy's
empire; she sees to that.

When the Pastor Emeritus sends a letter or

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message to that little Sanhedrin, it is the Clerk's
"imperative duty" to read it "at the place and time
specified." Otherwise, the world might come to an
end. These are fine, large frills, and remind us of
the ways of emperors and such. Such do not use the
penny-post, they send a gilded and painted special
messenger, and he strides into the Parliament, and
business comes to a sudden and solemn and awful
stop; and in the impressive hush that follows, the
Chief Clerk reads the document. It is his "impera-
tive duty." If he should neglect it, his official life
would end. It is the same with this Mother-
Church Clerk; "if he fail to perform this important
function of his office," certain majestic and unshrink-
able solemnities must follow: a special meeting
"shall" be called; a member of the Church "shall"
make formal complaint; then the Clerk "shall" be
"removed from office." Complaint is sufficient, no
trial is necessary.

There is something very sweet and juvenile and
innocent and pretty about these little tinsel vanities,
these grave apings of monarchical fuss and feathers
and ceremony, here on our ostentatiously democratic
soil. She is the same lady that we found in the
Autobiography, who was so naively vain of all that
little ancestral military riffraff that she had dug up
and annexed. A person's nature never changes.
What it is in childhood, it remains. Under pressure,
or a change of interest, it can partially or wholly
disappear from sight, and for considerable stretches
of time, but nothing can ever permanently modify
it, nothing can ever remove it.

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES

There isn't any — now. But with power and
money piling up higher and higher every day and
the Church's dominion spreading daily wider and
farther, a time could come when the envious and
ambitious could start the idea that it would be wise
and well to put a watch upon these assets — a watch
equipped with properly large authority. By
custom, a Board of Trustees. Mrs. Eddy has fore-
seen that probability — for she is a woman with a
long, long look ahead, the longest look ahead that
ever a woman had — and she has provided for that
emergency. In Art. I, Sec. 5, she has decreed that no
Board of Trustees shall ever exist in the Mother Church
"except it be constituted by the Pastor Emeritus."

The magnificence of it, the daring of it! Thus
far, she is

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College;

Pastor Emeritus;

President ;

Board of Directors;

Treasurer ;

Clerk; and future

Board of Trustees;
and is still moving onward, ever onward. When I
contemplate her from a commercial point of view,
there are no words that can convey my admiration
of her.

READERS

These are a feature of first importance in the
church machinery of Christian Science. For they

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occupy the pulpit. They hold the place that the
preacher holds in the other Christian Churches.
They hold that place, but they do not preach. Two
of them are on duty at a time — a man and a woman.
One reads a passage from the Bible, the other reads
the explanation of it from Science and Health — and
so they go on alternating. This constitutes the ser-
vice— this, with choir-music. They utter no word of
their own. Art. IV, Sec. 6, closes their mouths with
this uncompromising gag:

They shall make no remarks explanatory of the Lesson-Sermon
at any time during the service.

It seems a simple little thing. One is not startled
by it at a first* reading of it; nor at the second, nor
the third. One may have to read it a dozen times
before the whole magnitude of it rises before the
mind. It far and away oversizes and outclasses the
best business idea yet invented for the safeguarding
and perpetuating of a religion. If it had been
thought of and put in force eighteen hundred and
seventy years ago, there would be but one Christian
sect in the world now, instead of ten dozens of them.

There are many varieties of men in the world,
consequently there are many varieties of minds in
its pulpits. This insures many differing interpreta-
tions of important Scripture texts, and this in turn
insures the splitting up of a religion into many sects.
It is what has happened; it was sure to happen.

Mrs. Eddy has noted this disastrous result of
preaching, and has put up the bars. She will have
no preaching in her Church. She has explained all

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MARK TWAIN

essential Scriptures, and set the explanations down
in her book. In her belief her underlings cannot
improve upon those explanations, and in that stern
sentence "they shall make no explanatory remarks"
she has barred them for all time from trying. She
will be obeyed; there is no question about that.

In arranging her government she has borrowed
ideas from various sources — not poor ones, but the
best in the governmental market — but this one is
new, this one came out of no ordinary business
head, this one must have come out of her own, there
has been no other commercial skull in a thousand
centuries that was equal to it. She has borrowed
freely and wisely, but I am sure that this idea is
many times larger than all her borrowings bulked
together. One must respect the business brain that
produced it — the splendid pluck and impudence that
ventured to promulgate it, anyway.

ELECTION OF READERS

Readers are not taken at haphazard, any more
than preachers are taken at haphazard for the pul-
pits of other sects. No, Readers are elected by the
Board of Directors. But —

Section 3. The Board shall inform the Pastor Emeritus of
the names of candidates for Readers before they are elected, and
if she objects to the nomination, said candidates shall not be chosen.

Is that an election — by the Board? Thus far I
have not been able to find out what that Board of
Specters is for. It certainly has no real function,
no duty which the hired girl could not perform, no

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office beyond the mere recording of the autocrat's
decrees.

There are no dangerously long office terms in
Mrs. Eddy's government. The Readers are elected
for but one year. This insures their subserviency
to their proprietor.

Readers are not allowed to copy out passages and
read them from the manuscript in the pulpit; they
must read from Mrs. Eddy's book itself. She is
right. Slight changes could be slyly made, repeated,
and in time get acceptance with congregations.
Branch sects could grow out of these practices. Mrs.
Eddy knows the human race, and how far to trust
it. Her limit is not over a quarter of an inch. It
is all that a wise person will risk.

Mrs. Eddy's inborn disposition to copyright every-
thing, charter everything, secure the rightful and
proper credit to herself for everything she does, and
everything she thinks she does, and everything she
thinks, and everything she thinks she thinks or has
thought or intends to think, is illustrated in Sec. 5
of Art. IV, defining the duties of official Readers —
in church:

Naming Book and Author. The Reader of Science and Health,
with Key to the Scriptures, before commencing to read from this
book, shall distinctly announce its full title and give the author's name.

Otherwise the congregation might get the habit
of forgetting who (ostensibly) wrote the book.

THE ARISTOCRACY

This consists of First Members and their apostolic
succession. It is a close corporation, and its mem-

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MARK TWAIN

bership limit is one hundred. Forty will answer, but
if the number fall below that, there must be an
election, to fill the grand quorum.

This Sanhedrin can't do anything of the slightest
importance, but it can talk. It can "discuss."
That is, it can discuss "important questions relative
to Church members"; evidently persons who are
already Church members. This affords it amuse-
ment, and does no harm.

It can "fix the salaries of the Readers."
Twice a year it "votes on" admitting candidates.
That is, for Church membership. But its work is
cut out for it beforehand, by Sec. 2, Art. IX:

Every recommendation for membership in the Church
" shall be countersigned by a loyal student of Mrs. Eddy's, by a
Director of this Church, or by a First Member."

All these three classes of beings are the personal
property of Mrs. Eddy. She has absolute control
of the elections.

Also it must "transact any Church business that
may properly come before it."

"Properly" is a thoughtful word. No important
business can come before it. The By-laws have
attended to that. No important business goes be-
fore any one for the final word except Mrs. Eddy.
She has looked to that.

The Sanhedrin "votes on" candidates for ad-
mission to its own body. But is its vote worth any
more than mine would be? No, it isn't. Sec. 4,
of Art. V — Election of First Members — makes this
quite plain:

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Before being elected, the candidates for First Members
shall be approved by the Pastor Emeritus over her own signature.

Thus the Sanhedrin is the personal property of
Mrs. Eddy. She owns it. It has no functions, no
authority, no real existence. It is another Board of
Shadows. Mrs. Eddy is the Sanhedrin herself.

But it is time to foot up again and "see where we
are at." Thus far, Mrs. Eddy is

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College;

Pastor Emeritus;

President;

Board of Directors;

Treasurer;

Clerk;

Future Board of Trustees;

Proprietor of the Priesthood;

Dictator of the Services;

Proprietor of the Sanhedrin.

She has come far, and is still on her way.

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP

In this Article there is another exhibition of a
couple of the large features of Mrs. Eddy's remark-
able make-up : her business talent and her knowledge
of human nature.

She does not beseech and implore people to join
her Church. She knows the human race better than
that. She gravely goes through the motions of
reluctantly granting admission to the applicant as a
favor to him. The idea is worth untold shekels.
She does not stand at the gate of the fold with wel-

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MARK TWAIN

coming arms spread, and receive the lost sheep with
glad emotion and set up the fatted calf and invite
the neighbor and have a time. No, she looks upon
him coldly, she snubs him, she says: "Who are you?
Who is your sponsor ? Who asked you to come here ?
Go away, and don't come again until you are
invited."

It is calculated to strikingly impress a person
accustomed to Moody and Sankey and Sam Jones
revivals ; accustomed to brain-turning appeals to the
unknown and unindorsed sinner to come forward and
enter into the joy, etc. — "just as he is"; accustomed
to seeing him do it; accustomed to seeing him pass
up the aisle through sobbing seas of welcome, and
love, and congratulation, and arrive at the mourn-
er's bench and be received like a long-lost govern-
ment bond.

No, there is nothing of that kind in Mrs. Eddy's
system. She knows that if you wish to confer upon
a human being something which he is not sure he
wants, the best way is to make it apparently difficult
for him to get it — then he is no son of Adam if that
apple does not assume an interest in his eyes which
it lacked before. In time this interest can grow into
desire. Mrs. Eddy knows that when you cannot
get a man to try — free of cost — a new and effective
remedy for a disease he is afflicted with, you can
generally sell it to him if you will put a price upon it
which he cannot afford.1 When, in the beginning,

1 1 offered to cure of his passion — gratis — a victim of the drinking
habit, by a simple and (as it seemed to me) not difficult intellectual
method which I had successfully tried upon the tobacco habit. I

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she taught Christian Science gratis (for good reasons),
pupils were few and reluctant, and required per-
suasion; it was when she raised the limit to three
hundred dollars for a dollar's worth that she could
not find standing-room for the invasion of pupils that
followed.

With fine astuteness she goes through the motions
of making it difficult to get membership in her
Church. There is a twofold value in this system:
it gives membership a high value in the eyes of the
applicant; and at the same time the requirements
exacted enable Mrs. Eddy to keep him out if she has
doubts about his value to her. A word further as
to applications for membership :

Applications of students of the Metaphysical College must
be signed by the Board of Directors.

That is safe. Mrs. Eddy is proprietor of that
Board.

Children of twelve may be admitted if invited by
"one of Mrs. Eddy's loyal students, or by a First
Member, or by a Director."

These sponsors are the property of Mrs. Eddy,
therefore her Church is safeguarded from the in-
trusion of undesirable children.

Other Students. Applicants who have not studied

failed to get him interested. I think my proposition couldn't rouse
him, couldn't strongly appeal to him, could not electrify him, be-
cause it offered a thing so easy to get, and which could be had for
nothing. Within a month afterward a famous Drink Cure opened,
and at my suggestion he willingly went there, at once, and got
himself (temporarily) cured of his habit. Because he had to pay
one hundred and fifty dollars. One values a tiling when one can't
afford it.— M. T.

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MARK TWAIN

with Mrs. Eddy can get in only "by invitation and
recommendation from students of Mrs. Eddy . . .
or from members of the Mother Church."

Other paragraphs explain how two or three other
varieties of applicants are to be challenged and
obstructed, and tell us who is authorized to invite
them, recommend them, indorse them, and all that.

The safeguards are definite, and would seem to
be sufficiently strenuous — to Mr. Sam Jones, at any
rate. Not for Mrs. Eddy. She adds this clincher:

The candidates shall be elected by a majority vote of the First
Members present.

That is the aristocracy, the aborigines, the San-
hedrim It is Mrs. Eddy's property. She herself
is the Sanhedrim No one can get into the Church
if she wishes to keep him out.

This veto power could some time or other have a
large value for her, therefore she was wise to re-
serve it.

It is likely that it is not frequently used. It is
also probable that the difficulties attendant upon
getting admission to membership have been insti-
tuted more to invite than to deter, more to enhance
the value of membership and make people long for
it than to make it really difficult to get. I think so,
because the Mother Church has many thousands of
members more than its building can accommodate.

'ANDSOME ENGLISH REQUIRED

Mrs. Eddy is very particular as regards one
detail — curiously so, for her, all things considered.

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The Church Readers must be "good English schol-
ars"; they must be "thorough English scholars."
She is thus sensitive about the English of her
subordinates for cause, possibly. In her chapter
defining the duties of the Clerk there is an indica-
tion that she harbors resentful memories of an occa-
sion when the hazy quality of her own English made
unforeseen and mortifying trouble:

Understanding Communications. Sec. 2. If the Clerk of this
Church shall receive a communication from the Pastor Emeritus
which he does not fully understand, he shall inform her of this
fact before presenting it to the Church, and obtain a clear
understanding of the matter — then act in accordance therewith.

She should have waited to calm down, then, but
instead she added this, which lacks sugar:

Failing to adhere to this By-law, the Clerk must resign.

I wish I could see that communication that broke
the camel's back. It was probably the one be-
ginning: "What plague spot or bacilli were gnaw-
ing at the heart of this metropolis and bringing it
on bended knee?" and I think it likely that the
kindly disposed Clerk tried to translate it into
English and lost his mind and had to go to the
hospital. That By-law was not the offspring of a
forecast, an intuition, it was certainly born of a
sorrowful experience. Its temper gives the fact
away.

The little book of By-laws has manifestly been
tinkered by one of Mrs. Eddy's "thorough English
scholars," for in the majority of cases its meanings
are clear. The book is not even marred by Mrs.

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MARK TWAIN

Eddy's peculiar specialty — lumbering clumsinesses
of speech. I believe the salaried polisher has weeded
them all out but one. In one place, after referring
to Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy goes on to say "the
Bible and the above-named book, with other works
by the same author," etc.

It is an unfortunate sentence, for it could mislead
a hasty or careless reader for a moment. Mrs. Eddy
i framed it — it is her very own — it bears her trade-
mark. "The Bible and Science and Health, with
other works by the same author," could have come
from no literary vacuum but the one which produced
the remark (in the Autobiography): "I remember
reading, in my childhood, certain manuscripts con-
taining Scriptural Sonnets, besides other verses and
enigmas."

We know what she means, in both instances, but
a low-priced Clerk would not necessarily know, and
on a salary like his he could quite excusably aver
that the Pastor Emeritus had commanded him to
come and make proclamation that she was author
of the Bible, and that she was thinking of discharg-
ing some Scriptural sonnets and other enigmas upon
the congregation. It could lose him his place, but
it would not be fair, if it happened before the edict
about "Understanding Communications" was pro-
mulgated.

"readers" again

The By-law book makes a showy pretense of
orderliness and system, but it is only a pretense. 1
will not go so far as to say it is a harum-scarum

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jumble, for it is not that, but I think it fair to say
it is at least jumbulacious in places. For instance,
Articles III and IV set forth in much detail the
qualifications and duties of Readers, she then skips
some thirty pages and takes up the subject again.
It looks like slovenliness, but it may be only art.
The belated By-law has a sufficiently quiet look, but
it has a ton of dynamite in it. It makes all the Chris-
tian Science Church Readers on the globe the personal
chattels of Mrs. Eddy. Whenever she chooses, she
can stretch her long arm around the world's fat
belly and flirt a Reader out of his pulpit, though he
be tucked away in seeming safety and obscurity in
a lost village in the middle of China:

In any Church. Sec. 2. The Pastor Emeritus of the Mother
Church shall have the right (through a letter addressed to the
individual and Church of which he is the Reader) to remove a
Reader from this office in any Church of Christ, Scientist, both
in America and in foreign nations; or to appoint the Reader to
fill any office belonging to the Christian Science denomination.

She does not have to prefer charges against him,
she does not have to find him lazy, careless, incom-
petent, untidy, ill-mannered, unholy, dishonest, she
does not have to discover a fault of any kind in him,
she does not have to tell him nor his congregation
why she dismisses and disgraces him and insults his
meek flock, she does not have to explain to his
family why she takes the bread out of their mouths
and turns them out of doors homeless and ashamed
in a strange land; she does not have to do anything
but send a letter and say: "Pack! — and ask no
questions!"

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MARK TWAIN

Has the Pope this power? — the other Pope — the
one in Rome. Has he anything approaching it?
Can he turn a priest out of his pulpit and strip him
of his office and his livelihood just upon a whim, a
caprice, and meanwhile furnishing no reasons to the
parish? Not in America. And not elsewhere, we
may believe.

It is odd and strange, to see intelligent and
educated people among us worshiping this self-
seeking and remorseless tyrant as a God. This
worship is denied — by persons who are themselves
worshipers of Mrs. Eddy. I feel quite sure that it
is a worship which will continue during ages.

That Mrs. Eddy wrote that amazing By-law with
her own hand we have much better evidence than
her word. We have her English. It is there. It
cannot be imitated. She ought never to go to the
expense of copyrighting her verbal discharges. When
any one tries to claim them she should call me; I
can always tell them from any other literary appren-
tice's at a glance. It was like her to call America
a "nation"; she would call a sand-bar a nation if
it should fall into a sentence in which she was speak-
ing of peoples, for she would not know how to
untangle it and get it out and classify it by itself.
And the closing arrangement of that By-law is in
true Eddysonian form, too. In it she reserves
authority to make a Reader fill any office connected
with a Science church — sexton, grave-digger, adver-
tising-agent, Annex-polisher, leader of the choir,
President, Director, Treasurer, Clerk, etc. She did
not mean that. She already possessed that author-

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ity. She meant to clothe herself with power,
despotic and unchallengeable, to appoint all Science
Readers to their offices, both at home and abroad.
The phrase "or to appoint" is another miscarriage of
intention; she did not mean "or," she meant "and."
That By-law puts into Mrs. Eddy's hands abso-
lute command over the most formidable force and
influence existent in the Christian Science kingdom
outside of herself, and it does this unconditionally
and (by auxiliary force of Laws already quoted)
irrevocably. Still, she is not quite satisfied. Some-
thing might happen, she doesn't know what. There-
fore she drives in one more nail, to make sure, and
drives it deep:

This By-law can neither be amended nor annulled, except by
consent of the Pastor Emeritus.

Let some one with a wild and delirious fancy try
and see if he can imagine her furnishing that consent.

MONOPOLY OF SPIRITUAL BREAD

Very properly, the first qualification for member-
ship in the Mother Church is belief in the doctrines
of Christian Science.

But these doctrines must not be gathered from
secondary sources. There is but one recognized
source. The candidate must be a believer in the
doctrines of Christian Science " according to the
platform and teaching contained in the Christian
Science text-book, 'Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures,' by Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy."

That is definite, and is final. There are to be no

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MARK TWAIN

commentaries, no labored volumes of exposition and
explanation by anybody except Mrs. Eddy. Because
such things could sow error, create warring opinions,
split the religion into sects, and disastrously cripple
its power. Mrs. Eddy will do the whole of the
explaining, herself — has done it, in fact. She has
written several books. They are to be had (for cash
in advance); they are all sacred; additions to them
can never be needed and will never be permitted.
They tell the candidate how to instruct himself, how
to teach others, how to do all things comprised in
the business — and they close the door against all
would-be competitors, and monopolize the trade:

"The Bible and the above-named book [Science
and Health], with other works by the same author,"
must be his only text-books for the commerce — he
cannot forage outside.

Mrs. Eddy's words are to be the sole elucidators
of the Bible and Science and Health — forever.
Throughout the ages, whenever there is doubt as
to the meaning of a passage in either of these books
the inquirer will not dream of trying to explain it
to himself; he would shudder at the thought of
such temerity, such profanity; he would be haled to
the Inquisition and thence to the public square and
the stake if he should be caught studying into text-
meanings on his own hook; he will be prudent and
seek the meanings at the only permitted source,
Mrs. Eddy^s commentaries.

Value of this Strait-jacket. One must not underrate
the magnificence of this long-headed idea, one must
not underestimate its giant possibilities in the matter

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of hooping the Church solidly together and keeping
it so. It squelches independent inquiry, and makes
such a thing impossible, profane, criminal, it authori-
tatively settles every dispute that can arise. It
starts with finality — a point which the Roman
Church has traveled toward fifteen or sixteen cen-
turies, stage by stage, and has not yet reached.
The matter of the Immaculate Conception of the
Virgin Mary was not authoritatively settled until the
days of Pius IX. — yesterday, so to speak.

As already noticed, the Protestants are broken up
into a long array of sects, a result of disputes about
the meanings of texts, disputes made unavoidable by
the absence of an infallible authority to submit
doubtful passages to. A week or two ago (I am
writing in the middle of January, 1903), the clergy
and others hereabouts had a warm dispute in the
papers over this question: Did Jesus anywhere claim
to be God? It seemed an easy question, but it
turned out to be a hard one. It was ably and elabo-
rately discussed, by learned men of several denomi-
nations, but in the end it remained unsettled.

A week ago, another discussion broke out. It was
over this text :

Sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor.

One verdict was worded as follows:

When Christ answered the rich young man and said for
him to give to the poor all he possessed or he could not gain
everlasting life, He did not mean it in the literal sense. My
Interpretation of His words is that we should part with what
comes between us and Christ.

There is no doubt that Jesus believed that the rich young

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MARK TWAIN

man thought more of his wealth than he did of his soul, and,
such being the case, it was his duty to give up the wealth.

Every one of us knows that there is something we should
give up for Christ. Those who are true believers and followers
know what they have given up, and those who are not yet
followers know down in their hearts what they must give up.

Ten clergymen of various denominations were inter-
viewed, and nine of them agreed with that verdict.
That did not settle the matter, because the tenth said
the language of Jesus was so strait and definite that
it explained itself: "Sell all," not a percentage.

There is a most unusual feature about that dis-
pute : the nine persons who decided alike, quoted not
a single authority in support of their position. I do
not know when I have seen trained disputants do the
like of that before. The nine merely furnished their
own opinions, founded upon — nothing at all. In the
other dispute ("Did Jesus anywhere claim to be
God?") the same kind of men — trained and learned
clergymen — backed up their arguments with chapter
and verse. On both sides. Plenty of verses. Were
no reinforcing verses to be found in the present
case? It looks that way.

The opinion of the nine seems strange to me, for
it is unsupported by authority, while there was at
least constructive authority for the opposite view.

It is hair-splitting differences of opinion over dis-
puted text-meanings that have divided into many
sects a once united Church. One may infer from
some of the names in the following list that some of
the differences are very slight — so slight as to be not
distinctly important, perhaps — yet they have moved
groups to withdraw from communions to which they

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belonged and set up a sect of their own. The list-
accompanied by various Church statistics for 1902,
compiled by Rev. Dr. H. K. Carroll — was published,
January 8, 1903, in the New York Christian Advocate:

Adventists (6 bodies) German Evangelical

Baptists (13 bodies) Protestant

Brethren (Plymouth) (4 German Evangelical Sy-

bodies) nod

Brethren (River) (3 Independent congrega-

bodies)
Catholics (8 bodies)
Catholic Apostolic
Christadelphians
Christian Connection
Christian Catholics

(Dowie)
Christian Missionary

Association
Christian Scientists
Church of God (Wine-

brennarian)
Church of the New Jeru-
salem
Congregationalists
Disciples of Christ
Dunkards (4 bodies)
Evangelical (2 bodies)
Friends (4 bodies)
Friends of the Temple

tions
Jews (2 bodies)
Latter - day Saints (2

bodies)
Lutherans (22 bodies)
Mennonites (12 bodies)
Methodists (17 bodies)
Moravians

Presbyterians (12 bodies)
Protestant Episcopal (2

bodies)
Reformed (3 bodies)
Schwenkfeldians
Social Brethren
Spiritualists
Swedish Evangelical

Miss. Covenant (Wal-

denstromians)
Unitarians
United Brethren (2 bodies)

Universalists
Total of sects and splits — 139.
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MARK TWAIN

In the present month (February), Mr. E. I.
Lindh, A.M., has communicated to the Boston
Transcript a hopeful article on the solution of the
problem of the "divided church." Divided is not
too violent a term. Subdivided could have been
permitted if he had thought of it. He came near
thinking of it, for he mentions some of the sub-
divisions himself: "the 12 kinds of Presbyterians,
the 17 kinds of Methodists, the 13 kinds of Baptists,
etc." He overlooked the 12 kinds of Mennonites
and the 22 kinds of Lutherans, but they are in Rev.
Mr. Carroll's list. Altogether, 76 splits under 5
flags. The Literary Digest (February 14th) is pleased
with Mr. Lindh's optimistic article, and also with the
signs of the times, and perceives that "the idea of
Church unity is in the air."

Now, then, is not Mrs. Eddy profoundly wise in
forbidding, for all time, all explanations of her relig-
ion except such as she shall let on to be her own?

I think so. I think there can be no doubt of it.
In a way, they will be her own; for, no matter which
member of her clerical staff shall furnish the ex-
planations, not a line of them will she ever allow to
be printed until she shall have approved it, accepted
it, copyrighted it, cabbaged it. We may depend on
that with a four-ace confidence.

THE NEW INFALLIBILITY

All in proper time Mrs. Eddy's factory will take
hold of that Commandment, and explain it for good
and all. It may be that one member of the shift

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

will vote that the word "all" means all; it may be
that ten members of the shift will vote that "all"
means only a percentage; but it is Mrs. Eddy, not
the eleven, who will do the deciding. And if she says
it is percentage, then percentage it is, forevermore
— and that is what I am expecting, for she doesn't
sell all herself, nor any considerable part of it, and
as regards the poor, she doesn't declare any div-
idend; but if she says "all" means all, then all it
is, to the end of time, and no follower of hers will
ever be allowed to reconstruct that text, or shrink
it, or inflate it, or meddle with it in any way at all.
Even to-day — right here in the beginning — she is the
sole person who, in the matter of Christian Science
exegesis, is privileged to exploit the Spiral Twist.1
The Christian world has two Infallibles now.

Of equal power? For the present only. When
Leo XIII. passes to his rest another Infallible will
ascend his throne;2 others, and yet others, and still
others will follow him, and be as infallible as he
and decide questions of doctrine as long as they may
come up, all down the far future; but Mary Baker
G. Eddy is the only Infallible that will ever occupy
the Science throne. Many a Science Pope will suc-
ceed her, but she has closed their mouths; they will
repeat and reverently praise and adore her infalli-'

xThat is a technicality — that phrase. I got it of an uncle of
mine. He had once studied in a theological cemetery, he said, and
he called the Department of Biblical Exegesis the Spiral Twist
"for short." He said it was always difficult to drive a straight text
through an unaccommodating cork, but that if you twisted it it
would go. He had kept bar in his less poetical days. — M. T.
It has since happened. — M. T.

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MARK TWAIN

bilities, but venture none themselves. In her grave
she will still outrank all other Popes, be they o:
what Church they may. She will hold the supremest
of earthly titles, The Infallible — with a capital T.
Many in the world's history have had a hunger for
such nuggets and slices of power as they might
reasonably hope to grab out of an empire's or a re-
ligion's assets, but Mrs. Eddy is the only person alive
or dead who has ever struck for the whole of them.
For small things she has the eye of a microscope,
for large ones the eye of a telescope, and whatever
she sees, she wants. Wants it all.

THE SACRED POEMS

When Mrs. Eddy's "sacred revelations" (that is
the language of the By-laws) are read in public, their
authorship must be named. The By-laws twice com-
mand this, therefore we mention it twice, to be fair.

But it is also commanded that when a member
publicly quotes "from the poems of our Pastor
Emeritus " the authorship shall be named. For these
are sacred, too. There are kindly people who may
suspect a hidden generosity in that By-law; they
may think it is there to protect the Official Reader
from the suspicion of having written the poems him-
self. Such do not know Mrs. Eddy. She does an
inordinate deal of protecting, but in no distinctly
named and specified case in her history has Number
Two been the object of it. Instances have been
claimed, but they have failed of proof, and even of
plausibility.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

"Members shall also instruct their students" to
look out and advertise the authorship when they
read those poems and things. Not on Mrs. Eddy's
account, but "for the good of our Cause."

THE CHURCH EDIFICE

i. Mrs. Eddy gave the land. It was not of much
value at the time, but it is very valuable now.

2. Her people built the Mother Church edifice on
it, at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

3. Then they gave the whole property to her.

4. Then she gave it to the Board of Directors.
She is the Board of Directors. She took it out of
one pocket and put it in the other.

5. Sec. 10 (of the deed). "Whenever said Di-
rectors shall determine that it is inexpedient to main-
tain preaching, reading, or speaking in said church
in accordance with the terms of this deed, they are
authorized and required to reconvey forthwith said
lot of land with the building thereon to Mary Baker
G. Eddy, her heirs and assigns forever, by a proper
deed of conveyance."

She is never careless, never slipshod, about a
matter of business. Owning the property through
her Board of Waxworks was safe enough, still it was
sound business to set another grip on it to cover acci-
dents, and she did it.

Her barkers (what a curious name ; I wonder if it is
copyrighted) ; her barkers persistently advertise to the
public her generosity in giving away a piece of land

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MARK TWAIN

which cost her a trifle, and a two-hundred-and-fifty~
thousand-dollar church which cost her nothing; and
they can hardly speak of the unselfishness of it with-
out breaking down and crying; yet they know she
gave nothing away, and never intended to. However,
such is the human race. Often it does seem such a
pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

Some of the hostiles think that Mrs. Eddy's idea
in protecting this property in the interest of her heirs,
and in accumulating a great money fortune, is, that
she may leave her natural heirs well provided for
when she goes. I think it is a mistake. I think she
is of late years giving herself large concern about only
one interest — her power and glory, and the perpetua-
tion and worship of her Name — with a capital Nu
Her Church is her pet heir, and I think it will get her'
wealth. It is the torch which is to light the world
and the ages with her glory.

I think she once prized money for the ease and
comfort it could bring, the showy vanities it could
furnish, and the social promotion it could command;
for we have seen that she was born into the world
with little ways and instincts and aspirations and
affectations that are duplicates of our own. I do
not think her money-passion has ever diminished in
ferocity, I do not think that she has ever allowed a
dollar that had no friends to get by her alive, but I
think her reason for wanting it has changed. I
think she wants it now to increase and establish and
perpetuate her power and glory with, not to add
to her comforts and luxuries, not to furnish paint
and fuss and feathers for vain display. I think her

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ambitions have soared away above the fuss-and-
feather stage. She still likes the little shows and
vanities — a fact which she exposed in a public
utterance two or three days ago when she was not
noticing * — but I think she does not place a large
value upon them now. She could build a mighty
and far-shining brass-mounted palace if she wanted
to, but she does not do it. She would have
had that kind of ambition in the early scrabbling
times. She could go to England to-day and be
worshiped by earls, and get a comet's attention
from the million, if she cared for such things. She
would have gone in the early scrabbling days for
much less than an earl, and been vain of it, and glad
to show off before the remains of the Scotch kin.
But those things are very small to her now — next to
invisible, observed through the cloud-rack from the
dizzy summit where she perches in these great days.
She does not want that church property for herself.
It is worth but a quarter of a million — a sum she
could call in from her far-spread flocks to-morrow
with a lift of her hand. Not a squeeze of it, just a
lift. It would come without a murmur; come
gratefully, come gladly. And if her glory stood in
more need of the money in Boston than it does where
her flocks are propagating it, she would lift the hand,
I think.

She is still reaching for the Dollar, she will con-
tinue to reach for it ; but not that she may spend it
upon herself; not that she may spend it upon

xThis is a reference to her public note of January 17th. See
Appendix. — M. T.

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charities; not that she may indemnify an early
deprivation and clothe herself in a blaze of North
Adams gauds; not that she may have nine breeds
of pie for breakfast, as only the rich New-Englander
can; not that she may indulge any petty material
vanity or appetite that once was hers and prized and
nursed, but that she may apply that Dollar to
statelier uses, and place it where it may cast the
metallic sheen of her glory farthest across the reced-
ing expanses of the globe.

PRAYER

A brief and good one is furnished in the book
of By-laws. The Scientist is required to pray it
every day.

THE LORD'S PRAYER — AMENDED

This is not in the By-laws, it is in the first chapter
of Science and Health, edition of 1902. I do not find
it in the edition of 1884. It is probable that it had
not at that time been handed down. Science and
Health's (latest) rendering of its "spiritual sense"
is as follows:

"Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, adorable One.
Thy kingdom is within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us
to know — as in heaven, so on earth — God is supreme. Give us
grace for to-day; feed the famished affections. And infinite
Love is reflected in love. And Love leadeth us not into tempta-
tion, but delivereth from sin, disease, and death. For God is
now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love."1

1 For the latest version, see Appendix. — M. T.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

If I thought my opinion was desired and would be
properly revered, I should say that in my judgment
that is as good a piece of carpentering as any of
those eleven Commandment-experts could do with
material, after all their practice. I notice only one
doubtful place. "Lead us not into temptation"
seems to me to be a very definite request, and that
the new rendering turns the definite request into a
definite assertion. I shall be glad to have that
turned back to the old way and the marks of the
Spiral Twist removed, or varnished over; then I
shall be satisfied, and will do the best I can with
what is left. At the same time, I do feel that the
shrinkage in our spiritual assets is getting serious.
First the Commandments, now the Prayer. I never
expected to see these steady old reliable securities
watered down to this. And this is not the whole of
it. Last summer the Presbyterians extended the
Calling and Election suffrage to nearly everybody
entitled to salvation. They did not even stop
there, but let out all the unbaptized American in-
fants we had been accumulating for two hundred
years and more. There are some that believe they
would have let the Scotch ones out, too, if they
could have done it. Everything is going to ruin;
in no long time we shall have nothing left but the
love of God.

THE NEW UNPARDONABLE SIN

"Working Against the Cause. Sec. 2. If a mem-
ber of this Church shall work against the accomplish-

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ment of what the Discoverer and Founder of Christian
Science understands is advantageous to the individual,
to this Church, and to the Cause of Christian Sci-
ence"— out he goes. Forever.

The member may think that what he is doing will
advance the Cause, but he is not invited to do any-
thinking. More than that, he is not permitted to do
any — as he will clearly gather from this By-law.
When a person joins Mrs. Eddy's Church he must
leave his thinker at home. Leave it permanently.
To make sure that it will not go off some time or
other when he is not watching, it will be safest for
him to spike it. If he should forget himself and
think just once, the By-law provides that he shall
be fired out — instantly — forever — no return.

It shall be the duty of this Church immediately to call a
meeting, and drop forever the name of this member from its records.

My, but it breathes a towering indignation !

There are forgivable offenses, but this is not one of
them; there are admonitions, probations, suspen-
sions, in several minor cases; mercy is shown the
derelict, in those cases he is gently used, and in time
he can get back into the fold — even when he has
repeated his offense. But let him think, just once,
without getting his thinker set to Eddy time, and
that is enough; his head comes off. There is no
second offense, and there is no gate open to that
lost sheep, ever again.

This rule cannot be changed, amended, or annulled, except by
unanimous vote of all the First Members.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

The same being Mrs. Eddy. It is naively sly and
pretty to see her keep putting forward First Mem-
bers, and Boards of This and That, and other broid-
eries and ruffles of her raiment, as if they were inde-
pendent entities, instead of a part of her clothes,
and could do things all by themselves when she was
outside of them.

Mrs. Eddy did not need to copyright the sentence
just quoted, its English would protect it. None but
she would have shoveled that comically superfluous
"all" in there.

The former Unpardonable Sin has gone out of
service. We may frame the new Christian Science
one thus:

'Whatsoever Member shall think, and without
Our Mother's permission act upon his think, the
same shall be cut off from the Church forever."

It has been said that I make many mistakes
about Christian Science through being ignorant of
the spiritual meanings of its terminology. I believe
it is true. I have been misled all this time by that
word Member, because there was no one to tell me
that its spiritual meaning was Slave.

AX AND BLOCK

There is a By-law which forbids Members to
practise hypnotism; the penalty is excommunica-
tion.

i. If a member is found to be a mental prac-
titioner—

2. Complaint is to be entered against liim —

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MARK TWAIN

3. By the Pastor Emeritus, and by none else;

4. No member is allowed to make complaint to
her in the matter;

5. Upon Mrs. Eddy's mere "complaint" — unbacked
by evidence or proof, and without giving the accused a
chance to be heard — "his name shall be dropped from
this Church."

Mrs. Eddy has only to say a member is guilty —
that is all. That ends it. It is not a case of he
"may" be cut off from Christian Science salvation,
it is a case of he "shall" be. Her serfs must see to
it, and not say a word.

Does the other Pope possess this prodigious and
irresponsible power? Certainly not in our day.

Some may be curious to know how Mrs. Eddy
finds out that a member is practising hypnotism,
since no one is allowed to come before her throne
and accuse him. She has explained this in Christian
Science History, first and second editions, page 16:

I possess a spiritual sense of what the malicious mental
practitioner is mentally arguing which cannot be deceived; I can
discern in the human mind thoughts, motives, and purposes;
and neither mental arguments nor psychic power can affect this
spiritual insight. *

A marvelous woman; with a hunger for power such
as has never been seen in the world before. No
thing, little or big, that contains any seed or sug-
gestion of power escapes her avaricious eye; and
when once she gets that eye on it, her remorseless
grip follows. There isn't a Christian Scientist who
isn't ecclesiastically as much her property as if she
had bought him and paid for him, and copyrighted

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him and got a charter. She cannot be satisfied when
she has handcuffed a member, and put a leg-chain
and ball on him and plugged his ears and removed
his thinker, she goes on wrapping needless chains
round and round him, just as a spider would. For
she trusts no one, believes in no one's honesty,
judges every one by herself. Although we have
seen that she has absolute and irresponsible com-
mand over her spectral Boards and over every
official and servant of her Church, at home and
abroad, over every minute detail of her Church's
government, present and future, and can purge her
membership of guilty or suspected persons by vari-
ous plausible formalities and whenever she will, she
is still not content, but must set her queer mind to
work and invent a way by which she can take a
member — any member — by neck and crop and fling
him out without anything resembling a formality
at all.

She is sole accuser and sole witness, and her testi-
mony is final and carries uncompromising and irre-
mediable doom with it.

The Sole- Witness Court! It should make the
Council of Ten and the Council of Three turn in
their graves for shame, to see how little they knew
about satanic concentrations of irresponsible power.
Here we have one Accuser, one Witness, one Judge,
one Headsman — and all four bunched together in
Mrs. Eddy, the Inspired of God, His Latest Thought
to His People, New Member of the Holy Family, the
Equal of Jesus.

When a Member is not satisfactory to Mrs.

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Eddy, and yet is blameless in his life and faultless
in his membership and in his Christian Science walk
and conversation, shall he hold up his head and tilt
his hat over one ear and imagine himself safe because'
of these perfections? Why, in that very moment
Mrs. Eddy will cast that spiritual X-ray of hers
through his dungarees and say:

"I see his hypnotism working, among his insides
— remove him to the block!"

What shall it profit him to know it isn't so?
Nothing. His testimony is of no value. No one
wants it, no one will ask for it. He is not present
to offer it (he does not know he has been accused),
and if he were there to offer it, it would not be
listened to.

It was out of powers approaching Mrs. Eddy's —
though not equaling them — that the Inquisition
and the devastations of the Interdict grew. She
will transmit hers. The man born two centuries
from now will think he has arrived in hell; and all
in good time he will think he knows it. Vast con-
centrations of irresponsible power have never in
any age been used mercifully, and there is nothing
to suggest that the Christian Science Papacy is
going to spend money on novelties.

Several Christian Scientists have asked me to
refrain from prophecy. There is no prophecy in
our day but history. But history is a trustworthy
prophet. History is always repeating itself, be-
cause conditions are always repeating themselves.
Out of duplicated conditions history always gets a
duplicate product.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

READING LETTERS AT MEETINGS

I wonder if there is anything a Member can do
that will not raise Mrs. Eddy's jealousy? The By-
laws seem to hunt him from pillar to post all the
time, and turn all his thoughts and acts and words
into sins against the meek and lowly new deity of
his worship. Apparently her jealousy never sleeps.
Apparently any trifle can offend it, and but one
penalty appease it — excommunication. The By-
laws might properly and reasonably be entitled Laws
for the Coddling and Comforting of Our Mother's
Petty Jealousies. The By-law named at the head
of this paragraph reads its transgressor out of the
Church if he shall carry a letter from Mrs. Eddy to
the congregation and forget to read it or fail to read
the whole of it.

HONESTY REQUISITE

Dishonest members are to be admonished; if they
continue in dishonest practices, excommunication
follows. Considering who it is that drafted this
law, there is a certain amount of humor in it.

FURTHER APPLICATIONS OF THE AX

Here follow the titles of some more By-laws whose
infringement is punishable by excommunication:
Silence Enjoined.
Misteaching.
Departure from Tenets.

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MARK TWAIN

Violation of Christian Fellowship.

Moral Offenses.

Illegal Adoption.

Broken By-laws.

Violation of By-laws. (What is the difference?)

Formulas Forbidden.

Official Advice. (Forbids Tom, Dick, and Harry's
clack.)

Unworthy of Membership.

Final Excommunication.

Organizing Churches.

This looks as if Mrs. Eddy had devoted a large
share of her time and talent to inventing ways to
get rid of her Church members. Yet in another
place she seems to invite membership. Not in any
urgent way, it is true, still she throws out a bait to
such as like notice and distinction (in other words,
the Human Race). Page 82:

It is important that these seemingly strict conditions be
complied with, as the names of the Members of the Mother Church
will be recorded in the history of the Church and become a part
thereof.

We all want to be historical.

MORE SELF-PROTECTIONS

The Hymnal. There is a Christian Science Hymnal.
Entrance to it was closed in 1898. Christian Science
students who make hymns nowadays may possibly
get them sung in the Mother Church, "but not un-
less approved by the Pastor Emeritus." Art. XXVII,
Sec. 2.

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Solo Singers. Mrs. Eddy has contributed the
words of three of the hymns in the Hymnal. Two
of them appear in it six times altogether, each of
them being set to three original forms of musical
anguish. Mrs. Eddy, always thoughtful, has pro-
mulgated a By-law requiring the singing of one of
her three hymns in the Mother Church "as often
as once each month." It is a good idea. A con-
gregation could get tired of even Mrs. Eddy's muse
in the course of time, without the cordializing in-
centive of compulsion. We all know how wearisome
the sweetest and touchingest things can become,
through rep-rep-repetition, and still rep-rep-repeti-
tion, and more rep-rep-repetition — like "the sweet
by and by, in the sweet by and by," for instance,
and "Tan-rah-rah boom-de-aye " ; and surely it is not
likely that Mrs. Eddy's machine has turned out
goods that could outwear those great heart-stirrers,
without the assistance of the lash. "O'er Waiting
Harpstrings of the Mind" is pretty good, quite fair
to middling — the whole seven of the stanzas — but
repetition would be certain to take the excitement
out of it in the course of time, even if there were
fourteen, and then it would sound like the multi-
plication-table, and would cease to save. The con-
gregation would be perfectly sure to get tired; in
fact, did get tired — hence the compulsory By-law.
It is a measure born of experience, not foresight.

The By-laws say that "if a solo singer shall neglect
or refuse to sing alone" one of those three hymns
as often as once a month, and oftener if so directed
by the Board of Directors — which is Mrs. Eddy—

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MARK TWAIN

the singer's salary shall be stopped. It is circum-
stantial evidence that some soloists neglected this
sacrament and others refused it. At least that is the
charitable view to take of it. There is only one
other view to take : that Mrs. Eddy did really foresee
that there would be singers who would some day
get tired of doing her hymns and proclaiming the
authorship, unless persuaded by a By-law, with a
penalty attached. The idea could of course occur
to her wise head, for she would know that a seven-
stanza break might well be a calamitous strain upon
a soloist, and that he might therefore avoid it if
un watched. He could not curtail it, for the whole of
anything that Mrs. Eddy does is sacred, and cannot
be cut.

BOARD OP EDUCATION

It consists of four members, one of whom is
President of it. Its members are elected anv
nually. Subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval. Art,
XXX, Sec. 2.

She owns the Board — is the Board.

Mrs. Eddy is President of the Metaphysical
College. If at any time she shall vacate that
office, the Directors of the College (that is to say,
Mrs. Eddy) "shall" elect to the vacancy the Presi-
dent of the Board of Education (which is merely
re-electing herself).

It is another case of "Pastor Emeritus." She
gives up the shadow of authority, but keeps a good
firm hold on the substance.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

PUBLIC TEACHERS

Applicants for admission to this industry must
pass a thorough three days' examination before the
Board of Education "in Science and Health, chapter
on 'Recapitulation'; the Platform of Christian
Science; page 403 of Christian Science Practice, from
line second to the second paragraph of page 405
and page 488, second and third paragraphs."

BOARD OF LECTURESHIP

The lecturers are exceedingly important servants
of Mrs. Eddy, and she chooses them with great
care. Each of them has an appointed territory in
which to perform his duties — in the North, the
South, the East, the West, in Canada, in Great
Britain, and so on — and each must stick to his own
territory and not forage beyond its boundaries. I
think it goes without saying — from what we have
seen of Mrs. Eddy — that no lecture is delivered until
she has examined and approved it, and that the
lecturer is not allowed to change it afterward.

The members of the Board of Lectureship are
elected annually —

Subject to the approval of Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy.

MISSIONARIES

There are but four. They are elected — like the
rest of the domestics — annually. So far as I can

F— Vol. 25— M. T.

MARK TWAIN

discover, not a single servant of the Sacred House-
hold has a steady job except Mrs. Eddy. It is plain
that she trusts no human being but herself.

THE BY-LAWS

The branch Churches are strictly forbidden to use
them.

So far as I can see, they could not do it if they
wanted to. The By-laws are merely the voice of
the master issuing commands to the servants.
There is nothing and nobody for the servants to
re-utter them to.

That useless edict is repeated in the little book, a
few pages farther on. There are several other repeti-
tions of prohibitions in the book that could be spared
— they only take up room for nothing.

THE CREED

It is copyrighted. I do not know why, but I
suppose it is to keep adventurers from some da}7
claiming that they invented it, and not Mrs. Eddy
and that "strange Providence" that has suggested
so many clever things to her.

No Change, It is forbidden to change the Creed.
That is important, at any rate.

COPYRIGHT

I can understand why Mrs. Eddy copyrighted the
early editions and revisions of Science and Health,

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

and why she had a mania for copyrighting every
scrap of every sort that came from her pen in those
jejune days when to be in print probably seemed a
wonderful distinction to her in her provincial ob-
scurity, but why she should continue this delirium
in these days of her godship and her far-spread fame,
I cannot explain to myself. And particularly as re-
gards Science and Health. She knows, now, that that
Annex is going to live for many centuries; and so,
what good is a fleeting forty-two-year copyright
going to do it?

Now a perpetual copyright would be quite another
matter. I would like to give her a hint. Let her
strike for a perpetual copyright on that book. There
is precedent for it. There is one book in the world
which bears the charmed life of perpetual copyright
(a fact not known to twenty people in the world).
By a hardy perversion of privilege on the part of the
law-making power the Bible has perpetual copy-
right in Great Britain. There is no justification for
it in fairness, and no explanation of it except that
the Church is strong enough there to have its way,
right or wrong. The recent Revised Version enjoys
perpetual copyright, too — a stronger precedent,
even, than the other one.

Now, then, what is the Annex but a Revised Ver-
sion itself? Which of course it is — Lord's Prayer
and all. With that pair of formidable British prec-
edents to proceed upon, what Congress of ours —

But how short-sighted I am! Mrs. Eddy has
thought of it long ago. She thinks of everything.
She knows she has only to keep her copyright of

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1902 alive through its first stage of twenty-eight
years, and perpetuity is assured. A Christian
Science Congress will reign in the Capitol then.
She probably attaches small value to the first
edition (1875). Although it was a Revelation from
on high, it was slim, lank, incomplete, padded with
bales of refuse rags, and purls from lassoed celebrities
to fill it out, an uncreditable book, a book easily
sparable, a book not to be mentioned in the same
year with the sleek, fat, concise, compact, com-
pressed, and competent Annex of to-day, in its
dainty flexible covers, gilt edges, rounded corners,
twin screw, spiral twist, compensation balance,
Testament counterfeit, and all that; a book just
born to curl up on the hymn-book shelf in church
and look just too sweet and holy for anything.
Yes, I see now what she was copyrighting that child
for.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

It is true — in matters of business Mrs. Eddy
thinks of everything. She thought of an organ, to
disseminate the Truth as it was in Mrs. Eddy.
Straightway she started one — the Christian Science
Journal.

It is true — in matters of business Mrs. Eddy
thinks of everything. As soon as she had got the
Christian Science Journal sufficiently in debt to
make its presence on the premises disagreeable
to her, it occurred to her to make somebody a
present of it. Which she did, along with its debts.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

It was in the summer of 1889. The victim selected
was her Church — called, in those days, The National
Christian Scientist Association.

She delivered this sorrow to those lambs as a
"gift" in consideration of their "loyalty to our
great cause."

Also — still thinking of everything — she told them
to retain Mr. Bailey in the editorship and make
Mr. Nixon publisher. We do not know what it was
she had against those men; neither do we know
whether she scored on Bailey or not, we only know
that God protected Nixon, and for that I am sincerely
glad, although I do not know Nixon and have never
even seen him.

Nixon took the Journal and the rest of the Pub-
lishing Society's liabilities, and demonstrated over
them during three years, then brought in his report :

"On assuming my duties as publisher, there was
not a dollar in the treasury; but on the contrary
the Society owed unpaid printing and paper bills
to the amount of several hundred dollars, not to
mention a contingent liability of many more hun-
dreds"— represented by advance subscriptions paid
for the Journal and the "Series," the which goods
Mrs. Eddy had not delivered. And couldn't, very
well, perhaps, on a Metaphysical College income of
but a few thousand dollars a day, or a week, or
whatever it was in those magnificently flourishing
times. The struggling Journal had swallowed up
those advance payments, but its "claim" was a
severe one and they had failed to cure it. But
Nixon cured it in his diligent three years, and joy-

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MARK TWAIN

ously reported the news that he had cleared off all
the debts and now had a fat six thousand dollars in
the bank.

It made Mrs. Eddy's mouth water.

At the time that Mrs. Eddy had unloaded that
dismal gift on to her National Association, she had
followed her inveterate custom: she had tied a
string to its hind leg, and kept one end of it hitched
to her belt. We have seen her do that in the case
of the Boston Mosque. When she deeds property,
she puts in that string clause. It provides that
under certain conditions she can pull the string and
land the property in the cherished home of its happy
youth. In the present case she believed that she
had made provision that if at any time the National
Christian Scientist Association should dissolve itself
by a formal vote, she could pull.

A year after Nixon's handsome report, she writes
the Association that she has a "unique request to
lay before it." It has dissolved, and she is not quite
sure that the Christian Science Journal has ' ' already
fallen into her hands" by that act, though it "seems"
to her to have met with that accident ; so she would
like to have the matter decided by a formal vote.
But whether there is a doubt or not, "I see the wis-
dom," she says, "of again owning this Christian
Science waif."

I think that that is unassailable evidence that the
waif was making money, hands down.

She pulled her gift in. A few years later she
donated the Publishing Society, along with its real
estate, its buildings, its plant, its publications, and

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

its money — the whole worth twenty-two thousand
dollars, and free of debt — to —

Well, to the Mother Church!

That is to say, to herself. There is an account
of it in the Christian Science Journal, and of how she
had already made some other handsome gifts — to
her Church — and others to — to her Cause — besides
"an almost countless number of private charities"
of cloudy amount and otherwise indefinite. This
landslide of generosities overwhelmed one of her
literary domestics. While he was in that condition
he tried to express what he felt:

Let us endeavor to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to
. . . our Mother in Israel for these evidences of generosity and
self-sacrifice that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude, even
while surpassing our comprehension.

A year or two later, Mrs. Eddy promulgated some
By-laws of a self-sacrificing sort which assuaged
him, perhaps, and perhaps enabled his surpassed
comprehension to make a sprint and catch up.
These are to be found in Art. XII, entitled

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY

This Article puts the whole publishing business
into the hands of a publishing Board — special. Mrs.
Eddy appoints to its vacancies.

The profits go semi-annually to the Treasurer of
the Mother Church. Mrs. Eddy owns the Treasurer.

Editors and publishers of the Christian Science
Journal cannot be elected or removed without Mrs.
Eddy's knowledge and consent.

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MARK TWAIN

Every candidate for employment in a high ca-
pacity or a low one, on the other periodicals or in
the publishing-house, must first be "accepted by Mrs.
Eddy as suitable." And "by the Board of Di-
rectors"— which is surplusage, since Mrs. Eddy
owns the Board.

If at any time a weekly shall be started, "U shall
be owned by The First Church of Christ, Scufitist" —
which is Mrs. Eddy.

166

CHAPTER VIII

I THINK that any one who will carefully ex-
amine the By-laws (I have placed all of the im-
portant ones before the reader), will arrive at the
conclusion that of late years the master-passion in
Mrs. Eddy's heart is a hunger for power and glory;
and that while her hunger for money still remains,
she wants it now for the expansion and extension it
can furnish to that power and glory, rather than
what it can do for her toward satisfying minor and
meaner ambitions.

I wish to enlarge a little upon this matter. I
think it is quite clear that the reason why Mrs.
Eddy has concentrated in herself all powers, all dis-
tinctions, all revenues that are within the command
of the Christian Science Church Universal is that she
desires and intends to devote them to the purpose
just suggested — the upbuilding of her personal glory
— hers, and no one else's; that, and the continuing
of her name's glory after she shall have passed away.
If she has overlooked a single power, howsoever minute,
I cannot discover it. If she has found one, large or
small, which she has not seized and made her own,
there is no record of it, no trace of it. In her foragings
and depredations she usually puts forward the
Mother Church — a lay figure — and hides behind it.

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Whereas, she is in manifest reality the Mother
Church herself. It has an impressive array of
officials, and committees, and Boards of Direction,
of Education, of Lectureship, and so on — geldings,
every one, shadows, specters, apparitions, wax-
figures: she is supreme over them all, she can abol-
ish them when she will ; blow them out as she would
a candle. She is herself the Mother Church. Now
there is one By-law which says that the Mother Church

shall be officially controlled by no other church.

That does not surprise us — we know by the rest
of the By-laws that that is a quite irrelevant remark.
Yet we do vaguely and hazily wonder why she takes
the trouble to say it; why she wastes the words;
what her object can be — seeing that that emergency
has been in so many, many ways, and so effectively
and drastically barred off and made impossible. Then
presently the object begins to dawn upon us. That
is, it does after we have read the rest of the By-
law three or four times, wondering and admiring
to see Mrs. Eddy— Mrs. Eddy— Mrs. Eddy, of all
persons — throwing away power! — making a fair ex-
change— doing a fair thing for once — more, an almost
generous thing! Then we look it through yet once
more — unsatisfied, a little suspicious — and find that
it is nothing but a sly, thin make-believe, and that
even the very title of it is a sarcasm and embodies a
falsehood — ' ' self "-government :

Local Self-Government. The First Church of Christ, Scien-
tist, in Boston, Massachusetts, shall assume no official control
of other churches of this denomination. It shall be officially
controlled by no other church.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

It has a most pious and deceptive give-and-take
air of perfect fairness, unselfishness, magnanimity —
almost godliness, indeed. But it is all art.

In the By-laws, Mrs. Eddy, speaking by the mouth
of her other self, the Mother Church, proclaims
that she will assume no official control of other
churches — branch churches. We examine the other
By-laws, and they answer some important questions
for us:

i. What is a branch Church? It is a body of
Christian Scientists, organized in the one and only
permissible way — by a member, in good standing, of
the Mother Church, and who is also a pupil of one
of Mrs. Eddy's accredited students. That is to say,
one of her properties. No other can do it. There
are other indispensable requisites; what are they?

2. The new Church cannot enter upon its func-
tions until its members have individually signed,
and pledged allegiance to, a Creed furnished by Mrs.
Eddy.

3. They are obliged to study her books, and order
their lives by them. And they must read no outside
religious works.

4. They must sing the hymns and pray the prayers
provided by her, and use no others in the services,
except by her permission.

5. They cannot have preachers and pastors. Her
law.

6. In their Church they must have two Readers —
a man and a woman.

7. They must read the services framed and ap-
pointed by her.

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MARK TWAIN

8. She — not the branch Church — appoints those
Readers.

9. She — not the branch Church — dismisses them
and fills the vacancies.

10. She can do this without consulting the branch
Church, and without explaining.

11. The branch Church can have a religious lec-
ture from time to time. By applying to Mrs. Eddy.
There is no other way.

12. But the branch Church cannot select the
lecturer. Mrs. Eddy does it.

13. The branch Church pays his fee.

14. The harnessing of all Christian Science wed-
ding-teams, members of the branch Church, must
be done by duly authorized and consecrated Chris-
tian Science functionaries. Her factory is the only
one that makes and licenses them.

[15. Nothing is said about christenings. It is
inferable from this that a Christian Science child is
born a Christian Scientist and requires no tinkering.

[16. Nothing is said about funerals. It is infer-
able, then, that a branch Church is privileged to do
in that matter as it may choose.]

To sum up. Are any important Church functions
absent from the list? I cannot call any to mind.
Are there any lacking ones whose exercise could
make the branch in any noticeable way independent
of the Mother Church? — even in any trifling degree?
I think of none. If the named functions were
abolished would there still be a Church left ? Would
there be even a shadow of a Church left? Would
there be anything at all left? — even the bare namet

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Manifestly not. There isn't a single vital and
essential Church function of any kind that is not
named in the list. And over every one of them the
Mother Church has permanent and unchallengeable
control, upon every one of them Mrs. Eddy has set
her irremovable grip. She holds, in perpetuity,
autocratic and indisputable sovereignty and control over
every branch Church in the earth; and yet says, in
that sugary, naive, angel-beguiling way of hers, that
the Mother Church

shall assume no official control of other churches of this de-
nomination.

Whereas in truth the unmeddled-with liberties of
a branch Christian Science Church are but very,
very few in number, and are these:

i. It can appoint its own furnace-stoker, winters.

2. It can appoint its own fan-distributers, sum-
mers.

3. It can, in accordance with its own choice in
the matter, burn, bury, or preserve members who
are pretending to be dead — whereas there is no such
thing as death.

4. It can take up a collection.

The branch Churches have no important lib-
erties, none that give them an important voice
in their own affairs. Those are all locked up,
and Mrs. Eddy has the key. "Local Self-Gov-
ernment" is a large name and sounds well;
but the branch Churches have no more of it
than have the privates in the King of Dahomey's
army.

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MARK TWAIN

'MOTHER CHURCH UNIQUE"

"■.,*n,r-rT.T, /-.T-r^T-r^-r,. -T,T,^T,„ M

Mrs. Eddy, with an envious and admiring eye
upon the solitary and rivalless and world-shadowing
majesty of St. Peter's, reveals in her By-laws her
purpose to set the Mother Church apart by itself
in a stately seclusion and make it duplicate that lone
sublimity under the Western sky. The By-law
headed "Mother Church Unique" says:

In its relation to other Christian Science churches, the
Mother Church stands alone.

It occupies a position that no other Church can fill.

Then for a branch Church to assume such position would
be disastrous to Christian Science.

Therefore —

Therefore no branch Church is allowed to have
branches. There shall be no Christian Science St.
Peter's in the earth but just one — the Mother Church
in Boston.

"no first members"

But for the thoughtful By-law thus entitled, every
Science branch in the earth would imitate the
Mother Church and set up an aristocracy. Every
little group of ground-floor Smiths and Furgusons
and Shadwells and Simpsons that organized a branch
would assume that great title, of "First Members,"
along with its vast privileges of "discussing" the
weather and casting blank ballots, and soon there
would be such a locust-plague of them burdening the
globe that the title would lose its value and have to
be abolished.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

But where business and glory are concerned, Mrs.
Eddy thinks of everything, and so she did not fail
to take care of her Aborigines, her stately and
exclusive One Hundred, her college of functionless
cardinals, her Sanhedrin of Privileged Talkers (Lim-
ited). After taking away all the liberties of the
branch Churches, and in the same breath disclaiming
all official control over their affairs, she smites them
on the mouth with this — the very mouth that was
watering for those nobby ground-floor honors —

No First Members. Branch Churches shall not organize with
First Members, that special method of organization being
adapted to the Mother Church alone.

And so, first members being prohibited, we pierce
through the cloud of Mrs. Eddy's English and per-
ceive that they must then necessarily organize with
Subsequent Members. There is no other way. It
will occur to them by and by to found an aristocracy
of Early Subsequent Members. There is no By-law
against it.

"THE"

I uncover to that imperial word. And to the
mind, too, that conceived the idea of seizing and
monopolizing it as a title. I believe it is Mrs.
Eddy's dazzlingest invention. For show, and style,
and grandeur, and thunder and lightning and fire-
works it outclasses all the previous inventions of
man, and raises the limit on the Pope. He can never
put his avid hand on that word of words — it is
pre-empted. And copyrighted, of course. It lifts

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MARK TWAIN

the Mother Church away up in the sky, and fellow-
ships it with the rare and select and exclusive little
company of the THE'S of deathless glory— persons
and things whereof history and the ages could fur-
nish only single examples, not two : the Saviour, the
Virgin, the Milky Way, the Bible, the Earth, the
Equator, the Devil, the Missing Link— and now
The First Church, Scientist. And by clamor of1
edict and By-law Mrs. Eddy gives personal notice
to all branch Scientist Churches on this planet to
leave that THE alone.

She has demonstrated over it and made it sacred
to the Mother Church:

The article "The" must not be used before the titles of branch
Churches —

Nor written on applications for membership in naming such
churches.

Those are the terms. There can and will be a
million First Churches of Christ, Scientist, scattered
over the world, in a million towns and villages and
hamlets and cities, and each may call itself (sup-
pressing the article), "First Church of Christ,
Scientist" — it is permissible, and no harm; but there
is only one The Church of Christ, Scientist, and there
will never be another. And whether that great word
fall in the middle of a sentence or at the beginning
of it, it must always have its capital T.

I do not suppose that a juvenile passion for fussy
little worldly shows and vanities can furnish a match
to this, anywhere in the history of the nursery. Mrs.
Eddy does seem to be a shade fonder of little special

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distinctions and pomps than is usual with human
beings.

She instituted that immodest "The" with her own
hand; she did not wait for somebody else to think
of it.

A LIFE-TERM MONOPOLY

There is but one human Pastor in the whole
Christian Science world; she reserves that exalted
place to herself.

A PERPETUAL ONE

There is but one other object in the whole Christian
Science world honored with that title and holding
that office : it is her book, the Annex — -permanent Pas-
tor of The First Church, and of all branch Churches.

With her own hand she drafted the By-laws
which make her the only really absolute sovereign
that lives to-day in Christendom.1

She does not allow any objectionable pictures to
be exhibited in the room where her book is sold, nor
any indulgence in idle gossip there; and from the
general look of that By-law I judge that a lightsome
and improper person can be as uncomfortable in that
place as he could be in heaven.

THE SANCTUM SANCTORUM AND SACRED CHAIR

In a room in The First Church of Christ, Scientist,
there is a museum of objects which have attained

1 Even that ideal representative of irresponsible power, the General
of the Jesuits, is not in the running with Mrs. Eddy. He is authen-
tically described as follows:

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MARK TWAIN

to holiness through contact with Mrs. Eddy — among
them an electrically lighted oil-picture of a chair
which she used to sit in — and disciples from all about
the world go softly in there, in restricted groups,
under proper guard, and reverently gaze upon those
relics. It is worship. Mrs. Eddy could stop it if
she was not fond of it, for her sovereignty over that
temple is supreme.

The fitting-up of that place as a shrine is not an
accident, nor a casual, unweighed idea; it is imitated
from age-old religious custom. In Treves the pil-
grim reverently gazes upon the Seamless Robe, and
humbly worships; and does the same in that other
continental church where they keep a duplicate; and
does likewise in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
in Jerusalem, where memorials of the Crucifixion are
preserved; and now, by good fortune we have our
Holy Chair and things, and a market for our adora-
tions nearer home.

But is there not a detail that is new, fresh, original ?
Yes, whatever old thing Mrs. Eddy touches gets
something new by the contact — something not
thought of before by any one — something original,
all her own, and copyrightable. The new feature
is self-worship — exhibited in permitting this shrine

" The Society of Jesus has really but one head, the General. He
must be a professed Jesuit of the four vows, and it is the professed
Jesuits of the four vows only who take part in his election, which
is by secret ballot. He has four 'assistants' to help him, and an
'admonisher,' elected in the same way as himself , to keep him in,
or, if need be, to bring him back to the right path. The electors
of the General have the right of deposing him if he is guilty of a
serious fault."

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

to be installed during her lifetime, and winking her
sacred eye at it.

A prominent Christian Scientist has assured me
that the Scientists do not worship Mrs. Eddy, and
I think it likely that there may be five or six of the
cult in the world who do not worship her; but she
herself is certainly not of that company. Any
healthy-minded person who will examine Mrs. Eddy's
little Autobiography and the Manual of By-laws
written by her will be convinced that she worships
herself; and that she brings to this service a fervor
of devotion surpassing even that which she formerly
laid at the feet of the Dollar, and equaling any which
rises to the Throne of Grace from any quarter.

I think this is as good a place as any to salve a
hurt which I was the means of inflicting upon a
Christian Scientist lately. The first third of this
book was written in 1899 in Vienna. Until last sum-
mer I had supposed that that third had been printed
in a book which I published about a year later — a
hap which had not happened. I then sent the
chapters composing it to the North American Review,
but failed, in one instance, to date them. And so,
in an undated chapter I said a lady told me "last
night" so and so. There was nothing to indicate to
the reader that that "last night" was several years
old, therefore the phrase seemed to refer to a night
of very recent date. What the lady had told me
was, that in a part of the Mother Church in Boston
she had seen Scientists worshiping a portrait of
Mrs. Eddy before which a light was kept constantly
burning.

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MARK TWAIN

A Scientist came to me and wished me to retract
that "untruth." He said there was no such por-
trait, and that if I wanted to be sure of it I could
go to Boston and see for myself. I explained that
my "last night" meant a good while ago; that I
did not doubt his assertion that there was no such
portrait there now, but that I should continue to
believe it had been there at the time of the lady's
visit until she should retract her statement herself.
I was at no time vouching for the truth of the
remark, nevertheless I considered it worth par.

And yet I am sorry the lady told me, since a
wound which brings me no happiness has resulted.
I am most willing to apply such salve as I can. The
best way to set the matter right and make every-
thing pleasant and agreeable all around will be to
print in this place a description of the shrine as it
appeared to a recent visitor, Mr. Frederick W. Pea-
body, of Boston. I will copy his newspaper account,
and the reader will see that Mrs. Eddy's portrait is
not there now:

We lately stood on the threshold of the Holy of Holies of
the Mother Church, and with a crowd of worshipers patiently
waited for admittance to the hallowed precincts of the "Mother's
Room." Over the doorway was a sign informing us that but
four persons at a time would be admitted; that they would be
permitted to remain but five minutes only, and would please
retire from the " Mother's Room" at the ringing of the bell.
Entering with three of the faithful, we looked with profane eyes
upon the consecrated furnishings. A show-woman in attendance
monotonously announced the character of the different ap-
pointments. Set in a recess of the wall and illumined with
electric light was an oil-painting the show-woman seriously
declared to be a lifelike and realistic picture of the Chair in

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

which the Mother sat when she composed her " inspired " work.
It was a picture of an old-fashioned, country, haircloth rocking-
chair, and an exceedingly commonplace-looking table with a
pile of manuscript, an ink-bottle, and pen conspicuously upon
it. On the floor were sheets of manuscript. "The mantelpiece
is of pure onyx," continued the show-woman, "[and the beehive
upon the window-sill is made from one solid block of onyx; the
rug is made of a hundred breasts of eider-down ducks, and the
toilet-room you see in the corner is of the latest design, with
gold-plated drain-pipes; the painted windows are from the
Mother's poem, 'Christ and Christmas,' and that case con-
tains complete copies of all the Mother's books." The chairs
upon which the sacred person of the Mother had reposed were
protected from sacrilegious touch by a broad band of satin
ribbon. My companions expressed their admiration in subdued
and reverent tones, and at the tinkling of the bell we reverently
tiptoed out of the room to admit another delegation of the
patient waiters at the door.

Now, then, I hope the wound is healed. I am
willing to relinquish the portrait, and compromise
on the Chair. At the same time, if I were going to
worship either, I should not choose the Chair.

As a picturesquely and persistently interesting
personage, there is no mate to Mrs. Eddy, the
accepted Equal of the Saviour. But some of her
tastes are so different from His! I find it quite im-
possible to imagine Him, in life, standing sponsor
for that museum there, and taking pleasure in its
sumptuous shows. I believe He would put that
Chair in the fire, and the bell along with it; and I
think He would make the show- worn an go away.
I think He would break those electric bulbs, and the
"mantelpiece of pure onyx," and say reproachful
things about the golden drain-pipes of the lavatory,
and give the costly rug of duck-breasts to the poor,

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MARK TWAIN

and sever tha satin ribbon and invite the weary to
rest and ease their aches in the consecrated chairs.
What He would do with the painted windows we can
better conjecture when we come presently to examine
their peculiarities.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PASTOR-UNIVERSAL

When Mrs. Eddy turned the pastors out of all
the Christian Science churches and abolished the
office for all time — as far as human occupancy is
concerned — she appointed the Holy Ghost to fill
their place. If this language be blasphemous, I did
not invent the blasphemy, I am merely stating a
fact. I will quote from page 227 of Science and
Health (edition 1899), as a first step toward an, ex-
planation of this startling matter — a passage which
sets forth and classifies the Christian Science Trinity:

Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune God, or triply
divine Principle. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one
— the same in essence, though multiform in office: God the
Father; Christ the type of Sonship; Divine Science, or the Holy
Comforter. . . .

The Holy Ghost, or Spirit, reveals this triune Principle, and
(the Holy Ghost) is expressed in Divine Science, which is the
Comforter, leading into all Truth, and revealing the divine Prin-
ciple of the universe — universal and perpetual harmony.

I will cite another passage. Speaking of Jesus —

His students then received the Holy Ghost. By this is meant,
that by all they had witnessed and suffered they were roused to
an enlarged understanding of Divine Science, even to the spiritual
interpretation . . . of His teachings [etc.].

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
Also, page 579, in the chapter called the Glossary;

Holy Ghost. Divine Science; the developments of Life,
Truth, and Love.

The Holy Ghost reveals the massed spirit of the
fused trinity; this massed spirit is expressed in Di-
vine Science, and is the Comforter; Divine Science
conveys to men the "spiritual interpretation1' of the
Saviour's teachings. That seems to be the meaning
of the quoted passages.

Divine Science is Christian Science; the book
Science and Health is a "revelation" of the whole spirit
of the Trinity, and is therefore "The Holy Ghost";
it conveys to men the "spiritual interpretation" of the
Bible's teachings, and therefore is "the Comforter."

I do not find this analyzing work easy, I would
rather saw wood ; and a person can never tell whether
he has added up a Science and Health sum right or
not, anyway, after all his trouble. Neither can he
easily find out whether the texts are still on the
market or have been discarded from the Book; for
two hundred and fifty-eight editions of it have been
issued, and no two editions seem to be alike. The
annual changes — in technical terminology; in mat-
ter and wording; in transpositions of chapters and
verses; in leaving out old chapters and verses
and putting in new ones — seem to be next to
innumerable, and as there is no index, there is no
way to find a thing one wants without reading the
book through. If ever I inspire a Bible-Annex I
will not rush at it in a half-digested, helter-skelter
way and have to put in thirty-eight years trying

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MARK TWAIN

to get some of it the way I want it, I will sit down
and think it out and know what it is I want to say
before I begin. An inspirer cannot inspire for Mrs.
Eddy and keep his reputation. I have never seen
such slipshod work, bar the ten that interpreted for
the home market the "sell all thou hast." I have
quoted one "spiritual" rendering of the Lord's
Prayer, I have seen one other one, and am told there
are five more.1 • Yet the inspirer of Mrs. Eddy the
new Infallible casts a complacent critical stone at
the other Infallible for being unable to make up its
mind about such things. Science and Health, edi-
tion 1899, Page 33 :

The decisions, by vote of Church Councils, as to what should
and should not be considered Holy Writ, the manifest mistakes
in the ancient versions: the thirty thousand different readings
in the Old Testament and the three hundred thousand in the
New — these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole
into the divine record, darkening, to some extent, the inspired
pages with its own hue.

To some extent, yes — speaking cautiously. But
it is nothing, really nothing; Mrs. Eddy is only a
little way behind, and if her inspirer lives to get her
Annex to suit him that Catholic record will have
to "go 'way back and set down," as the ballad says.
Listen to the boastful song of Mrs. Eddy's organ,
the Christian Science Journal for March, 1902, about
that year's revamping and half -soling of Science and
Health, whose official name is the Holy Ghost, the
Comforter, and who is now the Official Pastor and
Infallible and Unerring Guide of every Christian

1 See a second rendering in Appendix. (Lord's Prayer.) — M. T.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Science church in the two hemispheres, hear Simple
Simon that met the pieman brag of the Infallible's
fallibility :

Throughout the entire book the verbal changes are so
numerous as to indicate the vast amount of time and labor Mrs.
Eddy has devoted to this revision. The time and labor thus
bestowed is relatively as great as that of the committee who
revised the Bible. . . . Thus we have additional evidence of the
herculean efforts our beloved Leader has made and is constantly
making for the promulgation of Truth and the furtherance of
her divinely bestowed mission [etc].

It is a steady job. I could help inspire if desired;
I am not doing much now, and would work for half
price, and should not object to the country.

PRICE OF THE PASTOR-UNIVERSAL

The price of the Pastor-Universal, Science and
Health, called in Science literature the Comforter —
and by that other sacred Name — is three dollars in
cloth, as heretofore, six when it is finely bound, and
shaped to imitate the Testament, and is broken into
verses. Margin of profit above cost of manufac-
ture, from five hundred to seven hundred per cent.,
as already noted. In the profane subscription trade,
it costs the publisher heavily to canvass a three-
dollar book; he must pay the general agent sixty per
cent, commission — that is to say, one dollar and
eighty cents. Mrs. Eddy escapes this blistering
tax, because she owns the Christian Science can-
vasser, and can compel him to work for nothing.
Read the following command — not request — fulmi-
nated by Mrs. Eddy, over her signature, in the

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MARK TWAIN

Christian Science Journal for March, 1897, and
quoted by Mr. Peabody in his book. The book
referred to is Science and Health:

It shall be the duty of all Christian Scientists to circulate and
to sell as many of these books as they can.

That is flung at all the elect, everywhere that the
sun shines, but no penalty is shaken over their heads
to scare them. The same command was issued to
the members (numbering to-day twenty-five thou-
sand) of the Mother Church, also, but with it went
a threat, of the infliction, in case of disobedience, of
the most dreaded punishment that has a place in the
Church's list of penalties for transgressions of Mrs.
Eddy's edicts — excommunication :

If a member of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, shall fail
to obey this injunction, it will render him liable to lose his member-
ship in this Church. MARY BAKER EDDY.

It is the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition.

None but accepted and well-established gods can
venture an affront like that and do it with confidence.
But the human race will take anything from that
class. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race; knows it
better than any mere human being has known it in
a thousand centuries. My confidence in her human-
beingship is getting shaken, my confidence in her
godship is stiffening.

SEVEN HUNDRED PER CENT.

A Scientist out West has visited a bookseller —
with intent to find fault with me — and has brought

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

away the information that the price at which Mrs.
Eddy sells Science and Health is not an unusually
high one for the size and make of the book. That is
true. But in the book trade — that profit-devourer
unknown to Mrs. Eddy's book — a three-dollar book
that is made for thirty-five or forty cents in large
editions is put at three dollars because the publisher
has to pay author, middleman, and advertising, and
if the price were much below three the profit accruing
would not pay him fairly for his time and labor. At
the same time, if he could get ten dollars for the
book he would take it, and his morals would not fall
under criticism.

But if he were an inspired person commissioned by
the Deity to receive and print and spread broadcast
among sorrowing and suffering and poor men a
precious message of healing and cheer and salvation,
he would have to do as Bible Societies do — sell the
book at a pinched margin above cost to such as could
pay, and give it free to all that couldn't; and his
name would be praised. But if he sold it at seven
hundred per cent, profit and put the money in his
pocket, his name would be mocked and derided.
Just as Mrs. Eddy's is. And most justifiably, as it
seems to me.

The complete Bible contains one million words.
The New Testament by itself contains two hundred
and forty thousand words.

My '84 edition of Science and Health contains one
hundred and twenty thousand words — just half as
many as the New Testament.

Science and Health has since been so inflated by

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MARK TWAIN

later inspirations that the 1902 edition contains one
hundred and eighty thousand words — not counting
the thirty thousand at the back, devoted by Mrs.
Eddy to advertising the book's healing abilities — and
the inspiring continues right along.

If you have a book whose market is so sure and so
great that you can give a printer an everlasting
order for thirty or forty or fifty thousand copies a
year he will furnish them at a cheap rate, because
whenever there is a slack time in his press-room and
bindery he can fill the idle intervals on your book
and be making something instead of losing. That
is the kind of contract that can be let on Science and
Health every year. I am obliged to doubt that the
three-dollar Science and Health costs Mrs. Eddy
above fifteen cents, or that the six-dollar copy costs
her above eighty cents. I feel quite sure that the
average profit to her on these books, above cost of
manufacture, is all of seven hundred per cent.

Every proper Christian Scientist has to buy and
own (and canvass for) Science and Health (one
hundred and eighty thousand words), and he must
also own a Bible (one million words). He can buy
the one for from three to six dollars, and the other for
fifteen cents. Or, if three dollars is all the money he
has, he can get his Bible for nothing. When the
Supreme Being disseminates a saving Message
through uninspired agents — the New Testament, for
instance — it can be done for five cents a copy; but
when He sends one containing only two-thirds as
many words through the shop of a Divine Personage,
it costs sixty times as much. I think that in matters

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

of such importance it Is bad economy to employ a
wildcat agency.

Here are some figures which are perfectly authentic,
and which seem to justify my opinion:

These [Bible] societies, inspired only by a sense of religious
duty, are issuing the Bible at a price so small that they have
made it the cheapest book printed. For example, the American
Bible Society offers an edition of the whole Bible as low as fifteen
cents and the New Testament at five cents, and the British Society
at sixpence and one penny, respectively. These low prices, made
possible by their policy of selling the books at cost or below
cost [etc.]. — New York Sun, February 25, 1903.

187

CHAPTER IX

WE may now make a final f ooting-up of Mrs.
Eddy, and see what she is, in the fullness of
her powers. She is

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College;

Pastor Emeritus;

President;

Board of Directors;

Board of Education;

Board of Lectureships;

Future Board of Trustees;

Proprietor of the Publishing-house and Periodicals;

Treasurer;

Clerk;

Proprietor of the Teachers;

Proprietor of the Lecturers;

Proprietor of the Missionaries;

Proprietor of the Readers;

Dictator of the Services: sole Voice of the Pulpit;

Proprietor of the Sanhedrin;

Sole Proprietor of the Creed. (Copyrighted.)

Indisputable Autocrat of the Branch Churches,
with their life and death in her hands ;

Sole Thinker for The First Church (and the
Others) ;

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Sole and Infallible Expounder of Doctrine, in life
and in death;

Sole permissible Discoverer, Denouncer, Judge,
and Executioner of Ostensible Hypnotists;

Fifty-handed God of Excommunication — with a
thunderbolt in every hand;

Appointer and Installer of the Pastor of all the
Churches — the Perpetual Pastor-Universal, Science
and Health, "the Comforter."

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CHAPTER X

THERE she stands — painted by herself. No
witness but herself has been allowed to testify.
She stands there painted by her acts, and decorated
by her words. When she talks, she has only a
decorative value as a witness, either for or against
herself, for she deals mainly in unsupported asser-
tion; and in the rare cases where she puts forward
a verifiable fact she gets out of it a meaning which
it refuses to furnish to anybody else. Also, when
she talks, she is unstable; she wanders, she is in- .
curably inconsistent ; what she says to-day she con- !
tradicts to-morrow.

But her acts are consistent. They are always
faithful to her, they never misinterpret her, they are
a mirror which always reflects her exactly, precisely,
minutely, unerringly, and always the same, to date,
Ivith only those progressive little natural changes
in stature, dress, complexion, mood, and carriage
that mark — exteriorly — the march of the years and
record the accumulations of experience, while — in-
teriorly— through all this steady drift of evolution
the one essential detail, the commanding detail, the
master detail of the make-up remains as it was in
the beginning, suffers no change and can suffer none;
the basis of the character; the temperament, the dis-

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THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, CENTRAL PARK
WEST AND 96TTI STREET, NEW YORK

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

'position, that indestructible iron framework upon
j which the character is built, and whose shape it must
itake, and keep, throughout life. We call it a per-
son's nature.

The man who is born stingy can be taught to
I give liberally — with his hands; but not with his
j heart. The man born kind and compassionate can
j have that disposition crushed down out of sight by
I embittering experience; but if it were an organ the
i post-mortem would find it still in his corpse. The
j man born ambitious of power and glory may live
long without finding it out, but when the oppor-
tunity comes he will know, will strike for the largest
thing within the limit of his chances at the time —
constable, perhaps — and will be glad and proud
when he gets it, and will write home about it. But
he will not stop with that start; his appetite will
come again; and by and by again, and yet again;
and when he has climbed to police commissioner
it will at last begin to dawn upon him that what his
Napoleon soul wants and was born for is something
away higher up — he does not quite know what, but
Circumstance and Opportunity will indicate the di-
rection and he will cut a road through and find out.
I think Mrs. Eddy was born with a far-seeing
business eye, but did not know it; and with a great
organizing and executive talent, and did not know
it; and with a large appetite for power and distinc-
tion, and did not know it. I think the reason that
her make did not show up until middle life was that
she had General Grant's luck — Circumstance and
Opportunity did not come her way when she was

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MARK TWAIN

younger. The qualities that were born in her had
to wait for circumstance and opportunity — but they
were there: they were there to stay, whether they
ever got a chance to fructify or not. If they had
come early, they would have found her ready and !
competent. And they — not she — would have de-
termined what they would set her at and what thej
would make of her. If they had elected to com-
mission her as second-assistant cook in a bankrupt
boarding-house, I know the rest of it — I know what
would have happened. She would have owned the
boarding-house within six months; she would have
had the late proprietor on salary and humping him-
self, as the worldly say; she would have had that
boarding-house spewing money like a mint; shej
would have worked the servants and the late land-
lord up to the limit; she would have squeezed the
boarders till they wailed, and by some mysterious
quality born in her she would have kept the affec-
tions of certain of the lot whose love and esteem she
valued, and flung the others down the back area;
in two years she would own all the boarding-houses
in the town, in five all the boarding-houses in the
state, in twenty all the hotels in America, in forty j
all the hotels on the planet, and would sit at home:
with her finger on a button and govern the whole
combination as easily as a bench-manager governs
a dog-show.

It would be a grand thing to see, and I feel a
kind of disappointment — but never mind, a religion
is better and larger; and there is more to it. And I
have not been steeping myself in Christian Science

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

all these weeks without finding out that the one
sensible thing to do with a disappointment is to put
it out of your mind and think of something cheer-
fuler.

We outsiders cannot conceive of Mrs. Eddy's
Christian Science Religion as being a sudden and
miraculous birth, but only as a growth from a seed
planted by circumstances, and developed stage by
stage by command and compulsion of the same
force. What the stages were we cannot know, but
are privileged to guess. She may have gotten the
mental-healing idea from Quimby — it had been ex-
perimented with for ages, and was no one's special
property. [For the present, for convenience' sake,
let us proceed upon the hypothesis that that was
all she got of him, and that she put up the rest of the
assets herself. This will strain us, but let us try it.]
In each and all its forms and under all its many
names, mental healing had had limits, always, and
they were rather narrow ones — Mrs. Eddy, let us
imagine, removed the fence, abolished the frontiers.
Not by expanding mental healing, but by absorbing
its small bulk into the vaster bulk of Christian Sci-
ence— Divine Science, The Holy Ghost, the Com-
forter— which was a quite different and sublimer
force, and one which had long lain dormant and
unemployed.

The Christian Scientist believes that the Spirit
of God (life and love) pervades the universe like an
atmosphere; that whoso will study Science and
Health can get from it the secret of how to inhale that
transforming air; that to breathe it is to be made

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new; that from the new man all sorrow, all care,
all miseries of the mind vanish away, for that only-
peace, contentment, and measureless joy can live in
that divine fluid; that it purifies the body from
disease, which is a vicious creation of the gross
human mind, and cannot continue to exist in the
presence of the Immortal Mind, the renewing Spirit
of God.

The Scientist finds this reasonable, natural, and
not harder to believe than that the disease-germ, a
creature of darkness, perishes when exposed to the
light of the great sun — a new revelation of profane
science which no one doubts. He reminds us that
the actinic ray, shining upon lupus, cures it — a
horrible disease which was incurable fifteen years
ago, and had been incurable for ten million years
before; that this wonder, unbelievable by the physi-
cians at first, is believed by them now; and so he is
tranquilly confident that the time is coming when
the world will be educated up to a point where it
will comprehend and grant that the light of the
Spirit of God, shining unobstructed upon the soul,
is an actinic ray which can purge both mind and
body from disease and set them free and make them
whole.

It is apparent, then, that in Christian Science
it is not one man's mind acting upon another man's
mind that heals; that it is solely the Spirit of God
that heals; that the healer's mind performs no office
but to convey that force to the patient; that it is
merely the wire which carries the electric fluid, so
to speak, and delivers the message. Therefore, if

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

these things be true, mental healing and Science
healing are separate and distinct processes, and no.
kinship exists between them.

To heal the body of its ills and pains is a mighty
benefaction, but in our day our physicians and
surgeons work a thousand miracles — prodigies which
would have ranked as miracles fifty years ago — and
they have so greatly extended their domination over
disease that we feel so well protected that we are
able to look with a good deal of composure and
absence of hysterics upon the claims of new com-
petitors in that field.

But there is a mightier benefaction than the heal-
ing of the body, and that is the healing of the spirit —
which is Christian Science's other claim. So far as
I know, so far as I can find out, it makes it good.
Personally I have not known a Scientist who did not
seem serene, contented, unharassed. I have not
found an outsider whose observation of Scientists
furnished him a view that differed from my own.
Buoyant spirits, comfort of mind, freedom from
care — these happinesses we all have, at intervals;
but in the spaces between, dear me, the black hours!
They have put a curse upon the life of every human
being I have ever known, young or old. I concede
not a single exception. Unless it might be those
Scientists just referred to. They may have been
playing a part with me; I hope they were not, and I
believe they were not.

Time will test the Science's claim. If time shall
make it good; if time shall prove that the Science
can heal the persecuted spirit of man and banish its

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troubles and keep it serene and sunny and content —
why, then Mrs. Eddy will have a monument that
will reach above the clouds. For if she did not hit
upon that imperial idea and evolve it and deliver it,
its discoverer can never be identified with certainty,
now, I think. It is the giant feature, it is the sun
that rides in the zenith of Christian Science; the
auxiliary features are of minor consequence. [Let
us still leave the large "if" aside, for the present,
and proceed as if it had no existence.]

It is not supposable that Mrs. Eddy realized, at
first, the size of her plunder. (No, find — that is the
word; she did not realize the size of her find, at first.)
It had to grow upon her, by degrees, in accordance
with the inalterable custom of Circumstance, which
works by stages, and by stages only, and never
furnishes any mind with all the materials for a large
idea at one time.

In the beginning, Mrs. Eddy was probably inter-
ested merely in the mental-healing detail. And
perhaps mainly interested in it pecuniarily, for she
was poor.

She would succeed in anything she undertook.
She would attract pupils, and her commerce would
grow. She would inspire in patient and pupil con-
fidence in her earnestness; her history is evidence
that she would not fail of that.

There probably came a time, in due course, when
her students began to think there was something
deeper in her teachings than they had been suspecting
— a mystery beyond mental healing, and higher. It
is conceivable that by consequence their manner

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

toward her changed little by little, and from respect-
ful became reverent. It is conceivable that this
would have an influence upon her; that it would
incline her to wonder if their secret thought — that
she was inspired — might not be a well-grounded
guess. It is conceivable that as time went on the
thought in their minds and its reflection in hers might
solidify into conviction.

She would remember, then, that as a child she had
been called, more than once, by a mysterious voice
— just as had happened to little Samuel. (Mentioned
in her Autobiography.) She would be impressed by
that ancient reminiscence, now, and it could have a
prophetic meaning for her.

It is conceivable that the persuasive influences
around her and within her would give a new and
powerful impulse to her philosophizings, and that
from this, in time, would result that great birth, the
healing of body and mind by the inpouring of the
Spirit of God — the central and dominant idea of
Christian Science — and that when this idea came she
would not doubt that it was an inspiration direct
from Heaven.

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CHAPTER XI

a MUST rest a little, now. To sit here and pains-
takingly spin out a scheme which imagines Mrs.
Eddy, of all people, working her mind on a plane
above commercialism; imagines her thinking, phi-
losophizing, discovering majestic things; and even
imagines her dealing in sincerities — to be frank, I
find it a large contract. But I have begun it, and
I will go through with it.]

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CHAPTER XII

IT is evident that she made disciples fast, and
that their belief in her and in the authenticity o{
her heavenly ambassadorship was not of the luke-
warm and half-way sort, but was profoundly earnest
and sincere. Her book was issued from the press
in 1875, it began its work of convert-making, and
within six years she had successfully launched a new
Religion and a new system of healing, and was
teaching them to crowds of eager students in a
College of her own, at prices so extraordinary that
we are almost compelled to accept her statement
(no, her guarded intimation) that the rates were
arranged on high, since a mere human being un-
acquainted with commerce and accustomed to think
in pennies could hardly put up such a hand as that
without supernatural help.

From this stage onward — Mrs. Eddy being what
she was — the rest of the development stages would
follow naturally and inevitably. But if she had been
anybody else, there would have been a different
arrangement of them, with different results. Being
the extraordinary person she was, she realized her
position and its possibilities; realized the possibilities,
and had the daring to use them for all they were
.worth.

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MARK TWAIN

We have seen what her methods were after she
passed the stage where her divine ambassadorship
was granted in exequatur in the hearts and minds
of her followers; we have seen how steads and fearless
and calculated and orderly was her march thence-
forth from conquest to conquest; we have seen her
strike dead, without hesitancy, any hostile or ques-
tionable force that rose in her path: first, the horde
of pretenders that sprang up and tried to take her
Science and its market away from her — she crushed
them, she obliterated them; when her own National
Christian Science Association became great in num-
bers and influence, and loosely and dangerously
garrulous, and began to expound the doctrines
according to its own uninspired notions, she took up
her sponge without a tremor of fear and wiped that
association out; when she perceived that the preach-
ers in her pulpits were becoming afflicted with
doctrine-tinkering, she recognized the danger of it,
and did not hesitate nor temporize, but promptly
dismissed the whole of them in a day, and abolished
their office permanently; we have seen that, as fast
as her power grew, she was competent to take the
measure of it, and that as fast as its expansion sug-
gested to her gradually awakening native ambition
a higher step she took it; and so, by this evolutionary
process, we have seen the gross money-lust relegated
to second place, and the lust of empire and glory rise
above it. A splendid dream; and by force of the
qualities born in her she is making it come true.

These qualities — and the capacities growing out of
them by the nurturing influences of training, ob-

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

servation, and experience — seem to be clearly indi-
cated by the character of her career and its achieve-
ments. They seem to be:

A clear head for business, and a phenomenally
long one;

Clear understanding of business situations;

Accuracy in estimating the opportunities they
offer;

Intelligence in planning a business move;

Firmness in sticking to it after it has been decided
upon;

Extraordinary daring;

Indestructible persistency;

Devouring ambition ;

Limitless selfishness;

A knowledge of the weaknesses and poverties and
docilities of human nature and how to turn them to
account which has never been surpassed, if ever
equaled;

And — necessarily — the foundation-stone of Mrs,
Eddy's character is a never-wavering confidence in
herself.

It is a granite character. And — quite naturally —
a measure of the talc of smallnesses common to human
nature is mixed up in it and distributed through it.
When Mrs. Eddy is not dictating servilities from her
throne in the clouds to her official domestics in
Boston or to her far-spread subjects round about the
planet, but is down on the ground, she is kin to us
and one of us: sentimental as a girl, garrulous, un-
grammatical, incomprehensible, affected, vain of her
little human ancestry, unstable, inconsistent, un-

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reliable in statement, and naively and everlastingly
self-contradictory — oh, trivial and common and
commonplace as the commonest of us! just a
Napoleon as Madame de Remusat saw him, a brass
god with clay legs.

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CHAPTER XIII

IN drawing Mrs. Eddy's portrait it has been my
purpose to restrict myself to materials furnished
by herself, and I believe I have done that. If I have
misinterpreted any of her acts, it was not done
intentionally.

It will be noticed that in skeletonizing a list of
the qualities which have carried her to the dizzy
summit which she occupies, I have not mentioned
the power which was the commanding force em-
ployed in achieving that lofty flight. It did not
belong in that list; it was a force that was not a
detail of her character, but was an outside one.
It was the power which proceeded from her people's
recognition of her as a supernatural personage, con-
veyer of the Latest Word, and divinely commissioned
to deliver it to the world. The form which such a
recognition takes, consciously or unconsciously, is
worship; and worship does not question nor criticize,
it obeys. The object of it does not need to coddle
it, bribe it, beguile it, reason with it, convince it — ■
it commands it; that is sufficient; the obedience
rendered is not reluctant, but prompt and whole-
hearted. Admiration for a Napoleon, confidence in
him, pride in him, affection for him, can lift him high
and carry him far; and these are forms of worship, and

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are strong forces, but they are worship of a mere
human being, after all, and are infinitely feeble, as
compared with those that are generated by that other
worship, the worship of a divine personage. Mrs.
Eddy has this efficient worship, this massed and
centralized force, this force which is indifferent to
opposition, untroubled by fear, and goes to battle
singing, like Cromwell's soldiers; and while she has
it she can command and it will obey, and maintain
her on her throne, and extend her empire.

She will have it until she dies; and then we shall
see a curious and interesting further development of
her revolutionary work begin.

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CHAPTER XIV

THE President and Board of Directors wilJ
succeed her, and the government will go on
without a hitch. The By-laws will bear that inter-
pretation. All the Mother Church's vast powers
are concentrated in that Board. Mrs. Eddy's un-
limited personal reservations make the Board's
ostensible supremacy, during her life, a sham, and
the Board itself a shadow. But Mrs. Eddy has not
made those reservations for any one but herself —
they are distinctly personal, they bear her name,
they are not usable by another individual. When
she dies her reservations die, and the Board's shadow
powers become real powers, without the change of
any important By-law, and the Board sits in her
place as absolute and irresponsible a sovereign as she
was.

It consists of but five persons, a much more
manageable Cardinalate than the Roman Pope's. I
think it will elect its Pope from its own body, and
that it will fill its own vacancies. An elective
Papacy is a safe and wise system, and a long-liver.

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CHAPTER XV

^ "K TE may take that up now.
V V It is not a single "if," but a several- jointed
one; not an oyster, but a vertebrate.

i. Did Mrs. Eddy borrow from Quimby the
Great Idea, or only the little one, the old-timer, the
ordinary mental healing — healing by "mortal" mind?

2. If she borrowed the Great Idea, did she carry
it away in her head, or in manuscript?

3. Did she hit upon the Great Idea herself?

By the Great Idea I mean, of course, the con-
viction that the Force involved was still existent,
and could be applied now just as it was applied by
Christ's Disciples and the converts, and as success-
fully.

4. Did she philosophize it, systematize it, and
write it down in a book?

5. Was it she, and not another, that built a new
Religion upon the book and organized it?

I think No. 5 can be answered with a Yes,
and dismissed from the controversy. And I think
that the Great Idea, great as it was, would have en-
joyed but a brief activity, and would then have
gone to sleep again for some more centuries, but for
the perpetuating impulse it got from that organized
and tremendous force.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

As for Nos. 1,2, and 4, the hostiles contend that
Mrs. Eddy got the Great Idea from Quimby and
carried it off in manuscript. But their testimony,
while of consequence, lacks the most important de-
tail; so far as my information goes, the Quimby
manuscript has not been produced. I think we
cannot discuss No. 1 and No. 2 profitably. Let
them go.

For me, No. 3 has a mild interest, and No. 4 a
violent one.

As regards No. 3, Mrs. Eddy was brought up,
from the cradle, an old-time, boiler-iron, West-
minster-Catechism Christian, and knew her Bible
as well as Captain Kydd knew his, "when he sailed,
when he sailed," and perhaps as sympathetically.
The Great Idea had struck a million Bible-readers
before her as being possible of resurrection and ap-
plication— it must have struck as many as that, and
been cogitated, indolently, doubtingly, then dropped
and forgotten — and it could have struck her, in due
course. But how it could interest her, how it could
appeal to her — with her make — is a thing that is
difficult to understand.

For the thing back of it is wholly gracious and
beautiful: the power, through loving mercifulness
and compassion, to heal fleshly ills and pains and
griefs — all — with a word, with a touch of the hand!
This power was given by the Saviour to the Disciples,
and to all the converted. All — every one. It was
exercised for generations afterward. Any Christian
who was in earnest and not a make-believe, not a
policy-Christian, not a Christian for revenue only,

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MARK TWAIN

had that healing power, and could cure with it any
disease or any hurt or damage possible to human flesh
and bone. These things are true, or they are not.
If they were true seventeen and eighteen and nine-
teen centuries ago it would be difficult to satis-
factorily explain why or how or by what argument
that power should be non-existent in Christians
now.1

To wish to exercise it could occur to Mrs. Eddy —
but would it?

Grasping, sordid, penurious, famishing for every-
thing she sees — money, power, glory — vain, untruth-
ful, jealous, despotic, arrogant, insolent, pitiless where
thinkers and hypnotists are concerned, illiterate, shal-
low, incapable of reasoning outside of commercial
lines, immeasurably selfish —

Of course the Great Idea could strike her, we have
to grant that, but why it should interest her is a ques-
tion which can easily overstrain the imagination
and bring on nervous prostration, or something like
that, and is better left alone by the judicious, it
seems to me —

Unless we call to our help the alleged other side
of Mrs. Eddy's make and character — the side which
her multitude of followers see, and sincerely believe
in. Fairness requires that their view be stated here.
It is the opposite of the one which I have drawn
from Mrs. Eddy's history and from her By-laws.
To her followers she is this:

Patient, gentle, loving, compassionate, noble-

1 See Appendix. — M. T.
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

hearted, unselfish, sinless, widely cultured, splendid-
ly equipped mentally, a profound thinker, an able
writer, a divine personage, an inspired messenger
whose acts are dictated from the Throne, and whose
every utterance is the Voice of God.

She has delivered to them a religion which has
revolutionized their lives, banished the glooms that
shadowed them, and filled them and flooded them
with sunshine and gladness and peace; a religion
which has no hell; a religion whose heaven is not
put off to another time, with a break and a gulf be-
tween, but begins here and now, and melts into
eternity as fancies of the waking day melt into the
dreams of sleep.

They believe it is a Christianity that is in the
New Testament; that it has always been there;
that in the drift of ages it was lost through disuse
and neglect, and that this benefactor has found it
and given it back to men, turning the night of life
into day, its terrors into myths, its lamentations into
songs of emancipation and rejoicing.1

There we have Mrs. Eddy as her followers see
her. She has lifted them out of grief and care and
doubt and fear, and made their lives beautiful; she
found them wandering forlorn in a wintry wilder-
ness, and has led them to a tropic paradise like that
of which the poet sings;

O, islands there are on the face of the deep

Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep.

1 For a clear understanding of the two claims of Christian Science,
read the novel The Life Within, published by Lothrops, Boston.

-M. T.
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MARK TWAIN

To ask them to examine with a microscope the
character of such a benefactor; to ask them to
examine it at all; to ask them to look at a blemish
which another person believes he has found in it —
well, in their place could you do it? Would you do
it? Wouldn't you be ashamed to do it? If a tramp
had rescued your child from fire and death, and
saved its mother's heart from breaking, could you
see his rags? Could you smell his breath? Mrs.
Eddy has done more than that for these people.

They are prejudiced witnesses. To the credit of
human nature it is not possible that they should be
otherwise. They sincerely believe that Mrs. Eddy's
character is pure and perfect and beautiful, and her
history without stain or blot or blemish. But that
does not settle it. They sincerely believe she did
not borrow the Great Idea from Quimby, but hit
upon it herself. It may be so, and it could be so.
Let it go — there is no way to settle it. They believe
she carried away no Quimby manuscripts. Let that
go, too — there is no way to settle it. They believe
that she, and not another, built the Religion upon
the book, and organized it. I believe it, too.

Finally, they believe that she philosophized Chris-
tian Science, explained it, systematized it, and wrote
it all out with her own hand in the book Science and
Health.

I am not able to believe that. Let us draw the
line there. The known and undisputed products of
her pen are a formidable witness against her. They
do seem to me to prove, quite clearly and conclu-
sively, that writing, upon even simple subjects, is a

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

difficult labor for her; that she has never been able
to write anything above third-rate English; that
she is weak in the matter of grammar; that she has
but a rude and dull sense of the values of words;
that she so lacks in the matter of literary precision
that she can seldom put a thought into words that
express it lucidly to the reader and leave no doubts
in his mind as to whether he has rightly understood
or not; that she cannot even draft a Preface that
a person can fully comprehend, nor one which can
by any art be translated into a fully understandable
form; that she can seldom inject into a Preface
even single sentences whose meaning is uncompro-
misingly clear — yet Prefaces are her specialty, if she
has one.

Mrs. Eddy's known and undisputed writings are
very limited in bulk; they exhibit no depth, no
analytical quality, no thought above school-compo-
sition size, and but juvenile ability in handling
thoughts of even that modest magnitude. She has
a fine commercial ability, and could govern a vast
railway system in great style; she could draft a
set of rules that Satan himself would say could not
be improved on — for devilish effectiveness — by his
staff; but we know, by our excursions among the
Mother Church's By-laws, that their English would
discredit the deputy baggage-smasher. I am quite
sure that Mrs. Eddy cannot write well upon any
subject, even a commercial one.

In the very first revision of Science and Health
(1883), Mrs. Eddy wrote a Preface which is an
unimpeachable witness that the rest of the book

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MARK TWAIN

was written by somebody else. I have put it in the
Appendix * along with a page or two taken from the
body of the book,2 and will ask the reader to compare
the labored and lumbering and confused gropings
of this Preface with the easy and flowing and direct
English of the other exhibit, and see if he can believe
that the one hand and brain produced both.

And let him take the Preface apart, sentence by
sentence, and searchingly examine each sentence
word by word, and see if he can find half a dozen
sentences whose meanings he is so sure of that he
can rephrase them — in words of his own — and re-
produce what he takes to be those meanings. Money
can be lost on this game. I know, for I am the one
that lost it.

Now let the reader turn to the excerpt which I
have made from the chapter on "Prayer"3 (last
year's edition of Science and Health), and compare
that wise and sane and elevated and lucid and com-
pact piece of work with the aforesaid Preface, and
with Mrs. Eddy's poetry concerning the gymnastic
trees, and Minerva's not yet effete sandals, and the
wreaths imported from Erudition's bower for the
decoration of Plymouth Rock, and the Plague-spot
and Bacilli, and my other exhibits (turn back to my
Chapters I and II) from the Autobiography, and
finally with the late Communication concerning me,4
and see if he thinks anybody's affirmation, or any-

1 See Appendix A. — M. T.

3 Appendix B.— M. T.

8 See Appendix. — M. T.

4 See Appendix. This reference is to the article "Mrs. Eddy in
Error," in the North American Review for April, 1903. — M. T.

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body's sworn testimony, or any other testimony of
any imaginable kind, would ever be likely to con-
vince him that Mrs. Eddy wrote that chapter on
Prayer.

I do not wish to impose my opinion on any one
who will not permit it, but such as it is I offer it
here for what it is worth. I cannot believe, and I
do not believe, that Mrs. Eddy originated any of
the thoughts and reasonings out of which the book
Science and Health is constructed; and I cannot
believe, and do not believe that she ever wrote any
part of that book.

I think that if anything in the world stands
proven, and well and solidly proven, by unimpeach-
able testimony — the treacherous testimony of her
own pen in her known and undisputed literary pro-
ductions— it is that Mrs. Eddy is not capable of
thinking upon high planes, nor of reasoning clearly
nor writing intelligently upon low ones.

Inasmuch as — in my belief — the very first editions
of the book Science and Health were far above the
reach of Mrs. Eddy's mental and literary abilities,
I think she has from the very beginning been claiming
as her own another person's book, and wearing as
her own property laurels rightfully belonging to that
person — the real author of Science and Health. And
I think the reason — and the only reason — that he
has not protested is because his work was not ex-
posed to print until after he was safely dead.

That with an eye to business, and by grace of
her business talent, she has restored to the world
neglected and abandoned features of the Christian

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religion which her thousands of followers find gra-
cious and blessed and contenting, I recognize and
confess; but I am convinced that every single detail
of the work except just that one — the delivery of the
product to the world — was conceived and performed
by another.

214

APPENDIX A
original first preface to Science and Health

There seems a Christian necessity of learning
God's power and purpose to heal both mind and
body. This thought grew out of our early seeking
Him in all our ways, and a hopeless as singular
invalidism that drugs increased instead of diminished,
and hygiene benefited only for a season. By degrees
we have drifted into more spiritual latitudes of
thought, and experimented as we advanced until
demonstrating fully the power of mind over the
body. About the year 1862, having heard of a
mesmerist in Portland who was treating the sick by
manipulation, we visited him; he helped us for a
time, then we relapsed somewhat. After his decease,
and a severe casualty deemed fatal by skilful
physicians, we discovered that the Principle of all
healing and the law that governs it is God, a divine
Principle, and a spiritual not material law, and re-
gained health.

It was not an individual or mortal mind acting
upon another so-called mind that healed us. It was
the glorious truths of Christian Science that we dis-
covered as we neared that verge of so-called material
life named death ; yea, it was the great Shekinah, the
spirit of Life, Truth, and Love illuminating our

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understanding of the action and might of Omnipo-
tence ! The old gentleman to whom we have referred
had some very advanced views on healing, but he
was not avowedly religious neither scholarly. We
interchanged thoughts on the subject of healing the
sick. I restored some patients of his that he failed
to heal, and left in his possession some manuscripts
of mine containing corrections of his desultory
pennings, which I am informed at his decease passed
into the hands of a patient of his, now residing in
Scotland. He died in 1865 and left no published
works. The only manuscript that we ever held of
his, longer than to correct it, was one of perhaps a
dozen pages, most of which we had composed. He
manipulated the sick; hence his ostensible method
of healing was physical instead of mental. We
helped him in the esteem of the public by our writ-
ings, but never knew of his stating orally or in
writing that he treated his patients mentally; never
heard him give any directions to that effect ; and have
it from one of his patients, who now asserts that he
was the founder of mental healing, that he never
revealed to any one his method. We refer to these
facts simply to refute the calumnies and false claims
of our enemies, that we are preferring dishonest
claims to the discovery and founding at this period
of Metaphysical Healing or Christian Science.

The Science and laws of a purely mental healing
and their method of application through spiritual
power alone, else a mental argument against disease,
are our own discovery at this date. True, the Prin-
ciple is divine and eternal; but the application of it

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to heal the sick had been lost sight of, and required
to be again spiritually discerned and its science dis-
covered, that man might retain it through the
understanding. Since our discovery in 1866 of the
divine science of Christian Healing, we have labored
with tongue and pen to found this system. In this
endeavor every obstacle has been thrown in our path
that the envy and revenge of a few disaffected stu-
dents could devise. The superstition and ignorance
of even this period have not failed to contribute
their mite toward misjudging us, while its Christian
advancement and scientific research have helped
sustain our feeble efforts.

Since our first Edition of Science and Health,
published in 1875, two of the aforesaid students have
plagiarized and pirated our works. In the issues of
E. J. A., almost exclusively ours, were thirteen para-
graphs, without credit, taken verbatim from our
books.

Not one of our printed works was ever copied or
abstracted from the published or from the unpub-
lished writings of any one. Throughout our publica-
tions of Metaphysical Healing or Christian Science,
when writing or dictating them, we have given our-
selves to contemplation wholly apart from the ob-
servation of the material senses: to look upon a
copy would have distracted our thoughts from the
subject before us. We were seldom able to copy
our own compositions, and have employed an
amanuensis for the last six years. Every work that
we have had published has been extemporaneously
written; and out of fifty lectures and sermons that

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we have delivered the last year, forty-four have been
extemporaneous. We have distributed many of our
unpublished manuscripts; loaned to one of our

youngest students, R. K y, between three and

four hundred pages, of which we were sole author —
giving him liberty to copy but not to publish them.

Leaning on the sustaining Infinite with loving
trust, the trials of to-day grow brief, and to-morrow
is big with blessings.

The wakeful shepherd, tending his flocks, beholds
from the mountain's top the first faint morning
beam ere cometh the risen day. So from Soul's
loftier summits shines the pale star to prophet-
shepherd, and it traverses night, over to where the
young child lies, in cradled obscurity, that shall
waken a world. Over the night of error dawn the
morning beams and guiding star of Truth, and "the
wise men" are led by it to Science, which repeats the
eternal harmony that it reproduced, in proof of im-
mortality. The time for thinkers has come; and
the time for revolutions, ecclesiastical and civil,
must come. Truth, independent of doctrines or
time-honored systems, stands at the threshold of
history. Contentment with the past, or the cold
conventionality of custom, may no longer shut the
door on science; though empires fall, "He whose
right it is shall reign." Ignorance of God should no
longer be the stepping-stone to faith; understanding
Him, ""whom to know aright is Life eternal," is the
only guaranty of obedience.

This volume may not open a new thought, and
make it at once familiar. It has the sturdy task of

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a pioneer, to hack away at the tall oaks and cut the
rough granite, leaving future ages to declare what
it has done. We made our first discovery of the
adaptation of metaphysics to the treatment of dis-
ease in the winter of 1866; since then we have tested
the Principle on ourselves and others, and never
found it to fail to prove the statements herein made
of it. We must learn the science of Life, to reach the
perfection of man. To understand God as the Prin-
ciple of all being, and to live in accordance with this
Principle, is the Science of Life. But to reproduce
this harmony of being, the error of personal sense
must yield to science, even as the science of music
corrects tones caught from the ear, and gives the
sweet concord of sound. There are many theories
of physic and theology, and many calls in each of
their directions for the right way; but we propose to
settle the question of "What is Truth?" on the
ground of proof, and let that method of healing the
sick and establishing Christianity be adopted that
is found to give the most health and to make the best
Christians; science will then have a fair field, in
which case we are assured of its triumph over all
opinions and beliefs. Sickness and sin have ever had
their doctors; but the question is, Have they become
less because of them? The longevity of our ante-
diluvians would say, No! and the criminal records
of to-day utter their voices little in favor of such a
conclusion. Not that we would deny to Caesar the
things that are his, but that we ask for the things
that belong to Truth; and safely affirm, from the
demonstrations we have been able to make, that the

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science of man understood would have eradicated sin,
sickness, and death, in a less period than six thousand
years. We find great difficulties in starting this
work right. Some shockingly false claims are al-
ready made to a metaphysical practice; mesmerism,
its very antipodes, is one of them. Hitherto we have
never, in a single instance of our discovery, found the
slightest resemblance between mesmerism and meta-
physics. No especial idiosyncrasy is requisite to
acquire a knowledge of metaphysical healing; spir-
itual sense is more important to its discernment than
the intellect; and those who would learn this science
without a high moral standard of thought and
action, will fail to understand it until they go up
higher. Owing to our explanations constantly vi-
brating between the same points, an irksome repe-
tition of words must occur; also the use of capital
letters, genders, and technicalities peculiar to the
science. Variety of language, or beauty of diction,
must give place to close analysis and unembellished
thought. "Hoping all things, enduring all things,"
to do good to our enemies, to bless them that curse
us, and to bear to the sorrowing and the sick con-
solation and healing, we commit these pages t(
posterity.

Mary Baker G. Eddy.

220

APPENDIX B

The Gospel narratives bear brief testimony even
to the life of our great Master. His spiritual
noumenon and phenomenon, silenced portraiture.
Writers, less wise than the Apostles, essayed in the
Apocryphal New Testament, a legendary and tra-
ditional history of the early life of Jesus. But Saint
Paul summarized the character of Jesus as the model
of Christianity, in these words: "Consider Him who
endured such contradictions of sinners against Him-
self. Who for the joy that was set before Him, en-
dured the cross, despising the shame, and is set
down at the right hand of the throne of God."

It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages,
and must continue till its involved errors are van-
quished by victory - bringing Science; but this
triumph will come! God is over all. He alone is
our origin, aim, and Being. The real man is not of
the dust, nor is he ever created through the flesh;
for his father and mother are the one Spirit, and his
brethren are all the children of one parent, the eternal
Good.

Any kind of literary composition was excessively
difficult for Mrs. Eddy. She found it grinding hard
work to dig out anything to say. She realized, at
the above stage in her life, that with all her trouble

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she had not been able to scratch together even ma-
terial enough for a child's Autobiography, and also
that what she had secured was in the main not valu-
able, not important, considering the age and the
fame of the person she was writing about; and so it
occurred to her to attempt, in that paragraph, to
excuse the meagerness and poor quality of the feast
she was spreading, by letting on that she could do
ever so much better if she wanted to, but was under
constraint of Divine etiquette. To feed with more
than a few indifferent crumbs a plebeian appetite
for personal details about Personages in her class
was not the correct thing, and she blandly points
out that there is Precedent for this reserve. When
Mrs. Eddy tries to be artful — in literature — it is
generally after the manner of the ostrich; and with
the ostrich's luck. Please try to find the connection
between the two paragraphs. — M. T.

222

APPENDIX C

The following is the spiritual signification of the
Lord's Prayer:

Principle, eternal and harmonious,

Nameless and adorable Intelligence,

Thou art ever present and supreme.

And when this supremacy of Spirit shall appear, the dream of

matter will disappear.
Give us the understanding of Truth and Love.
And loving we shall learn God, and Truth will destroy all error.
And lead us unto the Life that is Soul, and deliver us from the

errors of sense, sin, sickness, and death,
For God is Life, Truth, and Love forever.

— Science and Health, edition of 1881.

It seems to me that this one is distinctly superior
to the one that was inspired for last year's edition.
It is strange, but to my mind plain, that inspiring
is an art which does not improve with practice. —
M. T.

223

H— Vol. 25 — M. T.

APPENDIX D

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and
shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things
which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he
saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire
when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have
them.

Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before
ye ask Him. — Christ Jesus.

The prayer that reclaims the sinner and heals
the sick, is an absolute faith that all things are
possible to God — a spiritual understanding of Him —
an unselfed love. Regardless of what another may-
say or think on this subject, I speak from experience.
This prayer, combined with self-sacrifice and toil,
is the means whereby God has enabled me to do
what I have done for the religion and health of
mankind.

Thoughts unspoken are not unknown to the di-
vine Mind. Desire is prayer; and no less can occur
from trusting God with our desires, that they may
be molded and exalted before they take form in
audible word, and in deeds.

What are the motives for prayer? Do we pray
to make ourselves better, or to benefit those that hear
us; to enlighten the Infinite, or to be heard of men?
Are we benefited by praying? Yes, the desire which

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goes forth hungering after righteousness is blessed
of our Father, and it does not return unto us void.

God is not moved by the breath of praise to do
more than He has already done; nor can the Infinite
do less than bestow all good, since He is unchanging
Wisdom and Love. We can do more for ourselves
by humble fervent petitions; but the All-loving does
not grant them simply on the ground of lip-service,
for He already knows all.

Prayer cannot change the Science of Being, but
it does bring us into harmony with it. Goodness
reaches the demonstration of Truth. A request
that another may work for us never does our work.
The habit of pleading with the divine Mind, as one
pleads with a human being, perpetuates the belief
in God as humanly circumscribed — an error which
impedes spiritual growth.

God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more? God
is Intelligence. Can we inform the infinite Mind,
or tell Him anything He does not already compre-
hend? Do we hope to change perfection? Shall
we plead for more at the open fount, which always
pours forth more than we receive? The unspoken
prayer does bring us nearer the Source of all exist-
ence and blessedness.

Asking God to be God is a "vain repetition."
God is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for-
ever"; and He who is immutably right will do right,
without being reminded of His province. The wis-
dom of man is not sufficient to warrant him in ad-
vising God.

Who would stand before a blackboard, and pray

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the principle of mathematics to work out the prob-
lem? The rule is already established, and it is our
task to work out the solution. Shall we ask the di-
vine Principle of all goodness to do His own work?
His work is done; and we have only to avail our-
selves of God's rule, in order to receive the blessing
thereof.

The divine Being must be reflected by man — else
man is not the image and likeness of the patient,
tender, and true, the one "altogether lovely"; but
to understand God is the work of eternity, and
demands absolute concentration of thought and
energy.

How empty are our conceptions of Deity! We
admit theoretically that God is good, omnipotent,
omnipresent, infinite, and then we try to give in-
formation to this infinite Mind; and plead for un-
merited pardon, and a liberal outpouring of bene-
factions. Are we really grateful for the good already
received ? Then we shall avail ourselves of the bless-
ings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more.
Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression
of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than
speech.

If we are ungrateful for Life, Truth, and Love, and
yet return thanks to God for all blessings, we are
insincere; and incur the sharp censure our Master
pronounces on hypocrites. In such a case the only
acceptable prayer is to put the finger on the lips and
remember our blessings. While the heart is far from
divine Truth and Love, we cannot conceal the in-
gratitude of barren lives, for God knoweth all things.

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What we most need is the prayer of fervent de-
sire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meek-
ness, love, and good deeds. To keep the command-
ments of our Master and follow His exami le, is our
proper debt to Him, and the only worthy evidence
of our gratitude for all He has done. Outward wor-
ship is not of itself sufficient to express loyal and
heartfelt gratitude, since He has said: "If ye love
Me, keep My Commandments."

The habitual struggle to be always good, is un-
ceasing prayer. Its motives are made manifest in
the blessings they bring — which, if not acknowledged
in audible words, attest our worthiness to be made
partakers of Love.

Simply asking that we may love God will never
make us love Him; but the longing to be better and
holier — expressed in daily watchfulness, and in striv-
ing to assimilate more of the divine character — this
will mold and fashion us anew, until we awake in
His likeness. We reach the Science of Christianity
through demonstration of the divine nature; but
in this wicked world goodness will "be evil spoken
of," and patience must work experience.

Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual
understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer,
watchfulness, and devout obedience, enable us to
follow Jesus' example. Long prayers, ecclesiasti-
cism, and creeds, have clipped the divine pinions of
Love, and clad religion in human robes. They
materialize worship, hinder the Spirit, and keep man
from demonstrating his power over error.

Sorrow for wrong-doing is but one step toward

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reform, and the very easiest step. The next and
great step required by Wisdom is the test of our
sincerity — namely, reformation. To this end we are
placed under the stress of circumstances. Tempta-
tion bids us repeat the offense, and woe comes in
return for what is done. So it will ever be, till we
learn that there is no discount in the law of justice,
and that we must pay "the uttermost farthing."
The measure ye mete "shall be measured to you
again," and it will be full "and running over."

Saints and sinners get their full award, but not
always in this world. The followers of Christ drank
His cup. Ingratitude and persecution filled it to the
brim; but God pours the riches of His love into the
understanding and affections, giving us strength
according to our day. Sinners flourish "like a green
bay-tree"; but, looking farther, the Psalmist could
see their end — namely, the destruction of sin through
suffering.

Prayer is sometimes used, as a confessional, to
cancel sin. This error impedes true religion. Sin is
forgiven, only as it is destroyed by Christ — Truth
and Life. If prayer nourishes the belief that sin is
canceled, and that man is made better by merely
praying, it is an evil. He grows worse who con-
tinues in sin because he thinks himself forgiven.

An apostle says that the Son of God (Christ) came
to "destroy the works of the devil." We should fol-
low our divine Exemplar, and seek the destruction of
all evil works, error and disease included. We cannot
escape the penalty due for sin. The Scriptures say,
that if we deny Christ, "He also will deny us."

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The divine Love corrects and governs man. Men
may pardon, but this divine Principle alone reforms
the sinner. God is not separate from the wisdom
He bestows. The talents He gives we must improve.
Calling on Him to forgive our work, badly done or
left undone, implies the vain supposition that we have
nothing to do but to ask pardon, and that afterward
we shall be free to repeat the offense.

To cause suffering, as the result of sin, is the
means of destroying sin. Every supposed pleasure
in sin will furnish more than its equivalent of pain,
until belief in material life and sin is destroyed. To
reach heaven, the harmony of Being, we must under-
stand the divine Principle of Being.

"God is Love." More than this we cannot ask;
higher we cannot look; farther we cannot go. To
suppose that God forgives or punishes sin, according
as His mercy is sought or unsought, is to misunder-
stand Love and make prayer the safety-valve for
wrong-doing.

Jesus uncovered and rebuked sin before He cast
it out. Of a sick woman He said that Satan had
bound her; and to Peter He said, "Thou art an
offense unto me." He came teaching and showing
men how to destroy sin, sickness, and death. He
said of the fruitless tree, "It is hewn down."

It is believed by many that a certain magistrate,
who lived in the time of Jesus, left this record:
"His rebuke is fearful." The strong language of our
Master confirms this description.

The only civil sentence which He had for error was,
"Get thee behind Me, Satan." Still stronger evi-

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dence that Jesus' reproof was pointed and pungent
is in His own words — showing the necessity for such
forcible utterance, when He cast out devils and
healed the sick and sinful. The relinquishment of
error deprives material sense of its false claims.

Audible prayer is impressive; it gives momentary
solemnity and elevation to thought ; but does it pro-
duce any lasting benefit ? Looking deeply into these
things, we find that "a zeal . . . not according to
knowledge," gives occasion for reaction unfavorable
to spiritual growth, sober resolve, and wholesome
perception of God's requirements. The motives
for verbal prayer may embrace too much love of
applause to induce or encourage Christian sentiment.

Physical sensation, not Soul, produces material
ecstasy, and emotions. If spiritual sense always
guided men at such times, there would grow out of
those ecstatic moments a higher experience and a
better life, with more devout self-abnegation, and
purity. A self-satisfied ventilation of fervent senti-
ments never makes a Christian. God is not influ-
enced by man. The "divine ear" is not an audi-
torial nerve. It is the all-hearing and all-knowing
Mind, to whom each want of man is always known,
and by whom it will be supplied.

The danger from audible prayer is, that it may
lead us into temptation. By it we may become
involuntary hypocrites, uttering desires which are
not real, and consoling ourselves in the midst of sin,
with the recollection that we have prayed over it —
or mean to ask forgiveness at some later day.
Hypocrisy is fatal to religion.

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A wordy prayer may afford a quiet sense of self-
justification, though it makes the sinner a hypocrite.
We never need despair of an honest heart ; but there
is little hope for those who only come spasmodically
face to face with their wickedness, and then seek to
hide it. Their prayers are indexes which do not
correspond with their character. They hold secret
fellowship with sin; and such externals are spoken
of by Jesus as "like unto whited sepulchers . . . full
of all uncleanness."

If a man, though apparently fervent and prayerful,
is impure, and therefore insincere, what must be the
comment upon him? If he had reached the loftiness
of his prayer, there would be no occasion for such
comment. If we feel the aspiration, humility, grati-
tude, and love which our words express — this God
accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive ourselves
or others, for "there is nothing covered that shall
not be revealed." Professions and audible prayers
are like charity in one respect — they "cover a multi-
tude of sins." Praying for humility, with whatever
fervency of expression, does not always mean a
desire for it. If we turn away from the poor, we are
not ready to receive the reward of Him who blesses
the poor. We confess to having a very wicked
heart, and ask that it may be laid bare before us;
but do we not already know more of this heart than
we are willing to have our neighbor see?

We ought to examine ourselves, and learn what is
the affection and purpose of the heart; for this alone
can show us what we honestly are. If a friend in-
forms us of a fault, do we listen to the rebuke pa-

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tiently, and credit what is said? Do we not rather
give thanks that we are ' ' not as other men ' ' ? During
many years the author has been most grateful for
merited rebuke. The sting lies in unmerited censure
— in the falsehood which does no one any good.

The test of all prayer lies in the answer to these
questions: Do we love our neighbor better because
of this asking? Do we pursue the old selfishness,
satisfied with having prayed for something better,
though we give no evidence of the sincerity of our
requests by living consistently with our prayer? If
selfishness has given place to kindness, we shall
regard our neighbor unselfishly, and bless them that
curse us; but we shall never meet this great duty by
simply asking that it may be done. There is a cross
to be taken up, before we can enjoy the fruition of
our hope and faith.

Dost thou "love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind?"
This command includes much — even the surrender
of all merely material sensation, affection, and
worship. This is the El Dorado of Christianity. It
involves the Science of Life, and recognizes only the
divine control of Spirit, wherein Soul is our master,
and material sense and human will have no place.

Are you willing to leave all for Christ, for Truth,
and so be counted among sinners? No! Do you
really desire to attain this point? No! Then why
make long prayers about it, and ask to be Christians,
since you care not to tread in the footsteps of our
dear Master? If unwilling to follow His example,
wherefore pray with the lips that you may be par-

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takers of His nature? Consistent prayer is the
desire to do right. Prayer means that we desire to,
and will, walk in the light so far as we receive it,
3ven though with bleeding footsteps, and waiting
patiently on the Lord, will leave our real desires to
be rewarded by Him.

The world must grow to the spiritual understand-
ing of prayer. If good enough to profit by Jesus'
cup of earthly sorrows, God will sustain us under
these sorrows. Until we are thus divinely qualified,
and willing to drink His cup, millions of vain repeti-
tions will never pour into prayer the unction of
Spirit, in demonstration of power, and "with signs
following." Christian Science reveals a necessity
for overcoming the world, the flesh and evil, and thus
destroying all error.

Seeking is not sufficient. It is striving which
enables us to enter. Spiritual attainments open
the door to a higher understanding of the divine
Life.

One of the forms of worship in Thibet is to
carry a praying-machine through the streets, and
stop at the doors to earn a penny by grinding
out a prayer; whereas civilization pays for clerical
prayers, in lofty edifices. Is the difference very
great, after all?

Experience teaches us that we do not always re-
ceive the blessings we ask for in prayer. There is
some misapprehension of the source and means of all
goodness and blessedness, or we should certainly
receive what we ask for. The Scriptures say: "Ye
ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye

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MARK TWAIN

may consume it upon your lusts." What we desire
and ask for it is not always best for us to receive. In
this case infinite Love will not grant the request. Do
you ask Wisdom to be merciful, and not punish sin?
Then "ye ask amiss." Without punishment, sin
would multiply. Jesus' prayer, "forgive us our
debts," specified also the terms of forgiveness.
When forgiving the adulterous woman He said,
"Go, and sin no more."

A magistrate sometimes remits the penalty, but
this may be no moral benefit to the criminal; and
at best, it only saves him from one form of punish-
ment. The moral law, which has the right to
acquit or condemn, always demands restitution,
before mortals can "go up higher." Broken law
brings penalty, in order to compel this progress.

Mere legal pardon (and there is no other, for
divine Principle never pardons our sins or mistakes
till they are corrected) leaves the offender free to
repeat the offense; if, indeed, he has not already
suffered sufficiently from vice to make him turn
from it with loathing. Truth bestows no pardon
upon error, but wipes it out in the most effectual
manner. Jesus suffered for our sins, not to annul
the divine sentence against an individual's sin, but
to show that sin. must bring inevitable suffering.

Petitions only bring to mortals the results of their
own faith. We know that a desire for holiness is
requisite in order to gain it ; but if we desire holiness
above all else, we shall sacrifice everything for it.
We must be willing to do this, that we may walk
securely in the only practical road to holiness.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Prayer alone cannot change the unalterable Truth,
or give us an understanding of it ; but prayer coupled
with a fervent habitual desire to know and do the
will of God will bring us into all Truth. Such a de-
sire has little need of audible expression. It is best
expressed in thought and life.

23$

APPENDIX E
Reverend Heber Newton on Christian Science:

To begin, then, at the beginning, Christian
Science accepts the work of healing sickness as an
integral part of the discipleship of Jesus Christ.
In Christ it finds, what the Church has always
recognized, theoretically, though it has practically
ignored the fact — the Great Physician. That Christ
healed the sick, we none of us question. It stands
plainly upon the record. This ministry of healing
was too large a part of His work to be left out from
any picture of that life. Such service was not an
incident of His career — it was an essential element
of that career. It was an integral factor in His mis-
sion. The Evangelists leave us no possibility of con-
fusion on this point. Co-equal with His work of
instruction and inspiration was His work of healing.

The records make it equally clear that the Master
laid His charge upon His disciples to do as He had
done. "When He had called unto Him His twelve
disciples, He gave them power over unclean spirits,
to cast them out, and to heal all maimer of sickness
and all manner of disease."1 In sending them forth,
"He commanded them, saying, ... As ye go, preach,
saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal

1 Matt, x, u.
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out
demons."1

That the twelve disciples undertook to do the
Master's work of healing, and that they, in their
measure, succeeded, seems beyond question. They
found in themselves the same power that the Master
found in Himself, and they used it as He had used
His power. The record of The Acts of the Apostles,
if at all trustworthy history, shows that they, too,
healed the sick.

Beyond the circle of the original twelve, it is
equally clear that the early disciples believed them-
selves charged with the same mission, and that they
sought to fulfil it. The records of the early Church
make it indisputable that powers of healing were
recognized as among the gifts of the Spirit. St.
Paul's letters render it certain that these gifts were
not a privilege of the original twelve, merely, but
that they were the heritage into which all the dis-
ciples entered.

Beyond the era of the primitive Church, through
several generations, the early Christians felt them-
selves called to the same ministry of healing, and
enabled with the same secret of power. Through
well-nigh three centuries, the gifts of healing appear
to have been, more or less, recognized and exercised
in the Church. Through those generations, how-
ever, there was a gradual disuse of this power, fol-
lowing upon a failing recognition of its possession.
That which was originally the rule became the ex-

»Matt. x, 5, 7, 8.
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MARK TWAIN

ception. By degrees, the sense of authority and
power to heal passed out from the consciousness of
the Church. It ceased to be a sign of the indwelling
Spirit. For fifteen centuries, the recognition of this
authority and power has been altogether exceptional.
Here and there, through the history of these cen-
turies, there have been those who have entered into
this belief of their own privilege and duty, and have
used the gift which they recognized. The Church
has never been left without a line of witnesses to this
aspect of the discipleship of Christ. But she has
come to accept it as the normal order of things that
what was once the rule in the Christian Church
should be now only the exception. Orthodoxy has
framed a theory of the words of Jesus to account for
this strange departure of His Church from them.
It teaches us to believe that His example was not
meant to be followed, in this respect, by all His
disciples. The power of healing which was in Him
was a purely exceptional power. It was used as an
evidence of His divine mission. It was a miraculous
gift. The gift of working miracles was not bestowed
upon His Church at large. His original disciples,
the twelve apostles, received this gift, as a necessity
of the critical epoch of Christianity — the founding of
the Church. Traces of the power lingered on, in
weakening activity, until they gradually ceased, and
the normal condition of the Church was entered
upon, in which miracles are no longer possible.

We accept this, unconsciously, as the true state
of things in Christianity. But it is a conception
which will not bear a moment's examination. There

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

is not the slightest suggestion upon record that Christ
set any limit to this charge which He gave His dis-
ciples. On the contrary, there are not lacking hints
that He looked for the possession and exercise of
this power wherever His spirit breathed in men.

Even if the concluding paragraph of St. Mark's
Gospel were a later appendix, it may none the less
have been a faithful echo of words of the Master,
as it certainly is a trustworthy record of the belief
of the early Christians as to the thought of Jesus
concerning his followers. In that interesting pas-
sage, Jesus, after His death, appeared to the eleven,
and formally commissioned them, again, to take up
His work in the world; bidding them, "Go ye into
all the world and preach the gospel to every crea-
ture." "And these signs," He tells them, "shall fol-
low them that believe" — not the apostles only, but
"them that believe," without limit of time; "in
My name they shall cast out devils . . . they shall
lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." ' The
concluding discourse to the disciples, recorded in the
Gospel according to St. John, affirms the same ex-
pectation on the part of Jesus; emphasizing it in
His solemn way: "Verily, verily, I say unto you,
He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall
he do also; and greater works than these shall
he do." 2

1 Mark xvi, 15, 17, 18. * John xiv, 12.

239

APPENDIX P

Few will deny that an intelligence apart from
man formed and governs the spiritual universe
and man; and this intelligence is the eternal Mind,
and neither matter nor man created this intelligence
and divine Principle; nor can this Principle produce
aught unlike itself. All that we term sin, sickness,
and death is comprised in the belief of matter.
The realm of the real is spiritual; the opposite of
Spirit is matter; and the opposite of the real is
unreal or material. Matter is an error of statement,
for there is no matter. This error of premises leads
to error of conclusion in every statement of matter as
a basis. Nothing we can say or believe regarding
matter is true, except that matter is unreal, simply
a belief that has its beginning and ending.

The conservative firm called matter and mind
God never formed. The unerring and eternal Mind
destroys this imaginary copartnership, formed only
to be dissolved in a manner and at a period unknown.
This copartnership is obsolete. Placed under the
microscope of metaphysics matter disappears. Only
by understanding there are not two, matter and
mind, is a logical and correct conclusion obtained
by either one. Science gathers not grapes of thorns

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

or figs of thistles. Intelligence never produced non-
intelligence, such as matter: the immortal never
produced mortality, good never resulted in evil.
The science of Mind shows conclusively that matter
is a myth. Metaphysics are above physics, and
drag not matter, or what is termed that, into one of
its premises or conclusions. Metaphysics resolves
things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of
sense for the ideas of Soul. These ideas are per-
fectly tangible and real to consciousness, and they
have this advantage — they are eternal. Mind and
its thoughts comprise the whole of God, the universe,
and of man. Reason and revelation coincide with
this statement, and support its proof every hour, for
nothing is harmonious or eternal that is not spiritual :
the realization of this will bring out objects from
a higher source of thought; hence more beautiful
and immortal.

The fact of spirituaJization produces results in
striking contrast to the farce of materialization : the
one produces the results of chastity and purity, the
other the downward tendencies and earthward gravi-
tation of sensualism and impurity.

The exalting and healing effects of metaphysics
show their fountain. Nothing in pathology has ex-
ceeded the application of metaphysics. Through
mind alone we have prevented disease and preserved
health. In cases of chronic and acute diseases, in
their severest forms, we have changed the secretions,
renewed structure, and restored health; have elon
gated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made
cicatrized joints supple; restored carious bones to

241

/

MARK TWAIN

healthy conditions, renewed that which is termed the
lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy
organizations where disease was organic instead of
functional.

243

MRS. EDDY IN ERROR

I feel almost sure that Mrs. Eddy's inspira-
tion-works are getting out of repair. I think so
because they made some errors in a statement
which she uttered through the press on the 17 th of
January. Not large ones, perhaps, still it is a
friend's duty to straighten such things out and get
them right when he can. Therefore I will put my
other duties aside for a moment and undertake this
helpful service. She said as follows:

In view of the circulation of certain criticisms from the pen
of Mark Twain, I submit the following statement:

It is a fact, well understood, that I begged the students
who first gave me the endearing appellative "mother" not to
name me thus. But, without my consent, that word spread
like wildfire. I still must think the name is not applicable to
me. I stand in relation to this century as a Christian discoverer,
founder, and leader. I regard self-deification as blasphemous;
I may be more loved, but I am less lauded, pampered, provided
for, and cheered than others before me — and wherefore? Be-
cause Christian Science is not yet popular, and I refuse adulation.

My visit to the Mother Church after it was built and dedi-
cated pleased me, and the situation was satisfactory. The dear
members wanted to greet me with escort and the ringing of
bells, but I declined, and went alone in my carriage to the
church, entered it, and knelt in thanks upon the steps of its
altar. There the foresplendor of the beginnings of truth fell
mysteriously upon my spirit. I believe in one Christ, teach
one Christ, know of but one Christ. I believe in but one in-
carnation, one Mother Mary, and know I am not that one, and

243

MARK TWAIN

never claimed to be. It suffices me to learn the Science of the
Scriptures relative to this subject.

Christian Scientists have no quarrel with Protestants, Cath-
olics, or any other sect. They need to be understood as
following the divine Principle — God, Love — and not imagined
to be unscientific worshipers of a human being.

In the aforesaid article, of which I have seen only extracts,
Mark Twain's wit was not wasted in certain directions. Chris-
tian Science eschews divine rights in human beings. If the indi-
vidual governed human consciousness, my statement of Christian
Science would be disproved, but to understand the spiritual idea
is essential to demonstrate Science and its pure monotheism —
one God, one Christ, no idolatry, no human propaganda. Jesus
taught and proved that what feeds a few feeds all. His life-
work subordinated the material to the spiritual, and He left this
legacy of truth to mankind. His metaphysics is not the sport
of philosophy, religion, or Science; rather it is the pith and finale,
of them all.

I have not the inspiration or aspiration to be a first or
second Virgin Mother — her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent.
What I am remains to be proved by the good I do. We need
much humility, wisdom, and love to perform the functions of
foreshadowing and foretasting heaven within us. This glory is,
molten in the furnace of affliction.

She still thinks the name of Our Mother not
applicable to her; and she is also able to remember
that it distressed her when it was conferred upon
her, and that she begged to have it suppressed. Her
memory is at fault here. If she will take her By-
laws, and refer to Section i of Article XXII, written
with her own hand — she will find that she has
reserved that title to herself, and is so pleased with
it, and so — may we say jealous? — about it, that she
threatens with excommunication any sister Scientist
who shall call herself by it. This is that Section i :

The Title of Mother. In the year 1895 loyal Christian Scien-
tists had given to the author of their text-book, the Founder of

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

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

Mrs. Eddy is herself the Mother Church — its
powers and authorities are in her possession solely —
and she can abolish that title whenever it may please
her to do so. She has only to command her people,
wherever they may be in the earth, to use it no
more, and it will never be uttered again. She is
aware of this.

It may be that she "refuses adulation" when she
is not awake, but when she is awake she encourages
it and propagates it in that museum called "Our
Mother's Room," in her Church in Boston. She
could abolish that institution with a word, if she
wanted to. She is aware of that. I will say a
further word about the museum presently.

Further down the column, her memory is un-
faithful again:

I believe in . . . but one Mother Mary, and know I am
not that one, and never claimed to be.

At a session of the National Christian Science
Association, held in the city of New York on the
27th of May, 1890, the secretary was "instructed to
send to our Mother greetings and words of affection
from her assembled children."1

Her telegraphic response was read to the Asso-
ciation at next day's meeting:

'Page 24, Official Report.
245

MARK TWAIN

All hail! He hath filled the hungry with good things and
the sick hath He not sent empty away. — Mother Mary.1

Which Mother Mary is this one? Are there two?
If so, she is both of them; for, when she signed this
telegram in this satisfied and unprotesting way, the
Mother title which she was going to so strenuously
object to, and put from her with humility, and
seize with both hands, and reserve as her sole
property, and protect her monopoly of it with a
stern By-law, while recognizing with diffidence that
it was "not applicable" to her (then and to-day) —
that Mother title was not yet born, and would not
be offered to her until five years later. The date of
the above "Mother Mary" is 1890; the "indi-
vidual, endearing title of Mother" was given her
"in 1895" — according to her own testimony. See
her By-law quoted above.

In his opening Address to that Convention of
1890, the President recognized this Mary — our Mary
— and abolished all previous ones. He said:

There is but one Moses, one Jesus; and there is but one
Mary.2

The confusions being now dispersed, we have this
clarified result :

There had been a Moses at one time, and only one ;
there had been a Jesus at one time, and only one;
there is a Mary and "only one." She is not a Has
Been, she is an Is — the "Author of Science and
Health; and we cannot ignore her."3

1 Page 24, Official Report. JPage 13 , Official Report. 3 Ibid.

246

CHRJSTIAN SCIENCE

i. In 1890, there was but one Mother Mary.
The President said so.

2. Mrs. Eddy was that one. She said so, in signing
the telegram.

3. Mrs. Eddy was not that one — for she says so,
in her Associated Press utterance of January 17th.

4. And has "never claimed to be" that one —
unless the signature to the telegram is a claim.

Thus it stands proven and established that she is
that Mary and isn't, and thought she was and knows
she wasn't. That much is clear.

She is also "The Mother," by the election of
1895, and did not want the title, and thinks it is
not applicable to her, and will excommunicate any
one that tries to take it away from her. So that
is clear.

I think that the only really troublesome confusion
connected with these particular matters has arisen
from the name — Mary. Much vexation, much mis-
understanding, could have been avoided if Mrs.
Eddy had used some of her other names in place of
that one. "Mother Mary" was certain to stir up
discussion. It would have been much better if she
had signed the telegram "Mother Baker"; then
there would have been no Biblical competition, and,
of course, that is a thing to avoid, But it is not
too late, yet.

I wish to break in here with a parenthesis, and
then take up this examination of Mrs. Eddy's Claim1
of January 17th again.

x" Claim." In Christian Science terminology, "Claims'* are
errors of moral mind, fictions of the imagination.

247

MARK TWAIN

The history of her "Mother Mary" telegram — as
told to me by one who ought to be a very good
authority — is curious and interesting. The telegram
ostensibly quotes verse 53 from the "Magnificat,"
i but really makes some pretty formidable changes
in it. This is St. Luke's version:

He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich
He hath sent empty away.

This is "Mother Mary's" telegraphed version:

He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the sick
hath He not sent empty away.1

To judge by the Official Report, the bursting of
this bombshell in that massed convention of trained
Christians created no astonishment, since it caused
no remark, and the business of the convention went
tranquilly on, thereafter, as if nothing had happened.

Did those people detect those changes? We can-
not know. I think they must have noticed them,
the wording of St. Luke's verse being as familiar to
all Christians as is the wording of the Beatitudes;
and I think that the reason the new version pro-
voked no surprise and no comment was, that the
assemblage took it for a "Key" — a spiritualized
explanation of verse 53, newly sent down from
heaven through Mrs. Eddy. For all Scientists study
their Bibles diligently, and they know their Mag-
nificat. I believe that their confidence in the authen-
ticity of Mrs. Eddy's inspirations is so limitless and
so firmly established that no change, however violent,

2Page 24, Official Report.
248

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

which she might make in a Bible text could disturb
their composure or provoke from them a protest.

Her improved rendition of verse 53 went into the
convention's report and appeared in a New York
paper the next day. The (at that time) Scientist
whom I mentioned a minute ago, and who had not
been present at the convention, saw it and mar-
veled; marveled and was indignant — indignant with
the printer or the telegrapher, for making so careless
and so dreadful an error. And greatly distressed,
too; for, of course, the newspaper people would fall
foul of it, and be sarcastic, and make fun of it, and
have a blithe time over it, and be properly thankful
for the chance. It shows how innocent he was; it
shows that he did not know the limitations of news-
paper men in the matter of Biblical knowledge.
The new verse 53 raised no insurrection in the press;
in fact, it was not even remarked upon; I could have
told him the boys would not know there was any-
thing the matter with it. I have been a newspaper
man myself, and in those days I had my limitations
like the others.

The Scientist hastened to Concord and told Mrs.
Eddy what a disastrous mistake had been made, but
he found to his bewilderment that she was tranquil
about it, and was not proposing to correct it. He
was not able to get her to promise to make a cor-
rection. He asked her secretary if he had heard
aright when the telegram was dictated to him; the
secretary said he had, and took the filed copy of it
and verified its authenticity by comparing it with
the stenographic notes.

249

MARK TWAIN

Mrs. Eddy did make the correction, two months
later, in her official organ. It attracted no attention
among the Scientists; and, naturally, none elsewhere,
for that periodical's circulation was practically con-
fined to disciples of the cult.

That is the tale as it was told to me by an ex-
Scientist. Verse 53 — renovated and spiritualized—
had a narrow escape from a tremendous celebrity.
The newspaper men would have made it as famous as
the assassination of Csesar, but for their limitations.

To return to the Claim. I find myself greatly
embarrassed by Mrs. Eddy's remark: "I regard self-
deification as blasphemous." If she is right about
that, I have written a half -ream of manuscript
this past week which I must not print, either in the
book which I am writing, or elsewhere: for it goes
into that very matter with extensive elaboration,
citing, in detail, words and acts of Mrs. Eddy's
which seem to me to prove that she is a faithful and
untiring worshiper of herself, and has carried self-
deification to a length which has not been before
ventured in ages. If ever. There is not room
enough in this chapter for that Survey, but I can
epitomize a portion of it here.

With her own untaught and untrained mind, and
without outside help, she has erected upon a firm
and lasting foundation the most minutely perfect,
and wonderful, and smoothly and exactly working,
and best safeguarded system of government that
has yet been devised in the world, as I believe, and
as I am sure I could prove if I had room for my
documentary evidences here.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

It is a despotism (on this democratic soil); a
sovereignty more absolute than the Roman Papacy,
more absolute than the Russian Czarship; it has
not a single power, not a shred of authority, legisla-
tive or executive, which is not lodged solely in the
sovereign; all its dreams, its functions, its energies,
have a single object, a single reason for existing, and
only the one — to build to the sky the glory of the
sovereign, and keep it bright to the end of time.

Mrs. Eddy is the sovereign; she devised that
great place for herself, she occupies that throne.

In 1895, she wrote a little primer, a little body of
autocratic laws, called the Manual of The First
Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those laws in
force, in permanence. Her government is all there;
all in that deceptively innocent-looking little book,
that cunning little devilish book, that slumbering
little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels. In that
book she has planned out her system, and classified
and defined its purposes and powers.

MAIN PARTS OP THE MACHINE

A Supreme Church. At Boston.

Branch Churches. All over the world.

One Pastor for the whole of them: to wit, her book,
Science and Health. Term of the book's office—
forever.

In every C. S. pulpit, two "Readers," a man and
a woman. No talkers, no preachers, in any Church
— readers only. Readers of the Bible and her books — ■

251

MARK TWAIN

no others. No commentators allowed to write or
print.

A Church Service. She has framed it — for all the
C. S. Churches — selected its readings, its prayers,
and the hymns to be used, and has appointed the
order of procedure. No changes permitted.

A Creed. She wrote it. All C. S. Churches must
subscribe to it. No other permitted.

A Treasury. At Boston. She carries the key.

A C. S. Book-publishing House. For books ap-
proved by her. No others permitted.

Journals and Magazines. These are organs of hers
and are controlled by her.

A College. For teaching C. S.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE MACHINE'S POWERS AND

DIGNITIES

Supreme Church.

Pastor Emeritus — Mrs. Eddy.

Board of Directors.

Board of Education.

Board of Finance.

College Faculty.

Various Committees.

Treasurer.

Clerk.

First Members (of the Supreme Church).

Members of the Supreme Church.

It looks fair, it looks real, but it is all a fiction.
Even the little "Pastor Emeritus" is a fiction.
Instead of being merely an honorary and orna-

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

mental official, Mrs. Eddy is the only official in
the entire body that has the slightest power. In her
Manual, she has provided a prodigality of ways and
forms whereby she can rid herself of any functionary
in the government whenever she wants to. The
officials are all shadows, save herself; she is the only
reality. She allows no one to hold office more than
a year — no one gets a chance to become over-popular
or over-useful, and dangerous. "Excommunica-
tion" is the favorite penalty — it is threatened at
every turn. It is evidently the pet dread and terror
of the Church's membership.

The member who thinks, without getting his
thought from Mrs. Eddy before uttering it, is
banished permanently. One or two kinds of sinners
can plead their way back into the fold, but this one,
never. To think — in the Supreme Church — is the
New Unpardonable Sin.

To nearly every severe and fierce rule, Mrs. Eddy
adds this rivet: "This By-law shall not be changed
without the consent of the Pastor Emeritus.1'

Mrs. Eddy is the entire Supreme Church, in her
own person, in the matter of powers and author-
ities.

Although she has provided so many ways of
getting rid of unsatisfactory members and officials,
she was still afraid she might have left a life-preserver
lying around somewhere, therefore she devised a rule
to cover that defect. By applying it, she can excom-
municate (and this is perpetual again) every function-
ary connected with the Supreme Church, and every
one of the twenty-five thousand members of that

253

MARK TWAIN

Church, at an hour's notice — and do it qU-by herself
without anybody's help.

By authority of this astonishing By-law, she has
only to say a person connected with that Church is
secretly practising hypnotism or mesmerism; where-
upon, immediate excommunication, without a hear-
ing, is his portion! She does not have to order a
trial and produce evidence — her accusation is all that
is necessary.

Where is the Pope? and where the Czar? As the
ballad says:

Ask of the winds that far away
With fragments strewed the sea!

The Branch Church's pulpit is occupied by two
''Readers." Without them the Branch Church is as
dead as if its throat had been cut. To have con-
trol, then, of the Readers, is to have control of the
Branch Churches. Mrs. Eddy has that control — a
control wholly without limit, a control shared with
no one.

i. No Reader can be appointed to any Church in
the Christian Science world without her express
approval.

2. She can summarily expel from his or her place
any Reader, at home or abroad, by a mere letter of
dismissal, over her signature, and without furnishing
any reason for it, to either the congregation or the
Reader.

Thus she has as absolute control over all Branch
Churches as she has over the Supreme Church.
This power exceeds the Pope's.

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

In simple truth, she is the only absolute sovereign
in all Christendom.. The authority of the other
sovereigns has limits, hers has none. None what-
ever. And her yoke does not fret, does not offend.
Many of the subjects of the other monarchs feel
their yoke, and are restive under it; their loyalty is
insincere. It is not so with this one's human
property; their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere,
enthusiastic. The sentiment which they feel for her
is one which goes out in sheer perfection to no other
occupant of a throne ; for it is love, pure from doubt,
envy, exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has
no spot — that form of love, strong, great, uplifting,
limitless, whose vast proportions are compassable by
no word but one, the prodigious word, Worship. And
it is not as a human being that her subjects worship
her, but as a supernatural one, a divine one, one who
has comradeship with God, and speaks by His voice.

Mrs. Eddy has herself created all these personal
grandeurs and autocracies — with others which I have
not (in this article) mentioned. They place her upon
an Alpine solitude and supremacy of power and
spectacular show not hitherto attained by any other
self-seeking enslaver disguised in the Christian name,
and they persuade me that, although she may
regard " self -deification as blasphemous," she is as
fond of it as I am of pie.

She knows about "Our Mother's Room" in the
Supreme Church in Boston — above referred to — for
she has been in it. In a recently published North
American Review article,1 I quoted a lady as saying

1 1902.

255

I — Vol. 25 — M. T.

MARK TWAIN

Mrs. Eddy's portrait could be seen there in a shrine,
lit by always-burning lights, and that C. S. disciples
came there and worshiped it. That remark hurt
the feelings of more than one Scientist. They said
it was not true, and asked me to correct it. I comply
with pleasure. Whether the portrait was there four
years ago or not, it is not there now, for I have
inquired. The only object in the shrine now, and
lit by electrics — and worshiped — is an oil-portrait
of the horsehair chair Mrs. Eddy used to sit in when
she was writing Science and Health! It seems to me
that adulation has struck bottom, here.

Mrs. Eddy knows about that. She has been
there, she has seen it, she has seen the worshipers.
She could abolish that sarcasm with a word. She
withholds the word. Once more I seem to recognize
in her exactly the same appetite for self-deification
that I have for pie. We seem to be curiously alike;
for the love of self-deification is really only the
spiritual form of the material appetite for pie, and
nothing could be more strikingly Christian-Scien-
tifically ' ' harmonious. ' '

I note this phrase:

Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings.

"Rights" is vague; I do not know what it means
there. Mrs. Eddy is not well acquainted with the
English language, and she is seldom able to say in it
what she is trying to say. She has no ear for the
exact word, and does not often get it. "Rights."
Does it mean "honors"? "attributes"?

' ' Eschews. ' ' This is another umbrella where there

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0°

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

should be a torch ; it does not illumine the sentence,
it only deepens the shadows. Does she mean
"denies"? "refuses"? "forbids"? or something in
that line? Does she mean:

■ ' Christian Science denies divine honors to human
beings"? Or:

"Christian Science refuses to recognize divine
attributes in human beings"? Or:

"Christian Science forbids the worship of human

beings"?

The bulk of the succeeding sentence is to me a
tunnel, but, when I emerge at this end of it, I seem
to come into daylight. Then I seem to understand
both sentences — with this result:

1 ' Christian Science recognizes but one God, forbids
the worship of human beings, and refuses to recognize
the possession of divine attributes by any member
of the race."

I am subject to correction, but I think that that
is about what Mrs. Eddy was intending to convey.
Has her English — which is always difficult to me —
beguiled me into misunderstanding the following
remark, which she makes (calling herself "we," after
an old regal fashion of hers) in her Preface to her
Miscellaneous Writings? •

While we entertain decided views as to the best method for
elevating the race physically, morally, and spiritually, and shall
express these views as duty demands, we shall claim no especial
gift from our divine origin, no supernatural power.

Was she meaning to say:

"Although I am of divine origin, and gifted with
supernatural power, I shall not draw upon these

1 Page 3.
257

MARK TWAIN

resources in determining the best method of elevat-
ing the race"?

If she had left out the word "our," she might
then seem to say :

"I claim no especial or unusual degree of divine
origin — ' '

Which is awkward — most awkward; for one
either has a divine origin or hasn't; shares in it,
degrees of it, are surely impossible. The idea of
crossed breeds in cattle is a thing we can entertain,
for we are used to it, and it is possible; but the idea
of a divine mongrel is unthinkable.

Well, then, what does she mean? I am sure I do
not know, for certain. It is the word "our" that
makes all the trouble. With the "our" in, she is
plainly saying "my divine origin." The word
"from" seems to be intended to mean "on account
of." It has to mean that or nothing, if "our" is
allowed to stay. The clause then says:

"I shall claim no especial gift on account of my
divine origin."

And I think that the full sentence was intended
to mean what I have already suggested :

"Although I am of divine origin, and gifted with
supernatural power, I shall not draw upon these
resources in determining the best method of elevating
the race."

When Mrs. Eddy copyrighted that Preface seven
years ago, she had long been used to regarding herself
as a divine personage. I quote from Mr. F. W.
Peabody's book : 1

1 Boston: 15 Court Square.
258

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

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

Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her be-
half, that she herself was the chosen successor to and equal
of Jesus.

The following remark in that April number, quoted
by Mr. Peabody, indicates that her claim had been
previously made, and had excited "horror" among
some ' ' good people ' ' :

Now, a word about the horror many good people have
of our making the Author of Science and Health "equal with
Jesus."

Surely, if it had excited horror in Mrs. Eddy also,
she would have published a disclaimer. She owned
the paper; she could say what she pleased in its
columns. Instead of rebuking her editor, she lets
him rebuke those "good people" for objecting to the
claim.

These things seem to throw light upon those
words, "our [my] divine origin."

It may be that ' ' Christian Science eschews divine
rights in human beings," and forbids worship of any
but "one God, one Christ"; but, if that is the case,
it looks as if Mrs. Eddy is a very unsound Christian
Scientist, and needs disciplining. I believe she has
a serious malady — "self -deification"; and that it
will be well to have one of the experts demonstrate
Over it.

Meantime, let her go on living— for my sake.

259

MARK TWAIN

Closely examined, painstakingly studied, she is
easily the most interesting person on the planet,
and, in several ways, as easily the most extraordinary
woman that was ever born upon it.

P. S. — Since I wrote the foregoing, Mr. Mc-
Crackan's article appeared (in the March number of
the North American Review). Before his article ap-
peared— that is to say, during December, January,
and February — I had written a new book, a char-
acter-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own
acts and words, and it was then — together with the
three brief articles previously published in the North
American Review — ready to be delivered to the
printer for issue in book form. In that book, by
accident and good luck, I have answered the objec-
tions made by Mr. McCrackan to my views, and
therefore do not need to add an answer here. Also,
in it I have corrected certain misstatements of mine
which he has noticed, and several others which he
has not referred to. There are one or two important
matters of opinion upon which he and I are not in
disagreement; but there are others upon which we
must continue to disagree, I suppose; indeed, I know
we must; for instance, he believes Mrs. Eddy wrote
Science and Health, whereas I am quite sure I can
convince a person unhampered by predilections that
she did not.

As concerns one considerable matter I hope to
convert him. He believes Mrs. Eddy's word; in his
article he cites her as a witness, and takes her testi-
mony at par ; but if he will make an excursion through
my book when it comes out, and will dispassionately

260

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

examine her testimonies as there accumulated, I
think he will in candor concede that she is by a large
percentage the most erratic and contradictory and
untrustworthy witness that has occupied the stand
since the days of the lamented Ananias.

261

CONCLUSION

Broadly speaking, the hostiles reject and repu-
diate all the pretensions of Christian Science Chris-
tianity. They affirm that it has added nothing
new to Christianity; that it can do nothing that
Christianity could not do and was not doing before
Christian Science was born.

In that case is there no field for the new Chris-
tianity, no opportunity for usefulness, precious use-
fulness, great and distinguished usefulness? I think
there is. I am far from being confident that it can
fill it, but I will indicate that unoccupied field —
without charge — and if it can conquer it, it will de-
serve the praise and gratitude of the Christian world,
and will get it, I am sure.

The present Christianity makes an excellent pri-
vate Christian, but its endeavors to make an excellent
public one go for nothing, substantially.

This is an honest nation — in private life. The
American Christian is a straight and clean and
honest man, and in his private commerce with his
fellows can be trusted to stand faithfully by the
principles of honor and honesty imposed upon him
by his religion. But the moment he comes forward
to exercise a public trust he can be confidently
counted upon to betray that trust in nine cases out
of ten, if "party loyalty" shall require it.

262

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

If there are two tickets in the field in his city, one
composed of honest men and the other of notorious
blatherskites and criminals, he will not hesitate to
lay his private Christian honor aside and vote for
the blatherskites if his "party honor" shall exact it.
His Christianity is of no use to him and has no
influence upon him when he is acting in a public
capacity. He has sound and sturdy private morals,
but he has no public ones. In the last great munic-
ipal election in New York, almost a complete one-
half of the votes representing 3,500,000 Christians
were cast for a ticket that had hardly a man on it
whose earned and proper place was outside of a jail.
But that vote was present at church next Sunday
the same as ever, and as unconscious of its perfidy
as if nothing had happened.

Our Congresses consist of Christians. In their
private 1lfe they are true to every obligation of honor;
yet in every session they violate them all, and do it
without shame; because honor to party is above
honor to themselves. It is an accepted law of public
life that in it a man may soil his honor in the interest
of party expediency — must do it when party expe-
diency requires it. In private life those men would
bitterly resent — and justly — any insinuation that it
would not be safe to leave unwatched money within
their reach; yet you could not wound their feelings
by reminding them that every time they vote ten
dollars to the pension appropriation nine of it is
stolen money and they the marauders. They have
filched the money to take care of the party; they
believe it was right to do it; they do not see how

263

MARK TWAIN

their private honor is affected; therefore their con-
sciences are clear and at rest. By vote they do
wrongful things every day, in the party interest,
which they could not be persuaded to do in private
life. In the interest of party expediency they give
solemn pledges, they make solemn compacts; in the
interest of party expediency they repudiate them
without a blush. They would not dream of com-
mitting these strange crimes in private life.

Now then, can Christian Science introduce the
Congressional Blush? There are Christian Private
Morals, but there are no Christian Public Morals, at
the polls, or in Congress or anywhere else — except
here and there and scattered around like lost comets
in the solar system. Can Christian Science persuade
the nation and Congress to throw away their public
morals and use none but their private ones hence-
forth in all their activities, both public and private?

I do not think so; but no matter about me: there
is the field — a grand one, a splendid one, a sublime
one, and absolutely unoccupied. Has Christian
Science confidence enough in itself to undertake to
enter in and try to possess it ?

Make the effort, Christian Science; it is a most
noble cause, and it might succeed. It could suc-
ceed. Then we should have a new literature, with
romances entitled, How To Be an Honest Congress-
man Though a Christian; How To Be a Creditable
Citizen Though a Christian.

THE END

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

PS
1300
E99
v. 25

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne

The writings of Mark Twain

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