Project Gutenberg's What is Christian Science?, by M. M. Mangasarian
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Title: What is Christian Science?
Author: M. M. Mangasarian
Release Date: April 24, 2014 [EBook #45481]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE? ***
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WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE?
By M. M Mangasarian
London:
WATTS & CO.,
1922
_In this brochure the author makes an earnest endeavour to understand
Christian Science and define its mission. He scrupulously verifies all
his citations and references, and appeals to the judgment of those who
are willing to hear both sides of the question._
"The blood, heart, lungs, brain, have nothing to do with life."
"The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural than taking a fish
out of water and covering it with dirt would be natural."
"Christian Science is more safe and potent than any other sanitary
method."
"The condition of food, stomach, bowels, clothing, etc., is of no
serious import to your child."
"Gender is also a quality or characteristic of mind, not of matter."
"Until it is learned that generation (birth) rests on no sexual basis,
let marriage continue."
"To abolish marriage and maintain generation is possible in (Christian)
science."
What is Christian Science?
|You do not understand Christian Science" is the usual reply of the
followers of Mrs. Eddy to any one disputing their claims, or trying to
point out the many inconsistencies in their creed. If it is impossible
to understand Christian Science, how does it expect to propagate itself?
To answer that one must accept the doctrine before one can understand it
would be like asking a man to see before he opens his eyes, or to
think _after_ he has made up his mind. It is just as useless to try to
understand Christian Science after it has been accepted as true as it
would be for a judge to examine the evidence after a verdict has been
pronounced. And if Christian Scientists can understand the beliefs which
they reject, why may not other people have intelligence and honesty
enough to understand Christian Science without believing in it?
But can a person who is not a mathematician understand or discuss
profitably the intricate problems of mathematics? No; hence no one but
a Christian Scientist may discuss its doctrines and interpret its
metaphysics. Neither has that defence any value. We do not have to be
expert mathematicians to know that twice two make four. It is possible
to detect an error in an example of addition, multiplication, or
subtraction presented by the greatest mathematician without possessing
equal knowledge or ability. Mrs. Eddy may be more advanced in
metaphysics than any of her critics, but twice two make four in "Divine
science" as well as in human science. Square your statements with the
facts, and you disarm criticism. Ignore, suppress, or tamper with the
facts, and you will have the universe against you.
Why I Discuss Christian Science
|If asked why I devote time and labour to the discussion of such
seemingly foolish propositions as those propounded by Mrs. Eddy, my
defence is that I am very much interested in the people who accept
Christian Science, and would like to be of service to them, even though
they may hold me and my motives in derision. Then, again, I feel that
if we stand idly by while the Christian Scientists are concentrating all
their efforts, sparing neither time nor money to spread their
doctrine, we may wake up some morning to find that all our
institutions--newspapers, courts, schools, etc.--have passed under
the control of Mrs. Eddy's followers. That, in my opinion, would be a
national menace.
If the teachings of Christian Science prevail, there will come into
prominence the type of mentality which will dispense with all forms of
inquiry, and accept for authority the "say-so" of a book, a man, or a
woman as all-sufficient and final.
The passive mind easily becomes the plaything or instrument of every
kind of imposture--political, economic, or religious. Non-resistance
will prove the death of free institutions. I am opposed to Christian
Science because I am opposed to the least departure from sanity. I
have no other motive in this propaganda against the new cult. Whatever
undermines the _morale_ of the nation or is hurtful to the free and
rational development of humanity should be combated again and again
until it ceases to be a menace.
Mrs. Eddy's Mentality
|The founder of Christian Science was, indeed, one of the busiest women
of her day. She was preacher, writer, teacher, missionary, organizer,
manager, etc. But even a superficial reading of her books will show that
her activity resembled that of children at play rather than of men
at work. Mrs. Eddy's mind displayed all the qualities and defects of
primitive man. Though incessantly active, she followed in all her mental
efforts the line of least resistance. Children are never at rest of
their own will; they run and romp almost continually; but it is the
activity of play, not of work, which they enjoy. To work requires
concentration and effort in a definite direction, and submission to
rules and regulations; while in play one is at liberty to follow one's
own fancy, moving in any direction and at any speed one pleases. Again,
the worker is expected to show results; the player, on the other hand,
though equally busy, keeps going round and round, or back and forth,
just for the pleasure of being in motion.
Mrs. Eddy had the child's fondness for activity and the child's dislike
for work. She rebelled against discipline. Rules and restrictions were
as distasteful to her as to children who have been allowed to "grow up"
without discipline, while logic and reason meant no more to her than
they would to primitive man.
_Science and Health_ is a book consisting largely of extraordinary
claims put forth with the most provoking indifference to the universally
accepted rules of evidence, and with an abandon suggesting that of
the steed who has thrown his rider. If her readers ask for proofs, she
points to the authority of her name. Has she not received a revelation?
Is she not "the Comforter" whom Jesus promised to send into the world?
And if there are obscure passages in her writings, it is not because
these are really "dark," but because there is not enough light in the
eyes of the readers of her books. This free-and-easy method carries her
through seven hundred pages of her "masterpiece," _Science and Health_,
without encountering the least obstacle or being checked for an instant
by a single difficulty. Writing was like play to her, and sentences and
phrases flow copiously and swell into a veritable flood in her pages,
because what satisfied her was that she could say so much, and not
whether what she said had any basis in fact.
In the Preface to _Science and Health_, Mrs. Eddy, in order to prove the
usefulness of medical knowledge, quotes the example of the antediluvians
who knew nothing of drugs, and yet some of whom lived to be nearly
a thousand years old. Mrs. Eddy makes this statement with as little
concern as a boy tosses a ball. The reasoning that men were healthier
and lived longer before the Deluge because there were then no
physicians, whose presence in our times has shortened human life, may do
for the "child-mind," but is it permitted to a full-grown person to make
such careless use of his or her faculties? How does Mrs. Eddy know that
the antediluvians would not have lived longer if they could also have
had the services of trained and skilful physicians? It would be just as
reasonable to assert that there would have been no Deluge had there
been doctors to prevent it, as to say that the antediluvians owed their
longevity to the lack of them. Without caring to make sure of her data,
or to look into the truth of the statement that there was a flood, or
that before this terrible downpour men lived to be a thousand years
old, Mrs. Eddy accepts the rumour of the tradition as if it were a
demonstrated fact, and proves by it, to her own satisfaction at least,
the utter uselessness and positive menace to the human race of medical
science. What an argument and what a conclusion!
I am not accusing Mrs. Eddy of insincerity, but of mental indolence.
Nothing, for example, but a distaste for work could account for her
failure to verify her references in the following instances, or to
supply to her readers the means of verifying them for themselves. She
had to choose between making assertions and offering proofs, and she
chose the easier of the two. "I have healed Infidels" (p. 359). *
What were their names? Where did they live? Of what maladies were they
healed? "One whom I rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion in which the
senses had engulphed him" (p. 382). And what sort of a disease is that,
and who was the person suffering from it? "A little girl who had badly
wounded her finger" (p. 287); "A woman whom I cured of consumption"
(p. 184); "A famous naturalist says" (p. 548); "One of our ablest
naturalists has said" (p. 553); "It is related that a father" (p.
556), etc., etc. All these stories and illustrations fail completely to
impress the inquiring reader, for the simple reason that Mrs. Eddy did
not take the trouble to furnish the details to render her testimony
admissible. In no court would such statements as "I heard a man say,"
or "I knew some one who heard a man say," or "It has been said by so and
so," be accepted as evidence. Very likely Mrs. Eddy possessed the data,
names, addresses, etc., of the patients and the naturalists she writes
about, but she was too indolent to reach for her note-book, if she
kept one. Again, only mental fatigue or sheer indolence can explain a
statement like the following, from which all the important items which
alone could give it force and effectiveness are left out:--
* The quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from Mrs.
Eddy's _Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures_.
_I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost--sight and
teeth. A woman of eighty-five whom I knew had a return of sight. Another
woman of ninety had new teeth, incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and one
molar. One man at sixty had retained his full set of upper and lower
teeth without a decaying cavity_ (p. 247).
Evidently these cases are cited to carry conviction with the reader of
her book; would it not, then, have greatly enhanced their evidential
value had she made it possible for her readers to verify their claims?
But how can they do so when no names or addresses are given! If
Christian Science does not need demonstration, why cite these cases of
remarkable cures at all; if it needs demonstration, why not supply the
details necessary to complete the demonstration?
"I knew a person," writes again Mrs. Eddy, "who when a child adopted
the Graham system to cure dyspepsia" (p. 221); and then she proceeds to
relate how this led him to death's door and he was ready to die, "having
exhausted the skill of the doctors, who kindly informed him that death
was indeed his only alternative," and how "Christian Science saved him,
and he is now in perfect health without a vestige of the old complaint"
(p. 221). Surely this fortunate person would have no objection to have
his name announced and his case investigated. Why, then, suppress-his
identity?
Printed in italics at the foot of page xii of _Science and Health_ will
be found the following notice or advertisement:--_The author (Mrs. Eddy)
takes no patients, and declines medical consultation_.
The above offers an excellent illustration of the distinction between
work and play. Mrs. Eddy, with the mentality she possessed, found it
easier to compose phrases and make vague statements about past cures
than actually to grapple with "patients" or to take part in "medical
consultation," whatever that may mean in Christian Science. After
repeatedly asserting that the only way to demonstrate the truth of her
science is by healing the sick, she herself positively declines to
give this demonstration. It is really puzzling. Here is a woman who had
discovered the only power that can heal the sick as nothing else can,
and no other person understands the _modus operandi_ of this
power better or even as well as she does, and yet she will take no
patients--that is, she will under no circumstances apply her remedy,
however urgent the need for it may be!
Some people might be led to think that Mrs. Eddy's refusal to practise
healing was due to her fear that she might not always succeed, which
would greatly diminish her prestige and prejudice the public against her
discovery. To claim, as we have explained elsewhere, that Mrs. Eddy's
motive in refusing to heal the sick herself was that she might have more
time and strength for matters of higher importance would imply that she
was not strong enough to do both. But would not such an admission prove
fatal to the claim that all is divine Mind, and that in divine Mind
there is no sin, sickness, fatigue, or limitation of any kind?
The husband of Mrs. Eddy died; that was an event calling for an
explanation from the discoverer of an unfailing remedy for all maladies
who happened to be the widow of the deceased. How could any one so
closely related to Mrs. Eddy, and taking her treatment, succumb to
sickness of any kind? Mrs. Eddy looked about for an answer to that
question. "My husband died from the effects of arsenical poisoning
mentally administered" was her first effort at self-defence.
But Mrs. Eddy was quick to realize that she could ill afford to admit
that an imaginary dose of arsenic mentally administered could deprive
a Christian Scientist of his life, for she hastened to explain further
that unfortunately "circumstances debarred me from taking hold of my
husband's case."
"Circumstances," then, killed her husband, since had she not been
debarred by them she would have come to his rescue with her "divine"
science and prevented his death. To further exonerate and defend herself
she is inclined to blame her husband a little. "My husband declared
himself perfectly capable of carrying himself through, and I was so
entirely absorbed in business that I permitted him to try, and when
I awakened to the danger it was too late." Now we know why Christian
Science failed in this particular case. Mrs. Eddy was too busy, and she
awoke to the seriousness of her husband's condition too late. Besides,
the patient himself believed he was quite able to cope with the trouble
without his wife's help. In short, "circumstances" proved too much for
Christian Science. That is why Mrs. Eddy's husband died.
The more Mrs. Eddy explained, the more she had to explain. If Mr.
Eddy was murdered by means of mesmeric poison (whatever that may be),
mentally administered by an absent practitioner who, Mrs. Eddy believed,
was one of her own apostate disciples--that is, if some one could from
a distance kill her husband--what prevented her, by the same absent
treatment, and without taking any time from her other duties, from
defeating the work of the mal-practitioner by a thought or two of her
own? If this could not be done, and since there is a possibility of
other divine healers being so entirely absorbed in business as to
neglect their patients, had we not better hold on to the doctors a
little longer, at least until Christian Science has become a match for
"circumstances, etc."? And if a healer equipped with "divine" science
can have more to do than he or she has the strength to attend to, in
what sense is "divine" science more resourceful than plain, ordinary
science?
But there is more to come. Mrs. Eddy declares that one of her rejected
students tried to kill her in the same way as her husband had been
killed. But he could not, "because I instantly gave myself the same
treatment that I would give in a case of arsenical poisoning (mentally
administered), and so I recovered, just the same as I could have caused
my husband to recover had I taken the case in time." There is no such
thing as failure with Mrs. Eddy. Her husband would never have died had
she given him the same treatment as she gave herself. Of course, years
later Mrs. Eddy died too; but there, again, "circumstances" must have
proved too formidable for Christian Science, otherwise both the Eddys
might be living still.
The founder of this popular cult believed that she had now explained
the death of her husband to the satisfaction of her faithful flock. She
certainly could have saved Mr. Eddy's life had she not been too busy
with other matters, or "too late" in taking hold of his case. To prove
this she goes on to give examples of her wonderful powers, as will be
seen by the following: "Only a few days ago I disposed of a tumour
in twenty-four hours that the doctors had said must be removed by the
knife. I changed the course of the mind to counteract the effect of the
disease"; and of course the malignant tumour took wings and flew away,
twenty-four hours of Christian Science being all it could stand. It was
really unfortunate that so powerful a healer was prevented by pressure
of "business" from lending a thought to her sick husband. It was not
because she did not want to help him, nor because her "divine" science
was not equal to his trouble, but because of "circumstances." We hope
that in the near future some advanced practitioner of Christian Science
will discover a cure for that terrible malady called "circumstances,"
which reduced Mrs. Eddy to impotency at the bedside of a dying husband;
a cure which will be as effective against "circumstances" as against
tumours, cancer, etc. In comparison with such sophistry or make-believe,
how refreshing is the intellectual honesty which sees true and aims
straight.
"Mortal Mind"
|Mrs. Eddy's efforts to explain what she calls "mortal mind" give us
an even better insight into her mentality. Though constantly denouncing
mortal mind as the source of all human ills, the author of _Christian
Science_ makes no serious attempt to account for its origin. The
fundamentals of Christian Science as expounded by its author are summed
up in the following statements:--
_God is All in All.
God is Good, God is Mind.
God Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
Life, God, omnipotent good deny death, evil, sin, disease_ (p. 113).
The important deduction which the founder of Christian Science draws
from these assertions is that sin, suffering, sickness, and death do not
exist, since there is no room for them in God, who is All in All, or in
a universe where Mind is the sole reality and "Nothing is matter." Our
experience and our senses may testify to the contrary, but, replies Mrs.
Eddy, "I find that God is true, and every (mortal) man a liar" (p. 113).
In the opinion of Christian Scientists, that ought to end the
discussion. "God is true," never mind what men may say. But what is the
proof that Mrs. Eddy is speaking for the Deity? Calvin and Mohammed too
claimed to speak for the Deity.
If God is the All, whence comes mortal mind? The All plus mortal mind
would give us more than the All. God cannot be the all unless he is
immortal and mortal mind at the same time. It is true that Mrs. Eddy
denies reality to mortal mind. By mortal mind she means false beliefs
about God and man. But how did false beliefs originate in a universe
where God or Good is the only reality?
Mrs. Eddy's efforts to make room for mortal mind in her perfect world
are really amusing, as will be seen by what follows.
Man is defined as "God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal"
(p. 115). She explains further that, while man is not God, he is
nevertheless made in God's image, and is therefore God-like. The
distinction between God and man, according to Mrs. Eddy, is one of
quantity and not of quality. Jesus Christ was not God, she writes; he
was only "the ideal of God, now and for ever, here and everywhere" (p.
361). It is true Jesus said, "I and my father are one"; but, explains
Mrs. Eddy, what is meant is one in _quality_, not in _quantity_. Jesus
was God in the sense that a drop of water is the ocean, or a ray of
light is the sun--in essence, not in size. In that sense man too is
God, or a little god. Both man and Jesus possess all the qualities of
divinity, but in limited proportions.
"The science of being," our prophetess goes on to say, "reveals man as
perfect, even as the Father is perfect, because the Soul and Mind of the
spiritual man is God" (p. 302), but in quality only, since "man is in _a
degree_ as perfect as the Mind that forms him" (p. 337). It follows that
if man were God-like in quantity as well as in quality--that is, if he
were not undersized or underweighted spiritually, there would have been
no mortal mind, and therefore no sin or sickness in the world. But who
clipped man's divinity, or made him an underling? In a perfect world how
does man happen to be a dwarf?
Forgetting her own statement, that man is not so "bulky" as God, Mrs.
Eddy insists that, as there is no error or sickness in God, there can
be none in man, who is "God's spiritual idea." Yet, in order to
justify Christian Science healing, she is compelled to make a further
distinction between God and man. God is one, but there are two kinds
of men--the spiritual and the mortal, and it is the latter who need the
high-priced services of healers.
"God is not corporeal... mortals are corporeal" (p. 116).
If we ask Mrs. Eddy how man could possess a body and yet be "the
reflection of God," who is incorporeal, she replies that this body of
which she speaks is only a make-believe body; the real man is all
soul, as is the Deity. "The description of man as both material and
spiritual... is the Pandora box from which all ills have gone forth.
Matter is a fiction" (pp. 170-1). From which it follows that man is as
incorporeal as God; but the former _thinks_ he has a body, and hence
the sufferings from which the Deity is immune. "Mistaking his origin and
nature, man believes himself to be combined matter and spirit" (p.
171). This, Mrs. Eddy considers, is as great an absurdity as to think
of Christ as both God and Devil (Belial and Christ). How, then, did man
come to have a body? He has none; he has only come to think he has
one. And how did that happen? "The human mortal mind, by an inevitable
perversion, makes all things start from the lowest." That is the way,
according to the author of _Science and Health_, in which man came to
believe in matter. This false belief is "mortal mind" (pp. 172-89), the
Dragon which the St. George of New England offers to slay for what she
considers a moderate price.
Let it be observed that Mrs. Eddy attributes the existence or the belief
in the existence of "mortal mind" to the "inevitable perversion" of the
human mind. Mark the use of the word "inevitable." Does she mean
that "mortal mind"--that is to say, sin, suffering, and death--were
predestined? If she does not mean that, what made man's departure from
truth, or his "perversion," _inevitable?_ Was there another power,
greater than the All, who pulled man down into error? And how can
Christian Science, if it could not prevent the "perversion" which
called into existence the worst of all as well as the parent of all
diseases--"mortal mind"--be a remedy against the innumerable ills which
flow from it?
In pronouncing "mortal mind" or the "perversion" which called it into
existence inevitable, Mrs. Eddy has virtually created a power
greater than her "All in All," since the latter could not prevent the
catastrophe.
Once more: the reply that man is God-like in every respect except in
size, and that the body is a myth, does not help Mrs. Eddy's argument
in the least. Real or unreal, the human body, or the belief in it, which
causes so much suffering, should have no place in a system founded upon
the dogmatic declaration that all is Mind, and all is Good, and all is
God. The question remains: Why did Mrs. Eddy make room in this perfect
universe for the serpent--mortal mind? As already suggested, without
this false belief in materiality Christian Science would have been a
useless discovery. Mrs. Eddy was debarred by her creed from admitting
the existence of matter; hence she compromised on "a belief in matter,"
which works just as great a havoc as real matter. This arrangement has
given to her army of Christian Science practitioners many (imaginary)
ills to heal. Like Don Quixote, Christian Scientists to-day go forth
to do battle, even though for enemies they have nothing more formidable
than windmills. Physicians treat what they believe to be real maladies;
Christian Scientists combat maladies which they say do not exist--that
is to say, they fight phantoms.
Not only does the author of _Science and Health_ utterly fail, as all
metaphysicians before her have failed, to account for the origin of evil
or mortal mind, in a universe created and governed by Infinite Goodness,
but her doctrine that man, like the Deity, is free from sickness, etc.,
involves her in new contradictions. For example, on page 204 (1910
edition) Mrs. Eddy says that "in Christian Science it can never be said
that man has a mind of his own, distinct from God, the ALL-Mind"; and
more than once she has asserted that man "has neither birth nor death"
(p. 244). Of course, this is no more than a theory; but, even as such,
Mrs. Eddy makes only a limited application of it--that is to say, she
does not follow her theory to its logical consequences. If man has no
mind of his own, but is a replica of the Divine mind, why did the Deity
make so many copies of himself? Was this self-multiplication of the
Divine mind from necessity or from choice? If the former, then necessity
was greater than the Deity; if the latter, then man was an accident,
since the Deity could just as well not have created him at all, being
free to do as he pleased. And if man is a copy of the Deity, why did He
reproduce himself more freely among the inferior races--the blacks
and the yellows--than among the white peoples?
Again, if man has no mind distinct from the Divine, the _All-Mind_,
he ought to have all the attributes of God. God is painless, sinless,
deathless; and so is man, according to Mrs. Eddy. But why stop there?
God is omniscient; is man omniscient too? Then why does he go to school?
God is almighty; is man almighty? Then why does he have to use tools or
ask for help? God is omnipresent; why is man dependent upon the means
of transportation to go from place to place? How, then, does man, who is
not distinct from the _All-Mind_--God, come to possess only one or two
of the Divine attributes?
Mrs. Eddy's Prayer
|It is reported of Mrs. Eddy that every morning as she arose from her
bed she repeated the following prayer: "Clad in the panoply of Divine
love, human hatred cannot reach me." Her followers have expressed great
admiration for this, the "Mother's daily prayer." But to be forever
thinking of human hatred, and to live in constant dread of it, shows
a broken-down mind. Only a person haunted by the fear of human hatred
would beg daily to be delivered from it. If on getting up every morning
a man were to say, "To-day my liver shall not hurt me," one would have
reason to conclude that he was suffering from liver trouble.
To deny human hatred every morning is also proof positive of an alarmed
conscience. Macbeth saw Banquo's ghost everywhere and dared it with his
"avaunt" and "hence," even as Mrs. Eddy, seeing so much of human hatred,
ran under cover of "the Divine panoply" the first thing every morning.
Is that the way to prove that "all is mind," and that there is nothing
to fear?
Is Christian Science Scientific?
|Two words spell the name of this so-called "health
religion"--"Christian" and "Science." Let us see if there is anything
scientific about Christian Science. To begin with, men of science never
try to suppress inquiry, because inquiry only helps to advance their
cause, which can advance in no other way.
Science is investigation. Eddyism, on the other hand, is a dogma.
Science is knowledge, verified, classified, and placed within the reach
of all. Eddyism is a _copyrighted_ cult.
Science is free; in science we do not have to secure permission before
observing, studying, inventing, or teaching. But Mrs. Eddy reads out of
church the independent thinker or practitioner.
Science is open to new truths. Christian Science claims to be a final
revelation. For any man or woman to profess to be the custodian of the
last word on religion, and then to copyright the same, is not only the
negation of all science, which means increasing research and unhampered
discovery, but it is also the most objectionable kind of monopoly.
Science always accepts truth for authority, and never authority for
truth. Christian Science, on the contrary, rests on the sole authority
of Mrs. Eddy's _Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures_.
The fundamental difference between Mrs. Eddy and a scientist like
Charles Darwin, for example, is that, while the latter confines himself
to such statements as are investigable, Mrs. Eddy puts forth claims
which defy investigation. Let me give an example. The founder of
Christian Science solemnly declares that even the price she should
charge for a course of instruction in metaphysics was dictated to her
by the Deity himself: "When God impelled me to set a price on Christian
Science--mind healing--I was led to name $300 as the price." And she
adds: "This amount greatly troubled me. I shrank from asking it, but was
finally led by a strange providence to accept this fee." It must have
been a _strange_ providence, indeed! But can a claim of that nature be
verified? If we desired to make sure whether the Supreme Being, with the
destinies of ten thousand worlds upon His mind, found the time to fix
also the dividend rate upon Mrs. Eddy's investment in Christian Science,
how would he go about it? How shall we make sure that the Deity did not,
on the contrary, plead with her to be satisfied with a more moderate
profit?
While in Salt Lake City I enjoyed the opportunity of an interview with
a prominent Mormon. Finding me willing to listen, the gentleman told me
how Joseph Smith had received a visit from the angels who delivered
to him the originals from which were copied the articles of the Mormon
belief. When I expressed a desire to see the "heavenly" documents, my
informant replied that Joseph Smith had returned them to the angels.
Is such a statement investigatable? And what is not investigable lies
outside the province of science. Neither Mrs. Eddy nor Joseph Smith
can be put in the same class with Charles Darwin, who advances no
propositions which forbid verification.
Is Christian Science "Christian"?
|Eddyism is no more _Christian_ than it is _scientific_. Between the
teachings of Jesus and those of the Boston lady there are irreconcilable
differences.
It is the claim of practitioners in Christian Science that they
are following the example and applying the method of the founder of
Christianity in the healing of the sick. This is one of the "telling"
arguments used by Christian Science lecturers in their appeals for
converts. But if it can be shown that the method of Jesus was in many
respects radically different from that prescribed by Mrs. Eddy, the
claim that her religion is founded upon the teachings and practice of
Jesus falls to the ground. In a pamphlet issued by the Christian Science
Publication Society and copyrighted we read as follows; "Jesus proved
for all time and for all Christendom that the origin of disease was
_mental_, and He healed it with _mental medicine_." Can that statement
be squared with the practice of Jesus as we find it described in the
Gospels? The evangelist St. John relates the cure of the man born blind
as follows: "When he [Jesus] had thus spoken, He spat on the ground and
made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with
the clay and said unto him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.'" Is that
the Christian Science way of healing the sick? Do Christian Scientists
use clay or spittle? Do they "anoint" the sick with salve of any kind?
Do they counsel bathing or washing for curative purposes?
Moreover, Jesus, in reply to the question of His apostles as to the
cause of the man's blindness, clearly states that the origin of this
man's disease was not in human error or mentality:--
_And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or
his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that
the works of God should be made manifest in him. (John ix, 2-3.)_
The meaning of this text is that the man was born blind, not as a
punishment for his or his parents' sin, nor because of mortal mind, but
that through him God may be glorified. Could that text be quoted to show
that blindness is a "mental" disease caused by unbelief or selfishness?
or could it be quoted to prove that the man was not born blind, but only
_thought_ he was blind? Where is the evidence, then, that "Jesus proved
for all time and for all Christendom that 'disease was caused by mortal
mind,' and that 'mental medicine' was the only remedy he used?"
Was Jesus in the habit of using words to mislead his hearers, of saying
things the real meaning of which would remain hidden for nearly twenty
centuries--until Mrs. Eddy could place her _key_ (from three to six
dollars a key) upon the market?
The evangelist St. Mark gives another instance of Jesus's method of
healing which is again totally different from Mrs. Eddy's:--
_And they bring unto him one that was deaf and had an impediment in his
speech, and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.
And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his
ears, and he spit and touched his tongue._
Will the Christian Science healers explain the functions of the "hand,"
the "fingers," and the "spit" in "mental medicine"? If it be answered
that Jesus resorted to material means to illustrate the power of
the spirit, etc., it would follow that material means may be used to
advantage, and that there is no such feud between matter and mind as the
Eddyites proclaim.
Many other texts could be quoted to show that Jesus used material means.
He touched the bier, he laid his hands on the patient, which is the kind
of manipulation vehemently denounced by Mrs. Eddy in her comments on
mesmerism. The "touch" so frequent in the miracles performed by Jesus is
downright heresy in Mrs. Eddy's system of healing.
_Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers
diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of
them. (Luke iv, 40.)_
Again, Jesus recommends to his disciples dieting by way of abstinence
from food--that is, fasting--for the healing of obstinate diseases.
Evidently he believed that dieting increased one's healing power.
In the same pamphlet published and copyrighted by the Christian Science
Publication Society, the author, William R. Rathbon, member of the Board
of Lectureship of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston,
writes: "He [Jesus] gave himself no concern about physical symptoms...
He cared little about what the sick man had been eating, but much about
what he had been thinking." In the New Testament, however, nearly every
patient's symptoms are described, to which Jesus listened without a word
of protest and with apparent consent. Had the evangelists believed, as
the Christian Science lecturers teach, that disease is purely mental,
they would not have gone into details in describing physical symptoms.
"And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years" (Mark
v, 25.) Does not that describe the nature and duration, as well as the
physical effects, of the woman's disease?
"Lord, have mercy upon my son, for he is a lunatic" (Matt, xvii, 15).
"And one of the multitude said, Master, I have brought unto thee my
son"; and then the father proceeds to describe the symptoms of his son's
malady: "He foameth and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away" (Mark
ix, 17).
In all these cases there was not a word of rebuke from the great healer
because of the symptoms described.
Jesus himself, on one occasion, asked for certain physical details
before proceeding to heal the patient:--_And he [Jesus] asked his father
[the father of the sick youth], How long is it ago since this came unto
him? (Mark ix, 21.)_
What difference did it make when or how the disease was contracted if it
is true that "Jesus proved for all time and for all Christendom that the
origin of disease was mental, and he healed it with mental medicine"?
Perhaps the motive for representing Jesus as indifferent to the physical
condition of his patient is to excuse the Christian Science practitioner
for his ignorance of the human body and his contempt for physical
science.
But the most irreconcilable difference between Jesus Christ and Mary
Baker Eddy is in the spirit in which they performed their miracles.
Jesus does not appear to have had any financial schemes in his head. He
tells his followers to give freely the power which they have themselves
freely received. The idea of taking money for a cure, or charging a
large sum for the purpose of encouraging appreciation for his gifts,
would have shocked the Jesus of the Gospels. The mere suggestion
that some day a woman would copyright and commercialize this "divine
power" would have made him indignant beyond expression. It is impossible
to believe that the Jesus who said, "Get you no gold, no silver, nor
brass, neither two coats, nor shoes," and also, "Freely ye received,
freely give," could have the remotest sympathy with a woman who not only
_sells_ what she calls "the power of God," but has also secured by
legal procedure "a corner" on it. Mrs. Eddy's religion, then, is no more
Christian than it is scientific. Had she been dealing in food products
instead of in religion, the use of a false label would have made her
liable to prosecution.
Arrested Mentation
|Perhaps the term which best describes the thinking which leads so many
to accept Mrs. Eddy's teaching as both scientific and Christian is what
the psychologists call "arrested mentation." The majority of people
reason admirably up to a certain point, and then they suddenly come to
a full stop. Having followed the right path to a considerable distance,
they then deliberately refuse to follow it further. To speak more
plainly, there are many people who reason correctly enough on some
subjects, but on other subjects they manifest a credulity beyond belief.
The Moslem, for instance, uses his reason against the claims of every
religion but his own. The Christian Scientist argues like a trained
logician against all alien cults, but when it is a question of his own
faith he bids his reason to hush. For example, he observes, accurately
enough, as we all do, that the mind frequently creates the conditions of
the body. A man may at times think himself sick, or he may think himself
into health. The will, too, is a factor to be reckoned with. The truth
of the saying, "Where there's a will there's away," has more than once
been demonstrated. In the same way, we all admit, since experience
compels it, that the greater thoughts or sensations often crowd out of
the mind the lesser ones. That is an axiom. If I am suffering from a
toothache, the sudden appearance of a burglar in my room, pointing a
revolver at me, will in all probability make me forget my toothache
instantly. The cavity or the affected nerve which caused my pain is as
real as ever, but for the time being I have a more intense sensation
elsewhere in my system which renders me quite oblivious to the
comparatively lesser pain. Within certain limits and in connection with
certain maladies this principle--namely, the creating of a more powerful
emotion in the mind than the one which is absorbing attention--could
be, and is, utilized with therapeutic results. For people who worry, who
imagine things, a complete diversion is usually all the medicine needed.
So far, so well.
But the Christian Scientists who keep their eyes open to the evidences
of the mind controlling the body, and know very well how to use these as
arguments, shut their eyes completely to the equally convincing
proofs of the power of the body over the mind. Hunger or insomnia, if
prolonged, will put the mind out of commission. Destroy the optic nerve,
and all the mentality in the world cannot make the eyes see. Stop
the full flow of blood into the brain, and every one of our mental
faculties--memory, perception, judgment, as well as the power of
speech--becomes crippled, if not totally destroyed. Will any sensible
person dispute these statements? The Christian Scientist, who sees how
many things the mind can do, deliberately ignores the things it cannot
do. Can mind, as Herbert Spencer asks, change a field sown in wheat
into a cotton field? Can it make a horse into a cow? Can it transform an
African into an Anglo-Saxon? Can it convert copper or brass into gold?
Can we, by thinking, make the sun go around the earth? At one time
people did think that the sun moved and that the earth stood still. Did
thinking make it so?
It would be easier to prove that the mind would be helpless without the
body than that the body would be helpless without the mind. Take away
from man his erect posture or his hands, and not even the mentality of
a Prometheus would prevent the decline and deterioration of the
human race. What a wonderful instrument is the hand! It has no doubt
contributed much towards the evolution of man. The thumb meeting each
finger separately, or all four of them combined, enables one to take
hold of things.
The ability to feel things with the hands, to turn them over, to
take them apart, to bring them nearer to the eyes for a more minute
examination, started the mind into action, just as the same hands, by
putting food into the mouth, started the machinery of life into going.
Deprive man of his hands, and he will slowly slip to the foot of the
ladder, no matter how much mind he may have. On the other hand, endow
an oyster with the human frame, and in time it will develop a mind and a
civilization. An oyster with the mind of a Shakespeare would still be an
oyster, while a Shakespeare with the body of an oyster would have no use
for his "thousand souls." Why do not the converts of Mrs. Eddy see all
sides of a question? Because they think so far and no farther.
Do Christian Scientists Use their Minds?
|Despite the frequent use of the word "mind," there are perhaps few
people who use their minds less than Mrs. Eddy's disciples. Mental
development is possible only where there is freedom to think, to
experiment, to differ, and to originate. Are Christian Scientists
permitted to think for themselves? Are they at liberty to differ or to
express original views? To repeat or imitate another very little mind
is required. All the Christian Science topics, lessons, and instructions
are issued from headquarters, and the official readers in the
denomination merely repeat these verbatim. In their Sunday meetings
no original or even individual word is allowed. Of what use, then, is
mentality to a consistent Christian Scientist, who believes that the
truth, the only truth, the final truth, has been discovered and brought
to him once for all?
In the Kentucky cave of darkness fishes and mice are found without eyes.
What use could they make of sight in the darkness? Mind may become as
superfluous to human beings who have nothing more to discover as eyes
are to the denizens of Mammoth Cave.
The following from a letter sent to Mrs. Eddy and printed in _Science
and Health_ (p. 615) shows what small use some people have for their
minds. The writer, whose initials alone are given, "L. C. L., Salt Lake
City, Utah," writes how he fell from his bicycle while riding down a
hill "at a rapid pace; and, falling on my left side with my arm under my
head, the bone was broken about halfway between the shoulder and elbow.
While the pain was intense, I lay in the dust declaring the truth, and
denying that there could be a break or accident in the realm of Divine
Love." So saying, he remounts his wheel and rides home and orders
_Science and Health_ to be brought to him immediately, "which I read
for about ten minutes, when all pain left." When he told his story his
hearers would not believe that his arm could have been broken. To prove
that it had he goes to an X-ray physician, who says: "Yes, it has been
broken, but whoever set it made a perfect job of it, and you will never
have any further trouble from that break." The writer concludes his
letter with: "This is the first of several cases of _mental surgery_
that have come under my notice."
What shall we think of the mentality which can be the parent of such
contradictions! Here is a man who admits that he fell, though "there are
no accidents in the realm of Divine Love." He also admits that he broke
his arm while "denying that there could be a break in the realm of
Divine Love." The broken bone is set by the reading of _Science and
Health_, although it could not have been broken, for he did not fall,
seeing that there are "no accidents in the realm of Divine Love." If he
did not fall, he did not break his bone. But if the bone was not broken,
it was not set; and if it was not set, there was nothing to prove the
healing power of Christian Science. Therefore, he did fall and did break
his bone "while denying that there could be a break or an accident in
the realm of Divine Love"; and a physician, a man of material science,
is called in to prove that the broken bone was admirably set by "mental
surgery."
Let me add that if _Science and Health_ could set a broken bone, it
could also have prevented the accident. If it could not, then Christian
Science is insufficient; if it could have prevented the fall and the
breaking of the bone, and did not, then it was responsible for the
misfortune. The further fact that the X-ray discovered that the bone had
been set proves that Mrs. Eddy's _Science and Health_ had not been able
to obliterate all the marks of the fall and the break; which again shows
that accidents do happen and bones do break "in the realm of Divine
Love." People who make no better use of their minds than "L. C. L." of
Salt Lake City does might just as well have no more mind than the cave
fishes have eyes.
Examples of "Reasoning."
|On the fly-leaf of Mrs. Eddy's now "famous" book appears this quotation
from Shakespeare: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so." This is given a place of honour in her book because it is
supposed to prove the truth of Christian Science. But a wee bit of clear
thinking or of the power of analysis would have helped Mrs. Eddy to see
that her opening quotation completely destroys all that she advocates in
the rest of her book. The doctrine of Mrs. Eddy is that all is God; that
God or the good alone exists, and that evil, etc., is mere illusion.
According to her teaching, sickness, sin, and death do not exist except
for those who believe in them. The only reality is God or goodness. But
the text from Shakespeare which she so prominently displays upon her
banners denies God or goodness, just as effectually as it does evil
and the devil. "There is nothing--," says the great poet. Mark that,
Christian Scientists! Is that any text to quote to prove that there is
truth, and there is goodness, and there is God? "There is nothing either
good"--Pause again: Are Mrs. Eddy's troops of voiceless followers willing
to subscribe to that statement? If Shakespeare, Mrs. Eddy's authority,
is right, the good is as illusory as the bad, for he says plainly that
"there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so," which
should make God, goodness, health, and truth as much an unreality as
sickness or sin.
Moreover, the Shakespearean argument makes man the creator of both
the good and the evil in the world, since it is his _thinking_ which
determines the nature of things. Mrs. Eddy, on the contrary, maintains
that man is merely a reflection of the Deity, who alone exists and is
the only reality. It must have been the greatness of Shakespeare's name
which tempted Mrs. Eddy to quote from him on the very first page of her
book. But metaphysical arguments are like balloons: the bladders burst,
and nothing remains.
In order to prove that all disease is mental, the following argument
is frequently used. I shall give it precisely as I find it in Christian
Science: Its Results (p. 14; copyright, 1918, by the Christian Science
Publication Society):--_If, then, it is considered that the state of
mind may disturb the secretions, causing the tears to flow; or that the
state of mind may quicken the action of the heart, causing the blood to
rush to the face or away from it; or if the state of mind can affect the
organs of the throat, causing huskiness, then it is plain that the state
of mind may be held accountable for other derangements of the organs of
secretion, of circulation, and of speech. And if of these, why not of
other organs of the body?_
It is not denied that mental conditions often become manifest in
their effects upon the body. But, first, what produces these mental
conditions? The Eddyites do not seem to care to penetrate into that
question at all. Is it not true that in the majority of cases it is some
physical or material cause which has either depressed or exalted the
mind--brought tears to the eyes or dried them? The sight of a sudden
and terrible accident to a child while crossing the street will, for the
moment, rob onlookers of their power of speech, blanch their cheeks and
daze them beyond the ability to move or to think. In the same way, the
news that a dear son has been gassed or killed in battle will change a
happy home into a house of mourning, depriving its inmates of sleep and
appetite. On the other hand, the unexpected discovery of a vein of gold
on one's farm will exhilarate the mind and banish a hundred fears. These
mental moods have physical causes. Just as heat passes into motion and
motion again into heat, material events produce mental moods; and these
mental moods resolve themselves once more into physical manifestations,
such as laughter or tears.
The Christian Scientist observes accurately enough that depression and
discouragement cause sickness, but he is too impatient to learn
that these mental states are often the result of bad circulation or
mal-assimilation of food. Lack of fresh air, defective vision, or a dull
but constant physical pain very often lowers the mental tone, proving
thereby the interdependence of mind and matter.
The lecturer from whose pamphlet I have quoted realizes "that salt water
will flow from the eyes if he is subjected to great grief," and "that
the state of mind may disturb the secretions, causing the tears to
flow," and concludes therefrom that "dyspepsia and all other bodily
diseases and derangements" should be treated "with truth rather than
with tabloids and powders." But what if the secretions are disturbed by
purely physical causes? A child cries for something to eat, and not from
unbelief or fear, which are supposed to be purely mental states; and a
piece of cake will relieve his hunger and dry his tears. A splinter in
the eye will provoke tears, as will also a sharp, cold wind; the removal
of the one, and protection from the other, will immediately dry the
eyes. Peeling onions starts the secretions. Do onions come under the
class of mental causes?
Let me give another illustration. Wishing to prove that the material
world is an illusion of the senses, Mrs. Eddy tells us that on a wet
day, when there is a downpour of rain, and when mist and fog shroud land
and sea, we can easily assure ourselves that our senses are not
telling us the truth, that the weather is really fine, by consulting a
barometer, which in the midst of cloud and rain points to clear weather.
What shall we think of the mentality of a woman who appeals to a
barometer to prove that matter does not exist? If Mrs. Eddy had not
suddenly stopped thinking, she would have seen that if our senses betray
us when they report wet weather, neither would we have any assurance
that what they say about the barometer is dependable. Does she think
that our senses are not trustworthy except when they refer us to the
barometer?
Inconsistent thinking is often also responsible for inconsistency in
conduct. The Christian Scientist, for example, objects to the physician,
but patronizes the dentist. Yet dental surgery is not different from
medicine, but is one of its many branches. It is by the science of
medicine that the trouble in the body is located, diagnosed, and
remedied by the knife, if it cannot be by medication. Besides, the wound
or incision is treated medicinally, which requires medical knowledge
on the part of the surgeon, just as it does on the part of the regular
physician. Can a dentist practise surgery without a knowledge of the
human anatomy--that is to say, of how many bones and muscles there are
in the body, where the nerves are located, to what sort of treatment
they will respond, and to what laws of growth and decay they are
subject? Does he not treat an abscess or receding gums with medicine?
And does this not require a knowledge of medicine which to Christian
Scientists is nothing but "error"? Why do not these people invite a
novice or their cooks or barbers to work on their teeth if a knowledge
of anatomy, physiology, and medicine is not necessary to make a man a
good dentist? The mere fact that Christian Scientists will not allow any
one but a man with a diploma from a dental college to attend to their
teeth proves conclusively that they regard a knowledge of medicine
just as necessary as we do--only we admit it frankly, and they deny it
foolishly. If the Christian Scientists have not progressed sufficiently
to demonstrate against surgery, they should at least be grateful to us
for taking care of their needs in the meantime, and help support the
physical sciences until they are able to dispense with them.
In her _Science and Health_ Mrs. Eddy ridicules those who think that
vegetation or flowers can cause sickness, or that there can be such a
thing as a "rose cold."
"The rose," she writes, "is the smile of God," and to accuse it of
producing fevers or colds is to make God the author of disease. This is
strange reasoning. If the rose represents "the smile of God," what do
the bugs and crawling insects on its petals represent? And whose smile
are its thorns which prick x and draw blood? Further, if a rose, a
material flower, can represent the "Divine" smile, why may not other
equally material things have a mission in life--such as representing and
imparting health? If the Deity can use the rose to reveal his smile, why
may he not use herbs or minerals for curative purposes? Why may not
soap and water, cleanliness, fresh air, temperance in food and drink and
exercise, have as useful a purpose in the "Divine" economy of things as
the rose?
On p. 488 of _Science and Health_ Mrs. Eddy writes:--Christian Science
sustains with immortal proof the impossibility of any material sense,
and defines these so-called senses as mortal beliefs, the testimony of
which cannot be true. Nerves have no more sensation, apart from what
belief bestows upon them, than the fibres of a plant.
In the above, as also in innumerable other passages, the founder of
Christian Science advises her readers to deny the testimony of their
senses. They are urged to deny "that matter can ache, swell, and be
inflamed." Never mind the witness of our senses; "bones cannot break,
nerves cannot feel, the nose cannot smell, and the eyes cannot see." But
did she stop to think where such advice would carry us?
I smell something burning in the kitchen or in the basement; but no, the
senses lie. There is nothing burning; there is nothing to burn. I feel
and see smoke filling the room. I can hardly breathe; but no, the senses
are "a fraud." There is no smoke in the room, and I am not choking; for
has not Mrs. Eddy demonstrated with "immortal proof" that "corporeal
senses defraud and lie," and that they are "the only source of evil or
error" (pp. 488 and 489)? If the infant is crying in the nursery because
it has fallen from its cradle, or because it has stumbled into the fire,
there is no need to rush for help, because the report of our senses that
the child is in danger is a lie. "Christian Science shows them [our
senses] to be false" (p. 489). Fortunate it is that not many parents are
consistent Christian Scientists.
It is said that Christian Science does not deal with man as he appears,
but man as he is--"unborn and undying." Very well; is what Mrs. Eddy and
her followers write or say about "man unborn and undying" debatable
or un-debatable? If debatable, we have a right to ask the Eddyites
to conform to the canons of human reason; but if Christian Science is
non-debatable--that is, if it cannot be understood by such minds as we
possess, then why write or talk about it at all?
Do Christian Scientists Practise what they Preach?
|Mrs. Eddy teaches that the material universe is an illusion. Do the
Christian Scientists try to live up to this? I say, do they try, because
to try is about all that any one can do, as it is an utter impossibility
to really live up to such a belief.
Let us see if there is any difference between the way we treat our
bodies and the way Mrs. Eddy's followers treat theirs. We believe the
body exists, and therefore we protect it with clothing. The Christian
Scientists do the same, although they should not believe such material
things as flesh and bone exist. We sleep to be refreshed; so do they.
We have a roof over our heads; so have they. We close our windows in the
winter and build a fire; they do the same. We are growing older; so are
they. Now and then we feel unwell, and apply to a helper of some kind
for treatment, when we cannot cope with the trouble ourselves; the
Christian Scientists do the same. We die from some cause or other; so do
they. If Christian Scientists never need any treatment, why are there
so many practitioners among them? How do they make a living if no one
of their circle is ever taken sick? I admit that we do not take the same
treatment, or go to the same helper, or call our troubles by the same
_name_; but, dear me! why make such an ado over mere names?
In what respect, then, do Christian Scientists, who do not believe in
the body, treat theirs differently from the way we treat ours? We have
to eat to keep ourselves alive; so do they. We have to take liquids with
our food; so do they. We bathe our bodies because to do so is refreshing
and cleanly. Why do they bathe theirs? We need fresh air; Mrs. Eddy rode
out every day for the same purpose. And does not the Eddyite, like every
one else, repair his house or weed his garden? Does he not Paris Green
his vegetables? Does he not screen his windows? Does he not scrub his
floors? Why may he not, with equal reason, resort to certain means to
protect his teeth, his eyes, or his digestive organs? If Mind is _All_,
Mrs. Eddy's disciples should dispense with the use of powders and
cosmetics, and their houses and gardens should be free from wear and
tear, as their persons are supposed to be. Are not tree and plant, house
and land, face and teeth, included in the _All_ which is _Mind?_ And
do Christian Scientists use "Divine" healing also for the horse and the
dog? Do they employ dressmakers to clothe their minds or their bodies?
If Mind is All, why do not our trains run without engineers, or our
ships sail without pilots? Are physicians the only people the Deity will
not tolerate? If engineers and pilots represent Mind, why not doctors?
It is admitted by leaders in Christian Science that many among their
followers insure, not only their buildings against fire, but also their
lives against accident, sickness, and death. Of course, death can be
caused only by sickness, accident, or old age. It follows that the
Christian Scientist takes thought of accident, sickness, and old age,
and guards against them precisely as non-Christian Scientists do. I
know also of Christian Scientists who are in the life insurance
business--that is to say, while they deny sickness and accident they
argue with their clients that it is the part of wisdom, as well as
a duty they owe their families, to buy insurance. Is that the way to
practise what one professes?
Let us continue. Mrs. Eddy declares there is no matter, and then she
proceeds to write a book. Why could not Mrs. Eddy communicate her
revelation to her pupils without the help of a book? Would not that have
been a real miracle? Why should Absolute Mind be dependent upon ink
and type? Is not a book--its paper, its cloth, its ink, its glue and
boards--as material as any drug which the chemist manufactures? If Mrs.
Eddy is not able to reach the minds of her disciples without appealing
to their senses of touch and sight, why condemn the doctors for using
equally material means to influence their patients?
But Mrs. Eddy goes beyond the physician in her materialism. A doctor,
for example, invents an instrument to render surgical operations less
painful, but he does not patent his idea to protect his profits.
Mrs. Eddy discovers "Divine healing" and copyrights it. Moreover, the
physician is the inventor of his own instrument. Mrs. Eddy declares
that her book is from God, and then proceeds to copyright what does not
belong to her.
The hosts of people who proclaim Mrs. Eddy's name and bend the knee
to her do not seem to reflect that to copyright God's thoughts is an
attempt to copyright the Deity. A New England woman plans to secure a
corner on the Divine mind for commercial purposes, else why does she
charge such high prices for her book? And yet not one of her admiring
followers breathes even a murmur against it. It has been said that the
lady copyrighted her books and asked a big price for them, netting her
nearly five hundred per cent, profit, not because she wanted the money,
but to make the buyers appreciate the book. But what becomes of "Divine"
science if it must count on money to make people appreciate its merits?
If the Eddyites may use money to influence minds, why may not a doctor
use drugs to get results?
Really the metaphysical fraternity, instead of being sufficiently
advanced in "Divine" science to dispense with medical help, are often
compelled to employ the services of more than one doctor. The devout
follower of Mrs. Eddy, if he has a tooth to be extracted or a decayed
root to be removed, or an abscess in the ear to be treated, engages,
besides the services of an expert physician, also some metaphysical
practitioner. Thus, while the non-Christian Scientist employs only
one kind of doctor, the believer in "Divine" mind employs two. When a
Christian Scientist goes to a hospital for an operation, he either
takes a practitioner of his own faith with him and instals him in a room
near-by to give him "Divine" treatment while the surgeon is operating
on him, or he goes to the phone just before going under the knife to ask
his favourite practitioner for absent treatment. Two doctors instead
of one--that is how Christian Science has done away with doctors. Of
course, it is true that only in serious cases do Christian Scientists
call upon outside help; but, then, in cases not serious anybody can get
along without expert assistance.
In _Science and Health_ (p. 463) Mrs. Eddy gives the following
explanation of her seclusion from the world: "It has been said to
the author: 'The world has been benefited by you, but it feels your
influence without seeing you. Why do you not make yourself more widely
known?' Could her friends know how little time the author has had in
which to make herself outwardly known except through her laborious
publications--and how much time and thought are still required to
establish the stately operations of Christian Science--they would
understand why she is so secluded." Is not this an admission of her
limitations? And can a woman, claiming to be one with God, "unborn
and undying," afford to confess that she has neither the time nor the
ability to do all that is required of her?
On p. 464 of her book Mrs. Eddy advises her followers to let a surgeon
give them a hypodermic injection to relieve their pain, and a few
sentences after she writes: "Adulterating Christian Science makes
it void. Falsity has no foundation," She advises her followers, when
"Divine" science fails, to take a hypodermic for help, and then she
tells them that "adulterating Christian Science makes it void," which
leaves her disciples between "the devil and the deep sea."
And what if there were no hypodermics to relieve the pain which Mrs.
Eddy's doctrine had failed to cope with? What if there were no surgeons
to administer the drug? Under Christian Science all these material means
are to be abolished, leaving the whole field to Mrs. Eddy. To whom,
then, will "a Christian Scientist, seized with pain so violent that he
cannot treat himself mentally," go for relief?
Mrs. Eddy knows very well that physicians and not surgeons give
hypodermic injections; but she has not the courage, nor, I regret to
say, the honesty, to say anything good of a physician. Is not such a
mind as Mrs. Eddy's a menace?
Observe again that when a Christian Scientist is in intense pain he must
not seek instant relief by an appeal to real science, but must first try
Mrs. Eddy's remedy; only when that fails may he resort to a hypodermic
injection. How long a trial should the sufferer of intense pain give
to Mrs. Eddy's remedy is not stated; but this much is certain, he is
to suffer the intense pain as long as he can bear it before trying any
other remedy. Knowing very well that a hypodermic might give instant
relief to a patient in intense agony, Mrs. Eddy nevertheless insists
that the patient shall try her uncertain remedy first.
But what follows is really debasing: "When the belief of pain is lulled
[by the hypodermic] he, the sufferer, can handle his own case mentally.
Thus it is that we 'prove all things and hold fast that which is good.'"
Could there be anything more hypocritical than such reasoning? After
the pain has been relieved by a physician, the Christian Scientist will
treat himself mentally--for what? It is very much like saying that after
a starving man has been fed let him proceed to demonstrate that food
is not necessary for the relief of hunger. But the real motive for
demanding that mental treatment should follow the hypodermic injection
is to be able to claim that the cure, after all, was not effected by the
physician, but by Mrs. Eddy's remedy.
Moreover, if hypodermic injections are permitted for the relief of
intense pain, why may not antiseptics be allowed for protection against
germs, anæsthetics to deaden sensation, and antidotes to counteract
poisons? After the antidote has killed the effects of the poison, the
Christian Scientist, following Mrs. Eddy's instructions, may treat
himself mentally and deny the reality of both poison and antidote.
Instead of recommending the services of a surgeon, would it not have
been better for Mrs. Eddy to have advised her followers to go about
equipped, not only with her _Science and Health_, but also with a pocket
apparatus or instrument for giving to one's self or others hypodermic
injections in cases where Christian Science failed them?
Really, when Mrs. Eddy says, "If from an injury, or from any cause, a
Christian Scientist were seized with pain so violent that he could
not treat himself mentally--and the Christian Scientist had failed to
relieve him--the sufferer could call a surgeon, who would give him a
hypodermic injection," she surrenders everything, and her metaphysics
collapses like a bubble. It goes to prove that, despite her many bizarre
somersaults in the air, she cannot avoid landing upon matter.
When Christian Science fails, there is still the surgeon with his
"hypodermic injection." What an anti-climax! Like all metaphysicians,
Mrs. Eddy emerges from the same door wherein she entered.
Again Mrs. Eddy practically overthrows the foundations of her faith when
she writes: "If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, and the
patient dies... does human belief, you ask, cause this death? Even so,
and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken. In such
cases a few persons believe the potion swallowed by the patient to be
harmless; but the vast majority of mankind, though they know nothing
of this particular case and this special person, believe the arsenic,
strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to be poisonous, for it is set
down as a poison by mortal mind. Consequently the result is controlled
by the majority of opinions, not by the infinitesimal minority of
opinions in the sick chamber" (pp. 177-78). With that statement it may
be said that Christian Science commits suicide. Only a logic-proof mind
could fail to see that to admit the helplessness of Christian Science
when in the minority against "the majority of opinions," as Mrs. Eddy
does in the above passage, is tantamount to saying that at present, at
least, no patient can be healed by Christian Science, since "the result
is controlled by the majority of opinions, not by the infinitesimal
minority of opinions in the sick chamber." Not only does the statement
quoted deny to Christian Science the power to cope successfully
with "the majority of opinions," but it also destroys faith in the
testimonials from patients who claim to have been cured by Mrs. Eddy's
discovery. So long as the four hundred millions of China, the three
hundred millions of India, and the hosts of Africa, to which should
be added the multitudes in Europe and America, "believe the potion
swallowed to be poisonous," or the sickness complained of to be real,
"for it is set down as a poison," or as sickness "by mortal mind," a
handful of Eddyites representing "an infinitesimal minority" can effect
no cures, seeing that "_the result is controlled by the majority of
opinions_." On page 162 of her book Mrs. Eddy writes: "I have restored
what is called the lost substance of lungs......Christian Science heals
organic disease as surely as it does what is called functional." She
also claims to have "elongated shortened limbs," etc.
But how could she perform the latter miracle against the opinion held
by the majority that shortened limbs cannot be elongated, and after
admitting, as she does, that in the sick chamber "the result is
controlled by the majority of opinions, and not by the infinitesimal
minority of opinions"? In her attempt to answer the question, why
Christian Science fails to cure the patient who has accidentally
swallowed a deadly drug, Mrs. Eddy strips her "discovery" of all its
power to heal and makes "the majority of opinions the controlling
factor." In one and the same breath she announces the supremacy of
Infinite Mind, "who never endowed matter with power to disable life, or
to chill harmony......since such a power without the Divine permission
is inconceivable," and admits the helplessness of this "Infinite Mind"
against "the majority of opinions dictated by mortal mind." And the
same woman writes: "In this volume of mine there are no contradictory
statements" (p. 345).
Christian Science Cures
|It is urged, however, that Mrs. Eddy's teachings have been demonstrated
to be true by the remarkable cures they have effected. I need not
question these cures. I hope all of them are genuine. I love humanity
too well to wish that its ills were not cured at all rather than that
they should be cured by Christian Science. But when every claim is
conceded, all that will be proved is that Christian Science has cured
some sick people. Of course it has. I hope the Christian Scientists will
be equally generous to admit that during the past thousands of years
cures have been effected also by other agencies. Mohammedanism has
cured the sick; Catholic saints have cured the sick; holy places have
performed cures--else why do multitudes go on pilgrimages to shrines?
Patent medicines have helped the sick, otherwise the inventors and
vendors of them could not have made such big fortunes; and the
least tolerant Christian Scientist must admit that even physicians
occasionally succeed in curing the sick. Evidently, then, Mrs. Eddy is
not the _only_ healer; which, if admitted, will prove that she has
not performed any cures with her "ism" which others have not performed
without it. If it be said that other cures are cures only in name, the
same is said by unbelievers of Christian Science cures. One objection
balances the other. Christian Science would be unique if it never failed
to cure. But as it fails in some cases from one cause or another, and as
it limits its practice to complaints which do not require a knowledge
of surgery, and, again, _as it has never accomplished what the other
agencies have failed to accomplish_--restoring a lost limb, for
instance--it follows without the possibility of contradiction that it is
at its best no more than any other human agency.
At a Sunday morning meeting in San Francisco, as the audience was
leaving, a cripple in her invalid's chair was being wheeled out of
the building. Stepping up to one of the ushers who seemed to possess
considerable authority, I asked why the cripple had been brought to
the Christian Science meeting. "To be healed, of course," was the
unhesitating reply. But as she was being wheeled out in the same
condition as she was in when wheeled into the meeting, would it not
follow, I asked, that she was not cured? Had the occasion permitted, the
Christian Science usher would have argued that one or two treatments are
not always enough to effect a cure. Admitted. But if "Divine" science
must have more than one chance to hit the mark, how does it differ from
human science? To prove its Divine origin, Christian Science must meet
the following conditions: First, it must cure diseases which all other
agencies have pronounced incurable; second, it must never fail to cure;
third, it must prove itself the only power that can cure. Not one of
these conditions has been met by Christian Science. It has failed to
cure many; it has not cured the incurables; and other agencies have
cured at least as many patients as has Christian Science. In what
respect, then, is Mrs. Eddy's doctrine the absolute or the only truth?
Christian Science Testimonials
|Mrs. Eddy devotes one hundred pages of her _Science and Health_ to
testimonials from people who have used her "nostrum," very much as
vendors of patent medicines are in the habit of doing. But while, as a
rule, testimonials in patent medicine books are signed in full, those
in _Science and Health_ give only initials. Rheumatism, hernia, fibroid
tumour, insanity and epilepsy, cancer and consumption, Bright's disease,
and many other diseases, according to these testimonials, have been
"quickly cured," often by the mere reading of Mrs. Eddy's book. But
there are equally numerous witnesses to prove that these same maladies
have been cured by other equally fantastic remedies. I do not feel
myself under obligation, however, to take notice of these claims, for
the excellent reason that I am not bound to explain alleged facts, but
only real facts. Let the healers first prove that their patients had
real cancer, and that Christian Science cured them permanently, and then
I will consider their claims. But some one might say: "I ought to be
an authority on my own case. Every doctor had given me up; I was told
nothing could save me. My disease was pronounced incurable, yet I am
now in the best of health through Christian Science." If a person may
be misinformed about others, he may be about himself. It is the most
natural thing to imagine one's self sick or cured. It is equally a
matter of experience that doctors often fail to diagnose the case of a
patient correctly. Their pronouncing any one incurable is not a final
or infallible judgment. Before a miracle is claimed in the case of any
patient it has to be shown, by expert and disinterested testimony, that
the disease in question really existed, that it was really incurable,
and that Christian Science really cured it. But is such testimony
forthcoming? Do healers invite investigation of their cures by
outsiders?
In 1898 Mrs. Eddy announced some miraculous performances. "I challenge
the world to disprove," she said, "what I hereby declare! I healed
malignant tubercular diphtheria and carious bones that could be dented
in by the fingers. I have healed at one visit a cancer that had so eaten
the flesh of the neck as to expose the jugular vein so that it stood
out like a cord." Who made the diagnosis? How could a novice tell
one disease from another? If it was a physician's report Mrs. Eddy
is quoting, who was the physician? Besides, for Mrs. Eddy to accept
a doctor's verdict would be to put faith in medical science, which,
according to her, is no science at all. Neither does this Divine
practitioner give the name and the address of her patients. Who
witnessed the treatment applied to the case she describes? Who
pronounced the patient cured? I hope Mrs. Eddy cured all her cancer
patients; but a hope is not a proof, nor is assertion an argument. The
only way to demonstrate a power is to submit to all the tests. Compare
Mrs. Eddy's story of how she cured an unnamed patient with the following
accomplishment by a man of real science: "A remarkable case of curvature
of the spine was announced at a Philadelphia hospital. The case was that
of Adele Weinberg, a young girl hunchback. The surgeon removed part of
one of the lumbar vertebræ, found it to be diseased, and in its place
used a section of leg bone. She is as erect as though her spine had
been normal from birth." That operation took place in a hospital
in Philadelphia, before nurses and assisting physicians, who may be
summoned as witnesses. But Mrs. Eddy mentions no witnesses whom we may
interview in connection with the cancer cure she describes.
Get-Well-Quick
|Christian Science, instead of being either scientific or Christian,
comes very near being, and in fact is, a sort of get-well-quick system,
suggestive of the get-rich-quick scheme of the speculating fraternity.
The gambler does not have to learn a trade or to build up a business
in order to secure a footing in the commercial world, or to establish
a reputation for honesty and efficiency. He does not depend upon these
things for a living, since the throw of a dice, the colour of a card, or
a lucky bet may bring to him in a few minutes more than patient work
can offer in years. The Christian Science practitioner likewise does
not have to study the human body, the properties of drugs, the nature of
anæsthetics or of antiseptics, the germ theory of disease, the effect of
diet and climate upon the human organism, the causes of epidemics, the
means of control of contagious maladies--nothing at all of this. A few
lessons in metaphysics, a copy of Mrs. Eddy's book, and a number
of texts on the tip of his tongue, and he may begin practising and
collecting fees from patients.
Should a call come to the Christian Science healer in the middle of a
cold, wintry night, he need not even rise out of bed, much less walk or
ride through the storm to see and examine his patient; and if he should
fall asleep while giving absent treatment, who would be the wiser for
it?
There is yet another close resemblance between the get-rich-quick and
the get-well-quick systems. What makes gambling attractive is the wealth
there is in the world. If labour did not create wealth, there would be
nothing to gamble with or to gamble for. The gambler is a parasite. He
thrives on the labour of others. In the same way, the get-well-quick
practitioner profits from the conquests of material science. If the
Eddyites really desired to give a demonstration of their "science," they
should go to those Asiatic countries where sanitary measures are unknown
where there are no facilities for the proper ventilation of dwellings or
for personal cleanliness; where the waters are impure, the streets
are foul, the food insufficient, the climate merciless; where modern
hygienic precautions are unknown; where the cholera, the black death, or
some other plague works unhindered, and where there are no physicians
to be sent for at the last hour. Let them, I say, work in such an
environment to show what Christian Science can do. But to operate in
Europe and America--where science, like a watch dog, is guarding the
health of the people, inventing a thousand devices for the comfort and
security of life, hurrying to the aid of the injured almost with the
alacrity of thought, building hospitals equipped with all the weapons
which disease dreads, and training men and women to march at any moment
in full phalanx and armed to the teeth against the first plague germ
that lands on our shores from foreign lands--is nothing to boast of.
Indeed, it is the progress of the physical sciences which has made the
Christian Scientist's profession profitable. "Divine healers" eat of the
golden fruits of the tree of science, and then turn round and stone the
tree.
Christian Science Fashionable
|How, then, explain the remarkable growth of Christian Science? But
the imposing edifices, the prosperous looking disciples, the number
of automobiles in front of their churches, prove only that Christian
Science is fashionable--that is all. The question we are discussing is
not Is Christian Science fashionable, but Is it true? Does the rapid
growth and wealth of Mohammedanism, for instance, with its Alhambra
and Alcazar, its illustrious and extensive conquests, prove its Divine
origin? Does the progress of Mormonism, which reared a great city as if
by magic in the Western wilderness, prove Mormonism to be of God? The
Catholic Church at one time owned everything in Europe and ruled every
one. To her belonged all the wealth, the culture, the art, and the power
of Christendom. Yet Christian Scientists do not consider the Catholic
Church Divine. Why should the rapid spread of one creed surprise us any
more than that of another?
Moreover, it takes less courage to follow the crowd than to resist it.
The crowd picks up the weak and carries them along. Was it not Horace
Walpole who said, "The greater the imposition the greater the crowd"?
What Matthew Arnold said of the multitude in England is true also of
the American multitude: "Probably in no country is the multitude more
unintelligent, more narrow-minded, and more passionate than in this. In
no country is so much nonsense so firmly believed." Alas, that is true
of the multitude in every country.
Again, the faith habit is an older heredity, exerting upon us the
accumulated force of thousands of years, while the inquiry habit is too
recent an acquisition to have much force upon the generality of peoples.
That is another explanation of the greater popularity of dogma, which
requires only belief, and the comparative unpopularity of a movement
which demands individual thinking. "Superstition," as Goethe says, "is
so intimately and anciently associated with man that it is one of the
hardest things to get rid of." The only progress most people are capable
of is to part with one superstition for another. The Pope is given up
for Mrs. Eddy, but the idea of an infallible teacher to tell us what to
believe is not outgrown. The keys of heaven and hell placed in the hands
of the Vicar of Christ provoke scepticism in a Christian Scientist,
but he accepts without the shadow of a doubt the key to the Scriptures
delivered to Mrs. Eddy.
But how account for the presence of so many judges and lawyers among
the converts of Christian Science? And how account for the judges and
lawyers who are not Christian Scientists? It was not so long ago when
judges condemned innocent women as witches, and sentenced them to be
tortured to death. Did that make witchcraft a fact, or can it be quoted
to justify the belief in witchcraft? The late Chief Justice of the
United States was a Catholic. What does that prove?
Christian Science and Witchcraft
|Without wanting to give offence, I would say that Christian Science
is, in many respects, the modern version of the witchcraft belief,
which smote New England some three or four hundred years ago. If mental
treatment can cure, according to Mrs. Eddy's admissions, it can also
kill. Over her own signature Mrs. Eddy declares that her last husband
was killed by poison "mentally administered." The devil possessed
witches, too, were supposed to be able to injure and kill people
mentally. Mrs. Eddy teaches that, "If the right mental practice can
restore health, it is self-evident that mental malpractice can impair
health." She also contends that a person may commit mental murder or
"mental assassination." In the _Christian Science Journal_ of February,
1889, she demands that "mental assassins" be turned over to the
executioner.
On May 14, 1878, Mrs. Eddy, her attorney, and some twenty witnesses,
appeared at the opening of the Supreme Judicial Court in Salem and
practically accused a certain Mr. Daniel Harrison Spoffard of sorcery
and witchcraft. Mrs. Eddy's bill of complaint recited the injuries which
Spoffard was mentally, and of course by absent treatment, inflicting
upon one of Mrs. Eddy's students, a Miss Lucretia Brown, and begged the
Court to restrain him from giving malicious mental treatment to said
Miss Brown. Does not that suggest darkest Africa? Let me give a few
lines from Mrs. Eddy's bill of complaint:--
_By the power of his mind he (Mr. Spoffard) influences and controls the
minds and bodies of other persons, and uses his said power and art for
the purpose of injuring the persons and property of others. Among the
injuries Mr. Spoffard has communicated to Miss Brown are severe spinal
pains, neuralgia, temporary suspension of mind._
Fortunately for the reputation of our courts, Judge Gray dismissed the
charges against Mr. Spoffard, declaring, with a twinkle in his eye,
that it was not within the jurisdiction of the courts to control Mr.
Spoffard's mind. Had the Judge been of Mrs. Eddy's persuasion, the old
regrettable Salem persecutions against so-called witches might have been
revived. How well has it been explained by John Fiske that "one of the
most primitive shapes which the relation of cause and effect takes in
the savage mind is the assumed connection between disease or death and
some malevolent personal agency."
Marriage and Death in Christian Science
|Let us now investigate some of the other teachings of Mrs. Eddy,
which are at present more or less kept in the background, or which are
presented only to those who have become adepts or advanced students of
the cult. A careful perusal of Mrs. Eddy's miscellaneous literature will
show that she practically denies sex, marriage, birth, death, the
home, the family, as well as education and morality. It seems a serious
accusation to bring against any one posing as a reformer or as the
founder of a religion, but the evidence warrants the charge. Has no one
ever observed that Christian Science journals do not announce marriages,
births, or deaths? Of course, like other people, Christian Scientists
are born, marry, and die; but no official recognition of such events is
permitted. There must be a reason for it. In Christian Science there
is no room for sex relations and for children, even as there is no
recognition of that other natural phenomenon, death. But do not Mrs.
Eddy's disciples die? Is not her body buried in a cemetery, and marked
by a monument raised over her remains by her admirers?
The explanation for this apparent contradiction between the profession
and the practice, from the Christian Science point of view, is as
follows: Every believer in Mrs. Eddy's revelation is expected
to demonstrate over death as over sickness; and just as, when a
practitioner fails to demonstrate over sickness, it is because of some
error or belief somewhere, and not because of the insufficiency of
Divine power, likewise, if a Christian Scientist dies, it is because he
has not applied the new doctrine rightly, and not because the doctrine
is not strong enough to prevent death. This teaching really makes of
death not a beneficent economy of nature, but a crime, or a miscarriage,
as it were, of Christian Science.
In the State of Michigan there is a religious sect called "the House of
David." One of their doctrines is that a Christian cannot die. "But," I
asked the man whom I was interviewing in Michigan, "do not the members
of your sect die like other people?" His answer was that they die only
when they fall from grace.
In the same way, if a Christian Scientist dies, it is because he has
departed from the truth as taught by Mrs. Eddy, or because some one has
killed him mentally by "malicious animal magnetism" or "mortal mind."
That was how, Mrs. Eddy asserts, her husband was assassinated. If
one member of a family is a Christian Scientist and the treatment he
receives from a practitioner does not cure him of the complaint, the
blame is liable to be thrown upon the non-Christian Science members of
the family, who, by resisting the operations of "Divine" power, prevent
its manifestation. It is witchcraft come back. Could anything be more
inhuman than to hold an unbelieving parent responsible for the failure
of Christian Science to save his child from an attack of typhus or
scarlet fever after the practitioner has deprived the patient of the
services of medical care and treatment? But can a "Divine" healer
admit failure? Rather than confess defeat, he will accuse the nearest
relatives of the patient of malpractice. I am sorry to conclude that at
times Christian Science is as cowardly as it is cruel.
"Suffer it to Be So Now"
|According to Mrs. Eddy, marriage, like death, suggests materiality, and
is therefore an error. The words of Jesus, that in heaven they shall be
like the angels who do not marry nor are given in marriage, are quoted
to prove that sex is an illusion of mortal mind. Of course, the Eddyites
marry, but only for the same reason that they die--because they are not
sufficiently advanced in Christian Science to demonstrate over these
errors.
In the _Christian Science Sentinel_, June 16, 1906, and in the
_Christian Science Journal_, July, 1906, Mrs. Eddy calls marriage
"legalized lust"--this from a woman who had been three or four times
married!
"Suffer it to be so now" is the text quoted by Christian Scientists
to defend their inconsistency. But how long a time does the word "now"
cover? Jesus, in using the word "now," must have meant his own day,
which was nearly two thousand years ago. But is it still "now"? A "now"
that lasts so long might just as well mean "indefinitely."
"Suffer it to be so _indefinitely_" would be the real meaning of the
text as the Eddyites interpret it. Accordingly, when the Christian
Science dispensation shall be in full swing, marriage, birth, children,
the family, as also sickness and death, will be no more. That will be, I
suppose, when it is no longer "now."
I have already quoted Mrs. Eddy's belief in regard to sex: "Gender is
also a quality characteristic of mind, and not of matter." She will wink
at marriages "until it is learned that generation [birth] rests on no
sexual basis." I do not know what kind of reasoning led her to say:
"To abolish marriage and maintain generation is possible in Christian
Science." Are not such foolish as well as mischievous doctrines a menace
to the community? Can a man, can a woman, believe in such absurdities
without becoming unbalanced mentally sooner or later?
The New Autocracy
|Mrs. Eddy has banished all freedom of thought from her Church, as
Luther and Calvin did from theirs. Christian Science is as distinctly
hostile to the liberty of teaching as were the dogmatists of the
Reformation.
In the _Christian Science Quarterly_ Bible Lessons definite instructions
are given to read the following explanatory note before reciting the
lesson-sermon:--
_Friends,--The Bible and the Christian Science Text-book are our only
preachers... The canonical writings, together with the word of our
text-book, corroborating and explaining the Bible texts in their
spiritual import and application to all ages, past, present, and future,
constitute a sermon undivorced from Truth, uncontaminated and unfettered
by human hypotheses, and divinely authorized._
It is absolutely necessary to repeat this at every Sunday meeting. It
will be seen from the formula imposed upon her followers that only Mrs.
Eddy's voice is tolerated in Christian Science churches. But does she
not also permit the reading of the Bible? Only as _she_ interprets it,
no other interpretation being allowed, which makes the Bible nothing
more than a medium for Mrs. Eddy's thought. Outside of her book all is
contamination. _Science and Health_ and the book to which it is the key
are alone Divine, everything else being "human hypotheses" which enslave
and corrupt. Has the intellect of man ever been subjected to a greater
pinch than that?
"He who does not believe my doctrine is sure to be damned," said Luther
(Professor E.M. Hulme, _The Renaissance_, p. 363). Will Mrs. Eddy admit
that there is any salvation outside her church, or that there is any
other infallible guide than her own _Science and Health_? And just as
both John Calvin and Martin Luther called upon the civil authorities to
draw the sword against heretics, so Mrs. Eddy repeatedly summoned
the State to punish "mental assassins." Where there is no freedom
persecution is inevitable, since there is no other effective way
to suppress freedom. It was the great Swiss reformer, Beza, who
congratulated Calvin on the burning of Servetus: "To claim that heretics
ought not to be punished is the same as saying that those who murder
father and mother ought not to be punished, seeing that heretics are
infinitely worse than they." Mrs. Eddy, nearly four hundred years
later, appealed to the courts in the United States to punish one Richard
Kennedy, a former disciple of hers, for _malicious animal magnetism_,
and called upon the police to avenge the death of her husband by
arresting the culprit who administered poison to him "mentally."
"Oh, why does not somebody kill him?" Mrs. Eddy was heard to exclaim
when she imagined herself the victim of the malpractice of one of her
rivals. In _Science and Health_, chap. vi, p. 38, 1881 edition, Mrs.
Eddy, writing of another of her dissenting disciples with all the
theological fury of the Dark Ages, calls him the "Nero of to-day... he
is robbing, committing adultery, and killing," etc. And on page 2, in
the same chapter, she calls Kennedy a "moral leper," to be "shunned as
the most prolific cause of sickness and sin." Listen to this language of
Love:--
_Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out the sunshine
of earth, that would sever friends, destroy virtue, put out truth, and
murder in secret the innocent, befouling thy track with the trophies of
thy guilt._
Then she predicts "a hailstorm of doom upon the guilty head" of Daniel
Spoffard, another of her former students (_Science and Health_, 1878
edition).
Christian Science shows many of the symptoms of the early stages of the
Protestant Reformation. "Justification by faith alone" was the slogan
of Luther and his associates. Good works were not necessary at all.
Salvation was a divine gift, and all that the sinner had to do was to
accept it. Doing was a deadly thing.
Mrs. Eddy, like another Martin Luther, preached the doctrine of
salvation and health by faith alone. "Quit trying to get well by your
own efforts and trust in Divine Mind" was her ultimatum. Mrs. Eddy
had no more use for sanitary measures or for self-help than the German
reformers had for good works. And just as Mrs. Eddy taught that to
resort to material means destroyed the patient's chances of being
healed by Christian Science, the Lutherans declared that good works
were prejudicial to salvation because they made man self-confident and
boastful.
Another resemblance between Luther and Mrs. Eddy is to be found in
their common contempt for human science. To Luther the intellect was the
devil's bride. When he used stronger language he denounced reason as
a whore. He had no use for the universities, and prayed to see them
pulverized. More than once he boasted openly that there was not a dogma
of Christianity that did not offend human reason. But what is human
reason worth? What is it but, as Mrs. Eddy would reply, "mortal mind"?
The founder of Christian Science showed even less respect for human
intellect than did the reformers of the sixteenth century.
The words of Erasmus, the distinguished scholar of Holland, "The triumph
of the Lutherans is the death of good learning," could also be said
of the followers of Mrs. Eddy. The cause of culture, of intellectual
achievements, of discovery, of political and physical advancement, is
sure to be, and is, neglected by people who are too eager to demonstrate
the wonders of metaphysics. Any movement which does not include the
entire field of human knowledge is bound to be both narrow and sterile.
Goethe believed that the Lutheran doctrine, which confined the world
to one book, upon the meaning of which no two interpreters agreed,
postponed the emancipation of the human intellect for a thousand years.
Luther led the world out of the Catholic darkness into the Protestant
fog. Of Mrs. Eddy it could be said that she has brought her people out
of the land of Egypt into a pathless wilderness.
The Menace of Christian Science
|Imagine again what would happen to our educational system if it were to
pass under the control of Mrs. Eddy's party. The majority of studies
now pursued would be eliminated from the course. No Christian Scientist
would see the need of knowing anything about physiology, anatomy,
chemistry, biology, botany, geology, or any of the fundamental physical
sciences. To teach these would be an admission of the reality of the
material universe and a denial of the doctrine that all is illusion and
error except "Divine" mind. But what would become of a nation reared
in ignorance of the physical world and the laws which govern it?
Industrially such a nation must slip to the bottom of the line, leaving
the commerce of the world in the hands of those who study and master
the physical sciences. The Eddyites would not care, since they are not
interested in the material life, and would be glad to demonstrate that
it is possible to maintain life without food, as it is possible to
maintain generation without sex.
With the Christian Science dogma in force, every book out of harmony
with it would be excluded from our public libraries. Think you a
Christian Science librarian, if free to do as he thought best, would
permit the reading of books filled with "mortal error," the cause of
disease and death, and thereby postpone the coming of the kingdom of
Mrs. Eddy? If to-day you can scarcely find a Christian Scientist who
will read or hear anything opposed to his creed, and if at present
Christian Scientists allow in their churches only two books--the Bible
and the works of Mrs. Eddy--are they going to allow more than two books
in our schools, libraries, and homes, should they acquire control of the
government? People think that Eddyism is only a sort of drugless cure
and no more; on the contrary, Eddyism, with its overemphasis on the
_divine_ is the sworn foe of everything human. Huxley has well said that
modern civilization rests upon physical science. "Take away her gifts,
and our country's position among the civilized nations of the world
is gone to-morrow. It is physical science that makes intelligence
and morality stronger than brute force." How splendidly true, and how
refreshing is common sense after so much nonsense!
The physical sciences are not the only studies which Christian
Scientists will suppress should they come into power. History, ethics,
and the humanities will also be forbidden. To a Christian Scientist the
history of the centuries before Mrs. Eddy's discovery is summed up
in one word--error. No Christian Scientist will teach the history of
error--of illusion and "mortal mind." Even the late World War was to
them only an unreality. There was, according to Mrs. Eddy's followers,
no war at all, for war means disharmony, and in God's universe there is
room only for harmony. It is true that young men of this faith went
to war, and some of them, unfortunately, were killed in battle.
Nevertheless, no Christian Scientist could be conscious of anything but
harmony, and therefore no Christian Scientist logically could write
of the War or of any event in history which would necessitate the
recognition of evil. God himself, who is perfect harmony, did not know
there was a war in Europe, said the committee on Christian Science
publications in explaining the attitude of their Church on the War.
Christian Science and Morals
|Morality, too, as a scientific study, will be banished from the schools
under Eddyism. In the Infinite there is no more room for sin than there
is for disease, and, since man is but the image of the Infinite, he is
as free from sin as he is from disease. Mrs. Eddy practically denies the
possibility of sin in Christian Science.
At the age of fifty-six, on January 1, 1877, Mrs. Eddy contracted a new
marriage, this time with Mr. Asa G. Eddy, giving her age as forty, as
shown by her marriage licence. With a gesture Mrs. Eddy swept aside the
charge that she had suppressed the truth about her age, and justified
the misrepresentation on metaphysical grounds. In her _Science and
Health_, pp. 245-6, she asserts that a woman could not age while
believing herself to be young. Eternity, according to her, has nothing
to do with chronology, and "time-tables of birth and death are so many
conspiracies against manhood and womanhood."
"Never record ages," she advises. But if it makes no difference to a
Christian Scientist how old or how young she is, so far as the number of
years is concerned, why did Mrs. Eddy under-state her age? In pretending
to be younger than she really was did she not show her fear of advancing
years? Perhaps Mrs. Eddy also believed that _truth_ as well as _time_
had lost all claims upon Christian Scientists. To change a lie into a
truth, all that is necessary is to deny that "time-tables and calendars"
have any meaning to the believer in eternity.
One could even commit murder and deny that a bullet or a knife could
possibly deprive a man, who is _all mind_, of his life. Mrs. Eddy and
her book, I suppose, will be about all the protection we shall have
against the lightning, the storm, or the cold, or against hunger,
ignorance, and crime. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of world
this would be when stripped of everything but Mrs. Eddy's "inspired"
metaphysics.
In the State of Washington the Christian Scientists, as soon as they
had acquired sufficient political power to do it, abolished the law
requiring the medical inspection of children in the public schools.
But who will be the greatest sufferers from this foolish ordinance?
The children, of course: the pupils afflicted with defective vision
or throat and nose maladies will be deprived of the benefits of human
knowledge and experience. Their prayer for better sight, for freer
breathing and unhampered speech, will remain unheeded, upon the plea
that sight, hearing, and speech are of the Mind, and that bodily
obstructions cannot interfere with them. The Washington state law
abolishing the physical examination of public-school children gives us
an idea of what to expect under a metaphysical government.
And under Christian Science who, for example, will care for the deaf and
dumb unfortunates in the community? Material science, seconded by human
sympathy, has greatly helped to rob deafness and dumbness of more of
their power to discourage and depress. I have met deaf people who
were so well trained to read the movement of the lips as to be able to
converse freely. What will Christian Science do for these unfortunates?
Has it ever taken thought of them? And has Christian Science ever
planned or built homes for crippled children--the poor little ones who
cannot walk or move without pain? And what has metaphysics ever done in
the fight against the white plague? Has it made a single discovery, or
given a new weapon to man against any of the evils human flesh is heir
to? With this Asiatic superstition or fatalistic belief, masquerading as
Christian and scientific, in control of our institutions, all sanitary
laws, such as the pure food law, the law requiring the fumigation of
houses or the isolation of their inmates suffering from contagious
diseases, the laws requiring the inspection of ships from plague-ridden
ports, those requiring fireproof public buildings or providing for fire
escapes and a hundred other safety-first measures, will receive scant
attention.
To see and fight evil is wiser than to shut our eyes to it. The rose is
no more real than the thorns which guard it. The tear is as natural as
the smile, and equally divine. To be able to suffer for those we love,
and for a cause we prize, is a privilege.
Christian Science robs people of the feeling of sympathy, without which
man and marble become alike. But sympathy is born of the consciousness
that there are pain and suffering, evil and error, in the world.
Cognizance of evil is not permitted to a Christian Scientist. Being in
Nirvana himself, the disciple of Mrs. Eddy neither sees nor feels, or
at least he pretends not to see or feel, the sorrow that draws the tear.
Are there not times when, as the poet Hood in his _Ode to Melancholy_
says, the genuine tear is nobler than the artificial smile?
Oh, give her, then, her tribute just,
Her sighs and tears and musings holy!
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely.
"Christian Science makes people happy" is an argument often advanced.
No doubt it does. But we are not discussing "Is Christian Science
Comforting?" but "Is it true?" Ignorance is bliss, it has been said;
but does that prove that ignorance should be cultivated and knowledge
suppressed?
I met a young woman just the day before her mother's funeral who behaved
as if she and the woman who had borne her, nursed her, carried her in
her arms, who had watched day and night over her cradle and risked her
life for her a hundred times, were total strangers. The young woman was
a Christian Scientist. Eliminate the sympathy which consciousness of a
struggling and suffering world inspires, and art, literature, poetry,
morality, and the humanities wither like a branch deprived of the
quickening sap.
Jesus was called the man of sorrows. Could he have been a Christian
Scientist?
"Jesus wept" is written in the Gospel of John. Sorrow and tears are
heresies to the perpetually smiling followers of Mrs. Eddy.
Let us have men and women who fear neither the thorn nor the tear, but
who use them as stepping-stones to greater strength. The way to meet
evil is to grapple with it soldier-like. Man is not an ostrich, and
burying one's head in the sand is a coward's policy.
To live is to act, and to act is to combat.
But darkness cannot be overcome with jargon. To conquer we need the
weapons of Prometheus--knowledge and courage!
End of Project Gutenberg's What is Christian Science?, by M. M. Mangasarian
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