Christian Science and the book of Mrs. Eddy

Twain's short story: Christian Science and the book of Mrs. Eddy

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

I

This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the
Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and
broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was
found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the
nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed
farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning
little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright-coloured
flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room,
separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the
front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the
manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring
that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables
a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

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

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

'Yes.'

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

'Yes.'

'And struck another one and bounced again?'

'Yes.'

'And struck another one and bounced yet again?'

'Yes.'

'And broke the boulders?'

'Yes.'

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

'I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now but
an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock
to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look
like a hat-rack.'

'And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was
nothing the matter with me?'

'Those were her words.'

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

'Bitte?'

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

'Why?'

'She said you would need nothing at all.'

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

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

'She does, does she?'

'It is what she said.'

'Does she seem o be in full and functional possession of her intellectual
plant, such as it is?'

'Bitte?'

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

'Tie her up?'

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

II

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

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

I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she
detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative
tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no
use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so
that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence,
she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I
felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms--

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

'But if it hurts, just the same--'

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

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

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

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

'She merely imagined she felt a pain--the cat?'

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

'Then she had a real pain?'

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

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

She broke in with an irritated--

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

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

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

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

'Explain.'

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

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

'It is quite simple,' she said; 'the fundamental propositions of
Christian Science explain it, and they are summarised in the four
following self-evident propositions: 1. God is All in all. 2. God is
good. Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil sin, disease. There--
now you see.'

It seemed nebulous: it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty
in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions. I said, with
some hesitancy:

'Does--does it explain?'

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

With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backward.

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

'It--it--well, it is plainer than it was before; still--'

'Well?'

'Could you try it some more ways?'

'As many as you like: it always means the same. Interchanged in any way
you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it
means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble
it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was
before. It was a marvellous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de
force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and
the occult.'

'It seems to be a corker.'

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

'A what?'

'A--wonderful structure--combination, so to speak, or profound thoughts--
unthinkable ones--un--'

'It is true. Read backwards, or forwards, or perpendicularly, or at any
given angle, these four propositions will always be found to agree in
statement and proof.'

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

'Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove: 1. GOD--Principle, Life,
Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do you get that?'

'I--well, I seem to. Go on, please.

'2. MAN--God's universal idea, individual, perfect, eternal. Is it
clear?'

'It--I think so. Continue.'

'3. IDEA--An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding.
There it is--the whole sublime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell.
Do you find a weak place in it anywhere?'

'Well--no; it seems strong.'

'Very well. There is more. Those three constitute the Scientific
Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have the Scientific Definition of
Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST DEGREE: Depravity. 1. Physical--Passions and
appetites, fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge,
sin, disease, death.'

'Phantasms, madam--unrealities, as I understand it.'

'Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing. 1. Moral--Honesty,
affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?'

'Crystal.'

'THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. 1. Spiritual--Faith, wisdom, power,
purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and
co-ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this
Third Degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal
mind disappears.'

'Not earlier?'

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

'It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian
Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship, as
I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the
process of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains of
mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about to
further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and
disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting: go
on, please.'

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

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

'Yes--God-all, all-God, good Good, non-Matter, Matteration, Spirit,
Bones, Truth.'

'That explains it.'

'There is nothing in Christian Science that is not explicable; for God is
one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and may be one of a series, one
of many, as an individual man, individual horse; whereas God is one, not
one of a series, but one alone and without an equal.'

'These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does
Christian Science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality to
incidental reflection?'

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

(It is very curious, the effect which Christian Science has upon the
verbal bowels. Particularly the Third Degree; it makes one think of a
dictionary with the cholera. But I only thought this; I did not say it.)

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

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

'Indeed? When did this occur?'

'In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and disease and death
disappeared from the earth to return no more for ever. That is, the
fancies for which those terms stand, disappeared. The things themselves
had never existed; therefore as soon as it was perceived that there were
no such things, they were easily banished. The history and nature of the
great discovery are set down in the book here, and--'

'Did the lady write the book?'

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

But she had forgotten to bring her glasses.

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

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

'We never give medicine in any circumstances whatever! We--'

'But, madam, it says--'

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

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

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

'I can see that, but--'

'It rests upon the immovable basis of an Apodictical Principle.'

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

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

'Surely not every ill, every decay?'

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

'But without your glasses your failing eyesight does not permit you to--'

'My eyesight cannot fail; nothing can fail; the Mind is master, and the
Mind permits no retrogression.'

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

'Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or after long study and
calculation, like America?'

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

'Many years? How many?'

'Eighteen centuries!'

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

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

'How strange, how wonderful!'

'I will quote her own words, for her "Key to the Scriptures:" "The
twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in
connection with this nineteenth century." There--do you note that?
Think--note it well.'

'But--what does it mean?'

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

'"Revelation xii. 1. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven--a
woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her
head a crown of twelve stars."

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

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

'That is Boston.'

'I recognise it, madam. These are sublime things and impressive; I never
understood these passages before; please go on with the--with the--
proofs.'

'Very well. Listen:

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

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

'Was it--'

'I hold it in my hand--"Christian Science"!'

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

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

III

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

I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in the
head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the hands
of a woman whom I did not know, and in whose ability to successfully
treat mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified
by the fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the
first, along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of
relief; and indeed the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more
and more bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention
from food and drink.

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

I took up the 'Christian Scientist' book and read half of it, then took a
dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences
were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and
grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of
the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note
the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the
drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and
could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others
were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and
an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical
Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish
was reached at last, the evolutions were complete and a fine success; but
I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer materials.
I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the stomach-ache
into the boots, but I think one could develop the blind staggers out of
the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers produced in this way
would be of a better quality and more lasting than any produced by the
artificial processes of a horse-doctor.

For of all the strange, and frantic, and incomprehensible, and
uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely
this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence
and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often
compel the effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to have
any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they
understand the book; I know this, for I have talked with them; but in all
cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such things
as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world; nothing
actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value of their
testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science they do as
Mrs. Fuller did; they do not use their own language, but the book's; they
pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave you to find out later
that they were not originating, but merely quoting; they seem to know the
volume by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible--another Bible,
perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was written under the mental
desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the
membership of that Degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it
you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech
delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get but not the
particulars; or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a
vigorous instrument which is making a noise it thinks is a tune, but
which to persons not members of the band is only the martial tooting of a
trombone, and merely stirs the soul through the noise but does not convey
a meaning.

The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a
heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than
human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior, and
so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting
anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence,
and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all, it
thunders out the startling words, 'I have Proved' so and so! It takes the
Pope and all the great guns of his church in battery assembled to
authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single
unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and study
and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all that: she
finds the whole Bible in an unclarified condition, and at small expense
of time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from lid to lid,
reorganises and improves the meanings, then authoritatively settles and
establishes them with formulae which you cannot tell from 'Let there be
light!' and 'Here you have it!' It is the first time since the dawn-days
of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid
and complacent confidence and command.

IV

A word upon a question of authorship. Not that quite; but, rather, a
question of emendation and revision. We know that the Bible-Annex was
not written by Mrs. Eddy, but was handed down to her eighteen hundred
years ago by the Angel of the Apocalypse; but did she translate it alone,
or did she have help? There seems to be evidence that she had help. For
there are four several copyrights on it--1875, 1885, 1890, 1894. It did
not come down in English, for in that language it could not have acquired
copyright--there were no copyright laws eighteen centuries ago, and in my
opinion no English language--at least up there. This makes it
substantially certain that the Annex is a translation. Then, was not the
first translation complete? If it was, on what grounds were the later
copyrights granted?

I surmise that the first translation was poor; and that a friend or
friends of Mrs. Eddy mended its English three times, and finally got it
into its present shape, where the grammar is plenty good enough, and the
sentences are smooth and plausible though they do not mean anything. I
think I am right in this surmise, for Mrs. Eddy cannot write English
to-day, and this is argument that she never could. I am not able to
guess who did the mending, but I think it was not done by any member of
the Eddy Trust, nor by the editors of the 'Christian Science Journal,'
for their English is not much better than Mrs. Eddy's.

However, as to the main point: it is certain that Mrs. Eddy did not
doctor the Annex's English herself. Her original, spontaneous,
undoctored English furnishes ample proof of this. Here are samples from
recent articles from her unappeasable pen; double columned with them are
a couple of passages from the Annex. It will be seen that they throw
light. The italics are mine:

1. 'What plague spot, 'Therefore the efficient
or bacilli were (sic) gnawing remedy is to destroy the
(sic) at the heart of this patient's unfortunate belief,
metropolis... and bringing by both silently and audibly
it on bended knee? arguing the opposite facts in
Why, it was an institute that regard to harmonious being
had entered its vitals (sic) representing man as
that, among other things, healthful instead of diseased,
taught games,' et cetera. (P. and showing that it is
670, 'C.S.Journal,' article impossible for matter to suffer,
entitled 'A Narrative--by to feel pain or heat, to be
Mary Baker G. Eddy.') thirsty or sick.' (P. 375, Annex.)
2. 'Parks sprang up (sic)...
electric street cars run 'Man is never sick; for
(sic) merrily through several Mind is not sick, and matter
streets, concrete sidewalks cannot be. A false belief
and macadamised roads dotted is both the tempter and the
(sic) the place,' et cetera. tempted, the sin and the
(Ibid.) sinner, the disease and its
3. 'Shorn (sic) of its cause. It is well to be calm
suburbs it had indeed little in sickness; to be hopeful is
left to admire, save to (sic) still better; but to
such as fancy a skeleton understand that sickness is not
above ground breathing (sic) real, and that Truth can
slowly through a barren (sic) destroy it, is best of all, for
breast.' (Ibid.) it is the universal and perfect
remedy.' (Chapter xii.,
Annex.)

You notice the contrast between the smooth, plausible, elegant, addled
English of the doctored Annex and the lumbering, ragged, ignorant output
of the translator's natural, spontaneous, and unmedicated penwork. The
English of the Annex has been slicked up by a very industrious and
painstaking hand--but it was not Mrs. Eddy's.

If Mrs. Eddy really wrote or translated the Annex, her original draft was
exactly in harmony with the English of her plague-spot or bacilli which
were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on
bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing
slowly through a barren breast. And it bore little or no resemblance to
the book as we have it now--now that the salaried polisher has holystoned
all of the genuine Eddyties out of it.

Will the plague-spot article go into a volume just as it stands? I think
not. I think the polisher will take off his coat and vest and cravat and
'demonstrate over' it a couple of weeks and sweat it into a shape
something like the following--and then Mrs. Eddy will publish it and
leave people to believe that she did the polishing herself:

1. What injurious influence was it that was affecting the city's morals?
It was a social club which propagated an interest in idle amusements,
disseminated a knowledge of games, et cetera.

2. By the magic of the new and nobler influences the sterile spaces were
transformed into wooded parks, the merry electric car replaced the
melancholy 'bus, smooth concrete the tempestuous plank sidewalk, the
macadamised road the primitive corduroy, et cetera.

3. Its pleasant suburbs gone, there was little left to admire save the
wrecked graveyard with its uncanny exposures.

The Annex contains one sole and solitary humorous remark. There is a
most elaborate and voluminous Index, and it is preceded by this note:

'This Index will enable the student to find any thought or idea contained
in the book.'

V

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

Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look
like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the
royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman
have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could
he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure
that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance, but
the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and
remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a
saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if
the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy,
a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village, had great fame as
a faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her
from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, 'Have faith--
it is all that is necessary,' and they went away well of their ailments.
She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She
said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw
her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the
patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this
sort of industry and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets
into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his
business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is
unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria
there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire
from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of
his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to
year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no
religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in
his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is
this confidence which does the work and not some mysterious power issuing
from himself.

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

They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith
Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since
they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he
wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every
conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces
alone. They claim ability to cure malignant cancer, and other affections
which have never been cured in the history of the race. There would seem
to be an element of danger here. It has the look of claiming too much, I
think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less were
claimed.

I believe it might be shown that all the 'mind' sects except Christian
Science have lucid intervals; intervals in which they betray some
diffidence, and in effect confess that they are not the equals of the
Deity; but if the Christian Scientist even stops with being merely the
equal of the Deity, it is not clearly provable by his Christian-Science
Amended Bible. In the usual Bible the Deity recognises pain, disease,
and death as facts, but the Christian Scientist knows better. Knows
better, and is not diffident about saying so.

The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my stomach-ache and my cold;
but the horse-doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian Science
claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone and
confine itself to surgery. There it would have everything its own way.

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

'Nothing exists but Mind?'

'Nothing,' she answered. 'All else is substanceless, all else is
imaginary.'

I gave her an imaginary cheque, and now she is suing me for substantial
dollars. It looks inconsistent.

VI

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to
each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple
many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and
obscurities now.

Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there,
are nevertheless no doubt insane in one or two particulars--I think we
must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I
think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that as
regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are
really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all
accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are
outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun
gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that 6 times
6 are thirty-six; that 2 from 10 leave eight; that 8 and 7 are fifteen.
These are perhaps the only things we are agreed about; but although they
are so few, they are of inestimable value, because they make an
infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them we know to be
substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane.
Whoever disputes a single one of them we know to be wholly insane, and
qualified for the asylum.

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

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

The_Atheist,______________________The_Shakers,
The_Infidel,______________________The_Millerites,
The_Agnostic,_____________________The_Mormons,
The_Baptist,______________________The_Laurence_Oliphant
The_Methodist,______________________Harrisites,
The_Catholic,_and_the_other_______The_Grand_Lama's_people,
__115_Christian_sects,_the________The_Monarchists,
__Presbyterian_excepted,__________The_Imperialists,
The_72_Mohammedan_sects,__________The_Democrats,
The_Buddhist,_____________________The_Republicans_(but_not
The_Blavatsky-Buddhist,_____________the_Mugwumps),
The_Nationalist,__________________The_Mind-Curists,
The_Confucian,____________________The_Faith-Curists,
The_Spiritualist,_________________The_Mental_Scientists,
The_2,000_East_Indian_____________The_Allopaths,
__sects,__________________________The_Homeopaths,
The_Peculiar_People,______________The_Electropaths,
The_Swedenborgians,

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

This should move us to be charitable toward one another's lunacies. I
recognise that in his special belief the Christian Scientist is insane,
because he does not believe as I do; but I hail him as my mate and fellow
because I am as insane as he--insane from his point of view, and his
point of view is as authoritative as mine and worth as much. That is to
say, worth a brass farthing. Upon a great religious or political
question the opinion of the dullest head in the world is worth the same
as the opinion of the brightest head in the world--a brass farthing. How
do we arrive at this? It is simple: The affirmative opinion of a stupid
man is neutralised by the negative opinion of his stupid neighbour--no
decision is reached; the affirmative opinion of the intellectual giant
Gladstone is neutralised by the negative opinion of the intellectual
giant Cardinal Newman--no decision is reached. Opinions that prove
nothing are, of course, without value--any but a dead person knows that
much. This obliges us to admit the truth of the unpalatable proposition
just mentioned above--that in disputed matters political and religious
one man's opinion is worth no more than his peer's, and hence it follows
that no man's opinion possesses any real value. It is a humbling
thought, but there is no way to get around it: all opinions upon these
great subjects are brass-farthing opinions.

It is a mere plain simple fact--as clear and as certain as that 8 and 7
make fifteen. And by it we recognise that we are all insane, as concerns
those matters. If we were sane we should all see a political or
religious doctrine alike, there would be no dispute: it would be a case
of 8 and 7--just as it is in heaven, where all are sane and none insane.
There there is but one religion, one belief, the harmony is perfect,
there is never a discordant note.

Under protection of these preliminaries I suppose I may now repeat
without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane. I mean him no
discourtesy, and I am not charging--nor even imagining--that he is
insaner than the rest of the human race. I think he is more
picturesquely insane that some of us. At the same time, I am quite sure
that in one important and splendid particular he is saner than is the
vast bulk of the race.

Why is he insane? I told you before: it is because his opinions are not
ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the
only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It is
merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more interesting
than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his 'little book'--the one
described in the previous article; the 'little book' exposed in the sky
eighteen centuries ago by the flaming angel of the Apocalypse and handed
down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy of New Hampshire and
translated by her, word for word, into English (with help of a polisher),
and now published and distributed in hundreds of editions by her at a
clear profit per volume, above cost, of 700 per cent.!--a profit which
distinctly belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it
if he can; a 'little book' which the C.S. very frequently calls by just
that name, and always inclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin
exultantly in mind; a 'little book' which 'explains' and reconstructs and
new-paints and decorates the Bible and puts a mansard roof on it and a
lightning-rod and all the other modern improvements; a little book which
for the present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friendly
to it, and within half a century will hitch it in the rear, and
thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming great march
of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of the planet.

Perhaps I am putting the tandem arrangement too far away; perhaps five
years might be nearer the mark than fifty; for a Viennese lady told me
last night that in the Christian Science Mosque in Boston she noticed
some things which seem to me to promise a shortening of the interval; on
one side there was a display of texts from the New Testament, signed with
the Saviour's initials, 'J.C.;' and on the opposite side a display of
texts from the 'little book' signed--with the author's mere initials?
No--signed with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy's name in full. Perhaps the
Angel of the Apocalypse likes this kind of piracy. I made this remark
lightly to a Christian Scientist this morning, but he did not receive it
lightly, but said it was jesting upon holy things; he said there was no
piracy, for the angel did not compose the book, he only brought it--'God
composed it.' I could have retorted that it was a case of piracy just
the same; that the displayed texts should be signed with the Author's
initials, and that to sign them with the translator's train of names was
another case of 'jesting upon holy things.' However, I did not say these
things, for this Scientist was a large person, and although by his own
doctrine we have no substance, but are fictions and unrealities, I knew
he could hit me an imaginary blow which would furnish me an imaginary
pain which could last me a week. The lady said that in that Mosque there
were two pulpits; in one of them was a man with the Former Bible, in the
other a woman with Mrs. Eddy's apocalyptic Annex; and from these books
the man and the woman were reading verse and verse about:

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

Are these things picturesque? The Viennese lady told me that in a chapel
of the Mosque there was a picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before
it burns a never-extinguished light. Is that picturesque? How long do
you think it will be before the Christian Scientist will be worshipping
that image and praying to it? How long do you think it will be before it
is claimed that Mrs. Eddy is a Redeemer, a Christ, or Christ's equal?
Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as 'Our Mother.'
How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the Throne
beside the Virgin--and later a step higher? First, Mary the Virgin and
Mary the Matron; later, with a change of Precedence, Mary the Matron and
Mary the Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his
brushes; the new Renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in
altar-canvases--a thousand times as much as the Popes and their Church
ever spent on the Old Masters; for their riches were as poverty as
compared with what is going to pour into the treasure-chest of the
Christian-Scientist Papacy by-and-by, let us not doubt it. We will
examine the financial outlook presently and see what it promises. A
favourite subject of the new Old Master will be the first verse of the
twelfth chapter of Revelation--a verse which Mrs. Eddy says (in her Annex
to the Scriptures) has 'one distinctive feature which has special
reference to the present age'--and to her, as is rather pointedly
indicated:

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

The woman clothed with the sun will be a portrait of Mrs. Eddy.

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

If this is a wild dream it will not be easy to prove it is so just yet, I
think. There seems argument that it may come true. The
Christian-Science 'boom' is not yet five years old; yet already it has
500 churches and 1,000,000 members in America.

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

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

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

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

A new movement equipped with some of these endowments--like spiritualism,
for instance--may count upon a considerable success; a new movement
equipped with the bulk of them--like Mohammedanism, for instance--may
count upon a widely extended conquest. Mormonism had all the requisites
but one--it had nothing new and nothing valuable to bait with; and,
besides, it appealed to the stupid and the ignorant only. Spiritualism
lacked the important detail of concentration of money and authority in
the hands of an irresponsible clique.

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

To whom does Bellamy's 'Nationalism' appeal? Necessarily to the few:
people who read and dream, and are compassionate, and troubled for the
poor and the hard-driven. To whom does Spiritualism appeal? Necessarily
to the few; its 'boom' has lasted for half a century and I believe it
claims short of four millions of adherents in America. Who are attracted
by Swedenborgianism and some of the other fine and delicate 'isms?' The
few again: Educated people, sensitively organised, with superior mental
endowments, who seek lofty planes of thought and find their contentment
there. And who are attracted by Christian Science? There is no limit;
its field is horizonless; its appeal is as universal as is the appeal of
Christianity itself. It appeals to the rich, the poor, the high, the
low, the cultured, the ignorant, the gifted, the stupid, the modest, the
vain, the wise, the silly, the soldier, the civilian, the hero, the
coward, the idler, the worker, the godly, the godless, the freeman, the
slave, the adult, the child; they who are ailing, they who have friends
that are ailing. To mass it in a phrase, its clientele is the Human
Race? Will it march? I think so.

VII

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

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

At present I wish to ask you to examine some of the Scientist's
performances, as registered in his magazine, 'The Christian Science
Journal'--October number, 1898. First, a Baptist clergyman gives us this
true picture of 'the average orthodox Christian'--and he could have added
that it is a true picture of the average (civilised) human being:

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

Then he gives us this contrast:

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

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

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

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

But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have
been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he
watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and
compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human
invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing
imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against subsequent
applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, 'I am
well! I am sound!--sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound,
perfectly well! I have no pain; there's no such thing as pain! I have no
disease; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind; all
is Mind, All-Good, Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a series,
ante and pass the buck!'

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

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

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

This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has not gone over to the
new sect. He was 'almost blind and deaf.' He was treated by the C.S.
method, and 'when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually.' Saw
spiritually. It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable, but this C.S. magazine is
poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.

The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims:

Indigestion,

Rheumatism,

Catarrh,

Chalky deposits in

Shoulder joints,

Arm joints,

Hand joints,

Atrophy of the muscles of

Arms,

Shoulders,

Stiffness of all those joints,

Insomnia,

Excruciating pains most of the time.

These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but 'I never realised any physical relief from that source.'
After thirty years of torture he went to a Christian Scientist and took
an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later he 'began to
eat like a well man.' Then 'the claims vanished--some at once, others
more gradually;' finally, 'they have almost entirely disappeared.' And--
a thing which is of still greater value--he is now 'contented and happy.'
That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist-Church
specialty. With thirty-one years' effort the Methodist Church had not
succeeded in furnishing it to this harassed soldier.

And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims,
declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the
praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is
cured; and St. Vitus's dance made a pastime. And now and then an
interesting new addition to the Science slang appears on the page. We
have 'demonstrations over' chilblains and such things. It seems to be a
curtailed way of saying 'demonstrations of the power of Christian-Science
Truth over the fiction which masquerades under the name of Chilblains.'
The children as well as the adults, share in the blessings of the
Science. 'Through the study of the "little book" they are learning how
to be healthful, peaceful, and wise.' Sometimes they are cured of their
little claims by the professional healer, and sometimes more advanced
children say over the formula and cure themselves.

A little Far-Western girl of nine, equipped with an adult vocabulary,
states her age and says, 'I thought I would write a demonstration to
you.' She had a claim derived from getting flung over a pony's head and
landed on a rock-pile. She saved herself from disaster by remember to
say 'God is All' while she was in the air. I couldn't have done it. I
shouldn't have even thought of it. I should have been too excited.
Nothing but Christian Science could have enabled that child to do that
calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came
down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it; but the
intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim resulting
was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and shut. At
school 'it hurt pretty bad--that is, it seemed to.' So 'I was excused,
and went down in the basement and said, "Now I am depending on mamma
instead of God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma."' No doubt
this would have answered; but, to make sure, she added Mrs. Eddy to the
team and recited 'the Scientific Statement of Being,' which is one of the
principal incantations, I judge. Then 'I felt my eye opening.' Why, it
would have opened an oyster. I think it is one of the touchingest things
in child-history, that pious little rat down cellar pumping away at the
Scientific Statement of Being.

There is a page about another good child--little Gordon. Little Gordon
'came into the world without the assistance of surgery or anaesthetics.'
He was a 'demonstration.' A painless one; therefore his coming evoked
'joy and thankfulness to God and the Discoverer of Christian Science.'
It is a noticeable feature of this literature--the so frequent linking
together of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles.
When little Gordon was two years old, 'he was playing horse on the bed,
where I had left my "little book." I noticed him stop in his play, take
the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about
for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there.'
This pious act filled the mother 'with such a train of thought as I had
never experienced before. I thought of the sweet mother of long ago who
kept things in her heart,' etc. It is a bold comparison; however,
unconscious profanations are about as common in the mouths of the lay
membership of the new Church as are frank and open ones in the mouths of
its consecrated chiefs.

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

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

There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by an
accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of the
other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered any
real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon. I can believe this,
because my own case was somewhat similar, as per my former article.

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

There is a plenty of other testimonies in the magazine, but these quoted
samples will answer. They show the kind of trade the Science is driving.
Now we come back to the question; Does it kill a patient here and there
and now and then? We must concede it. Does it compensate for this? I
am persuaded that it can make a plausible showing in that direction. For
instance: when it lays its hands upon a soldier who has suffered thirty
years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body and mind, what is
the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think: that it has restored
to life a subject who had essentially died ten deaths a year for thirty
years, and each of them a long and painful one. But for its interference
that man would have essentially died thirty times more, in the three
years which have since elapsed. There are thousand of young people in
the land who are now ready to enter upon a life-long death similar to
that man's. Every time the Science captures one of these and secures to
him life-long immunity from imagination-manufactured disease, it may
plausibly claim that in his person it has saved 300 lives. Meantime it
will kill a man every now and then; but no matter, it will still be ahead
on the credit side.

VIII

'We consciously declare that "Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures," was foretold as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in
Revelation x. She is the "mighty angel," or God's highest thought
to this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the
Bible in the "little book open" (verse 2). Thus we prove that
Christian Science is the second coming of Christ--Truth--Spirit.'--
Lecture by Dr. George Tomkins, D.D., C.S.

There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the
divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the
present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she
has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following
as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshipped, and
we must expect this feeling to spread territorially, and also to deepen
in intensity [1].

Particularly after her death; for then, as anyone can foresee,
Eddy-worship will be taught in the Sunday-schools and pulpits of the
cult. Already whatever she puts her trade-mark on, thought it be only a
memorial spoon, is holy and is eagerly and passionately and gratefully
bought by the disciple, and becomes a fetish in his house. I say bought,
for the Boston Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; everything it
has for sale. And the terms are cash; and not cash only but cash in
advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual
Dollar, but a real one. From end to end of the Christian-Science
literature not a single (material) thing in the world is conceded to be
real, except the Dollar. But all through and through its advertisements
that reality is eagerly and persistently recognised. The hunger of the
Trust for the Dollar, its adoration of the Dollar, its lust after the
Dollar, its ecstasy in the mere thought of the Dollar--there has been
nothing like it in the world in any age or country, nothing so coarse,
nothing so lubricous, nothing so bestial, except a French novel's
attitude towards adultery.

The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways; the Christian-Science
Mother-Church and Bargain-Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of
spiritual wares to the faithful, always at extravagant prices, and always
on the one condition--cash, cash in advance. The Angel of the Apocalypse
could not go there and get a copy of his own pirated book on credit.
Many, many precious Christian-Science things are to be had there--for
cash: Bible Lessons; Church Manual; C.S. Hymnal; History of the building
of the Mother-Church; lot of Sermons; Communion Hymn, 'Saw Ye My
Saviour,' by Mrs. Eddy, half a dollar a copy, 'words used by special
permission of Mrs. Eddy.' Also we have Mrs. Eddy's and the Angel's
little Bible-Annex in eight styles of binding at eight kinds of war-
prices: among these a sweet thing in 'levant, divinity circuit, leather
lined to edge, round corners, gold edge, silk sewed, each, prepaid, $6,'
and if you take a million you get them a shilling cheaper--that is to
say, 'prepaid, $5.75.' Also we have Mrs. Eddy's 'Miscellaneous
Writings,' at noble big prices, the divinity-circuit style heading the
extortions, shilling discount where you take an edition. Next comes
'Christ and Christmas,' by the fertile Mrs. eddy--a poem--I would God I
could see it--price $3, cash in advance. Then follow five more books by
Mrs. Eddy at highwaymen's rates, as usual, some of them in 'leatherette
covers,' some of them in 'pebbled cloth,' with divinity circuit,
compensation balance, twin screw, and the other modern improvements: and
at the same bargain counter can be had the 'Christian Science Journal.'
I wish it were in refined taste to apply a rudely and ruggedly
descriptive epithet to that literary slush-bucket, so as to give one an
accurate idea of what it is like. I am moved to do it, but I must not:
it is better to be refined than accurate when one is talking about a
production like that.

Christian-Science literary oleomargarine is a monopoly of the Mother
Church Headquarters Factory in Boston; none genuine without the
trade-mark of the Trust. You must apply there, and not elsewhere; and
you pay your money before you get your soap-fat.

The Trust has still other sources of income. Mrs. Eddy is president (and
perhaps proprietor?) of the Trust's Metaphysical College in Boston, where
the student who has practised C.S. healing during three years the best
he knew how perfects himself in the game by a two weeks' course, and pays
one hundred dollars for it! And I have a case among my statistics where
the student had a three weeks' course and paid three hundred for it.

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

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

No member, young or old, of a Christian-Scientist church can retain that
membership unless he pay 'capitation tax' to the Boston Trust every year.
That means an income for the Trust--in the near future--of millions more
per year.

It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in 1910 there will be
10,000,000 Christian Scientists, and 3,000,000 in Great Britain; that
these figures will be trebled by 1920; that in America in 1910 the
Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1920 politically
formidable--to remain that, permanently. And I think it a reasonable
guess that the Trust (which is already in our day pretty brusque in its
ways) will then be the most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical
politico-religious master that has dominated a people since the palmy
days of the Inquisition. And a stronger master than the strongest of
bygone times, because this one will have a financial strength not dreamed
of by any predecessor; as effective a concentration of irresponsible
power as any predecessor had; in the railway, the telegraph, and the
subsidised newspaper, better facilities for watching and managing his
empire than any predecessor has had; and after a generation or two he
will probably divide Christendom with the Catholic Church.

The Roman Church has a perfect organisation, and it has an effective
centralisation of power--but not of its cash. Its multitude of Bishops
are rich, but their riches remain in large measure in their own hands.
They collect from 200,000,000 of people, but they keep the bulk of the
result at home. The Boston Pope of by-and-by will draw his dollar-a-head
capitation-tax from 300,000,000 of the human race, and the Annex and the
rest of his book-shop will fetch in double as much more; and his
Metaphysical Colleges, the annual pilgrimage to Mrs. Eddy's tomb, from
all over the world--admission, the Christian-Science Dollar (payable in
advance)--purchases of consecrated glass beads, candles, memorial spoons,
aureoled chromo-portraits and bogus autographs of Mrs. Eddy, cash
offerings at her shrine--no crutches of cured cripples received, and no
imitations of miraculously restored broken legs and necks allowed to be
hung up except when made out of the Holy Metal and proved by fire-assay;
cash for miracles worked at the tomb: these money-sources, with a
thousand to be yet invented and ambushed upon the devotee, will bring the
annual increment well up above a billion. And nobody but the Trust will
have the handling of it. No Bishops appointed unless they agree to hand
in 90 per cent. of the catch. In that day the Trust will monopolise the
manufacture and sale of the Old and New Testaments as well as the Annex,
and raise their price to Annex rates, and compel the devotee to buy (for
even to-day a healer has to have the Annex and the Scriptures or he is
not allowed to work the game), and that will bring several hundred
million dollars more. In those days the Trust will have an income
approaching $5,000,000 a day, and no expenses to be taken out of it; no
taxes to pay, and no charities to support. That last detail should not
be lightly passed over by the read; it is well entitled to attention.

No charities to support. No, nor even to contribute to. One searches in
vain the Trust's advertisements and the utterances of its pulpit for any
suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged
prisoners, hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions,
foreign missions, libraries, old people's homes, or any other object that
appeals to a human being's purse through his heart.[2]

I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and otherwise, and
have not yet got upon the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent
upon any worthy object. Nothing makes a Scientist so uncomfortable as to
ask him if he knows of a case where Christian Science has spent money on
a benevolence, either among its own adherents or elsewhere. He is
obliged to say no. And then one discovers that the person questioned has
been asked the question many times before, and that it is getting to be a
sore subject with him. Why a sore subject? Because he has written his
chiefs and asked with high confidence for an answer that will confound
these questioners--and the chiefs did not reply. He has written again--
and then again--not with confidence, but humbly, now, and has begged for
defensive ammunition in the voice of supplication. A reply does at last
come--to this effect: 'We must have faith in Our Mother, and rest content
in the conviction that whatever She[3] does with the money it is in
accordance with orders from Heaven, for She does no act of any kind
without first "demonstrating over" it.'

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

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

Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands business. The Trust does
not give itself away. It defeats all the attempts of us impertinents to
get at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our diligence, we have
not been able to get it to confess what it does with the money. It does
not even let its own disciples find out. All it says is, that the matter
has been 'demonstrated over.' Now and then a lay Scientist says, with a
grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously rich, but he stops
there; as to whether any of the money goes to other charities or not, he
is obliged to admit that he does not know. However, the Trust is
composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture that if it
had a charity on its list which it did not need to blush for, we should
soon hear of it.

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

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

I have no reverence for Mrs. Eddy and the rest of the Trust--if there is
a rest--but I am not lacking in reverence for the sincerities of the lay
membership of the new Church. There is every evidence that the lay
members are entirely sincere in their faith, and I think sincerity is
always entitled to honour and respect, let the inspiration of the
sincerity be what it may. Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion
further than any other missionary except fire and sword, and I believe
that the new religion will conquer the half of Christendom in a hundred
years. I am not intending this as a compliment to the human race, I am
merely stating an opinion. And yet I think that perhaps it is a
compliment to the race. I keep in mind that saying of an orthodox
preacher--quoted further back. He conceded that this new Christianity
frees its possessor's life from frets, fears, vexations, bitterness, and
all sorts of imagination-propagated maladies and pains, and fills his
world with sunshine and his heart with gladness. If Christian Science,
with this stupendous equipment--and final salvation added--cannot win
half the Christian globe, I must be badly mistaken in the make-up of the
human race.

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

IX

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

In the case of the cure-engine it is a distinct advantage to clothe the
engineer in religious overalls and give him a pious name. It greatly
enlarges the business, and does no one any harm.

The Christian-Scientist engineer drives exactly the same trade as the
other engineers, yet he out-prospers the whole of them put together. Is
it because he has captured the takingest name? I think that that is only
a small part of it. I think that the secret of his high prosperity lies
elsewhere:

The Christian Scientist has organised the business. Now that was
certainly a gigantic idea. There is more intellect in it than would be
needed in the invention of a couple of millions of Eddy Science-and-
Health Bible Annexes. Electricity, in limitless volume, has existed in
the air and the rocks and the earth and everywhere since time began--and
was going to waste all the while. In our time we have organised that
scattered and wandering force and set it to work, and backed the business
with capital, and concentrated it in few and competent hands, and the
results are as we see.

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

Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is going to extend its
commerce wide in the earth. I think that if the business were conducted
in the loose and disconnected fashion customary with such things, it
would achieve but little more than the modest prosperity usually secured
by unorganised great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe that so
long as this one remains compactly organised and closely concentrated in
a Trust, the spread of its dominion will continue.

VIENNA: May 1, 1899.

[1] After raising a dead child to life, the disciple who did it writes an
account of her performance, to Mrs. Eddy, and closes it thus: 'My prayer
daily is to be more spiritual, that I may do more as you would have me
do... and may we all love you more and so live it that the world may
know that the Christ is come.'--Printed in the Concord, N.H.,
Independent Statesman, March 9, 1899. If this is no worship, it is a
good imitation of it.

[2] In the past two years the membership of the Established Church of
England have given voluntary contributions amounting to $73,000,000 to
the Church's benevolent enterprises. Churches that give have nothing to
hide.

[3] I may be introducing the capital S a little early--still it is on its
way.

-THE END-
Mark Twain's short story: Christian Science and the book of Mrs. Eddy

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