Christian science, or, The false Christ of 1866

Front matter

Chap. Copyright No

Shell!

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Preface

In the Presbyterian Quarterly of July and October, 1898, and April, 1899, I published a series of papers on Christian Science, covering most of the points discussed in the following pages. The favorable reception accorded to these papers, together with the advice of many friends, encouraged me to rearrange and revise them for publication in permanent form. In doing this, I have added such matter as was necessary to give the reader a complete view of the doctrinal and other contents of the system.

A special reason for a complete refutation of the errors of Christian Science lies in the incoherent and unattractive style of Mrs. Eddy's works. The cultivated reader is apt to turn away from them in sheer weariness and disgust, unless actuated by some specially strong motive in his efforts to wade through her jumbled arguments. Few books have ever been issued from the press that are so hard to comprehend in their statements, so puzzling in their inconsistencies, so illogical in their style, so botched in literary dress, and so brain-addling in their general contents, as are Science and Health and Unity of Good, Mrs. Eddy's principal works. Most of those who have, to

6 Preface.

my knowledge, attempted to read the former have given up the task in despair, bewildered and confused by the author's disconnected style and misty speculations. Ministers are sorely tempted to toss the book aside as being unworthy the attention of intelligent people, and as likely to exert small influence over the public mind. And yet, strange as it may seem, this book, Science and Health, is the chief oracle of God in the estimation of a quarter of a million of "Scientists," and is rushing through multiplied editions.

I have written for the pew, rather than for the pulpit. While wishing to give to busy pastors a satisfactory account of this dangerous enemy to revealed truth, I have desired especially to put the matter here given in such shape as to make it readily accessible to the man of business, the house-keeper, and even the school-girl, as well as to the whole multitude who have little taste for theological discussions. Avoiding, as far as possible, all technical terms, and seeking to present the subject in popular style, I have, in my discussion of the doctrinal bearings of the new gospel of healing, endeavored to let the Scriptures speak for themselves, rather than attempt argument on rational and philosophical grounds. I trust that I have succeeded in showing that the system is anti-scriptural in every particular.

Some topics, related to the philosophy of Christian Science, which have been touched upon incidentally in this discussion, deserve much fuller treatment just

Preface. 7

at this time, because of their frequent presentation in popular literature. Pantheism, always an intoxicating error, has been widely disseminated in our day. It was the most dangerous element in the religious philosophy of Emerson, and, largely popularized by his essays, now saturates very much of what is supposed to be evangelical preaching. The preexistence of the human soul, reincarnation, and the final absorption of the human individuality into the Divine essence, are being affirmed, both directly and indirectly, in current poetry and fiction. I trust that some abler pen than mine will give to the church and to the world a refutation of this congeries of errors, which constitutes the back-bone and the digestive system, both of Christian Science and Theosophy.

I would be ungrateful did I not acknowledge my indebtedness to many friends for timely aid and cheering words of encouragement while I was investigating the subject of Christian Science. Their appreciation and approval have inspired me to continue my work in the hope of serving the cause of truth. To Rev. Dr. George Summey, of the Southwestern Presbyterian University, to Mrs. L. J. Moore, of Moulton, Texas, and to Miss Mary L. Atherton, of Boston, I am specially indebted for Christian Science literature, by means of which I have been rendered independent of other writers in my search into the mysteries of the new religion, and enabled to draw my information from original sources. To Rev. G. B.

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Strickler, D. D., of Union Seminary, I am under lasting obligations for his kindness in examining the MS. of this volume. His warm approval encouraged me to write, and now encourages me to publish, this defense of the faith.

The volume of Rev. J. M. Buckley, D. D., on Faith Healing, Christian Science and Kindred Phenomena is the chief source from which I have drawn my material in discussing the mental healing features of the new gospel, and I count myself very much his debtor. Had he undertaken to present a refutation of Mrs. Eddy's theological vagaries as complete and overwhelming as is his refutation of her mental healing philosophy, my task would have been rendered superfluous. None of the treatises on the subject of Mrs. Eddy's errors have, so far as I am aware, discussed, save in a very fragmentary fashion, her radical departures from evangelical truth, except the little volume of Mr. J. H. Bates on Christian Science and Its Problems. This, while it is an admirable discussion of the subject in some of its important bearings, is fatally vitiated by its evolutionary philosophy, by its tacit concessions to the destructive criticism now so popular in some quarters, and, most of all, by its practical abandonment of fundamental truths, such as the doctrines of salvation by grace, the vicarious nature of the atonement, and the necessity of regeneration by the Spirit of God.

In all my quotations from authorities, I have been

Preface. 9

careful to give the author's ipsissima verba. References have been verified and pains taken to avoid even such inadvertent alterations as are liable to occur in copying. I have also corrected all errors discovered in the papers published in the Presbyterian Quarterly. One of these was the statement that, according to Mrs. Eddy, Adam was the man Jesus in a previous incarnation. Further study of her rather Delphic oracle on that point convinces me that what she means to assert is, not that Jesus was Adam, but that he was, in his first incarnation, the first spiritual man, and the first Science healer. The statement in question occurs in one of Mrs. Eddy's tracts, and I have not found it repeated in any of her larger works.

I have been careful to give, in all my principal quotations from Science and Health, the wording of the 154th edition of that work. It is possible that some of the choice phrases copied from an older edition, which was my authority for the citations given in my first and second Review papers, may be found altered or missing in the later editions of the book. It is one among many peculiarities of Mrs. Eddy's distinctively feminine inspiration that it always leaves her the womanly prerogative of changing her mind. Comparing the verbiage of the 154th edition with that of the citations referred to, I find that her later inspiration has made her introduce sundry mathematical changes in the way of additions and subtractions, some rhetorical ones in the shape of paraphrases, and io Preface.

some geographical ones in transposing numerous passages backward or forward to other parts of her book, as suited her sacred whim. These changes made it impossible, in a few instances, to find in the later edition the words quoted from the former. None of the changes which Mrs. Eddy has made in the expression of her doctrines, however, have made any change in the doctrines themselves, which are always more or less indefinite in statement, and always pantheistic in proportion to their clearness. Nor have Mrs. Eddy's frequent revisions added to the literary attractiveness of her great work. They have only served to illustrate the childish ignorance, the feeble reason, and the total lack of literary skill and acumen, which distinguish her above all the popular authors of the day.

This volume was undertaken with a sincere conviction that such an exhibition of the anti-Christian spirit and unscriptural doctrines of Christian Science was needed just at this time, and is now sent forth with an earnest prayer that God may use it for the furtherance of his gospel.

The Manse, Graham, N. C.

Contents

Page.

Introductory — Discussion Necessary, ... 13

PART I. General View

I. A New Gospel and a Growing Church. . 31

II. A Bad Beginning, 42

III. A Miraculous Book, 48

IV. A New Mariolatry, 59

V. Obstacles Removed — The Bible Set Aside

and Orthodoxy Repudiated, . . 73

PART II. Christian Science as a System of Mental Healing

VI. A Foolish Philosophy and its Absurd Consequences, 85

VII. Christian Science and Faith Healing, . 102

VIII. Christian Science vs. Mental Healing by

the Medical Faculty, . . . . 114

IX. Christian Science and Hypnotism, . . 126

T2 Contents.

Page.

X. The Miracles of Christian Science, . . 139

XL Christian Science Practice, 153

XII. Christian Science Failures, ... 163

XIII. The Influence of the Body on the Mind, . 169

PART III. The Doctrinal Contents of Christian Science

XIV. An Old Theology in New Shape, . . 1S1

XV. The Gospel of No Gospel, .... 212

XVI. Christian Science, Theosophy and Gnosticism, 245

XVII. Christian Science Worship and Sacraments, 267

XVIII. Mrs. Eddy as an Expositor, . . . 2S6

XIX. Summary and Conclusion, .... 303

Christian Science.

INTRODUCTORY.— DISCUSSION NECESSARY.

That a pseudo-science and a false Christianity, such as those combined in the system exposed in this volume, should gain large credence among intelligent people in this enlightened age, may seem to many a thing incredible. But we cannot forget that ours has been an age of successful imposture, and of contagious delusions. The Millerite craze carried away fifty thousand in its day, and even when the predictions of Miller as to the advent of Christ in 1843 were disappointed — when thousands who had assembled on the hill-tops to meet their Lord as he came, found themselves compelled to doff their ascension robes and return to their homes sadder and wiser men — not even then did the movement cease; it survives to-day in the Seventh Day Adventist Church — a vigorous, aggressive and growing body. That Joseph Smith plagiarized the Book of Mormon from the unpublished manuscript of Rev. Solomon Spaulding, is well known to every well-informed person outside the ranks of Mormonism ; and yet that apostate church, thriving on immorality and presenting a bastard Christianity — a church heathenish both in its doctrines and in its practices — now numbers three hundred thousand adherents. It controls the political destinies of three States, is planting its colonies, both for political and religious ends, wherever the craft of its leaders sees a favorable opening, and is pushing its proselyting missions to the remotest bounds of Christendom. "It is growing in the full light of our civilization, thrusting itself into positions of prominence, claiming recognition in our halls of national legislation, and staking its future, with bold confidence and with good reason, on the limitless credulity of nineteenth century humanity/' x In a later decade the Fox sisters, having discovered that by means of a simple trick they could produce certain rappings, which were accounted mysterious by their mother and neighbors, were encouraged to elaborate a system of deception from which sprung at last the whole fabric of Spiritualism. In 1888 one of the sisters appeared before a New York audience, confessed the imposture, and gave to all who were present a lucid and perfectly satisfactory explanation of the method by which these "spirit-rappings" were produced; but the exposure came too late. Those who had been duped refused to be undeceived, and we are now told that there are a million and a half of Spiritualists in the United States. The still more recent impostures practiced by Madame Blavatsky are notorious; her own confessions are in evidence ; and yet the societv of which she became the founder, and which began with only fifteen members, now has its hundreds' of branches scattered through Christian and through heathen lands, and counts its members by thousands Far beyond the circle of its immediate influence it is now seeking, through the writings of such gifted visionaries as Marie Corelli and others, to color the literature and shape the thought of this generation.

1 Rev. R. C. Reed, D. D., in Presbyterian Quarterly.

But more shameless than any of these impositions is that practiced by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, who claims that in 1866 she receded a final revelation from God, to which, after long delay and deep thought — feeling, we presume, that she had both parental and Adamic privileges in being permitted to name the thing — she gave the title of " Christian Science." This new "Science" has in it elements of danger even more pronounced than any of the other impostures mentioned.

It was my intention, when I began to write the papers contained in this volume, to prepare one on "Christian Science" in its relation to the laws of our land, and its status as determined by our courts. Along with Mormonism and certain faith-healing movements, it enjoys the coveted distinction of being liable to be arraigned at any time before our courts in the persons of its followers for violation of the laws of our land. Every State has its health laws, and no "Christian Scientist," unless for reasons of temporary expediency, counts himself under obligation to observe these laws of the Commonwealth in which he lives. The chief purpose of the organization is to heal the sick ; and when Judge Pennypacker, of Philadelphia, refused to grant a charter to a "Christian Scientist" Church, that it might be able to hold its property, he based his decision upon the act of the Pennsylvania Legislature prescribing the qualifications of medical practitioners, saying that the granting of a charter would be an infringement of the provisions of that act. The Supreme Court of Rhode Island, following decisions rendered by other courts, decided that "Christian Scientists" were not medical practitioners in the legal sense of the word, and that persons who neglect to send for physicians are liable, in case of the patient's death, to the penalty prescribed by the law for neglect, no matter how many "Christian Scientists" have been summoned. The issue is thus being squarely drawn. Cases like that of Mrs. Baird, a "Science" healer arrested in Kansas City for failure to report a case of malignant diphtheria which she had treated, are multiplying in every direction. Referring to a "Christian Science" family which refused to comply with the city ordinance requiring houses to be placarded in which there are malignant and contagious diseases, the Kansas City Star of January 5, 1897, observed :

The issue to be decided is whether the ordinances of the city are to prevail in such cases or the peculiar notions of the people who regard the ordinances as an infringement upon their religious liberty. While the institutions of this Republic vouchsafe, in general terms, the privilege to all of worshipping God according to the dictates of their own consciences, there are religions which would not be tolerated in this country. The pagan, who believes with his whole soul in the righteousness and efficacy of human sacrifices, would not be permitted to pursue his barbarous and bloody rites under the American scheme, and the government has declared that polygamy shall not be practiced and perpetuated, even though the followers of Brigham Young may gauge their love for God by the number of their wives.

No religious, idea or belief can or will be countenanced in this country which conflicts with the authority of the State or sets out to defy its laws. Our system of government, in all of its details, allows the largest measure of liberty to the citizen which is consistent with the safety of his neighbor, but beyond that it cannot go. While the right of Christian Scientists to withhold medical treatment from members of their own faith may be open to debate, there can be no reasonable difference of opinion as to their responsibility to those regulations which provide in wisdom for the preservation of the public health and the prevention of pestilence.

Stephens, in his Digest of the Criminal Law, declares that "a person is deemed to have committed homicide, although his act is not the sole cause of death, ... if by any act he hastens the death of a person suffering from any disease or injury which, apart from such act, would have caused death." It was, doubtless, under this law that the coroner's jury in London held Mrs. Athalie Mills and Miss Kate Lyons, two "Scientist" healers, for manslaughter, because of the death, under their treatment, of Harold Frederick, the well-known novelist and newspaper correspondent. According to the testimony, Mr. Frederick died from a malady which would not have resulted seriously if he had been given proper medical attention. Referring to this case, the editor of Lazv Notes remarks :

Christian Scientists, if their methods are interfered with in this country, will doubtless urge that they are not amenable for their acts, because they are merely engaged in a proper exercise of their religious liberty; but we advise them not to lay this flattering unction to their souls. The Supreme Court of the United States has passed upon the identical question in determining the alleged rights of Mormons to practice polygamy in accordance with the tenets of their religion. . . Construing the first amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court has declared that it was intended to allow every one to . . . exhibit his sentiments in such forms of worship as he may think proper, "not injurious to others." But the court has emphatically declared : "With man's relations to his Maker, and the obligations he may think they impose, and the manner in which an expression shall be made by him of his belief on these subjects, no interference can be permitted, provided, always, the laws of society, designed to secure its peace and prosperity, and the morals of its people, are not interfered with. However free the exercise of religion may be, it must be subordinate to i8 Christian Science.

the criminal laws of the country passed with reference to actions regarded by general consent as properly the subjects of punitive legislation." In view of these expressions we fail to see how Christian Scientists can hope for any immunity from punishment because of the fact that their so-called scientific operations are sanctioned by and constitute a part of their religion.

These opinions are, I conceive, unquestionably correct. But there is need of active and determined effort everywhere on the part of those who are charged with the preservation of the public health to see that the law is executed. When Mrs. Baird was arrested it was stated in the press dispatches that fifteen hundred Christian Scientists in Kansas City would sustain her. When grown strong, this body of deluded people may plunge whole communities into plagues of cholera, of yellow fever, of diphtheria, small-pox, or any other malignant contagion. ^ But this is the least of the evils in the practice of Christian Science. It has in it untold possibilities of mischief, morally, socially, and religiously. Morallv, it cannot hope to restrain men from sin by telling them they are gods. Socially, it must inevitably produce domestic alienation, divorce and immorality, wherever the contagion of its creed becomes epidemic! Religiously, it is animated by the bitterest hatred toward the whole system of revealed truth, and the whole fabric of Evangelical Christianity.

And yet its first introduction into any community is as the appearance of an angel of light. It comes as a new advent of Christ, the "Sun of Righteousness with healing in his wings." It claims to be primitive Christianity in all and more than its original purity and power,— the true doctrine, purified by revelations fresh from heaven. It is full of love. It opposes no church, suggests no separation from orthodox bodies. It appeals blandly to the Scriptures to substantiate both its doctrines and its claims. But it bears in its right hand the pruning shears of a Biblical criticism which surpasses the pen-knife methods of all other destructive critics in its ability to reduce the Holy Book to a contemptible fragment of doubtful meaning, while in its left hand it bears the terminology, the cultus and the doctrines of an anti-Christian creed, which strikes viciously at every distinctive Christian doctrine, and makes of the suffering Divine Christ the amiable, but mortal, victim of hypnotic illusions.

This new enemy of the Church of Christ must be met and conquered. This is no time for prophesying smooth things, and for speaking pleasantly of "our Scientist friends," as if we considered them all fellow- Christians, entitled to our confidence, our goodwill, and our Godspeed. Many of them are not Christians ; and we should, if possible, open their eyes to the dreadful delusion into which they have fallen, and show them the heathenish origin and the anti-Christian tendency of the doctrines which they have embraced. Away with such sentimental charity as that of the New England pastor who lectured to his congregation on the "Beauties of Christian Science !" As well might he have praised the beauties of Buddhism. There is in this false Christ, who came in 1866, not in the clouds, but out of the befogged brain of a half-crazy woman, no beauty that we should admire him; nor does any voice from heaven say, "Hear ye him." Though men may say, "Lo ! here !" or "Lo! there!" we will not heed them. We still wait for the sign of our Lord's coming, and we will not be disappointed.

Says the Rev. P. P. Flournoy, D. D., the accomplished author of The Search-Light of St. HippolytiiS; in a letter to the writer, "What I have heard . . . has convinced me that this heresy is a menace, especially to bright and earnest Christian women, such as scarcely any other has ever been. . . I think that you could perform a great service for Christ our Lord and for some of the choicest of his flock by publishing your proposed book." This was encouraging, but it was not echoed on every hand. Many will agree with the venerable ex-professor of one of our Seminaries, who wrote to the son of his old friend, "Christian Science is not founded on reason, and cannot be met by reason/' With all deference to my revered and learned friend, I must beg to dissent from his second proposition, though fully agreeing with his first. It is not founded on reason, and therefore it can be met by reason. If it were founded on reason, it would be folly to assail it. But inasmuch as it is founded on fallacious reasoning rather than on true reason, this fact encourages me to attempt its refutation. I have confidence in the reason of the average man or woman. I do not believe it will ever be useless to show the fallacies of false systems. The light is its own evidence, even though it shine in the darkness and the darkness comprehend it not. Some will come to the light, that their "deeds may be manifest that they are wrought in God." Reason can confound unreason. Facts which do prove one doctrine will be stronger to convince rational minds than facts which are only supposed to prove another, and which are shown to be inconclusive. Since, then, a new assault is now being made upon the "faith once delivered to the saints/'' and we are bidden to "contend earnestly" for our precious heritage, we should be at this time, as always, ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us. Falsely accused of mutilating the gospel, and charged with hypocrisy, we may at least show our good conscience by exhibiting the grounds upon which we reject and contemn this alleged revelation recommended to us by one whose claim to plenary inspiration is refuted by the ever-changing character of her oracles, which shift as we look upon them, like the phantasmagoria of dreams.

There is, in our time, especially in Christian churches, an intense opposition to controversy ; and I have been led to suspect that it is rather an opposition to polemics in defense of the faith than to those which assail the most venerable articles of our religion. It is not infrequently said that controversy is always hurtful. Those who take this ground forget the plainest lessons taught by the history of the church. Christianity was nurtured, not only by the fires of persecution, but by the heat of controversy. All that its first believers desired was a hearing, and they "declared the word with all boldness," alike in the audience of the people, and before the judgment seats of kings. Peter's sermon at Pentecost was controversial, and while it won a multitude of converts to the faith, it also threw down the gauntlet to priest and Pharisee, and helped him to a prison. A little later we see this bold defender of the faith facing the Sanhedrim, and taking advantage of a prisoner's opportunity of defense in order to urge the claims of Christ upon rulers and elders. The deacon Stephen declared the gospel to a howling mob, though he died a martyr for his pains. Paul, we read, "disputed in the synagogue'' at Athens with the Jews and devout persons, and when challenged by Epicureans and Stoics was ready to stand on Mars' Hill and defend the blessed gospel of the resurrection. We are told of at least one philosopher who was converted by that sermon, who afterwards, if Eusebius is correct, became pastor of the Athenian church.

Again, at Ephesus, Paul is found "disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus." Thus did this great apostle everywhere. Whether opposed by priest or philosopher, by Jew or Greek, whether arraigned before the Jerusalem Sanhedrim or Roman governors, he embraced every opportunity to defend the truth, and to urge .the claims of the gospel of redemption. He was but one of many ; and while his epistles have been said to bear, more than any other Scriptures, the marks of the many controversies in which their author was engaged, the epistles of Peter, of John, of James and of Jude, all show the same peculiarity. John is said to have written his story, the most precious of the gospel narratives, for the purpose 'of refuting the heresy of Cerinthus. His first epistle reveals the same object, and he rebukes another Gnostic sect in the second chapter of the Apocalypse. True gospel preaching, if I catch the meaning of these facts, ought to take" account of every form of error as it rises, and show its opposition to the truth as it is in Jesus. Thus only can we keep that which has been* committed to us, and prevent the "oppositions" of false systems from working serious injury to the church. When it comes to pass that the ministry cannot defend the truth and attack error in its strongholds without injuring the church, it will be high time for the ministry to have a new gospel to preach, or else for the church to have new men to preach the old gospel.

Not only did primitive Christianity gain its triumphs largely through controversy, but in every age evangelical truth has been the gainer by its fearless attacks upon error. If the life of Protestantism in Germany was saved by the swords of the Protestant princes during the thirty years' war, that life was born of gospel seed sown in the controversial sermons and anti-papal tracts of Luther and his coadjutors. The age of the Reformation w r as preeminently an age of polemic pamphlets and of public discussion. The confessions of the Reformed churches were forged in the fires of heated controversy. The proceedings of the Westminster Assembly may be described as a battle of giants day after day and month after month. Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Beza, Tyndale and Knox spent their lives in controversy.

Truth wins its victories in the light of day, w r hile error runs its errands in the dark. False systems thrive on the drowsy indifference, the somnolent peace, and the time-serving caution of those whom God has appointed guardians of His truth. Had those who knew the facts been able to meet Mormonism face to face in its early days, and show the evidence of Smith's fraud, that foul heresy would have been crippled, if not destroyed, for all time. While persecution popularizes, and the blood of martyrs may become the seed even of an apostate church, the public refutation of error drives it into hiding. Romanism has long ago learned to avoid discussion with Protestants, and with caution born of sad experience now adopts the easier arts of smiling peace and private deception. Mormon missionaries and Adventists forsake a neighborhood in which their tenets have been exposed and refuted. Spiritualism shuns the light of day, and Theosophy must needs depend upon the tricks of oriental jugglers and letters from Thibet. And what has been found to be true of other classes of errorists will be true also of Christian Scientists. They will not come out boldly into the light. They will not risk all upon the judgment of an enlightened people. Their protests against the replies which they themselves have challenged, their carefully indefinite references to certain cases of healing, their reiterated pleas for Christian charity, their loud professions of love for humanity, and their cant about religious freedom, all show their unwillingness to meet the issue squarely and fairly. Since the writer began to publish the results of his investigations into the origin and character of Mrs. Eddy's new gospel, he has received letters protesting against his "attacks" upon Christian Science, and pleading for the recognition of that church as a Christian organization, working for the good of humanity. He has also received sundry papers from anonymous sources, sent by pious Scientists for his enlightenment, but, greatly to his satisfaction, furnishing him with valuable weapons for his arsenal. The galled jade winces, and the scourge of small cords which we are able to draw from our unmutilated Bibles is found to have a longer reach and a sharper lash than the scourge of Science with which Mrs. Eddy proposes to whip us all out of the Temple of God.