The truth about Christian science; the founder and the faith

Front matter

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Preface

The author of this book is well aware that it falls among those "obnoxious books'* which the founder of Christian Science forbade her followers to read in her endeavor by her censorship to protect them from any influence or light coming from outside the closed circle of her own books and other approved writings. It is not therefore written primarily for Christian Scientists, but if any of them should look into it, it is not thought they will find just ground of ofiFense, however strong may be their dissent. It is difficult to be permanently oflFended with facts.

Every important statement in this book relating to the founder and faith of Christian Science is supported by quotations from her writings or is based upon trustworthy evidence. The most serious allegations pertaining to Mrs. Eddy are sustained by her own words found in her acknowledged writings, for in such matters she is always the most damaging witness against herself.

The author throughout this book has let Mrs. Eddy speak fairly for herself. Her teaching is entitled to a patient and even sympathetic hearing in its own behalf before any judgment is passed upon it. The author really had no particular prejudice against it when he began this investigation, and when asked by the publishers to write a book on it was even inclined to let Christian Science alone as a rather harmless vagary, and he formed his judgments of it as he proceeded with this study. It vi PREFACE

was close acquaintance with and insight into its real nature that led him to see that it is a graver error than he had supposed.

If anyone asks for the justification for another book on this subject, the author answers that he had doubts on this point himself until he began to look into its literature and then saw that there appears to be no book that covers the whole ground of the founder and the faith and brings its history up to the present time. This book not only endeavors to do this, but also as a distinctive feature seeks to see the elements of truth in Christian Science and recover them to their full use. It is a story that has often been told, but it will no doubt need to be told again and again and brought up to date and subjected to the criticism of new light.

J. H. S.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction 1

1. Truth and Error in Religion

Introduction

It is the purpose of the author of this book to ascertain and state, as accurately and impartially and fairly as he can, the facts as to the founder and the faith of Christian Science. While one cannot wholly escape from the limitations of his personal point of view and from the subjective coloring of his established convictions and unconscious preferences, yet objective truth should be his ideal, and this is the aim and effort of this study.

1. TRUTH AND ERROR IN RELIGION

Religion is our conscious relation to God. All human beings sustain vital unconscious relations to God, for in him we necessarily live and move and have our being, and we could no more escape from his presence and power than we could slip out of the grip of gravitation. But it is only as this relation emerges into the field of conscious life and becomes a matter of personal experience and choice and action that it becomes religion. This experience is one of the deepest and most universal and vital facts in our human world, as all history witnesses.

The truth in religion is open to us on the same terms as truth in other fields: intuition, perception, judgment, evidence, reasoning, and experience. God is nigh us, even in our heart. Agnosticism, that peremptorily shuts its gate against any knowledge of God, is irresistibly battered down by the reasonings of our minds and the urgencies of our hearts, and we know God as surely as the child knows its father, or as the eye sees the sun.

The truth contained in religion is the most vital in the world, the foundation and framework of all our knowledge and life. 'Tn the beginning God," is the sublime opening of the Bible, and it is the beginning of all our science and philosophy, religion and life. What we think about God is the bottom principle of all our thinking and shapes and colors our thoughts on every subject, as the center of a circle determines every point around its whole circumference. If we believe in no God, we have a world without a Cause, a universe without a system and center, a hopeless confusion and chaos, if not a wild dream of insanity as well as a colossal cruelty. Give us God, and the world falls into order and meaning and purpose around a central throne, and all things work together for good.

But everything depends on the kind of God we believe in. Any pantheistic God or impersonal principle or blind fate does not give us any light but only turns the light we have into a greater darkness. Our Christian faith believes in God our heavenly Father, and this fact is its Rock of ages and its glory. We are "'infants crying in the night," and our cry is answered by our Father who folds us in his everlasting arm, close to his loving heart. When we have faith in God as our Father we can calm our perplexed minds and soothe our troubled hearts and be still and know that he is God. This simple faith solves our problems, makes plain our path, and gives us strength and courage to resist our temptations and bear our burdens and win the battle of life.

Yet the field of religion, which yields the most blessed fruits, also abounds in the most poisonous weeds. Its very light may turn to darkness, and then ''how great is that darkness!" The best things are always subject to the worst perversion and abuse. The science and art that invent magic machines and multiply material goods and create all the wonders and splendors of our civilization, also produce the most diabolical devices of destruction and death that blast the very face of the earth and destroy millions of lives. All our education is only a sharp and cunning tool that bad men can use as powerfully as good men. The Devil can clothe himself in light seemingly as pure and beautiful as the holiness of any saint or the white robes of an angel, and often so artfully as to deceive the very elect.

It is not surprising, then, but inevitable that religion should be productive of error as well as of truth, of evil as well as of good. And this all history confirms. The records of religion present the aspect of a vast confusion and chaos and noise of conflicting beliefs and practices, "a dust of systems and of creeds." Religion divides into innumerable forms and sects that are all more or less at war with one another. Not only are there many antagonistic general religions, but each religion in itself splits into sects, and historic Christianity has not escaped this fate but has divided into upwards of two hundred denominations, each one of which has its own internal divisions.

In this field are intermingled all forms ,and varieties of truth and error, wholesome grain and deadly weeds. There is no form of behef so false and fantastic that some religion or religionist has not held it as a doctrine, and no religious rite so inhuman and cruel and wicked that it has not been advocated and practiced as a sacred duty.

In religion.

What damned error but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text. Hiding the grossness with fair ornament.

Hatred and malice and murder and every kind of uncleanness have been consecrated on the altar of religion as truly as purity and love and service and sacrifice. No demon or Devil could be more vile and vicious in character and conduct than have been some gods that men have worshipped. On the other hand, it is not to be overlooked that such errors and misdeeds are not the general fact and fruit but are relatively rare in the history of religion, and that Christianity has an infinitely larger credit side to its account and has filled its pages with the best thoughts and noblest deeds and the whitest and most beautiful characters this world has ever known.

These errors and evils in religion are not all found in the past, but are still in the world and run rife in Christian lands and even disfigure professedly Christian forms of faith and worship. It is necessary to face the difficult task of discriminating the wheat from the tares, of trying the spirits whether they be of God, and of proving all things and holding fast only that which is good.

2. TRUTH AND ERROR IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

It is certain that there is truth in Christian Science. No pure error could ever last or even get a start in the world. Such an error would totally contradict itself so that no sane mind pould entertain it. Every error not only impinges on and interlaces with truth around its whole boundary, but it also contains internal elements of fact. It is this truth in any erroneous system of belief and conduct that gives it some working value and enables it to live and last in the world. Tested by this principle, Christian Science has proved that it must contain large elements of important truth, for it has laid hold of many minds and spread rapidly among men. The adherents of this faith are generally people of intelligence and culture and some of them are of marked ability. It has also become institutionalized in a great mother church with thousands of members and with many branches and in a complex and powerful organization with its sacred book, its literature, magazines, and daily newspaper, and with an alert and efficient system of propaganda. It is less than fifty years old, and few religions have more to show in so short a time in practical results than has this modern cult.

Christian Science certainly meets some wide and deep need in our day. Its success indicates that it has either discovered some new truth, or else it has emphasized and utilized some old truth which other forms of religion have neglected and let fall into desuetude. However much error it may contain it has rendered a service by calling attention to this truth and forcing the Christian Church to do it justice in its own teaching and practice. It is the duty of Christians to see and accept and utilize this truth, and it is the purpose of this book to endeavor to do this in the study of it. The spirit of truth-seeking requires this and it is hoped it may be done in all fairness and frankness, both out of regard to justice to Christian Science and of duty to our Christian faith.

On the other hand, the reader will find and, even at the outset of study and without prejudicing fairness, can affirm, on the general groimd of well-known admitted facts, that there is much error in Christian Science. The most superficial acquaintance with its doctrines and practices proves this. A system of belief that bodily casts overboard as utter delusions anatomy, physiology, biology, geology, astronomy, and all sciences, repudiates organized human knowledge and turns the whole natural world into a baseless illusion of the mind, must contain a huge error that is the mother of a whole brood of errors. It will be the business of this study to expose and refute these errors as it proceeds.

Few subjects have been so beset and beclouded with personal issues and controversial points as Christian Science, and it calls for a fair mind and clear vision to discriminate between the truth and error in this system; but the author will strive to see the facts in the light of objective truth and write in a spirit of candor and charity.

3. LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT

The literature of Christian Science has become extensive, and a number of the more important books on the subject are named in the list of "Works Consulted'' prefixed to this volume. It is the purpose of this section to name and characterize a few of the most important ones, especially of those on which this study is directly based.

First and foremost are the works of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. She has the right before all others to speak for |

herself and should be heard at every step and point. \

Though at first she was a slow and untrained and even ungrammatical writer and had to learn after she had passed her fiftieth year the simplest rudiments of literary art, yet through patient and persistent practice she was able to turn out several books, but with what help will be told in later chapters. Her first and chief book is the well-known '^Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," which is the bible of Christian Science, the book that she claimed and that her followers claim was divinely inspired in the same sense that the Bible was inspired; the book that contains her authoritative official teaching and is officially enjoined to be used and is used along with the Bible in every Christian Science church and service the world over. Frequent reference to, and examination of, this book will be made in the course of this study. Of course every thorough student of this subject should read this book, and as a guarantee of good faith the writer declares that he patiently carried through the task of reading it from beginning to end: a wearisome labor that few people outside of the inner circle of the most devoted followers and practitioners of Christian Science have done or ever will do.

Another book by Mrs. Eddy is "Retrospection and Introspection,'^ a brief and fragmentary autobiography which should be read and carefully compared with other sources of information as to her life. Several other books are listed among her writings, such as "Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896," and "The First Church of Christ Scientist and Miscellany," but these are mostly composed of selected articles, contributed to The Christian Science Journal and The Christian Science Sentinel and other journals, and of messages to her churches. A number of her sermons are also available, many of these being published separately. All of her books and writings are published by the official Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, and the edition of "'Science and Health,'* used in this study bears the date of 1916, except when othenvise indicated.

One of the most important books on this subject is "The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science,'' by Georgine Milmine. This book first appeared as a series of illustrated articles in McClure's Magazine in 1906-1907 and was then issued in book form. Christian Scientists hold this to be a prejudiced and hostile work, but in the judgment of the author it is a thoroughly scientific piece of historical investigation and composition. Miss Milmine made a comprehensive and searching inquiry into the facts of Mrs. Eddy's life and into the teaching and practice of Christian Science. She visited the scenes of Mrs. Eddy's career, followed her from town to town and through year after year, examined books and newspapers and court records, interviewed many persons who knew and had had personal relations with her, obtained affidavits on important matters, and secured photographs of many places and documents that enter into the story. Her book is based on the facts as thus obtained and is not only illustrated with many pictures from photographs of places and persons but is also fortified with facsimiles of some important documents. The book is written with an evident desire and effort to find and tell the truth, and it will ever stand as an authoritative history based on original investigation and backed up with names, dates, documents, and affidavits. The writer has made frequent use of and generous quotations from this book, of which due acknowledgments have been given.

Another book next in importance to Miss Milmine's is "Christian Science, the Faith and Its Founder," by Lyman P. Powell, Rector of St. John's Church, Northampton, Mass., and now president of Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y. Dr. Powell says in his preface that he has made free use of Miss Milmine's articles and adds: "I have taken the pains, however, in each instance to verify her statements by correspondence or by interviews with those concerned. For this purpose alone I have traveled more than twenty-five hundred miles and am glad to be able to testify to the singular accuracy of the articles and the thoroughness with which they have been prepared.'' This is a remarkable confirmation of the trustworthiness of Miss Milmine's book. Dr. Powell also contributes additional light of value on Christian Science as the result of his own investigations. The day for obtaining personal evidence from those that knew and had relations with Mrs. Eddy is about gone, and later writers will necessarily largely depend on these first-hand students and witnesses for the facts in the case.

Miss Milmine's articles in McClure's called forth an answer in the form of a series of articles that appeared in the journal, Human Life, and were then issued in a volume entitled "The Life of Mary Baker Eddy," (1907), by Sibyl Wilbur O'Brien, now Sibyl Wilbur. This book is published by The Christian Science Publishing Society, Boston, and is thus officially authorized. Mrs. Eddy herself published in the Christian Science Sentinel of March 12, 1910, the following authorization of the book, which is now printed in the book itself:

I have not had sufficient interest in the matter to read or to note from others' reading what the enemies of Christian Science are said to be circulating regarding my history, but my friends have read Sibyl Wilbur's book, "Life of Mary Baker Eddy," and request the privilege of buying, circulating, and recommending it to the public. I briefly declare that nothing has occurred in my life's experience which, if correctly narrated and understood, could injure me; and not a little is already reported of the good accomplished therein, the self-sacrifice, etc., that has distinguished all my working years. I thank Miss Wilbur and the Concord Publishing Company for their unselfish labors in placing this book before the public, and hereby say that they have my permission to publish and circulate this work. Mary Baker Eddy.

It will be noted that Mrs. Eddy takes advantage of the occasion to write a recommendation of herself as well as of the book.

As to Miss Wilbur's book, it bears all the marks of an interested advocate's statement of facts in dispute and defense of a character under attack. It is partisan in the extreme, and everything is turned to Mrs. Eddy's glory. The many facts in her life that appear in an unfortunate and often painful light in Miss Milmine's book are by Miss Wilbur toned down and glossed over and clothed in a different aspect. Even the most desperate cases are made the best of, though the ugly truth cannot always be denied or explained away. The personal adulation of Mrs. Eddy, approaching divine worship, is nauseating. Even such a simple-minded soul and colorless limp personality as Asa Gilbert Eddy, Mrs. Eddy's third husband, at whose *'calm, sweet eyes" the presiding judge in a celebrated trial "must have wondered," is ridiculously adulated. In contrast with Miss Milmine's book, which is abundantly supplied with quotations from and references to authorities and documents, Miss Wilbur's book is almost bare of such quotations and references. It obviously lacks objective authority and gives the impression that it is largely a subjective production. It is based in no small measure on conversations with and explanations and private disclosures which must have come from Mrs. Eddy herself. Such statements occur as "Mrs. Eddy has told the author," and "'Mrs. Eddy has recently pointed out to the author." There are many of these confidential revelations, so that one is led to believe that the book is largely the result of the intimate communings of the author with Mrs. Eddy and that it is little more than what Mrs. Eddy wants the world to believe about herself. The book, however, is a valuable document in the case and confirms more than it explains away.

Having in hand the books of Mrs. Eddy, Miss Milmine, Dr. Powell, and Miss Wilbur the student can get at the essential facts as to the founder and the faith of this cult.

Many other books throw important corroborative light and critical illumination on it, among which may be named the following: "The Interpretation of Life," New York, (1908), by Gerhardt C. Mars, a New York "lecturer," purports to show "the relation of Modern Culture to Christian Science." It displays considerable learning and acumen and strongly supports Mrs. Eddy's claims, granting her "preternatural insight," but distinguishing "two phases in Mrs. Eddy's life — as indeed in all our lives — which are to be borne in mind, viz.: her human personality, with its mortal limitations, and her spiritual individuality which is ever seeking to express itself through the human form," a distinction apparently after the manner of the infallibility of the pope, who is infallible only when speaking in his official and not in his private capacity.

A dispassionate exposition of the system is found in Thomas W. Wilby's "What Is Christian Science?'* On the other hand, "A Plea for the Thorough and Unbiassed Investigation of Christian Science/' by Charles Herman Lea, an English writer, is anything but "unbiassed" in its intensely dogmatic and heated defense of this faith. If italics and black letter type were logic, Mr. Lea would be very convincing.

''TheReligio-Medical Masquerade, a Complete Exposure of Christian Science," (1910), is by Frederick W. Peabody, a Boston lawyer who was counsel in several cases brought against Mrs. Eddy and has had intimate relations with many of the people involved in this story. He tells us in the introduction to his book that ''the facts herein set forth are, almost without exception, based, either upon Mrs. Eddy's own published utterances, her private correspondence, the sworn testimony of witnesses, or the admissions under oath of her most influential friends and followers." Mr. Peabody's book, written in a trenchant style, reveals much inside information and is a damaging document in the case he presents against Christian Science.

''The Faith and Works of Christian Science," (1909), is an examination of the system, especially in it claims of healing, by Stephen Paget, M. D., an eminent London medical authority. Mark Twain's "Christian Science," (1907), is the humorist's terribly sarcastic but really serious exposure of the cult, illuminating and sharp as a flash of lightning. It by no means lacks logic, for so keen a logician as Dr. Francis L. Patton, of Princeton, when he was asked what book he read in refutation of Christian Science, answered with a characteristic snap of his mouth, "Mark Twain!" ^'Mesmerism and Christian Science," (1909), by Frank Podmore, an EngHsh psychologist and member of the Society for Psychical Research, is written with a psychologist's insight and in a judicial spirit. A small but important book is '*The True History of Mental Science," by Julius A. Dresser, (1887), who was a patient of Dr. Quimby and then a teacher of his system and had inside and intimate knowledge of the facts that lie at the very origin and root of Christian Science.

The title of this book occurred to and was adopted by the writer in May, 1919, and he had almost completed the manuscript when he discovered that a book with the same title (except the subtitle) had appeared in 1916, the author being George M. Searle, of the Paulist Fathers and formerly Professor of Mathematics in the Catholic University, Washington, D. C. Father Searle's book is confined to a critical examination of **Science and Health," and is a keen piece of work.

Chapter II The Subsoil Of Christian Science

Every system of thought and movement in society has deep roots and distant connections, and we must understand these in order to comprehend it. Christian Science has such roots.

1. PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM

Philosophical idealism is as old as Plato and has come down into our day in a deepening gulf stream of thought. It found classical expression in Berkeley's "Principles of Human Knowledge," a book of singular lucidity which readers untrained in philosophy can understand. Briefly, this system holds that mind or spirit is the ultimate and sole reality and that matter is a mode of its activity. The doctrine usually maintains that God is the infinite and eternal Spirit, who has posited or created finite spirits, and that the material world is a mode of the divine will and life. As finite spirits we are environed in God, in whom "we live and move and have our being,'* and our experience of the world is caused by the activity of God which we in some degree share with him. Idealism, then, does not at all deny the reality of matter or resolve it into a subjective illusion or delusion, but only discovers and demonstrates, as it believes, the true nature of matter as a mode of the divine life.

THE SUBSOIL OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 15

Dr. Powell says of P. P. Quimby, the mind healer of Portland, Me., from whom Mrs. Eddy, as we shall see, derived her ideas: '*He read much. The Bible was ever in his hand, and sometimes Berkeley." Quimby taught that "error is matter." The uneducated Portland clock maker thus had obtained a perverted notion of Berkeley's idealism, and this trickled down into Mrs. Eddy's mind. She mentions Berkeley but only to disown him and it is not likely that she ever read him, but in some way she got an inkling of this philosopher's theory in the form that matter, instead of being a phenomenal experience of objective spiritual reality, is a pure subjective delusion to be "denied" and cast out of the mind; and this initial mistake lies at the root of her system and is the beginning of all her trouble. The basis of Christian Science is a misunderstood and spurious form of idealism. Philosophical idealism in all its forms repudiates Christian Science as an illegitimate and deformed child and will acknowledge no responsibility for it.

2. NEW ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM

Mrs. Eddy grew up in New England at a time when a peculiar type of transcendentalism was running its course and blighting the roots of historic Christian faith. Reaction against the extreme Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards and his successors had swung to Unitarianism and then had escaped from the gravitation of Christianity into free thought. Channing and Parker, Frothingham and Freeman Clarke were leaders in the movement that gave the world "the pale negations of Boston Unitarianism.'* Emerson went beyond them and became lost in the pantheistic Oversoul. He was a seer of wonderful insight and taught truth of imperishable value, yet he emitted a cold, white light that corruscated brilliantly in the brain but gave no warmth to the heart and little religious satisfaction to the soul. The literary genius of Longfellow and Lowell and Holmes produced some high-grade poetry, but yielded very thin religion. Transcendentalism reached its limit in A. Bronson Alcott whose "orphic sayings'* and subjective exhalations were bits of pale clouds that have long since evaporated into nothingness. New England transcendentalism thus did some notable literary work and emitted some splendid fireworks, but it burned New England over with a kind of slow-consuming fire of religious indifference and skepticism that left the ground ready for a new crop of reactionary movements. Such a crop is sure to spring up. Deprive people of religious bread and they will take to stones rather than do without any spiritual food. When the human soul is swept and left empty, it is in a dangerous condition, and if nothing else comes in, devils will. As faith in the mythological gods died out in the ancient Greek and Roman world, it swarmed with all manner of wild, fantastic cults. Dead orthodoxy becomes the rank hothouse and seedbed of heresy. As rational faith withers, fads flourish. The human heart is "'incurably religious'* and will have its god and its cult, and if robbed of one thing it will take to another, though it be a god as false and foolish as a hideous idol of wood or stone.

New England in the middle decades of the last century was just the soil in which Christian Science could strike root and flourish, and it took advantage of its opportunity.

THE SUBSOIL OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 17

3. FAITH HEALING AND SPIRITUALISM

New England was prolific in these strange cults. At East Canterbury, New Hampshire, within five miles of Tilton, Mary Baker's childhood home, was the main community of the Shakers, a sect that had been founded by Ann Lee. Their peculiar doctrines and still more peculiar practices were the cause of much popular excitement and of considerable indignation in the region round about, and the impressionable young girl who afterwards became Mrs. Eddy must have heard and seen much of these stfange doings. While Shakerism and Christian Science are not closely connected, yet they have many points of affinity and contact. The Shakers always prayed to *'Our Father and Mother which art in heaven," while Mrs. Eddy's "spiritually interpreted" version of The Lord's Prayer begins, '*Our Father-Mother God." The Shakers proclaimed Ann Lee to be the woman of the Apocalypse, and Mrs. Eddy made the same suggestion with reference to herself. The Shakers called Ann Lee "Mother," and Mrs. Eddy arrogated this name to herself and forbade her followers to bestow it upon others, although afterwards she withdrew the privilege of applying it to herself and denied that she had ever authorized such use. The Shakers claimed that Ann Lee was inspired, and Mrs. Eddy made the same claim. Ann Lee declared that she had the gift of healing, and this was Mrs. Eddy's chief stock in trade. The Shakers called their organization "The Church of Christ," and Mrs. Eddy adopted this name with the addition of "Scientist." The Shakers forbade audible prayer, and Mrs. Eddy disapproved of it and has none of it, except The Lord's Prayer with her "interpretation" of it,Jn her services.