Part 4

But how could she perform the latter miracle against the opinion held by the majority that shortened limbs cannot be elongated, and after admitting, as she does, that in the sick chamber "the result is controlled by the majority of opinions, and not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions"? In her attempt to answer the question, why Christian Science fails to cure the patient who has accidentally swallowed a deadly drug, Mrs. Eddy strips her "discovery" of all its power to heal and makes "the majority of opinions the controlling factor." In one and the same breath she announces the supremacy of Infinite Mind, "who never endowed matter with power to disable life, or to chill harmony......since such a power without the Divine permission is inconceivable," and admits the helplessness of this "Infinite Mind" against "the majority of opinions dictated by mortal mind." And the same woman writes: "In this volume of mine there are no contradictory statements" (p. 345).

Christian Science Cures

|It is urged, however, that Mrs. Eddy's teachings have been demonstrated to be true by the remarkable cures they have effected. I need not question these cures. I hope all of them are genuine. I love humanity too well to wish that its ills were not cured at all rather than that they should be cured by Christian Science. But when every claim is conceded, all that will be proved is that Christian Science has cured some sick people. Of course it has. I hope the Christian Scientists will be equally generous to admit that during the past thousands of years cures have been effected also by other agencies. Mohammedanism has cured the sick; Catholic saints have cured the sick; holy places have performed cures--else why do multitudes go on pilgrimages to shrines? Patent medicines have helped the sick, otherwise the inventors and vendors of them could not have made such big fortunes; and the least tolerant Christian Scientist must admit that even physicians occasionally succeed in curing the sick. Evidently, then, Mrs. Eddy is not the _only_ healer; which, if admitted, will prove that she has not performed any cures with her "ism" which others have not performed without it. If it be said that other cures are cures only in name, the same is said by unbelievers of Christian Science cures. One objection balances the other. Christian Science would be unique if it never failed to cure. But as it fails in some cases from one cause or another, and as it limits its practice to complaints which do not require a knowledge of surgery, and, again, _as it has never accomplished what the other agencies have failed to accomplish_--restoring a lost limb, for instance--it follows without the possibility of contradiction that it is at its best no more than any other human agency.

At a Sunday morning meeting in San Francisco, as the audience was leaving, a cripple in her invalid's chair was being wheeled out of the building. Stepping up to one of the ushers who seemed to possess considerable authority, I asked why the cripple had been brought to the Christian Science meeting. "To be healed, of course," was the unhesitating reply. But as she was being wheeled out in the same condition as she was in when wheeled into the meeting, would it not follow, I asked, that she was not cured? Had the occasion permitted, the Christian Science usher would have argued that one or two treatments are not always enough to effect a cure. Admitted. But if "Divine" science must have more than one chance to hit the mark, how does it differ from human science? To prove its Divine origin, Christian Science must meet the following conditions: First, it must cure diseases which all other agencies have pronounced incurable; second, it must never fail to cure; third, it must prove itself the only power that can cure. Not one of these conditions has been met by Christian Science. It has failed to cure many; it has not cured the incurables; and other agencies have cured at least as many patients as has Christian Science. In what respect, then, is Mrs. Eddy's doctrine the absolute or the only truth?

Christian Science Testimonials

|Mrs. Eddy devotes one hundred pages of her _Science and Health_ to testimonials from people who have used her "nostrum," very much as vendors of patent medicines are in the habit of doing. But while, as a rule, testimonials in patent medicine books are signed in full, those in _Science and Health_ give only initials. Rheumatism, hernia, fibroid tumour, insanity and epilepsy, cancer and consumption, Bright's disease, and many other diseases, according to these testimonials, have been "quickly cured," often by the mere reading of Mrs. Eddy's book. But there are equally numerous witnesses to prove that these same maladies have been cured by other equally fantastic remedies. I do not feel myself under obligation, however, to take notice of these claims, for the excellent reason that I am not bound to explain alleged facts, but only real facts. Let the healers first prove that their patients had real cancer, and that Christian Science cured them permanently, and then I will consider their claims. But some one might say: "I ought to be an authority on my own case. Every doctor had given me up; I was told nothing could save me. My disease was pronounced incurable, yet I am now in the best of health through Christian Science." If a person may be misinformed about others, he may be about himself. It is the most natural thing to imagine one's self sick or cured. It is equally a matter of experience that doctors often fail to diagnose the case of a patient correctly. Their pronouncing any one incurable is not a final or infallible judgment. Before a miracle is claimed in the case of any patient it has to be shown, by expert and disinterested testimony, that the disease in question really existed, that it was really incurable, and that Christian Science really cured it. But is such testimony forthcoming? Do healers invite investigation of their cures by outsiders?

In 1898 Mrs. Eddy announced some miraculous performances. "I challenge the world to disprove," she said, "what I hereby declare! I healed malignant tubercular diphtheria and carious bones that could be dented in by the fingers. I have healed at one visit a cancer that had so eaten the flesh of the neck as to expose the jugular vein so that it stood out like a cord." Who made the diagnosis? How could a novice tell one disease from another? If it was a physician's report Mrs. Eddy is quoting, who was the physician? Besides, for Mrs. Eddy to accept a doctor's verdict would be to put faith in medical science, which, according to her, is no science at all. Neither does this Divine practitioner give the name and the address of her patients. Who witnessed the treatment applied to the case she describes? Who pronounced the patient cured? I hope Mrs. Eddy cured all her cancer patients; but a hope is not a proof, nor is assertion an argument. The only way to demonstrate a power is to submit to all the tests. Compare Mrs. Eddy's story of how she cured an unnamed patient with the following accomplishment by a man of real science: "A remarkable case of curvature of the spine was announced at a Philadelphia hospital. The case was that of Adele Weinberg, a young girl hunchback. The surgeon removed part of one of the lumbar vertebræ, found it to be diseased, and in its place used a section of leg bone. She is as erect as though her spine had been normal from birth." That operation took place in a hospital in Philadelphia, before nurses and assisting physicians, who may be summoned as witnesses. But Mrs. Eddy mentions no witnesses whom we may interview in connection with the cancer cure she describes.

Get-Well-Quick

|Christian Science, instead of being either scientific or Christian, comes very near being, and in fact is, a sort of get-well-quick system, suggestive of the get-rich-quick scheme of the speculating fraternity. The gambler does not have to learn a trade or to build up a business in order to secure a footing in the commercial world, or to establish a reputation for honesty and efficiency. He does not depend upon these things for a living, since the throw of a dice, the colour of a card, or a lucky bet may bring to him in a few minutes more than patient work can offer in years. The Christian Science practitioner likewise does not have to study the human body, the properties of drugs, the nature of anæsthetics or of antiseptics, the germ theory of disease, the effect of diet and climate upon the human organism, the causes of epidemics, the means of control of contagious maladies--nothing at all of this. A few lessons in metaphysics, a copy of Mrs. Eddy's book, and a number of texts on the tip of his tongue, and he may begin practising and collecting fees from patients.

Should a call come to the Christian Science healer in the middle of a cold, wintry night, he need not even rise out of bed, much less walk or ride through the storm to see and examine his patient; and if he should fall asleep while giving absent treatment, who would be the wiser for it?

There is yet another close resemblance between the get-rich-quick and the get-well-quick systems. What makes gambling attractive is the wealth there is in the world. If labour did not create wealth, there would be nothing to gamble with or to gamble for. The gambler is a parasite. He thrives on the labour of others. In the same way, the get-well-quick practitioner profits from the conquests of material science. If the Eddyites really desired to give a demonstration of their "science," they should go to those Asiatic countries where sanitary measures are unknown where there are no facilities for the proper ventilation of dwellings or for personal cleanliness; where the waters are impure, the streets are foul, the food insufficient, the climate merciless; where modern hygienic precautions are unknown; where the cholera, the black death, or some other plague works unhindered, and where there are no physicians to be sent for at the last hour. Let them, I say, work in such an environment to show what Christian Science can do. But to operate in Europe and America--where science, like a watch dog, is guarding the health of the people, inventing a thousand devices for the comfort and security of life, hurrying to the aid of the injured almost with the alacrity of thought, building hospitals equipped with all the weapons which disease dreads, and training men and women to march at any moment in full phalanx and armed to the teeth against the first plague germ that lands on our shores from foreign lands--is nothing to boast of. Indeed, it is the progress of the physical sciences which has made the Christian Scientist's profession profitable. "Divine healers" eat of the golden fruits of the tree of science, and then turn round and stone the tree.

Christian Science Fashionable

|How, then, explain the remarkable growth of Christian Science? But the imposing edifices, the prosperous looking disciples, the number of automobiles in front of their churches, prove only that Christian Science is fashionable--that is all. The question we are discussing is not Is Christian Science fashionable, but Is it true? Does the rapid growth and wealth of Mohammedanism, for instance, with its Alhambra and Alcazar, its illustrious and extensive conquests, prove its Divine origin? Does the progress of Mormonism, which reared a great city as if by magic in the Western wilderness, prove Mormonism to be of God? The Catholic Church at one time owned everything in Europe and ruled every one. To her belonged all the wealth, the culture, the art, and the power of Christendom. Yet Christian Scientists do not consider the Catholic Church Divine. Why should the rapid spread of one creed surprise us any more than that of another?

Moreover, it takes less courage to follow the crowd than to resist it. The crowd picks up the weak and carries them along. Was it not Horace Walpole who said, "The greater the imposition the greater the crowd"? What Matthew Arnold said of the multitude in England is true also of the American multitude: "Probably in no country is the multitude more unintelligent, more narrow-minded, and more passionate than in this. In no country is so much nonsense so firmly believed." Alas, that is true of the multitude in every country.

Again, the faith habit is an older heredity, exerting upon us the accumulated force of thousands of years, while the inquiry habit is too recent an acquisition to have much force upon the generality of peoples. That is another explanation of the greater popularity of dogma, which requires only belief, and the comparative unpopularity of a movement which demands individual thinking. "Superstition," as Goethe says, "is so intimately and anciently associated with man that it is one of the hardest things to get rid of." The only progress most people are capable of is to part with one superstition for another. The Pope is given up for Mrs. Eddy, but the idea of an infallible teacher to tell us what to believe is not outgrown. The keys of heaven and hell placed in the hands of the Vicar of Christ provoke scepticism in a Christian Scientist, but he accepts without the shadow of a doubt the key to the Scriptures delivered to Mrs. Eddy.

But how account for the presence of so many judges and lawyers among the converts of Christian Science? And how account for the judges and lawyers who are not Christian Scientists? It was not so long ago when judges condemned innocent women as witches, and sentenced them to be tortured to death. Did that make witchcraft a fact, or can it be quoted to justify the belief in witchcraft? The late Chief Justice of the United States was a Catholic. What does that prove?

Christian Science and Witchcraft

|Without wanting to give offence, I would say that Christian Science is, in many respects, the modern version of the witchcraft belief, which smote New England some three or four hundred years ago. If mental treatment can cure, according to Mrs. Eddy's admissions, it can also kill. Over her own signature Mrs. Eddy declares that her last husband was killed by poison "mentally administered." The devil possessed witches, too, were supposed to be able to injure and kill people mentally. Mrs. Eddy teaches that, "If the right mental practice can restore health, it is self-evident that mental malpractice can impair health." She also contends that a person may commit mental murder or "mental assassination." In the _Christian Science Journal_ of February, 1889, she demands that "mental assassins" be turned over to the executioner.

On May 14, 1878, Mrs. Eddy, her attorney, and some twenty witnesses, appeared at the opening of the Supreme Judicial Court in Salem and practically accused a certain Mr. Daniel Harrison Spoffard of sorcery and witchcraft. Mrs. Eddy's bill of complaint recited the injuries which Spoffard was mentally, and of course by absent treatment, inflicting upon one of Mrs. Eddy's students, a Miss Lucretia Brown, and begged the Court to restrain him from giving malicious mental treatment to said Miss Brown. Does not that suggest darkest Africa? Let me give a few lines from Mrs. Eddy's bill of complaint:--

_By the power of his mind he (Mr. Spoffard) influences and controls the minds and bodies of other persons, and uses his said power and art for the purpose of injuring the persons and property of others. Among the injuries Mr. Spoffard has communicated to Miss Brown are severe spinal pains, neuralgia, temporary suspension of mind._

Fortunately for the reputation of our courts, Judge Gray dismissed the charges against Mr. Spoffard, declaring, with a twinkle in his eye, that it was not within the jurisdiction of the courts to control Mr. Spoffard's mind. Had the Judge been of Mrs. Eddy's persuasion, the old regrettable Salem persecutions against so-called witches might have been revived. How well has it been explained by John Fiske that "one of the most primitive shapes which the relation of cause and effect takes in the savage mind is the assumed connection between disease or death and some malevolent personal agency."

Marriage and Death in Christian Science

|Let us now investigate some of the other teachings of Mrs. Eddy, which are at present more or less kept in the background, or which are presented only to those who have become adepts or advanced students of the cult. A careful perusal of Mrs. Eddy's miscellaneous literature will show that she practically denies sex, marriage, birth, death, the home, the family, as well as education and morality. It seems a serious accusation to bring against any one posing as a reformer or as the founder of a religion, but the evidence warrants the charge. Has no one ever observed that Christian Science journals do not announce marriages, births, or deaths? Of course, like other people, Christian Scientists are born, marry, and die; but no official recognition of such events is permitted. There must be a reason for it. In Christian Science there is no room for sex relations and for children, even as there is no recognition of that other natural phenomenon, death. But do not Mrs. Eddy's disciples die? Is not her body buried in a cemetery, and marked by a monument raised over her remains by her admirers?

The explanation for this apparent contradiction between the profession and the practice, from the Christian Science point of view, is as follows: Every believer in Mrs. Eddy's revelation is expected to demonstrate over death as over sickness; and just as, when a practitioner fails to demonstrate over sickness, it is because of some error or belief somewhere, and not because of the insufficiency of Divine power, likewise, if a Christian Scientist dies, it is because he has not applied the new doctrine rightly, and not because the doctrine is not strong enough to prevent death. This teaching really makes of death not a beneficent economy of nature, but a crime, or a miscarriage, as it were, of Christian Science.

In the State of Michigan there is a religious sect called "the House of David." One of their doctrines is that a Christian cannot die. "But," I asked the man whom I was interviewing in Michigan, "do not the members of your sect die like other people?" His answer was that they die only when they fall from grace.

In the same way, if a Christian Scientist dies, it is because he has departed from the truth as taught by Mrs. Eddy, or because some one has killed him mentally by "malicious animal magnetism" or "mortal mind." That was how, Mrs. Eddy asserts, her husband was assassinated. If one member of a family is a Christian Scientist and the treatment he receives from a practitioner does not cure him of the complaint, the blame is liable to be thrown upon the non-Christian Science members of the family, who, by resisting the operations of "Divine" power, prevent its manifestation. It is witchcraft come back. Could anything be more inhuman than to hold an unbelieving parent responsible for the failure of Christian Science to save his child from an attack of typhus or scarlet fever after the practitioner has deprived the patient of the services of medical care and treatment? But can a "Divine" healer admit failure? Rather than confess defeat, he will accuse the nearest relatives of the patient of malpractice. I am sorry to conclude that at times Christian Science is as cowardly as it is cruel.

"Suffer it to Be So Now"

|According to Mrs. Eddy, marriage, like death, suggests materiality, and is therefore an error. The words of Jesus, that in heaven they shall be like the angels who do not marry nor are given in marriage, are quoted to prove that sex is an illusion of mortal mind. Of course, the Eddyites marry, but only for the same reason that they die--because they are not sufficiently advanced in Christian Science to demonstrate over these errors.

In the _Christian Science Sentinel_, June 16, 1906, and in the _Christian Science Journal_, July, 1906, Mrs. Eddy calls marriage "legalized lust"--this from a woman who had been three or four times married!

"Suffer it to be so now" is the text quoted by Christian Scientists to defend their inconsistency. But how long a time does the word "now" cover? Jesus, in using the word "now," must have meant his own day, which was nearly two thousand years ago. But is it still "now"? A "now" that lasts so long might just as well mean "indefinitely."

"Suffer it to be so _indefinitely_" would be the real meaning of the text as the Eddyites interpret it. Accordingly, when the Christian Science dispensation shall be in full swing, marriage, birth, children, the family, as also sickness and death, will be no more. That will be, I suppose, when it is no longer "now."

I have already quoted Mrs. Eddy's belief in regard to sex: "Gender is also a quality characteristic of mind, and not of matter." She will wink at marriages "until it is learned that generation [birth] rests on no sexual basis." I do not know what kind of reasoning led her to say: "To abolish marriage and maintain generation is possible in Christian Science." Are not such foolish as well as mischievous doctrines a menace to the community? Can a man, can a woman, believe in such absurdities without becoming unbalanced mentally sooner or later?

The New Autocracy

|Mrs. Eddy has banished all freedom of thought from her Church, as Luther and Calvin did from theirs. Christian Science is as distinctly hostile to the liberty of teaching as were the dogmatists of the Reformation.

In the _Christian Science Quarterly_ Bible Lessons definite instructions are given to read the following explanatory note before reciting the lesson-sermon:--

_Friends,--The Bible and the Christian Science Text-book are our only preachers... The canonical writings, together with the word of our text-book, corroborating and explaining the Bible texts in their spiritual import and application to all ages, past, present, and future, constitute a sermon undivorced from Truth, uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses, and divinely authorized._

It is absolutely necessary to repeat this at every Sunday meeting. It will be seen from the formula imposed upon her followers that only Mrs. Eddy's voice is tolerated in Christian Science churches. But does she not also permit the reading of the Bible? Only as _she_ interprets it, no other interpretation being allowed, which makes the Bible nothing more than a medium for Mrs. Eddy's thought. Outside of her book all is contamination. _Science and Health_ and the book to which it is the key are alone Divine, everything else being "human hypotheses" which enslave and corrupt. Has the intellect of man ever been subjected to a greater pinch than that?

"He who does not believe my doctrine is sure to be damned," said Luther (Professor E.M. Hulme, _The Renaissance_, p. 363). Will Mrs. Eddy admit that there is any salvation outside her church, or that there is any other infallible guide than her own _Science and Health_? And just as both John Calvin and Martin Luther called upon the civil authorities to draw the sword against heretics, so Mrs. Eddy repeatedly summoned the State to punish "mental assassins." Where there is no freedom persecution is inevitable, since there is no other effective way to suppress freedom. It was the great Swiss reformer, Beza, who congratulated Calvin on the burning of Servetus: "To claim that heretics ought not to be punished is the same as saying that those who murder father and mother ought not to be punished, seeing that heretics are infinitely worse than they." Mrs. Eddy, nearly four hundred years later, appealed to the courts in the United States to punish one Richard Kennedy, a former disciple of hers, for _malicious animal magnetism_, and called upon the police to avenge the death of her husband by arresting the culprit who administered poison to him "mentally."