The Faked Revelation
Back in 1877 Mrs. Eddy placed her mission, as I have said, above
that of Jesus. In a personal letter to a friend, she said, “I
know the crucifixion of one who presents Truth in its higher
aspect will be _this_ time through a _bigger error_, through
mortal mind instead of its lower strata or matter, showing that
the _idea given of God this time is higher, clearer, and more
permanent than before_.” But of late years she has contented
herself with claiming only equality, in all respects, with Jesus,
and has not hesitated boldly and in so many words to declare her
teachings to have been expressly “authorized by Christ.”
We must go into this matter with some particularity, and I crave
indulgence while I present certain essential details. I want to
leave no doubt in any orderly mind as to just what Mrs. Eddy
claims to be, and shall then show, with an abundance of evidence
that will not permit of the slightest doubt, just exactly the
manner of woman she has been and is. When the most corrupt tree
in the orchard brings forth the sweetest and most beautiful fruit
of all, it will be believed that Mary Baker G. Eddy _can_ be the
channel through which God has revealed Himself to mankind, and it
will _not_ be believed _until then_.
I am of those who believe that there can be no religion but a
religion based upon revelation. Either God reveals himself to us,
or He remains unknown and unknowable. “No man by searching can
find out God.” Reason alone cannot attain unto Him. God hides
Himself from the wise, and the mightiest intellect approaches no
nearer to Him than the simple mind of a child.
This great truth has been and is the common belief of mankind,
and every unprincipled person, who has appealed to human
credulity along religious lines, knowing mankind to so believe,
has faked a revelation from God. Mrs. Eddy has put herself in a
class by herself by the boldness, the irreverence, the
recklessness, the blasphemy of her pretended intimacy with God.
In express terms, the founder of Christian Science claims to have
received from the Almighty a revelation which she has
incorporated in her book entitled “Science and Health, with Key
to the Scriptures.” Speaking of this book, in January, 1901, she
said: “I should blush to write of ‘Science and Health, with Key
to the Scriptures’ as I have, were it of human origin and I,
apart from God, its author, but as I was only a scribe echoing
the harmonies of Heaven in divine metaphysics, I cannot be
super-modest of the Christian Science Text-book.”
Nothing could be plainer or more unequivocal than that. There is
a distinct avowal that the book entitled “Science and Health” was
the work of Almighty God, and, preposterous as the claim may seem
to any rational being who has ever undertaken to read the book,
slanderous as it is upon Omniscience, some thousands of people in
the United States today believe it precisely as made. They
believe that God literally dictated the contents of this book to
Mrs. Eddy, and that it is in _every_ part as much the word of God
as the most devout Christian believes the Bible to be in _any_
part the word of God.
This is the sacrilegious lie upon which Mary Baker G. Eddy has
reared her whole fraudulent superstructure, which she had
denominated Christian Science, and which has become the religious
belief of thousands. It is because of this lie that Christian
Science flourishes like a green bay tree; that the old faith does
not hold its believers; that real scientific knowledge in
medicine is losing the confidence it ought to enjoy. It is
because of this lie that Christian Science wives separate
themselves from their husbands; that Christian Science mothers
abandon their children; that young women believers put marriage
behind them as lustful and unclean and inconsistent with true
spirituality of life and character. It is because of this lie,
this cruel and wicked lie, that children are permitted needlessly
to suffer and needlessly to die without any intelligent
perception that they are suffering, and after a resolute
withholding by their deluded parents of trained medical skill
that would alleviate suffering and save life. And this odious
lie, I purpose, while strength abides with me, to hold up to the
enduring detestation of mankind.
I am going to show, with absolute conclusiveness, that Mrs.
Eddy’s claim to revelation is wholly false. And when I have shown
that, I shall have shown that the “religious” phase of Christian
Science is a fraud and a sham; I shall have shown that it is a
veritable parody upon religion, a caricature upon Christianity; I
shall have shown that every beautiful temple erected for the
worship of the Christian Science God is a monument to Mrs. Eddy’s
success in imposing upon mankind, and that all of the thousands
upon thousands of pure and simple-minded people, who acclaim her
God’s messenger, are the victims of a mercenary old schemer who
has amazed herself at the gullibility of her worshipers.
I am not dealing in exaggeration. I am not speaking without
knowledge when I say that no sane person can follow me through
this narrative and not agree with me that Christian Science as a
religion is a sham, as a healing system is a fraud; that it kills
the sweetest and tenderest emotions in the human heart by rooting
out sympathy and charity and compassion; that there is no other
hatred and vindictiveness equal to the hatred and vindictiveness
of its founder and her leading votaries; that there is no other
cruelty, no other greed that can be compared with theirs, and
that the “inspired” teaching of Mary Baker G. Eddy regarding the
most sacred institution established amongst men, I refer to the
institution of marriage, is so low and so vile that decent
people, when they come to understand it, _must_ repudiate the
woman and the thing from overwhelming shame.
Insanity is not responsible for indecency, but those Christian
Scientists who have not parted with their sanity, and are not
Christian Scientists for revenue only, will turn with horror from
the woman and her work when they know what they are.
I say that Mrs. Eddy’s claim to having received an inspiration
from God is fraudulent. Now, what are the facts?
That God had nothing to do with Mrs. Eddy’s book is abundantly
proven by the book itself, to any person of sufficient
understanding to be at large outside of Bedlam. Who but a person
of weak or disordered mind could believe that God is the author
of this, “The condition of the stomach, bowels, food, clothing,
etc., is of no serious import to your child”?
Can any not absolutely insane parent believe that God
communicated that “absolute truth” to Mrs. Eddy?
Again: “The less we know of or think about Hygiene, the less we
are predisposed to sickness.”
That is to say, the more we know about how to keep well and how
to avoid conditions breeding disease, the more likely we are to
be sick.
Again: “Treatises on anatomy, physiology and health sustained by
what is termed material law, are the promoters of sickness and
disease. It is proverbial that as long as you read medical works
you will be sick.”
We have all observed the truth of this inspired utterance in the
fact that the physicians, as a body, are almost constantly in bed
of one disease or another. The wonder is that any of them ever
survive the courses of preparatory study.
Again: “Not because of muscular exercise, but because of the
blacksmith’s faith in muscle, his arm becomes stronger.”
All one has to do to develop his biceps is to have faith that his
biceps will develop, if Mrs. Eddy really speak by inspiration of
God.
Again: “You say or think because you have partaken of salt fish
that you are thirsty, and you are thirsty accordingly; while the
opposite belief would produce the opposite result.”
That is to say, you may partake of all the salt fish you please;
but if you persistently say and believe it cannot cause thirst,
thirst is the last sensation that will afflict you.
Again: “Question. Do not brains think and nerves feel, and is
there no intelligence in matter? Answer. Not if God be true and
mortal man a liar.”
In other words, if God _be_ true, brains do not think and nerves
do not feel. That brains do not think, Mrs. Eddy, when she
contemplates her foolish following, may have some reason to
believe; but she will have some difficulty in satisfying the rest
of us that brains do not possess the function of thought. I
think, therefore I am not a Christian Scientist.
Again: “The blood, heart, lungs, brain, etc., have nothing to do
with life.”
When this impressive passage was first presented to my darkened
mind, I was inclined to believe it to contain no element of
truth; but I am persuaded that there is a grain of truth in it. I
have sat in a Christian Science church repeatedly and have seen
some thousands of people with open mouths and ecstatic
expressions listening to material from the platform wholly
unintelligible to those who read it and wholly unintelligible to
every person in the building who heard it; and I have come
slowly, very slowly and regretfully, to the conviction that it is
true, that amongst large masses of people there are times when
the brain has absolutely nothing to do with life. As to the
blood, heart and lungs, I am still of my early prejudice that
they have _something_ to do with life, notwithstanding Mrs.
Eddy’s affirmation that God has informed her to the contrary.
Again: “Gender also is a quality, a characteristic of mind and
not of matter.”
It is all in your mind. You are a man or a woman according as you
think you are a man or a woman, and not otherwise. If a man
thinks he is a woman, and if a woman thinks she is a man, that
settles it; they are.
Again: “The less mind there is manifested in matter, the better.
When the unthinking lobster loses his claw, it grows again. If
the science of life were understood, it would be found that the
senses of mind are never lost and that matter has no sensation.
Then the human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster’s
claw.”
This makes it plain that, from Mrs. Eddy’s standpoint, the less
mind, the better; the less mind, the more Christian Scientists;
the more Christian Scientists, the more revenue; the more
revenue, the greater glory for impostors and charlatans. And, oh,
wonder of wonders! God here informs us, if Mrs. Eddy speak the
truth, that the loss of a human leg will be but a temporary
inconvenience when man has advanced to the high stage attained by
the wholly mindless lobster!
Again: “Man is the same after, as before, a bone is broken or a
head chopped off.”
And so, the head follows the lungs, and the blood, and the heart,
and the brains, and the stomach, and the bowels, as useless
members of the human body, if Mrs. Eddy speak the words of truth
and inspiration.
Again: “That life is sustained by food, drink, air, etc., that it
is organic or in the least dependent upon matter or sustained by
it, is a myth.”
Mrs. Eddy teaches that there is no reality in matter. When she
sits down at her table three times a day and puts into her
immaterial and nonexistent stomach unrealities in the shape of
bread and butter and beef steak and tea and coffee, and so on,
life is sustained by the _belief_ that the food sustains life,
and not by the food itself. It would be interesting to have Mrs.
Eddy demonstrate in her own daily life that the partaking of what
we grosser persons regard as food indispensable to the survival
of the physical organism could be wholly dispensed with and life,
notwithstanding, continue.
And, finally, and I commend this precious gem of truth to those
of my readers who are parents, be they fathers or mothers, and
who agree with me that the loveliest of all lovely things in the
world is the wholesome baby enjoying his morning bath: “The daily
ablutions of an infant are no more natural or necessary than
would be the process of taking a fish out of the water every day
and covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive more
vigorously thereafter in its native element.”
To bathe a baby is the same thing as to grab a fish out of the
water and rub it all over with mud! If it were of mere “human
origin,” Mrs. Eddy would “blush” to deliver herself of that
beautiful and “absolute” truth.
This twaddle inspired of God! And these selections, taken at
random from Mrs. Eddy’s book of which, she says, not she but God
was author, are of a piece with the thing as a whole.
I am told, as I have said, that there are intelligent persons in
Mrs. Eddy’s following, and yet such things as those I have quoted
slap intelligence in the face from every page of her book; and
her friends, nevertheless, persist in affirming, “Lo, the Lord’s
anointed, God’s voice to this age!”
“I cannot see,” says Mark Twain, “how any one contemplating Mrs.
Eddy’s career can deny to the Divine Being the possession of a
sense of humor.” God is so amused by Mrs. Eddy’s accomplishments
that He is provoked to laughter, and Christian Science thus
escapes the consuming fire of Divine wrath.