The Eddy Autocracy.
Money and power are the explanations of Mrs. Eddy’s life. We have
seen how greedily she has accumulated wealth. Let us, for a
moment, consider the way in which she has extended her power.
Nearly twenty years ago, Mrs. Eddy established the First Church
of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, which is called the “Mother
Church” and stands in the relation to the other churches, as she
says, of the vine to the branches. It has been Mrs. Eddy’s
repeatedly expressed wish that all Christian Scientists
everywhere should belong to the Mother Church, and Mr. Hanna,
then her chief representative in the organization, argued at
length that this expressed wish of Mrs. Eddy’s was the revealed
will of God; and no real Christian Scientist hesitates to do
God’s will, as revealed through Mrs. Eddy.
Of course, membership in anything or connection with anything in
Christian Science costs money, and every member, resident or
non-resident, of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in
Boston, is required to pay an annual tax of at least one dollar.
The present total membership of this church, resident and
non-resident, in which Mrs. Eddy’s arbitrary will is absolute
law, is upwards of fifty thousand, and embraces all of the really
devout and loyal Eddyites everywhere in the world. Here is, in
itself, an income of some fifty thousand dollars annually of the
First Church in Boston. If to this be added pew rents, church
collections, the voluntary offerings of the faithful and the
profits on the official periodicals, the aggregate will doubtless
reach a total of considerably over one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars per annum. Can any other church in the country show such
revenues? Truly, the Church of St. Bunco, as Mr. Gordon Clark has
happily named it, is a paying institution!
Mrs. Eddy is the head of this church. She constituted and calls
herself pastor emeritus; but her relation to the organization is
the reverse of what her title implies. Instead of being honorary
merely, it is most positive and active. She has been the final
authority on all matters in the church, dictated all its actions
and ceremonies and formulated its rules and by-laws. By these
rules and by-laws, which Mrs. Eddy has made, she has conferred
upon _herself_ the power to remove from office any officer of her
church in Boston, without cause, and to excommunicate forever,
without assigned cause, any of the fifty thousand members. By
these rules, which Mrs. Eddy has made, she has conferred upon
herself the power to remove the readers—the first and second
readers, who take the place of ministers—of all Christian Science
churches in the United States and foreign nations. No member
excommunicated from the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in
Boston, may hold a membership in any other Christian Science
church anywhere in the world and is cut off from fellowship with
the faithful, and cast into outer darkness forever.
By these rules and by-laws, which Mrs. Eddy has made, she has
provided that the president and directors of the church may only
be appointed subject to her approval; that no board of trustees
of the church may ever be constituted except by her, and that the
first members, or governing body, of the church may be appointed
only with her approval. Indeed, only recently, with one stroke of
her pen and without a word of explanation, she swept this
governing body, the first or executive members, completely out of
existence. No sermons shall ever be read in the churches, no
original work of any first reader or minister is permitted (it
would detract somewhat from Mrs. Eddy’s own writings) and the
service is limited, by Mrs. Eddy’s rules, to the Bible and Mrs.
Eddy’s published and copyrighted and profit-yielding works,
announcements of the name of the author of the latter always
being required while publicly read. Hypnotists, so called, must
be excluded upon her complaint; and the editors and publishers of
the _Christian Science Journal_ and the other organs of the sect
and the president of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College may
be only persons of whom she expressly approves. Any teacher who
dares to take a student of Mrs. Eddy’s into her class without
Mrs. Eddy’s written consent “shall be” (not may be) “_shall_ be
excommunicated from the church.”
Mrs. Eddy’s rule, conferring upon Mrs. Eddy the power to remove
officers of all Christian Science churches, is as follows:
“The pastor emeritus of the Mother Church (Mrs. Eddy) shall
have the right, through a letter addressed to the individual
and the church of which he is a reader, to remove a reader from
this office in any Church of Christ, Scientist, both in America
and foreign nations, or to appoint the reader to fill any
office belonging to the Christian Scientists denomination.”
This by-law is followed by the further provision that it can
neither be amended nor annulled except by Mrs. Eddy’s consent.
Mrs. Eddy’s rules provide that membership of the church is only
possible to those familiar with Mrs. Eddy’s copyrighted, five
hundred per cent profit earning publications; that the Bible and
her book shall be the pastor—the impersonal pastor—of the Mother
Church; that every member of the church, when publicly reading or
quoting from the books of Mrs. Eddy, must first announce the name
of the author; that teachers shall instruct their students how to
defend themselves against mental malpractice, the witchcraft of
Christian Science; that a degree of the Massachusetts
Metaphysical College is a necessary preliminary to the teaching
of Christian Science (and these degrees cost money); that any
member of the church, working against what Mrs. Eddy believes
advantageous to the church and the cause of Christian Science,
shall, upon her complaint, be dropped forever from membership;
that a member of the church who shall use written formulas, or
permit his patients or his students to use them, shall be
excommunicated; that any member daring to give advice on church
matters, outside of the meetings, shall be dropped from
membership, and so on, as Mark Twain says, “more ways to get out
than to stay in”—the autocrat, the egotist, and the tradesman in
every line.
And this woman, who has accumulated a fortune by the methods
stated, and imposed upon the credulity of many thousands of
religious people to build up a powerful organization of which she
has made herself the whimsical and imperious autocrat, is the
woman, forsooth, whom the Creator of the universe selected to be
the successor to Jesus!
I lately stood at the threshold of the Holy of Holies of the
“Mother Church,” and with a crowd of worshipers patiently waited
for admittance to the hallowed precincts of the “Mother’s Room.”
Over the doorway was a sign informing us that but four persons at
a time would be admitted; that they would be permitted to remain
five minutes only, and would please retire from the “Mother’s
Room” at the ringing of the bell. Entering with four of the
faithful, I looked with profane eyes upon the consecrated
furnishings. A show-woman in attendance monotonously announced
the character of the different appointments. Set in a recess of
the wall and illumined with electric light was an oil painting
the show-woman seriously declared to be a life-like and realistic
picture of the chair in which the “Mother” sat when she composed
her “inspired” work. It was a picture of an old-fashioned,
country, haircloth rocking chair, and an exceedingly
commonplace-looking table with a pile of manuscript, an
ink-bottle and pen conspicuously upon it. On the floor were
sheets of manuscript. “The mantelpiece is of pure onyx,”
continued the show-woman, “and the bee-hive upon the window sill
is made from one solid stone. The rug is made of a hundred
breasts of eider-down ducks, and the toilet room you see in the
corner is of the latest design, with gold-plated drain pipes. The
painted windows are from the Mother’s poem, ‘Christ and
Christmas,’ and that case contains complete copies of all the
Mother’s books.” The chairs, upon which the sacred person of the
Mother had reposed, were protected from sacrilegious touch by a
broad band of satin ribbon. My companions expressed their
admiration in subdued and reverent tones, and at the tinkling of
the bell we reverently tiptoed out of the room to admit another
delegation of the patient waiters at the door.
There are no other proselyters like the Christian Scientist; for
there is no other “religion” that is at the same time a source of
large revenue to its promoters. The more money that comes into
the coffers of the central organization in Boston, the more
liberal salaries may be voted to the workers. The organization
publishes the periodicals, and there is a corps of salaried
lecturers constantly distributed over the country. The _Christian
Science Journal_, a monthly periodical, and the _Christian
Science Sentinel_, a weekly periodical, were for many years the
only organs of the cult; but lately a more pretentious effort has
been made and a daily newspaper has been established in Boston,
called the _Christian Science Monitor_. The _Journal_ and the
_Sentinel_ reach practically all of the sixty or sixty-five
thousand Christian Scientists, and large numbers of them are
regular subscribers to the daily newspaper. Of course, outside of
Boston the paper cannot reach its subscribers in time to be
anything but stale as a news agency. But what of that! To buy it
helps the cause; and to help the cause puts money into the
capacious pockets of the managers. All over the country copies of
these various publications are distributed free, and in nearly
every railroad station and waiting room throughout the length and
breadth of the land copies of the weekly and monthly periodicals
may be found in conspicuous places. The newspaper has little or
no paid circulation outside the ranks of the believers, but many,
many thousands of copies are daily delivered to people who pay
nothing whatever for it. Of course, all of this costs a great
deal of money, and the money comes out of the pockets of the
believers, and goes into the pockets of the exploiters.