The “String” on the Gifts
Mr. Farlow, Mr. Hanna and other paid agents of Mrs. Eddy from
time to time meet these various accusations with the response
that, while Mrs. Eddy has made a great deal of money, she has
given away a great deal; and, while she possesses the powers
aforesaid, she lives in retirement, at Concord, N.H., and lets
the organization run itself. Let us see what there is in these
defenses.
Has Mrs. Eddy given away many thousands of dollars? Mr. Hanna
quotes Mrs. Eddy as having said, “I could have been worth many
millions of money. My college alone was an annual income of forty
thousand dollars; but I managed to give away enough to balance my
account with conscience.” It may be inferred from this that, but
for what Mrs. Eddy has given away, she would today be worth many
millions; consequently that she has given away millions. She has
given away money, with reservations, but whenever she has so
given it, it has been to enhance her comfort, to extend her
power, or to add to her glory; and again and again, by herself
and her chosen representatives, by Mr. Hanna and Mr Farlow, have
false representations been made of the amounts given by her. This
is important. Let me give a view of Mrs. Eddy’s character as
displayed in these business transactions.
Much has been made of Mrs. Eddy’s gift of the land upon which the
First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, stands. In her book
entitled “Pulpit and Press,” copyrighted by Mrs. Eddy, and
published in 1895, is the statement that the cost of the First
Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, “is two hundred and
twenty-one thousand dollars, exclusive of the land, a gift from
Mrs. Eddy, which is valued at some forty thousand dollars.”
Valued at some forty thousand dollars! Mrs. Eddy, of course, here
intends to convey an impression that this gift of the land was a
gift by her of some forty thousand dollars’ worth of real estate.
In none of her many published references to this peculiar
transaction has Mrs. Eddy told the truth, or any material part of
the truth.
The land upon which the church stands was originally owned by a
society known as The Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and
it was originally mortgaged for nine thousand dollars to Mr.
Nathan Matthews. This original society, by contributions, fairs,
etc., raised enough money to reduce the amount of the mortgage to
about five thousand dollars, when, according to Mrs. Eddy’s
statement in her book “Pulpit and Press,” “Owing to a heavy loss,
they were unable to pay the mortgage; therefore I paid it, and
through trustees gave back the land to the church.”
Mrs. Eddy did not pay the mortgage. She did not give back the
land to the church. What she did was quite other than what she
says she did. Through her agents, she took an assignment of the
mortgage for the balance of five thousand dollars due upon it,
foreclosed it, crowded out all of the original contributors,
members of the Church of Christ, Scientist, acquired the title
herself, and gave it to trustees for a new organization, The
First Church of Christ, Scientist, reserving to herself a right
to re-enter and repossess herself of the land with any church
that might be constructed upon it. And this cost Mrs. Eddy five
thousand dollars, not forty thousand, as she would have us
understand, and as Mr. Farlow has represented; nor even twenty
thousand, as the more modest Hanna intimates.
Real-estate men in Boston would wonder how it was possible for
Mrs. Eddy legally to acquire, for the sum of five thousand
dollars, by the proper foreclosure of a mortgage, property upon
which Mr. Nathan Matthews had been willing to lend nine thousand
dollars. Indeed, it is remarkable that Mrs. Eddy should, at an
open foreclosure sale, have been able to buy for five thousand
dollars a property hundreds of men in the city of Boston would
have been only too glad to have paid, at the time, upwards of ten
thousand dollars for. Was this foreclosure regular, or was it
fraudulent, as were so many of Mrs. Eddy’s transactions? To one
who has delved into her methods, as I have, it would seem as if
everything that she touched became tainted with fraud or false
pretense; and it is simply incredible that here in the city of
Boston, after due advertisement, and at a legal public auction, a
piece of real estate could be purchased for but little more than
half the money so sagacious an investor as Mr. Matthews was
willing to lend upon it. And what of the owners of the equity in
this land, who were Mrs. Eddy’s own friends and followers, and
whom she thus despoiled? They had contributed about $7,000 and
were left nothing, while Mrs. Eddy for $5,000 acquired all.
Mrs. Eddy, herself, says, “the property was transferred in a
circuitous and novel way, the wisdom of which a few persons have
since scrupled,” and that her intent, while “spiritually
inalienable,” was “materially questionable.” It is interesting to
note that the instruments employed by Mrs. Eddy for the executing
of the “materially questionable” transaction were two Boston
lawyers who have since been disbarred.
Again, in the _Christian Science Journal_ for February, 1898, is
an editorial statement, evidently prepared by Editor Hanna under
Mrs. Eddy’s direction, in which an effort is made to meet the
criticism upon Mrs. Eddy’s mercenary methods, he refers to three
instances which he calls “evidences of a generosity and
self-sacrifice that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude,
even while surpassing our comprehension.”
Now, what are these evidences of this extraordinary “generosity
and self-sacrifice”?
The first is the gift of the land to the church. “Years ago,”
says Mr. Hanna, “she donated a lot of ground in Boston, on which
to erect the Mother Church, that was then valued at twenty
thousand dollars, and now estimated to be worth more than double
that sum.” Mr. Hanna, it should be observed, does not say, “which
cost her five thousand dollars,” but which “was then valued at
twenty thousand dollars”; and he does not say anything about the
reserved right to re-enter and repossess herself of the land and
all the buildings that might be constructed upon it, which right
she secured for not more than $5,000. If it was “then valued at
twenty thousand dollars,” as Hanna says, or at forty thousand
dollars, as Mrs. Eddy’s book says, how did Mrs. Eddy get it for
five? Perhaps Mr. Hanna can tell. Mr. Hanna can tell many things,
if he will. He has sworn that—so help him God!—he is completely
ignorant of the belief of the members of the church of which he
was the first reader, or minister, regarding the founder of the
alleged religion he pretends to profess and professes to expound,
so we may not ask him anything about that; but he may be able to
tell us how his “generous” and “self-denying” leader secured for
five thousand dollars Boston real estate worth twenty or forty
thousand. It is a trick some of our real-estate speculators would
be glad to learn.
Another of these evidences of a “generosity and self-sacrifice”
surpassing Mr. Hanna’s comprehension is a conveyance in
perpetuity to the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston,
of the real estate of the Christian Science Publishing Society;
to wit, the lots and buildings known as 95 and 97 Falmouth
Street, “valued,” says Mr. Hanna, at “not less than twenty-two
thousand dollars.”
Again the wily Hanna gives us what he calls the value and not the
cost to Mrs. Eddy; and again, like a true disciple of his
cautious teacher, he suppresses the fact that the property in
question was conveyed to Mrs. Eddy three days before she conveyed
it to the church, by the Christian Science Publishing Society,
for the nominal sum of one dollar. Mrs. Eddy always reserves very
substantial rights, and here she reserved to herself the right to
use and occupy as much room, conveniently and pleasantly located,
as she might require for her own publishing business. If, at any
time, she shall require the whole of the premises for her
publishing business, she has the right, under her deed, to occupy
the whole, and this right she acquired for one dollar, and did
not part with. Mr. Hanna is a great stickler for values when
contending for Mrs. Eddy’s great generosity. It sounds rather
better, and makes a better showing for his patron, to say that
her gift (to which she reserves, if she wishes it, the exclusive
use) is valued at $22,000, than to state the cold truth that it
cost her the sum of one dollar.
Another of these evidences of unselfishness on Mrs. Eddy’s part,
too great for Mr. Hanna’s understanding, is the transfer to the
church in perpetuity of the _Christian Science Journal_,
_Quarterly_, and all the literary publications of the society,
and every right and privilege whatsoever connected therewith,
saving only the right to copyright the _Journal_ in her own name;
and these properties the astute Hanna again “values” at fifty
thousand dollars. Again he says nothing about what they cost Mrs.
Eddy, and again he says nothing about the right she reserved to
herself. These properties, as in the case of the real estate,
were acquired three days before she gave them to the church, by
Mrs. Eddy, from the Christian Science Publishing Society, for the
large sum of one dollar, and she reserved not only the right to
copyright the _Christian Science Journal_, which was the only
value the _Journal_ possessed, but she reserved the right to
withdraw the _Journal_ from the trust and from the church at any
time she pleased. In other words, she procured title to the
_Journal_, with a subscription list of 20,000 and over, for $1.00
and did not give the _Journal_ to the church or the society at
all. What she did give to the church, according to the official
record, cost her nothing, and what she acquired was a prosperous
periodical with a paying subscription list of 20,000 or more.
These wonderful beneficences, which fairly startle Mr. Hanna, and
which cost Mrs. Eddy $5,002, and Hanna says were “worth” $90,000,
left her with a right, under certain circumstances, to take
absolute possession of the land and the church, which cost her
nothing and cost others over two hundred thousand dollars,
guaranteed to her pleasant and permanent business quarters
without expense of any kind, gave her complete control, amounting
to ownership, of the _Christian Science Journal_, and made her
the dictator and authoritative head, if she wishes to be, of the
business end of Christian Science as conducted at the
headquarters of the Christian Science Publishing Society in
Boston. This was Mrs. Eddy’s own benefit from her outlay of
$5,002, and yet the Honorable Septimus J. Hanna, with upturned
eyes, piously exclaims:
“Let us endeavor to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to God
for His goodness to us and our cause and to His servant, our
Mother in Israel, for these evidences of a generosity and
self-sacrifice that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude,
even while surpassing our comprehension.”
In a published statement, Mr. Farlow has said:
“As to Mrs. Eddy’s wealth, I want to say she has given away,
during the past five years, more than double the sum total of
the entire profits from the sale of her books from their first
publication to the present time.”
I denounce this statement of Mr. Alfred Farlow’s as utterly
false, and I defy him to name the beneficiaries of these hundreds
of thousands of dollars he says his employer has given away. I
challenge this official prevaricator of Mrs. Eddy’s
religio-commercial enterprise to give the public the particulars
of these alleged gifts. He cannot give them. They do not exist,
and his falsehood is only one of many fabrications boldly put
forth to bolster the tottering structure that has so long
afforded him and his colleagues in fraud a comfortable financial
refuge.
The public will be wise if it decline to accept, without
verification, any statement that Mrs. Eddy or Mr. Hanna or Mr.
Farlow may make. Mrs. Eddy, it would seem, cannot tell the truth,
and Messrs. Hanna and Farlow, it would seem, are paid to tell
lies.
But the story is only half told, and what follows is more damning
than what has gone before.