The Eddy Ban on Marriage
I have said that Mrs. Eddy’s influence as the founder of
Christian Science is not confined to the religious activities of
her followers, but extends into their domestic and marital
relations and even their business affairs. One of the harmful
results of Mrs. Eddy’s “inspired” teachings consists in the
estrangement so frequently caused between husband and wife where
either one or the other of them is a Christian Scientist. If both
happen to be fast in the faith, the occasion for disharmony
between them is not so great; for then the marital relation is
suspended by mutual consent.
I cannot say that I have found very much sympathy on the part of
husbands, even nominal Christian Science husbands, with Mrs.
Eddy’s views upon the marriage relation; but I do know of many
cases in which they have so influenced wives as to lead to the
complete destruction of anything like real marriage.
Mrs. Eddy disapproves of marriage altogether. “These words of St.
Matthew,” she says, “have special application to Christian
Science, namely, ‘It is not good to marry.’”
In the first place, St. Matthew never said anything of the kind;
and, in the second place, if he had said it, it would have been
only so much to his discredit. No sane and sincere person has
ever denounced marriage; and not only did St. Matthew not
disapprove of it, but, in his Gospel, Jesus is quoted as having
said: “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and
shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh.” And
the beautiful affection of Jesus for children is sufficient
evidence of his high approval of marriage.
Mrs. Eddy, having been married three or four times, now
emphatically disapproves of marriage, and a marriage between
Christian Scientists is decidedly objectionable. There has never
been a marriage in a Christian Science church. There is no
Christian Science marriage ceremony and no Christian Science
official authorized to perform a marriage. The marriage relation,
as such, is regarded as sensuous and impure, and the marriage of
an official of the church in any part of the country would mean
instant loss of power and influence together with his office and
its emoluments.
“Is marriage nearer right than celibacy?” asks Mrs. Eddy. “Human
knowledge inculcates that it is, while science indicates that it
is not.” Science is thus distinguished from human knowledge. Mrs.
Eddy’s science is a thing imparted to her by Omniscience, and
Omniscience, she says, indicates that marriage is not nearer
right than celibacy. It is a part of Mrs. Eddy’s teaching and the
teaching of her students, that a woman cannot be an effective
healer, if she really love a man and be a true wife, and that a
man cannot accomplish the best results in healing through
Christian Science if he really love a woman and be a true
husband.
With this objection to marriage goes also the objection to
children, so that the birth of children in Christian Science
families is of rare occurrence and is regarded as evidence of
unspiritual living and is decidedly discrediting. “Sensual and
mortal beliefs, material suppositions of life,” Mrs. Eddy calls
children.
The effect of this teaching is shown in the difference between
Christian Science Sunday Schools and Christian Sunday Schools.
The membership of the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian Sunday
Schools is about the same as their church membership; while in
Christian Science Sunday Schools there is but one child for every
five church members.
Mrs. Eddy’s objection to children does not appear to be to
children themselves, but simply to children begotten and born as
they have been from the beginning of man’s existence until now
and will be until the end. It is a part of Mrs. Eddy’s inspired
doctrine that, when Christian Science has made a conquest of the
world and the “spiritual creation is discerned,” there will be no
more marriage and the human race be propagated without regard to
sex. “Until it be learned,” she says, “that generation rests on
no sexual basis, let marriage continue,” and “until time matures
human growth, marriage and progeny will continue unprohibited in
Christian Science,” and “To abolish marriage at this period and
maintain morality and generation, would put ingenuity to
ludicrous shifts, yet this is possible in Science.” Insane as
this teaching is, Mrs. Eddy’s alleged “intelligent” following
believe it to be the teaching of Infinite Wisdom, and as such
make it the desire of their lives.
Charming doctrine this for civilized people to make the regulator
of their lives! Oh, charming! But Mrs. Eddy goes further and
denounces marriage in the roundest and almost unprintable terms.
The most impressive and conspicuous incident in Christian Science
history was the dedication in June, 1906, of the “Mother Church”
in Boston, a beautiful building that cost upwards of two million
dollars. In order to get her views regarding marriage before the
faithful, in the most impressive manner, Mrs. Eddy incorporated
them in her message which was read at the church dedication
ceremonies. She took the bit in her teeth, as it were, and
notwithstanding efforts to dissuade her or induce her to modify
her statement, insisted upon getting her views before her
following in their most extreme and obnoxious form,
characterizing marriage as “synonymous with legalized lust.”
It has been denied by Mrs. Eddy’s press agents that she gave
utterance to this opinion of marriage; but it will be found in
her dedication message as published in the _Christian Science
Sentinel_ for June 16, 1906, and the _Christian Science Journal_
for July, 1906.
To one not insane or degenerate, to all noble souls, marriage is
the sweetest and purest relationship imaginable and fatherhood
and motherhood are nothing less than divine; but this
three-or-four-times-married woman gives us to understand that, so
far as she knows it, marriage is “legalized lust.” I should think
a so much married woman would deliberate a long time before she
would give public utterance to such a view of the marriage
relation. Far be it from me to dispute her own experience. Her
whole teaching regarding the institution shows that it is
impossible for her to conceive of what marriage means to a noble
man and a noble woman who have found unity in its sacred bond;
and when she applies that vile epithet to society’s fundamental
institution, I tell her, though she pretend to voice God Himself,
that she lies and the truth is not in her. How is it possible for
a husband who loves and respects his wife, or a wife who loves
and respects her husband, or parents who adore their children, to
have anything but contempt for this woman and her odious
teachings?
If Mrs. Eddy’s God were, in fact, the true God, and if Christian
Science were a revelation from Him, and if all the miracles they
pretend to have performed had been performed, I should still not
bow down to their God nor worship him; I should not prostrate
myself at their shrines nor have fellowship with them, so long as
the attempt is made to place the stigma of impurity upon the
purest of all pure things in the world to me, my child.
Yes, this is the twentieth century. No, we are not living in the
year 500 nor yet in the year 1000. The ideas and doctrines, the
beliefs and practices of Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science belong to
the darkest period of the dark ages, but they are very real and
very potent things in the lives of many thousands of people upon
whom the light of the world’s highest civilization shines.