After Mrs. Eddy retired to Pleasant View, neither her son nor his
family were permitted to visit her, and, when they came East, they
experienced a good deal of difficulty in seeing her at all. Mr. Glover
believed that his letters to his mother were sometimes answered by Mr.
Frye, and that some of his letters never reached his mother at all.
Mr. Glover states that he finally sent his mother a letter by express,
with instructions to the Concord agent that it was to be delivered to
her in person, and to no one else. He was notified that Mrs. Eddy
could not receive the letter except through her secretary, Calvin
Frye.
[ILLUSTRATION: MRS. EDDY'S NEW HOME AT CHESTNUT HILL
JANUARY 26, 1908. MRS. EDDY LEFT HER OLD HOME AT CONCORD AND CAME TO
HER NEW HOUSE AT NEWTON ON A SPECIAL TRAIN, WITH THREE ENGINES TO
INSURE HER SAFE CONDUCT]
January 2, 1907, Mr. Glover and his daughter, Mary Baker Glover, were
permitted a brief interview with Mrs. Eddy at Pleasant View. Mr.
Glover states that he was shocked at his mother's physical condition
and alarmed by the rambling, incoherent nature of her conversation. In
talking to him she made the old charges and the old complaints:
"people" had been stealing her "things" (as she used to say they did
in Lynn); people wanted to kill her; two carriage horses had been
presented to her which, had she driven behind them, would have run
away and injured her--they had been sent, she thought, for that
especial purpose.
After this interview Mr. Glover and his daughter went to Washington,
D. C., to ask legal advice from Ex-Senator William E. Chandler. While
there Mr. Glover received the following letter from his mother:
Pleasant View,
Concord, N. H., Jan. 11, 1907.
MY DEAR SON: The enemy to Christian Science is by the
wickedest powers of hypnotism trying to do me all the harm
possible by acting on the minds of people to make them lie
about me and my family. In view of all this I herein and
hereby ask this favor of you. I have done for you what I
could, and never to my recollection have I asked but once
before this a favor of my only child. Will you send to me by
express all the letters of mine that I have written to you?
This will be a great comfort to your mother if you do it.
Send all--ALL of them. Be sure of that. If you will do this
for me I will make you and Mary some presents of value, I
assure you. Let no one but Mary and your lawyer, Mr. Wilson,
know what I herein write to Mary and you. With love.
Mother, M. B. G. Eddy.
Mr. Glover refused to give up his letters, and on March 1, 1907, he
began, by himself and others as next friends, an action in Mrs. Eddy's
behalf against some ten prominent Christian Scientists, among whom
were Calvin Frye, Alfred Farlow, and the officers of the Mother Church
in Boston. This action was brought in the Superior Court of New
Hampshire. Mr. Glover asked for an adjudication that Mrs. Eddy was
incompetent, through age and failing faculties, to manage her estate;
that a receiver of her property be appointed; and that the various
defendants named be required to account for alleged misuse of her
property. Six days later Mrs. Eddy met this action by declaring a
trusteeship for the control of her estate. The trustees named were
responsible men, gave bond for $500,000, and their trusteeship was to
last during Mrs. Eddy's lifetime. In August Mr. Glover withdrew his
suit.
This action brought by her son, which undoubtedly caused Mrs. Eddy a
great deal of annoyance, was but another result of those indirect
methods to which she has always clung so stubbornly. When her son
appealed to her for financial aid, she chose, instead of meeting him
with a candid refusal, to tell him that she was not allowed to use her
own money as she wished, that Mr. Frye made her account for every
penny, etc., etc. Mr. Glover made the mistake of taking his mother at
her word. He brought his suit upon the supposition that his mother was
the victim of designing persons who controlled her affairs--without
consulting her, against her wish, and to their own advantage--a
hypothesis which his attorneys entirely failed to establish.
This lawsuit disclosed one interesting fact, namely, that while in
1893 securities of Mrs. Eddy amounting to $100,000 were brought to
Concord, and in January, 1899, she had $236,200, and while in 1907 she
had about a million dollars' worth of taxable property, Mrs. Eddy in
1901 returned a signed statement to the assessors at Concord that the
value of her taxable property amounted to about nineteen thousand
dollars. This statement was sworn to year after year by Mr. Frye.
_Mrs. Eddy's Removal to Newton_
About a month after Mr. Glover's suit was withdrawn, Mrs. Eddy
purchased, through Robert Walker, a Christian Scientist real-estate
agent in Chicago, the old Lawrence mansion in Newton, a suburb of
Boston. The house was remodeled and enlarged in great haste and at a
cost which must almost have equaled the original purchase price,
$100,000. All the arrangements were conducted with the greatest
secrecy and very few Christian Scientists knew that it was Mrs. Eddy's
intention to occupy this house until she was actually there in person.
On Sunday, January 26, 1908, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs.
Eddy, attended by nearly a score of her followers, boarded a special
train at Concord. Extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent
accidents. A pilot-engine preceded the locomotive which drew Mrs.
Eddy's special train, and the train was followed by a third engine to
prevent the possibility of a rear-end collision--a precaution never
before adopted, even by the royal trains abroad. Dr. Alpheus B.
Morrill, a second cousin of Mrs. Eddy and a practising physician of
Concord, was of her party. Mrs. Eddy's face was heavily veiled when
she took the train at Concord and when she alighted at Chestnut Hill
station. Her carriage arrived at the Lawrence house late in the
afternoon, and she was lifted out and carried into the house by one of
her male attendants.
Mrs. Eddy's new residence is a fine old stone mansion which has been
enlarged without injury to its original dignity. The grounds cover an
area of about twelve acres and are well wooded. The house itself now
contains about twenty-five rooms. There is an electric elevator
adjoining Mrs. Eddy's private apartments. Two large vaults have been
built into the house--doubtless designed as repositories for Mrs.
Eddy's manuscripts. Since her arrival at Chestnut Hill, Mrs. Eddy,
upon one of her daily drives, saw for the first time the new building
which completes the Mother Church and which, like the original modest
structure, is a memorial to her.
There are many reasons why Mrs. Eddy may have decided to leave
Concord. But the extravagant haste with which her new residence was
got ready for her--a body of several hundred laborers was kept busy
upon it all day, and another shift, equally large, worked all night by
the aid of arc-lights--would seem to suggest that even if practical
considerations brought about Mrs. Eddy's change of residence, her
extreme impatience may have resulted from a more personal motive. It
is, indeed, very probable that Mrs. Eddy left Concord for the same
reason that she left Boston years ago: because she felt that malicious
animal magnetism was becoming too strong for her there. The action
brought by her son in Concord last summer she attributed entirely to
the work of mesmerists who were supposed to be in control of her son's
mind. Mrs. Eddy always believed that this strange miasma of evil had a
curious tendency to become localized: that certain streets,
mail-boxes, telegraph-offices, vehicles, could be totally suborned by
these invisible currents of hatred and ill-will that had their source
in the minds of her enemies and continually encircled her. She
believed that in this way an entire neighborhood could be made
inimical to her, and it is quite possible that, after the recent
litigation in Concord, she felt that the place had become saturated
with mesmerism and that she would never again find peace there.
_Mrs. Eddy at Eighty_
The years since 1890 Mrs. Eddy has spent in training her church in the
way she desires it to go, in making it more and more her own, and in
issuing by-law after by-law to restrict her followers in their church
privileges and to guide them in their daily walk. Mrs. Eddy, one must
remember, was fifty years of age before she knew what she wanted to
do; sixty when she bethought herself of the most effective way to do
it,--by founding a church,--and seventy when she achieved her greatest
triumph--the reorganization and personal control of the Mother Church.
But she did not stop there. Between her seventieth and eightieth year,
and even up to the present time, she has displayed remarkable
ingenuity in disciplining her church and its leaders, and adroit
resourcefulness and unflagging energy in the prosecution of her
plans.
Mrs. Eddy's system of church government was not devised in a month or
a year, but grew, by-law on by-law, to meet new emergencies and
situations. To attain the end she desired it was necessary to keep
fifty or sixty thousand people working as if the church were the first
object in their lives; to encourage hundreds of these to adopt
church-work as their profession and make it their only chance of
worldly success; and yet to hold all this devotion and energy in
absolute subservience to Mrs. Eddy herself and to prevent any one of
these healers, or preachers, or teachers from attaining any marked
personal prominence and from acquiring a personal following. In other
words, the church was to have all the vigor of spontaneous growth, but
was to grow only as Mrs. Eddy permitted and to confine itself to the
trellis she had built for it.
_Preaching Prohibited_
Naturally, the first danger lay in the pastors of her branch churches.
Mrs. Stetson and Laura Lathrop had built up strong churches in New
York; Mrs. Ewing was pastor of a flourishing church in Chicago, Mrs.
Leonard of another in Brooklyn, Mrs. Williams in Buffalo, Mrs. Steward
in Toronto, Mr. Norcross in Denver. These pastors naturally became
leaders among the Christian Scientists in their respective
communities, and came to be regarded as persons authorized to expound
"Science and Health" and the doctrines of Christian Science. Such a
state of things Mrs. Eddy considered dangerous, not only because of
the personal influence the pastor might acquire over his flock, but
because a pastor might, even without intending to do so, give a
personal color to his interpretation of her words. In his sermon he
might expand her texts and infinitely improvise upon her themes until
gradually his hearers accepted his own opinions for Mrs. Eddy's. The
church in Toronto might come to emphasize doctrines which the church
in Denver did not; here was a possible beginning of differing
denominations.
So, as Mrs. Eddy splendidly puts it, "In 1895 I ordained the Bible and
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, as the Pastor, on this
planet, of all the churches of the Christian Science Denomination."
That is what Mrs. Eddy actually did. In the _Journal_ of April, 1895,
she announced, without any previous warning to them, that her
preachers should never preach again; that there were to be no more
preachers; that each church should have instead a First and a Second
Reader, and that the Sunday sermon was to consist of extracts from
the Bible and from "Science and Health," read aloud to the
congregation. In the beginning the First Reader read from the Bible
and the Second Reader from Mrs. Eddy's book. But this she soon
changed. The First Reader now reads from "Science and Health" and the
Second reads those passages of the Bible which Mrs. Eddy says are
correlative. This service, Mrs. Eddy declares, was "authorized by
Christ."[5]
When Mrs. Eddy issued this injunction, every Christian Science
preacher stepped down from his pulpit and closed his lips. There was
not an island of the sea in which he could lift up his voice and
sermonize; Mrs. Eddy's command covered "this" planet. Not one voice
was raised in protest. Whatever the pastors felt, they obeyed. Many of
them kissed the rod. L. P. Norcross, one of the deposed pastors, wrote
humbly in the August _Journal_:
"Did any one expect such a revelation, such a new departure
would be given? No, not in the way it came.... A former
pastor of the Mother Church once remarked that the day would
dawn when the current methods of preaching and worship would
disappear, but he could not discern how.... Such disclosures
are too high for us to perceive. _To One alone did the
message come._"
_The "Reader" Restricted_
Mrs. Eddy had no grudge against her pastors; she did not intend that
they should starve, and many of them were made Readers and were
permitted to read "Science and Health" aloud in the churches which
they had built and in which they had formerly preached.
The "Reader," it would seem, was a safe experiment, and he was so well
hedged in with by-laws that he could not well go astray. His duties
and limitations are clearly defined:
He is to read parts of "Science and Health" aloud at every service.
He cannot read from a manuscript or from a transcribed copy, but must
read from _the book itself_.
He is, Mrs. Eddy says, to be "well read and well educated," but he
shall at no time make any remarks explanatory of the passages which he
reads.
Before commencing to read from Mrs. Eddy's book "he shall distinctly
announce its full title and give the author's name."
A Reader must not be a leader in the church.
Lest, under all these restrictions, his incorrigible ambition might
still put forth its buds, there is a saving by-law which provides that
Mrs. Eddy can without explanation remove any reader at any time that
she sees fit to do so.[6]
Mrs. Eddy herself seems to have considered this a safe arrangement. In
the same number of the _Journal_ in which she dismissed her pastors
and substituted Readers, she stated, in an open letter, that her
students would find in that issue "the completion, as I now think, of
the Divine directions sent out to the churches." But it was by no
means the completion. By the summer of 1902 Septimus J. Hanna, First
Reader of the Mother Church in Boston, had become, without the liberty
to preach or to "make remarks," by the mere sound of his voice, it
would seem, so influential that Mrs. Eddy felt the necessity to limit
still further the Reader's power. Of course she could have dismissed
Mr. Hanna, but he was far too useful to be dispensed with. So Mrs.
Eddy made a new ruling that the Reader's term of office should be
limited to three years,[7] and, Mr. Hanna's term then being up, he was
put into the lecture field. Now the highest dignity that any Christian
Scientist could hope for was to be chosen to read "Science and Health"
aloud for three years at a comfortable salary.
_Why the Readers Obeyed_
Why, it has often been asked, did the more influential pastors--people
with a large personal following, like Mrs. Stetson--consent to resign
their pulpits in the first place and afterward to be stripped of
privilege after privilege? Some of them, of course, submitted because
they believed that Mrs. Eddy possessed "Divine Wisdom"; others because
they remembered what had happened to dissenters aforetime. Of all
those who had broken away from Mrs. Eddy's authority, not one had
attained to anything like her obvious success or material prosperity,
while many had followed wandering fires and had come to nothing.
Christian Science leaders had staked their fortunes upon the
hypothesis that Mrs. Eddy possessed "divine wisdom"; it was as
expounders of this wisdom that they had obtained their influence and
built up their churches. To rebel against the authority of Mrs. Eddy's
wisdom would be to discredit themselves; to discredit Mrs. Eddy's
wisdom would have been to destroy their whole foundation. To claim an
understanding and an inspiration equal to Mrs. Eddy's, would have been
to cheapen and invalidate everything that gave Christian Science an
advantage over other religions. Had they once denied the Revelation
and the Revelator upon which their church was founded, the whole
structure would have fallen in upon them. If Mrs. Eddy's intelligence
were not divine in one case, who would be able to say that it was in
another? If they could not accept Mrs. Eddy's wisdom when she said
"there shall be no pastors," how could they persuade other people to
accept it when she said "there is no matter"? It was clear, even to
those who writhed under the restrictions imposed upon them, that they
must stand or fall with Mrs. Eddy's Wisdom, and that to disobey it was
to compromise their own career. Even in the matter of getting on in
the world, it was better to be a doorkeeper in the Mother Church than
to dwell in the tents of the "mental healers."
_Mrs. Stetson and Mrs. Eddy_
Probably it was harder for Mrs. Stetson to retire from the pastorship
than for any one else; indeed, it was often whispered that the pastors
were dismissed largely because Mrs. Stetson's growing influence
suggested to Mrs. Eddy the danger of permitting such powers to her
vice-regents. Mrs. Stetson had gone to New York when Christian Science
was practically unknown there, and from poor and small beginnings had
built up a rich and powerful church. But, when the command came, she
stepped out of the pulpit she had built. She is to-day probably the
most influential person, after Mrs. Eddy, in the Christian Science
body. Rumors are ever and again started that Mrs. Stetson is not at
all times loyal to her Leader, and that she controls her faction for
her own ends rather than for Mrs. Eddy's. Whatever Mrs. Stetson's
private conversation may be, her public utterances have always been
humble enough, and she annually declares her loyalty. In 1907 the New
York _World_ published several interviews with persons who asserted
that they believed Mrs. Eddy to be controlled by a clique of Christian
Scientists who were acting for Mrs. Stetson's interests. In June Mrs.
Stetson wrote Mrs. Eddy a letter which was printed in the _Christian
Science Sentinel_ and which read in part:
"Boston, Mass., June 9, 1907.
"MY PRECIOUS LEADER:--I am glad I know that I am in the
hands of God, not of men. These reports are only the revival
of a lie which I have not heard for a long time. It is a
renewed attack upon me and my loyal students, to turn me
from following in the footsteps of Christ by making another
attempt to dishearten me and make me weary of the struggle
to demonstrate my trust in God to deliver me from the
'accuser of our brethren.' It is a diabolical attempt to
separate me from you, as my Leader and Teacher....
"Oh, Dearest, it is such a lie! No one who knows us can
believe this. It is vicarious atonement. Has the enemy no
more argument to use, that it has to go back to this? It is
exhausting its resources and I hope the end is near. You
know my love for you, beloved; and my students love you as
their Leader and Teacher; they follow your teachings and
lean on the 'sustaining infinite.' They who refuse to accept
you as God's messenger, or ignore the message which you
bring, will not get up by some other way, but will come
short of salvation....
"Dearly beloved, we are not ascending out of sense as fast
as we desire, but we are trusting in God to put off the
false and put on the Christ. This lie cannot disturb you nor
me. I love you and my students love you, and we never touch
you with such a thought as is mentioned.
"Lovingly your child,
"AUGUSTA E. STETSON."
_The Teachers Disciplined_
Her pastors having been satisfactorily dealt with, the next danger
Mrs. Eddy saw lay in her teachers and "academies." Mrs. Eddy soon
found, of course, that a great many Christian Scientists wished to
make their living out of their new religion; that possibility, indeed,
was one of the most effective advantages which Christian Science had
to offer over other religions. In the early days of the church, while
Mrs. Eddy herself was still instructing classes in Christian Science
at her "college," teaching was a much more remunerative business than
healing. Mrs. Eddy charged each student $300 for a primary course of
seven lessons, and the various Christian Science "institutes" and
"academies" about the country charged from $100 to $200 per student.
So long as Mrs. Eddy was herself teaching and never took patients, she
could not well forbid other teachers to do likewise. But after she
retired to Concord, she took the teachers in hand. Mrs. Eddy knew well
enough that Christian Science was propagated and that converts were
made, not through doctrine, but through cures. She had found that out
in the very beginning, when Richard Kennedy's cures brought her her
first success. She knew, too, that teaching Christian Science was a
much easier profession than healing by it, and that the teacher
risked no encounter with the law. Since teaching was both easier and
more remunerative, the first thing to be done in discouraging it was
to cut down the teacher's fee, and to limit the number of pupils which
one teacher might instruct in a year. By 1904 Mrs. Eddy had got the
teacher's fee down to fifty dollars per student, and a teacher was not
permitted to teach more than thirty students a year. Mrs. Eddy's
purpose is as clear as it was wise: she desired that no one should be
able to make a living by teaching alone. It was healing that carried
the movement forward, and whoever made a living by Christian Science
must heal. From 1903 to 1906 all teaching was suspended under the
by-law "Healing better than teaching."
In the fall of 1895 Mrs. Eddy issued her instructions to the churches
in the form of a volume entitled the "Church Manual of the First
Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass." The by-laws herein
contained, she says, "were impelled by a power not one's own, were
written at different dates, as occasion required." This book is among
Mrs. Eddy's copyrighted works,--a source of revenue, like the
rest,--and has now been through more than forty editions. Some of the
by-laws in the earlier editions are perplexing.
We find that "Careless comparison or irreverent reference to Christ
Jesus, is abnormal in a Christian Scientist and prohibited."[8] It is
probable that no Christian church had ever before found it necessary
to make such a prohibition.
Again, the by-laws state that "Any member of this church who is found
living with a child improperly, or claiming a child not legally
adopted, or claiming or living with a husband or a wife to whom they
have not been legally married, shall immediately be excommunicated,"
etc.[9] This seems a strange subject for especial legislation.
The Manual, however, is chiefly interesting as an exposition of Mrs.
Eddy's method of church government and as an inventory of her personal
prerogatives. Never was a title more misleadingly modest than Mrs.
Eddy's title of "Pastor Emeritus" of the Mother Church.
_How the Mother Church is Organized_
Next to Mrs. Eddy in authority is the Board of Directors, who were
chosen by Mrs. Eddy and who are subject to her in all their official
acts. Any one of these directors can at any time be dismissed _upon
Mrs. Eddy's request_, and the vacancy can be filled only by a
candidate whom she has approved. All the church business is
transacted by these directors,--no other members of the church may be
present at the business meetings,--and if at any time one of them
should refuse to carry out Mrs. Eddy's instructions, or should grumble
about carrying them out, her request would remove him. The members of
this board, in addition to their precarious tenure, are pledged to
secrecy; they "shall neither report the discussions of this Board,
_nor those with Mrs. Eddy_."[10]
These directors are Mrs. Eddy's machine; they are her executive self,
created by her breath, dissolved at a breath, and committed to
silence. Their chief duties are two--to elect to office whomsoever
Mrs. Eddy appoints, and to hold their peace.
The President of the church is annually elected by the directors, the
election being subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval.[11]
The First and Second Readers are elected every third year by the
directors, subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval, but she can remove a
Reader either from the Mother Church or from any of the branch
churches whenever she sees fit and without explanation.[12]
The Clerk and Treasurer of the church are elected once a year by the
directors, subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval.[13]
Executive Members: Prior to 1903 these were known as First Members.
They shall not be less than fifty in number, nor more than one
hundred. They must have certain qualifications (such as residing
within five hundred miles of Boston), and they must hold a meeting
once a year and special meetings at Mrs. Eddy's call, but they have no
powers and no duties.[14] The manner of their election is especially
unusual. The by-laws state that a member can be made an Executive
Member only after a letter is received by the directors from Mrs. Eddy
requesting them to make said persons Executive Members; and then, Mrs.
Eddy adds, "they shall be elected by the _unanimous vote of the Board
of Directors_."[15]
What, one might ask, is the purpose in having an "executive" body
which can do nothing--they are not even allowed to be present at the
business meetings of the church--elected by a Board of Directors who
have to elect "unanimously" whomsoever Mrs. Eddy names? Why go through
the form of "electing" them, when they are simply appointed? Why,
indeed, elect the church officers, since, behind this brave showing
of boards and bodies, Mrs. Eddy, in reality, simply appoints?
One reason is that Mrs. Eddy likes the play of making boards and
committees; she loves titles and loves to distribute them. Another
reason is that her followers are proud to be placed upon these boards,
however limited their sphere of action may be.
_How Mrs. Eddy Controls the Branch Churches_
With the branch churches the case is much the same. Mrs. Eddy starts
out bravely by saying that they are to have "local self-government."
But on reading the Manual we find that they are pretty well provided
for.
A branch church can be organized only by a member of the Mother
Church.[16]
The services of the branch churches are definitely prescribed; they
are to consist of music, Mrs. Eddy's prayer, and oral readings from
"Science and Health" and the Bible.
Mrs. Eddy may appoint or remove--without explanation--the Readers of
the branch churches at any time.[17]
The branch churches may never have comments or remarks made by their
Readers, either upon passages from "Science and Health" or from the
Bible.[18]
The branch churches may have lectures only by lecturers whom Mrs. Eddy
has appointed in the usual way--through the "vote" of her Board of
Directors.[19] And the lecture must have passed censorship.[20]
After listening to such a lecture, the members of the branch churches
are not permitted to give a reception or to meet for social
intercourse. Mrs. Eddy tells them that it will be much better for them
to "depart in quiet thought."[21] (It seems more than probable that
this by-law was devised for the spiritual good of the lecturer. Mrs.
Eddy had no idea that these gentlemen should be fêted or made much of
after their discourse and thus become puffed up with pride of place.)
Since the branch churches, then, have nothing to say about their
services, Readers, or lecturers, there seems to be very little left
for them to do with their powers of local self-government.
Services in the branch churches, as in the Mother Church, are limited
to the Sunday morning and evening readings from the Bible and "Science
and Health," the Wednesday evening experience meetings, and to the
communion service. (In the Mother Church this occurs but once a year,
in the branch churches twice.) There is no baptismal service, no
marriage or burial service, and weddings and funerals are never
conducted in any of the Christian Science churches.
_The Publication Committee_
Included in the Mother Church organization are the Publication
Committee, the Christian Science Publishing Society, the Board of
Lectureship, the Board of Missionaries, and the Board of Education,
all absolutely under Mrs. Eddy's control.
The manager of the Publication Committee, at present Mr. Alfred
Farlow, is "elected" annually by the Board of Directors under Mrs.
Eddy's instructions. His salary is to be not less than $5,000. This
Publication Committee is simply a press bureau, consisting of a
manager with headquarters in Boston and of various branch committees
throughout the field. It is the duty of a member of this committee,
wherever he resides, to reply promptly through the press to any
criticism of Christian Science or of Mrs. Eddy which may be made in
his part of the country, and to insert in the newspapers of his
territory as much matter favorable to Christian Science as they will
print. In replying to criticism this bureau will, if necessary, pay
the regular advertising rate for the publication of their statements.
The members of this committee, after having written and published
their articles in defense of Christian Science, are also responsible,
says the Manual, "for having the papers containing these articles
circulated in large quantities." This press agency has been extremely
effective in pushing the interests of Christian Science, in keeping it
before the public, and in building up a desirable legendry around Mrs.
Eddy.
_The Publishing Society_
The Christian Science Publishing Society is conducted for the purpose
of publishing and marketing Mrs. Eddy's works and the three Christian
Science periodicals, the _Christian Science Journal_, the _Christian
Science Sentinel_, and _Der Christian Science Herold_. It is managed
and controlled by a Board of Trustees, appointed by Mrs. Eddy, and the
net profits of the business are turned over semi-annually to the
treasurer of the Mother Church. The manager and editors are appointed
for but one year, and must be elected or reëlected by a vote of the
directors _and_ "the consent of the Pastor Emeritus, given in her own
handwriting." The Manual also states that a person who is not accepted
by Mrs. Eddy as suitable shall _in no manner_ be connected with
publishing her books or editing her periodicals--not a compositor, not
the copy-boy, not the scrubwoman.
_Christian Science Lectures_
Until 1898 any Christian Scientist could give public talks or lectures
upon the doctrines of his faith, but in January of that year Mrs. Eddy
prudently withdrew this privilege. She appointed a Board of
Lectureship, carefully selecting each member and assigning each to a
certain district. In this work she placed several of her most
influential men, among whom was Septimus J. Hanna. Her idea seems to
have been that as itinerant lecturers these men could not build up a
dangerously strong personal following. These lecturers are elected
annually, subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval. Their representative
lecture must be censored by the clerk of the Mother Church. The Manual
stipulates that these lectures must "bear testimony to the facts
pertaining to the life of the Pastor Emeritus."
_Missionaries_
Seven missionaries are elected annually by the Board of
Directors--Mrs. Eddy's usual way of appointing. Indeed, one finds that
the elections of these various boards are simply confirmations of
appointments made by Mrs. Eddy; not, certainly, because her
appointments need confirmation, but rather because it seems to give
these boards pleasure to vote "unanimously" when they are bidden. To
all intents and purposes the Manual might just as well state that
every committee and officer is appointed by the Pastor Emeritus, and
the phrase "elected by the Board of Directors" seems used merely for
variety of expression.
_Board of Education_
The Board of Education consists of three members, the President,
Vice-President, and a teacher. Mrs. Eddy is the permanent
President--unless, says the Manual, she sees fit to "resign over her
own signature." The Vice-President and teacher are elected from time
to time, "subject to the approval of the Pastor Emeritus."
_Obligations of the Individual Christian Scientist_
It is not easy to become a member of the Mother Church. In the first
place, the applicant for admission must read nothing upon metaphysics
or religion except Mrs. Eddy's books and the Bible. In the second
place, his application must be countersigned by one of Mrs. Eddy's
loyal students, who is made responsible for the candidate's sincerity.
There are so many things for which the new member may be expelled
after he is once admitted into the church, that it would seem as if he
can remain there only by very special grace. He is hedged about by a
number of by-laws which seem to relate chiefly to his personal
attitude toward Mrs. Eddy. He may not haunt the roads upon which Mrs.
Eddy drives. He may not discuss, lecture upon, or debate upon
Christian Science in public without especial permission from one of
her representatives. He must not be a "leader" in the church and must
never be called one. He may read only the Bible and Mrs. Eddy for
religious instruction. He shall not "vilify" the Pastor Emeritus. He
is in duty bound to go to Mrs. Eddy's home and serve her in person for
one year if she requires it of him. He may not permit his children to
believe in Santa Claus--Mrs. Eddy abolished Santa Claus by
proclamation in 1904. She brooks no petty rivals. He may not read or
quote from Mrs. Eddy's books or from her "poems" without first naming
the author. She says, in explanation of this by-law: "To pour into the
ears of listeners the sacred revelations of Christian Science
indiscriminately, or without characterizing their origin and thus
distinguishing them from the writings of authors who think at random
on this subject, is to lose some weight in the scale of right
thinking."[22]
A Christian Scientist "shall neither buy, sell nor circulate Christian
Science literature which is not correct in its statement," etc., Mrs.
Eddy, of course, determining whether or not the statement is correct.
He "shall not patronize a publishing house or bookstore that has for
sale obnoxious books."
A Christian Scientist may not belong to any club or society, Free
Masons excepted, outside the Mother Church. His connection with the
Mother Church must be sufficient for all his social and intellectual
needs, and his interest is not to be diverted from its one proper
channel. Mrs. Eddy says that church organizations are ample for
him.[23]
It is indicative of Mrs. Eddy's influence over her followers that when
this by-law was issued, less than twenty inquiries (so her secretary
announced) were received at Pleasant View. Men resigned from their
political, business, and social clubs, women from their literary and
patriotic organizations, without a murmur and without a question.
No hymns may be sung in the Mother Church unless they have been
approved by Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. Eddy's own hymns must be sung at
stated intervals. "If a solo singer in the Mother Church shall either
neglect or refuse to sing alone a hymn written by our Leader and
Pastor Emeritus, as often as once each month, and oftener if the
Directors so direct, a meeting shall be called and the salary of this
singer shall be stopped."
_Supreme Authority_
But far above all these lesser by-laws Mrs. Eddy holds one in which
her supreme authority rests. A mesmerist or "mental malpractitioner"
is, of course, to be excommunicated, and "if the author of Science and
Health shall bear witness to the offense of mental malpractice, it
shall be considered sufficient evidence thereof."[24] The accused can
make no defense, has no appeal. If any Christian Scientist offends
Mrs. Eddy, if he writes a letter to the _Journal_ and uses a phrase
which does not please her, if he is too popular in his own community,
if it is rumored that he reads upon philosophy or metaphysics, or
medicine, if he in any way wounds her vanity, Mrs. Eddy can expel him
from the church by a word, without explanation, and he can make no
effort to vindicate himself. In the matter of hypnotism Mrs. Eddy's
mere word is enough. She has, she says, an unerring instinct by which
she can detect hypnotism in any creature:
"I possess a spiritual sense of what the malicious mental practitioner
is mentally arguing which cannot be deceived; I can discern in the
human mind thoughts, motives, and purposes; and neither mental
arguments nor psychic power can affect this spiritual insight."[25]
_Actual Size of Mrs. Eddy's Following_
The result of Mrs. Eddy's planning and training and pruning is that
she has built up the largest and most powerful organization ever
founded by any woman in America. Probably no other woman so
handicapped--so limited in intellect, so uncertain in conduct, so
tortured by hatred and hampered by petty animosities--has ever risen
from a state of helplessness and dependence to a position of such
power and authority. All that Christian Science comprises to-day--the
Mother Church, branch churches, healers, teachers, Readers, boards,
committees, societies--are as completely under Mrs. Eddy's control as
if she were their temporal as well as their spiritual ruler. The
growth of her power has been extensive as well as intensive.
In June, 1907, the membership of the Mother Church, according to the
Secretary's report, was 43,876. The membership of the branch churches
amounted to 42,846. As members of the branch churches are almost
invariably members of the Mother Church as well, there cannot be more
than 60,000 Christian Scientists in the world to-day, and the number
is probably nearer 50,000.
In June, 1907, there were in all 710 branch churches. Fifty-eight of
these are in foreign countries: 25 in the Dominion of Canada, 14 in
Great Britain, 2 in Ireland, 4 in Australia, 1 in South Africa, 8 in
Mexico, 2 in Germany, 1 in Holland, and 1 in France. There are also
295 Christian Science societies not yet incorporated into churches, 30
of which are in foreign countries.[26]
In reading these figures one must bear in mind the fact that
twenty-nine years ago the only Christian Science church in the world
was struggling to pay its rent in Boston.
One very effective element in the growth of the church has been the
fact that a considerable proportion of Christian Scientists--probably
about one tenth--make their living by their faith, and their worldly
fortunes as well as their spiritual comfort are in their church; they
must prosper or decline, rise or fall, with Christian Science, and
they prosecute the cause of their church with all their energies and
with entire singleness of purpose. Again, any religion must experience
a great impetus and stimulus from the living presence of its founder
or prophet, and when that presence is as effective as Mrs. Eddy's, it
is a force to be reckoned with. Furthermore, Christian Science is a
novel and sensational presentation of one of the oldest accepted
truths in human thinking, and converts a few time-worn metaphysical
platitudes into mysterious incantations which are quite as effective
by reason of their incoherence and misapplication as because of the
relative truths which they originally conveyed. Optimism is the cry of
the times, and of all the voices which declare it, this is the most
strident and insistent, proclaiming the shortest of all the short
roads to happiness, declaring the secret of a contentment as
impervious of total anaesthesia.
[Note: The next article will deal with Mrs. Eddy's book,
"Science and Health," and will complete this history.]