Any one who tries to understand such printed matter is headed for
Bloomingdale. You must leave it alone absolutely or else accept it and
read it with your mental eyes closed, mumbling it with your lips, and
let your mind roam like a priest reading his breviary in the
smoking-apartment of a Pullman car. The question then arises, "Was Mrs.
Eddy sincere in putting forth such writings?"
And the answer is, she was most certainly sincere, and she was certainly
sane. She was an honest woman. But she was not a clear or logical
thinker, except on matters of finance and business, and consequently she
did not give forth a clear expression when she essayed philosophy. In
order to write lucidly you must think lucidly. Mrs. Eddy had no sense of
literary values. She was absolutely devoid of humor, and humor is only
the ability to detect a little thing from a big one--to perceive a wrong
adjustment from a right one.
Style in literature is taste. But the lack of style, taste and humor is
general in mankind. The world has produced only a few great thinkers,
and one of them was Darwin, a name which Mrs. Eddy mentioned in "Science
and Health" with reproach. Great writers are even more rare than great
thinkers, because to write one must have the ability not only to think
clearly, but the knack or technical skill to use the right word, the
luminous word, and so arrange, paragraph and punctuate them that your
meaning will be clear to average minds. To say that Mrs. Eddy was not a
thinker nor a writer, is not an indictment of the woman, although it may
be a reflection on the mental processes of the people who think she was.
To say that there are two million people reading Mrs. Eddy, also proves
nothing, since numbers are no vindication. Over a hundred million people
have kissed the big toe of Saint Peter in Rome.
And surely the Roman Catholic Church contains a vast number of highly
educated people. The things you do not know, you do not know. And Mrs.
Eddy, knowing nothing of literary style, knew nothing of literary art.
Her prose and her poetry are worse than ordinary. All inspirational
poetry I ever read is rot, and all inspired paintings I ever saw are
daubs. Mrs. Eddy should not be blamed for her limitations.
Many people who are great in certain lines labor under the hallucination
that they are also great in others. Matthew Arnold was a great writer,
and he also thought he was a great orator.
But when he spoke, his words simply fell over the footlights into the
orchestra and died there. He could not reach the front row. Most
comedians want to play Hamlet, and all of us have heard girls attempt to
sing who thought they could sing, and who were encouraged in the
hallucination by their immediate kinsfolk.
Mrs. Eddy thought she could write, and unfortunately she was
corroborated in her error by the applause of people who, not being able
to read her book, kindly attributed the inability to their own
limitations and not to hers, being prompted in this by the suggestion
oft repeated by Mrs. Eddy, herself. The resemblance of Mrs. Eddy's
thought to that of Jesus was never noticed until Mrs. Eddy first
explained the matter. Mrs. Eddy was by no means insane. Swedenborg was a
civil engineer and a mathematician. He wrote forty books that are nearly
as opaque as "Science and Health." If you write stupidly enough, some
one will surely throw up his cap and cry "Great!" And others will follow
the example and take up the shout, because it is much easier, as Doctor
Johnson affirmed, to praise a book than to read and understand it. The
custom of reading to a congregation in a dead or foreign language, which
the listeners do not understand, has never caused any general protest
from the listeners. The scoffers are the only ones who have ever noticed
the incongruity, and they do not count, since they probably would not
attend, anyway.
Next to reading from a book written in the dead language, is to read
from a book that is unintelligible. To listen to such makes no tax upon
the intellect, and with the right accessories is soporific, restful,
pleasing and to be commended. If it does not supply an idea, it at least
imparts a feeling. Mrs. Eddy's success in literature arose from the
extreme muddiness of her thinking and her opacity in expression.
If she had written fairly well, her mediocrity would have been apparent
to every one; but writing absolutely without rhyme or reason, we bow
before her supreme assurance. The strongest element in men is
inertia--we agree rather than fight about it. We want health--and health
is what Mrs. Eddy gives to us--therefore, "Science and Health with Key
to the Scriptures" is the greatest book in the whole world. Sancta
simplicitas! Why not, indeed!
* * * * *
People turn to Mrs. Eddy's book for relief just exactly as they formerly
went to the doctor for the same reason.
In addition to bodily health, Mrs. Eddy gives joy, hope, worldly
success; and even superior minds, seeing these practical results of
Christian Science, move in the line of least resistance and are quite
willing to accept the book, not troubled at all about its medieval
reasoning. In Ungania is a very great merchant who, not content with
having the biggest store in the Kingdom, aspires to the biggest
University. The fact that the higher criticism is to him only a trivial
matter, and really unworthy of the serious attention of a busy man,
simply reveals human limitation.
The specialist is created at a terrific cost, and that a person will be
practical, shrewd, diplomatic and wise in managing the buying public and
an army of employees, and yet know and love Walt Whitman, is too much to
expect. This keen and successful merchant, an absolute tyrant in certain
ways, has his soft side and many pleasant qualities. Why any one should
ever question the literal truth of the Bible is beyond his
comprehension.
He is convinced that "Leaves of Grass" is an obscene book, never having
read it; yet he knows nothing about the third, eleventh and thirteenth
chapters of Second Samuel, having read the Book all his life. He has a
pitying, patronizing smile for any one who suggests that David was a
very faulty man, and that possibly Solomon was not the wisest person
that ever lived. "What difference does it make, anyway?" he testily
asks. If you work for him you have to agree with him, or else be very
silent as to what you actually believe. We often find an avowed and
reiterated love for Jesus, the non-resistant, going hand in hand with a
passion for war, a miser's greed, a lust for power and a thirst for
revenge.
There may be a prating about righteousness while the hand of the man is
feeling for his sword-hilt, and his eye is locating your jugular. The
Ten Commandments are all rescinded in war time. The New York "Evening
Post" noted the peculiar fact that nine out of ten of the delegates at
The Hague International Peace Conference were theological heretics. As a
rule, Orthodox Christians stand for war, and also for capital
punishment. How do we explain these inconsistencies?
We do not try to: they are simply facts in the partial development of
the race. Why millionaires should patronize the memory of Jesus is
something no one can understand, save that things work by antithesis.
Mrs. Eddy was of the same shrewd, practical type as the merchant prince
just mentioned. She was the greatest woman-general of her day and
generation. She possessed all the qualities that go to make successful
leadership.
She was self-reliant, proud, arrogant, implacable in temper, rapid in
decision, unbending, shrewd, diplomatic--and a good hater.
At times she dismissed her critics with simply a look. No man could
dictate to her, and few dared make suggestions in her presence. To move
her, the matter had to be brought to her attention in a way that led her
to believe that she had discovered it herself. And of course all the
credit went to her. In all Christian Science churches are various
selections from her writings, and beneath every one is her name. "Thou
shalt have no other gods before me!" is the one controlling edict
breathed forth by her life and words. One of her orders was that
whenever one of her hymns was announced, always and forever it must be
stated that it was written by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. Always and forever,
the "student" giving testimony refers, in terms of lavish praise and
fulsome adulation, to "Our Blessed Teacher, Guide and Exemplar, Mary
Baker Eddy." God Almighty and Jesus occupy secondary positions in all
Christian Science meetings.
Mrs. Eddy is mentioned five times to where they are once. And I would
not criticize this if Mrs. Eddy had but regarded Jesus as simply a great
man in history and "God" as an abstract term referring to the Supreme
Intelligence in Nature. But to her, God and Jesus were persons who
dictated books, and very frequently she was careful to explain that her
method of healing was exactly the same as that practised by Jesus. Side
by side with His words are hers. Passages from the Bible are read
alternately with passages from "Science and Health." If both were
regarded as mere literature, this would be pardonable, but when we are
told that both are "sacred" writ, and "damned be he who dares deny or
doubt," we are simply lost in admiration for the supreme egotism of the
lady. To get mad about it were vain--let us all smile. Surely the
imagination that can trace points of resemblance between Mrs. Mary Baker
Eddy and Jesus, the lowly peasant of Nazareth, is admirable. Jesus was a
communist in principle, having nothing, giving everything. He carried
neither scrip nor purse. He wrote nothing. His indifference to place,
pelf and power is His distinguishing characteristic. Mrs. Eddy's love of
power was the leading motive of her life; her ability to bargain was
beautiful; her resorts to law and the subtleties of legal aid were all
strictly modern; and the way she tied up the title to her writings by
lead-pipe-cinched copyrights reveals the true instincts of Connecticut.
This jealousy of her rights and the safeguarding of her interests were
among the emphatic features of her life, and set her apart as the
antithesis of Jesus.
There is one character in history, however, to whom Mrs. Eddy bore a
close resemblance--and that is Julius Cæsar, who was educated for the
priesthood, became a priest, and was Pope of Rome before he ventured
into fighting and politics as a business. Mrs. Eddy's faith in herself,
her ability to decide, her quick intuitions, the method and simplicity
of her life, her passion for power, her pleasure in authorship--all
these were the traits which exalted the name and fame of Cæsar.
The inventor of the calendar ordered that it should be known as the
"Julian Calendar," and it is so called, even unto this day. Once Carlyle
sat smoking with Milburn, the blind preacher. They had been discussing
the historicity of Jesus. Then they sat smoking in silence. Finally,
Tammas the Techy knocked the ashes out of his long clay t. d. and
muttered, half to himself and half to Milburn, "Ah, a great mon, a great
mon--but he had his limitations!" The same remark can truthfully be
applied to Mrs. Eddy. And about the only point that Jesus and Mrs. Eddy
have in common is this matter mentioned by Carlyle.
The superior shrewdness and the keen business instinct of Mrs. Eddy are
seen in the use of the words "Christian" and "Science." The sub-title,
"With Key to the Scriptures," is particularly alluring. And the use of
the Oxford binding was the crowning stroke of commercial insight. Surely
Mrs. Eddy must command our profound respect. She was undoubtedly a very
great business genius, to say the very least.
* * * * *
When John Henry Newman became a Catholic, he gave as a reason for his
decision that he had found no place in literature or art to rest his
head. His reward for not finding a place in literature or art for his
head was the red hat.
Let the followers of Mrs. Eddy take comfort in that their great teacher
had plenty of high precedent for believing that Adam was created by
fiat, and Eve was made from his rib, all the fiat being used; that
Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed, even when the
order should have been given to the earth; that Lazarus was raised from
the dead after his body had become putrid; that witchcraft is a fact in
Nature; and that children can be born with the aid of one parent a
little better than in the old-fashioned way--parthenogenesis, I think
they call it.
These inconsistencies of absolute absurdity, existing side by side with
great competence and sanity, are to be found everywhere in history.
Mrs. Eddy excited the envy of the medical world in her demonstration
that good health and happiness are the sure results of getting rid of
the doctor habit; but they got even with her when she said that virgin
motherhood would yet become the rule, and tilling of the soil would
cease to be a necessity.
Saint Augustine thought, as did most of the early Churchmen, that to do
evil that good might follow was not only justifiable, but highly
meritorious. So they preached hagiology to scare people into the narrow
path of rectitude.
Chapman, Alexander, Torrey, Billy Sunday and most other professional
evangelists believe in and practise the same doctrine.
The literary conscience was a thing known in Greece, but only recently,
say within two hundred years, has it been again manifest, and as yet it
is rare. It consists in the scorn and absolute refusal to write a line
except that which stands for truth.
The artistic conscience that refuses to paint for hire or model on order
is the same. Wagner, Millet, Rembrandt, William Morris and Ruskin are
examples of men who were incapable of anything but their highest and
best creative work, and refused to truckle to the mercenary horde. Such
men may be without conscience in a business way. And a person may be
absolutely moral in all his acts of life, except in writing and talking,
and here he may be slipshod and uncertain.
Mrs. Eddy was beautifully lacking in the literary conscience, just as
much so as was Gladstone when he attempted to reply to Ingersoll in "The
North American Review," and resorted to sophistry and evasion in
lieu of logic. Absolute truth to Gladstone was a matter of
indifference--expediency was his shibboleth. Truth to Mrs. Eddy was also
a secondary matter; the only things that really mattered were Health and
Success. Health and Success are undoubtedly great things and well
worthy of possession, but I wish to secure them only through the
expression of truth. If you gag my tongue, chain my pen and cry,
"Believe and you will have Health," I would say, "Give me liberty or
give me death!" Christian Scientists ask you to buy Mrs. Eddy's book,
"Science and Health."
When the volume is handed you, you are promised health and success if
you believe its every word; and if you don't, you are threatened with
"moral idiocy."
It is the old promise of Paradise and the threat of Hell in a new guise.
As for me, I decline the book.
* * * * *
Stephen Girard was a great merchant who had a great love of truth; but
if he had been in a retail business, his zeal for truth might have been
slightly modified.
As a rule, the world of humanity can be divided into two parts: the
practical men and the searchers for truth. Usually the latter have
nothing to lose but their head. Spinoza, Galileo, Bruno, Thomas Paine,
Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, are the pure type. Then
come Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson, crowded out of their
pulpits, scorned by their Alma Mater, pitied by the public--yet holding
true to their course.
And lo! they grew rich; whereas, if they had stuck close to the shore
and safety, they would have been drowned in the shallows of oblivion.
On the other hand, we find in, say, the directorate of the Standard Oil
Company, many men who are zealous members of the orthodox churches,
giving large sums in support of the "gospel," and taking an active
interest in its promulgation. All of them say, with the late Mr. Morgan,
"My mother's religion is good enough for me." So here we get practical
shrewdness combined with minds that, so far as abstract truth is
concerned, are simply prairie-dog towns.
These men belong to a type that will cling to error as long as it is
soft, easy and popular. Most certainly these men are not fools--they are
highly competent and useful in their way. But as for superstition, they
find it soothing; it saves the trouble of thinking, and all their
energies are needed in business.
Religion, to them, is a social diversion, with a chance of salvation on
the side. Inertia does not grip them when it comes to commerce--but in
religion it does. Lincoln once said that there was just one thing, and
only one thing, that God Almighty could not understand: and that was the
workings of the mind of an intelligent American juror.
Herbert Spencer says that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the six best
educated men the world has seen. He was the first man to resolve light
into its constituent elements. Voltaire says that when Newton discovered
the Law of Gravitation he excited the envy of the scientific world.
"But," adds Voltaire, "when he wrote a book on the Bible prophecies, the
men of science got even with him." Sir Isaac Newton defended the literal
inspiration of the Scriptures and was a consistent member of the Church
of England. Doctor Johnson was unhappy all day if he didn't touch every
tenth picket of the fence with his cane as he walked downtown.
Blackstone, the great legal commentator, believed in witchcraft, and
bolstered his belief by citing the Scriptural text, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live"--thus proving Moses a party to the superstition.
Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice of England, did the same.
Gladstone was a great statesman, and yet he believed in the Mosaic
account of Creation, just as did Mary Baker Eddy.
John Adams was a rebel from political slavery, but lived and died a
worthy Churchman, subsisting on canned theology--and canned in England,
at that.
Franklin and Jefferson were rebels from both political and theological
despotism, but looked leniently on leeches and apothecaries. Herbert
Spencer had a free mind as regards religion, politics, economics and
sociology; yet he was a bachelor, lived in the city, belonged to a club,
played billiards and smoked cigars. Physical health was out of his
reach, and with all his vast knowledge, he never knew why. All through
history we find violence and gentleness, ignorance and wisdom, folly and
shrewdness side by side in the same person.
The one common thing in humanity is inconsistency. To account for it
were vain. We know only that it is.
* * * * *
The very boldness of Mrs. Eddy's claims created an impetus that carried
conviction.
The woman certainly believed in herself, and she also believed in the
Power, of which she was a necessary part, that works for righteousness.
She repudiated the supernatural, not by denying "miracles," but by
holding that the so-called miracles of the Bible really occurred and
were perfectly natural--all according to Natural Law, which is the
Divine Law.
And the explanation of this Divine Law was her particular business. Thus
did she win to her side those who were too timid in constitution to
forsake forms and ceremonies and stand alone on the broad ground of
Rationalism.
Christian Science is not a religion of fight, stress and struggle. Isn't
it better to relax and rest and allow Divinity to flow through us, than
to sit on a sharp rail and call the passer-by names in falsetto? May
Irwin's motto, "Don't Argufy," isn't so bad as a working maxim, after
all.
All Christian denominations are very much alike. Their differences are
microscopic, and recognized only by those who are immersed in them.
Martin Luther only softened the expression of the Roman Catholic
Church--he did not change its essence.
Benjamin Franklin declared that he could not tell the difference between
a Catholic and an Episcopalian. But Christian Science is a complete
departure from all other denominations, and while professing to be
Christian, is really something else, or if it is Christian, then
orthodoxy is not.
Christian Science strikes right at the root of orthodoxy, since it
divides the power of Jesus with Mary Baker Eddy and affirms that Jesus
was not "The Savior," but A Savior.
This is the position of Thomas Paine, and all other good radicals.
Christian Science places Mrs. Eddy's work right alongside of the Bible.
No denomination has ever put out a volume stating that the book was
required in order to make the Bible intelligible. No denomination has
ever put forth a person as the equal of Jesus. This has only been done
by unbelievers, atheists and free-thinkers.
Christianity is at last attacked in its own house and by its own
household. It is thoroughly understood and admitted everywhere that
there are two kinds of Christianity. One is the kind taught by the
Nazarene; and the other is the institutional variety, made up of
denominations which hold millions upon millions of dollars' worth of
property without taxation, and parade their ritual with rich and costly
millinery.
The one was lived by a Man who had not where to lay His head; and the
other is an acquirement taken over from pagan Rome, and continued
largely in its pagan form even unto this day. Christian Science is
neither one nor the other, and the obvious pleasantry that it is
neither Christian nor scientific is a jest in earnest. Christian Science
is a modern adaptation of all that is best in the simplicity and
asceticism of Jesus, the commonsense philosophy of Benjamin Franklin,
the mysticism of Swedenborg, and the bold pronunciamento of Robert
Ingersoll. It is a religion of affirmation with a denial-of-matter
attachment.
It is a religion of this world. Jesus was a Man of Sorrows but Mary
Baker Eddy was a Daughter of Joy.
And as the universal good sense of mankind holds that the best
preparation for a life to come, if there is one, is to make the best of
this, Christian Science is meeting with a fast-growing popular
acceptance.
The decline of the old orthodoxy is owing to its clinging to the fallacy
that the world's work is base, and Nature is a trickster luring us to
our doom. Mrs. Eddy reconciled the old idea with the new and made it
mentally palatable. And this is the reason why Christian Science is
going to sweep the earth and in twenty years will have but one
competitor, the Roman Catholic faith.
Orthodoxy, blind, blundering, stubborn, senile, is tottering--the
undertaker is at the door. Indeed, the old idea of our orthodox friends
that they were preparing to die, was literally true.
The undertaker's name and business address attached to the front of many
a city church is a sign too subtle to overlook. Not only was the
undertaker a partner of the priest, but he is now foreclosing his claim.
Christian Science is not final. After it has lived its day, another
religion will follow, and that is the Religion of Commonsense, the
esoteric religion which Mrs. Eddy herself lived and practised.
As for her believers, she gave them the religion of a Book--two Books,
the Bible and "Science and Health." They want form and ritual and
temples.
She gave them these things, just as doctors give sweetened water to
people who still demand medicine; and as if to supply the zealous
converts, just out of orthodoxy, their fill of ecclesiastic husks, she
built fine churches--churches rivaling the far-famed San Salute of
Venice. Let them have their wish! Paganism is in their blood--they are
even trying to worship her!
Let them go on and eventually they will pray not in temples nor on this
or that mountain, but in spirit and in truth, just as did Mrs. Eddy, one
of the world's most successful women.
* * * * *
Christian Science is orthodox Christianity, minus medical fetish and the
fear that a belief in sin, sickness, death and eternal punishment
naturally lends, plus the joy of a natural, healthy, human life. The
so-called rational Christian sects preserve their Devil in the form of a
Doctor, and Hell in the shape of a Hospital.
My hope and expectation is that Christian Science will become a Rational
Religion instead of a one-man institution, or a religion of authority,
such as it now is. Its superstitious features have doubtless been strong
factors in its rapid growth--serving as stays or stocks to aid in the
launching.
But now, the sooner the ship floats free the better. Christian
Scientists, being men and women, can not continue to grow if fettered
with an Index Expurgatorius and mandatory edicts and encyclicals. That
which binds and manacles must go--the good will remain.
Christian Science brings good news, and good news is always curative.
Mrs. Eddy animated her patients with a new thought--the thought of
harmony, the denial of disease, and the affirmation that God is good and
life is beautiful. The animation thus produced is in itself the most
powerful healing principle known to science. Life is born of love. Joy
is a prophylactic. Christian Science comes to the "student" as a great
flood of light. His circulation becomes normal, his muscles relax, the
nerves rest, digestion acts, elimination takes place--and the person is
well.
Fear has congested the organs--love, hope and faith place them in an
attitude so Nature plays through them. The patient is healed. In it
there is neither mystery nor miracle. It is all very simple.
Let us rid ourselves of a belief in the strange and occult! The
Christian Science organization is an expediency. It is an intellectual
crutch. The book is a necessity. It is a scaffolding. Yet he who
mistakes the scaffolding for the edifice is a specialist in scaffolding.
Truth can never be caught and crystallized in a formula. Also this:
truth can never be monopolized by an "ite" or an "ist." Eventually the
label will be eliminated with the scaffolding, and the lumber of ritual
and rite will have to go.
We will live truth instead of talking about it. Among Christian
Scientists there are no drunkards, paupers or gamblers. Also, there are
no sick people. To them sickness is a disgrace.
Orthodox Christians get sick and gratify their sense of approbation by
receiving pastoral calls and visits from the doctor and neighbors. The
biblical injunction to visit the sick was never followed by Mrs.
Eddy--she always decided for herself just what injunctions should be
waived and what followed.
Those which she did not like she interpreted spiritually or else glided
over. The biblical statement that man's days are few and full of
trouble, and also the assertion that man is prone to wickedness as the
sparks fly upwards, are both very conveniently glossed.
Christian Scientists know the rules of health, just as most people do;
but what is more, they follow them, thus avoiding the disgrace of being
pointed out. They have made sickness not only tabu, but invalidism
ridiculous.
When things become absurd and preposterous, we abandon them.
Unpopularity can do what logic is helpless to bring about. The reasoning
of Christian Scientists is bad, but their intuitions are right.
While denying the existence of matter, no people on earth are as canny,
save possibly the Quakers. A bank-balance to a Christian Scientist is no
barren ideality. It is like falsehood to a Jesuit--a very present help
in time of trouble. Sin, to them, consists in making too much fuss about
life and talking about death. Do what you want and forget it. Quit
talking about the weather, night air, miasma.
Knowingly or unknowingly Christian Scientists cultivate resiliency. They
are proof against drafts and microbes. Eat what you like, but not too
much of it. Be moderate. Christian Scientists get their joy out of their
work. This is essentially hygienic. They breathe deeply, eat moderately,
bathe plentifully, work industriously--and smile. This is all sternly
scientific. It can never be argued down.
No school of medicine has ever offered a prophylactic equal to work and
good-cheer, and no system of religion has ever offered a working formula
for health, happiness and success equal to that launched by Mrs. Eddy.
The science of medicine is a science of palliation.
Christian Scientists avoid the cause of sickness, and thus keep well.
There is no vitality in drugs. Nature cures--obey her. In this matter of
bodily health just a few plain rules suffice. And these rules, fairly
followed, soon grow into a pleasurable habit. Fortunately, we do not
have to oversee our digestion, our circulation, the work of the millions
of pores that form the skin, or the action of the nerves. Folks who get
fussy about their digestion and assume personal charge of their nerves
have "nerves" and are apt to have no digestion.
"I have a pain in my side," said the woman who had no money to the busy
doctor. "Forget it," was the curt advice. Get the Health Habit, and
forget it.
This is the quintessence of Christian Science. Your mental attitude
controls your body. Happiness is your health. There is no devil but
fear. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
* * * * *
SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT TEACHERS," BEING
VOLUME TEN OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD; EDITED AND
ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND
PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA,
ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII