A GREAT "METAPHYSICAL" NOVEL.
As shown by our last chapter, Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy, whatever divine
attributes may have perched upon her, has been endowed with some very
human qualities. But in one gift she has been strangely lacking--a good
memory. For, in spite of her association with Dr. P. P. Quimby, his
renovation of her broken system, and all the mellifluous prose and poetry
she devoted to him in his day, the fruitful "mother," "discoverer," and
"founder" of "Christian Science," when she came to set up her new
religion, entirely forgot that her old friend, Quimby, was the real
suggestion of her whole Shekinah. She not only failed to mention the fact,
but she has been so miraculously forgetful, ever since, as to repudiate
her own record of it, and to attempt the obliteration of it from sacred
and profane history.
Mother Eddy's lack of memory, however, has had its plenary compensation.
Her imagination has more than made up for it. The surcharge of this
illimitable faculty has enabled her to produce one of the greatest works
of fiction ever conceived on earth, or possible to any other planet. This
arch-angelic romance, dimly and very distantly founded on fact, bears the
esoteric title of _Retrospection and Introspection_. It is not in the
usual form of a novel, but was evaporated by Mrs. Eddy as her corporal and
spiritual biography, after she had dropped Dr. Quimby from her powers of
research, and had built up her grand theological and financial industry,
"Christian Science." From an attentive reading of this personally
conducted and authorized volume, we know the light in which the hallowed
lady wishes to appear, and we know a good deal more if we read between the
lines.
At eight years of age--if we can only credit true piety hitched up with
lost memory--a heaven-selected little girl, Mary Baker, "repeatedly heard
a voice," calling her "distinctly by name, three times in an ascending
scale." At first she thought it was a human voice; but in due season--for
the call came many times--she, her mother and her cousin, Mehitable
Huntoon, learned better. Then her mother read to her the Hebrew story of
little Samuel, and advised her to respond to the voice, saying, "Speak,
Lord, for thy servant heareth." Finally the chosen virgin took this
advice, whereupon the voice "came no more" to her "_material_ senses." Its
mission had been fulfilled.
Such is the opening legend told to the marines of the Church Scientist, in
that juicy book, _Retrospection and Introspection_.[17]
Still, in these days of "Spiritual manifestations," the numerous believers
in messages from "the summer land" would account, in a quite simple way,
for the voices calling little Hebrew Samuel and little New-England Mary.
But not so Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. "Am I a believer in Spiritualism?" she
asks. "I believe in no ism.... As I understand it Spiritualism is the
antipode of Christian Science."[18]
Ah, it was no voice of common, finite spirit, that came to the high and
mighty founder of an "absolutely scientific religion." So there is but
one conclusion she gives us to draw: _the voice was directly the voice of
God_. The Infinite and Omniscient, the All-in-All, spake to the girl of
nine years, as a miraculous call to her divine work. At that time, she
tells us, her father thought her "brain" was "too large for her body."[19]
The old gentleman was doubtless right. It looks, too, as if the brain of
his blessed daughter, with the entire head containing it, has been rapidly
enlarging ever since.
From the metaphysical adventures of Saint Mary Baker, as told in her
_Retrospection and Introspection_,[20] we find that when twelve years old
she was admitted to the "Orthodox Church" of New England, though she
declined to accept the doctrine of predestination--a doctrine which so
troubled her that a doctor was called, who pronounced her "stricken with
fever." It is told of Martin Luther that when a theological student once
came to him half-crazy over the same doctrine, the doughty reformer
ordered him to go and get "well drunk." In the case of Robert Ingersoll,
his soul could only find relief from the tenet by such hard swearing that
it brought him peace. But we are assured by our divine lady of the "Church
Scientist" that she took the better as well as the usual course prescribed
for such trials. She "wrestled in prayer." For she felt sure that the
Creator of the Universe, who had once descended in person and spoken to
her by name, could not fail to possess the faculty of hearing and the
usefulness of help. Behold it was so! Instantly the fever was gone and
health was restored. "The physician marveled," she says, and John Calvin
"lost his power."
In 1878 Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy was called to preach at the Baptist
Tabernacle of Boston. The congregation increased beyond the capacity of
the pews, and it was no uncommon occurrence for the sick to be healed by
her sermons. Cancers were cured, and "many pale cripples went into the
church, leaning on crutches, who went out carrying them on their
shoulders." Mrs. Eddy says so.[21]
By the same authority--in her _Retrospection and Introspection_--it is
stated that her "Science of Divine Metaphysical Healing," otherwise
"Christian Science," was "discovered" by her in 1866. The day and date are
not given. But it was some time after February 15th; for at that time one
Mary M. Patterson was occupied in putting on poetic mourning for Dr. P. P.
Quimby, and in begging Mr. Julius A. Dresser to visit Lynn and heal an
injury to her back from a fall on the ice.
It is not well to wear mourning too long. In the spring of 1866 it must
have occurred to Mrs. Eddy that weeds of poetry would not pay, and she
hustled them off. Dr. Quimby having gone "to heaven" and slipped out of a
decayed memory, his obituary poetess just then realized that she had spent
"twenty years" in tracing "physical effects to a mental cause." Then came
the "scientific certainty" that "all causation" is "Mind," and that "every
effect is a mental phenomenon."[22]
What "Christian Scientists" mean by "scientific certainty" is proof by
"healing." Take the revered principle of cosmogony that "the moon is made
of green cheese." If one who holds the doctrine, "heals" anybody, the
proposition is "demonstrated." Mrs. Eddy's "scientific works" are all
filled with this unanswerable logic. "Mortal Mind"--a thing which she
utterly reprobates--may find difficulty in accepting the conclusion; but
it is doubtless quite as well founded as most of the "healing" itself.
Mrs. Eddy's own case is an illustration in point. A bed-ridden invalid for
years, she was snatched from death, she has told us, by Dr. Quimby, and
within a week of his first mental treatment she climbed to the top of a
city hall. The writer has read a series of Mrs. Eddy's unpublished
letters, which show that for some time she had varied nervous and spinal
relapses. When not with Dr. Quimby, she wrote to him for "absent
treatments," and sometimes _saw him appear to her_--or said she did--in
response. Finally she was cured. Then she fell on an icy sidewalk, was
nearly frightened to death, and wrote her letter beseeching Mr. Dresser to
"undertake" for her. But, having been taught mind-healing by Dr. Quimby,
she "demonstrated" over herself, and got up. The Doctor's original cure
appears to have been so effective that her fall on the ice was mostly a
jar of her imagination and a contusion on her veracity. For, in her
_Retrospection and Introspection_, she solemnly affirms that her accident
caused an injury far beyond the reach of "medicine" or "surgery," which
she repaired by application of the Divine Spirit. This experience, says
Mrs. Eddy ("scientist"), was a "falling apple of discovery" to her.
Thereupon she went out into the wilderness of Boston--"withdrew," that is,
from society--for three years--that she might search the Scriptures and
find "Science."[23] At the end of her retirement, she had learned that
"Mind reconstructs the body," and that "nothing else can." How it is done,
she adds, "the Spiritual Science of Mind must reveal." Her charge for a
course of ten lessons in this "divine science" was soon fixed at "only
three hundred dollars."[24]
Of the genuine original "Christian Science"--the sole and undivided
"discovery" of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy--she says:
"I named it _Christian_ because it is compassionate, helpful, and
spiritual. God I called _Immortal Mind_. That which sins, suffers, and
dies, I named _mortal mind_. The physical senses, or sensuous nature, I
called _error_ and _shadow_. Soul I denominated _Substance_, because Soul
alone is truly substantial. God I characterized as individual entity, but
his corporeality I denied. The Real I claimed as eternal; and its
antipodes, or the temporal, I described as unreal. Spirit I called the
_reality_; and matter, the _unreality_."[25]
On the hash and rehash of theology, here announced, we need not dwell just
now, but will consider, for the moment, how much of Mrs. Eddy's
individually discovered and copyrighted creed was first expounded, though
_not_ copyrighted, by one P. P. Quimby.
Dr. Quimby never thought of pushing his thought and work under the special
name of "Christian Science," though his writings show that he used the
term.[26]
He was not in pursuit of money by truckling to current preconception or
prejudice. We recollect, however--for our own memory has not been laid in
the tomb of our piety--that after "his truth was discovered" he "found his
new views all portrayed and illustrated in Christ's teachings." We
recollect that he said of his practise, "It belongs to a Wisdom that is
above man as man. It was taught eighteen hundred years ago, and has never
had a place in the heart of man since." He said, "There is a bread which,
if a man eat, he is filled; and this bread is Christ or Science." In 1865
the Portland _Advertiser_ said of Dr. Quimby:
"By a method entirely novel and at first sight quite unintelligible, he
has been slowly developing what he calls _the 'Science of Health'_; that
is, as he defines it, a science founded on principles that can be taught
and practised like that of mathematics, and not on opinion or experiments
of any kind whatsoever."
Prior to the issue of Mrs. Eddy's _Retrospection and Introspection_ she
had, of course, written her other great and better-known work of
religious fiction, called _Science and Health_. Now the title of that
book--the term "Science and Health"--is quite different from Dr. Quimby's
term, "The Science of Health." Still, the chief distinction between them,
considering what Dr. Quimby taught, is that the latter came first and the
former afterwards.
It does not appear that God--who in our day has been personally known by
Mrs. Eddy only--and in an interview which _He_ took the trouble to
seek--was ever technically defined by Dr. Quimby as "Immortal Mind," or
"characterized as individual entity," with "corporeality denied." It may
have been so; for all the obligations derived by Mrs. Eddy from Dr. Quimby
have not yet been published. By all competent theologians and
metaphysicians, since the beginning at least of human records, God has
been conceived and proclaimed as Infinite Spirit, one with "Immortal
Mind," and above "corporeality," which has been accounted a temporary
phase of finite things. Plato was pretty nearly made of this conception in
philosophy, and St. John in religion. P. P. Quimby was neither a Plato nor
a Saint John; but he "agreed" with them, in his literal, honest fashion,
as he said he did with Bishop Berkeley.
If Mrs. Eddy had ever read a history of philosophy before she instituted a
religion, she would have found that Spinoza honored her advent, some two
hundred years in advance of it, by postulating "Substance" as the "Soul"
of things. Incidentally, too, he postulated "matter" as an "unreality of
sense," and thus, in a way, as "error" and "shadow"--the product of
"mortal mind." Dr. Quimby said, with the utmost possible distinctness, "I
believe matter to be nothing but an idea belonging to the senses"; and it
will be found, when his writings get published, that he said the same
thing in some hundreds of different ways. But all this was known to the
thought of India, even before books were written, and the original
authorities for it had then been lost.
But now: in one point of doctrine--and to her the most important
one--Mother Mary Baker G. Eddy does stand completely "original," solitary
and alone. She holds of "matter" that it is not only not what it seems,
but is _nothing at all_ save "unreality." To recognize it as anything
whatever, beyond "shadow" and "error," is to be buried in disease, sin,
and death. Absolutely to deny the most palpable fact of daily existence is
to Christian Science the one road to health and salvation.
To Dr. Quimby, matter was a state of things "reduced from mind," but the
state and the things were _here_. They were perfectly _actual_ as _a
condition_, though not as an unrelated fixture of all time and eternity.
Every "idealist," in every age, has taken this view, excepting only Mrs.
Eddy. Of her own view, no human being out of a refuge for imbeciles or the
Church Scientist, could possibly begrudge her the sole copyright. In due
order Mrs. Eddy's theological speculation will be further considered.
From the Arabian Nights tales of _Retrospection and Introspection_, we
learn that, before setting up her new church, the revelator "wandered
through the dim mazes of _Materia Medica_." She "found," in Jahr's two
hundred and sixty-two remedies, the one pervading secret that the less
matter and the more mind, the better the work. Homeopathy taught her that
in the higher attenuations of its drugs, "matter is rarefied to its fatal
essence, mortal mind." Her conclusion was that "mortal belief," instead of
any "drug," governs the action of material medicine. "I claim," says she,
"for healing scientifically," that "it does away with all material
medicine, and recognizes the antidote for all sickness, as well as sin, in
the Immortal Mind; and mortal mind as the source of all ills which befall
mortals.... The mortal body being but the objective state of the mortal
mind, this mind must be renovated to improve the body."[27]
Considering the high moral perch on which Mrs. Eddy has set herself, and
contemplating the cerulean nest in which she has laid the eggs of
"science," it is really painful here to study her case of fatty
degeneration of the memory. For, apart from mere phraseology and
acquaintance with Jahr, Dr. P. P. Quimby had reached the principle and
practise of "healing scientifically," more than twenty years before she
proclaimed it in _Science and Health_, and he had applied it to Mrs. Eddy
herself, thirteen years prior to that publication, which descended from
heaven in 1875. He did not mention "mortal mind"--by name, that is--for he
called the fact of it "opinion of the natural man," in "the state of
matter," and so far of "error." He did not use the term, "Immortal Mind";
for he designated it as "Wisdom," "Science," and the "Christ," as
distinguished from "the man, Jesus." Adopting the Christ _principle_, Dr.
Quimby aimed to follow, persistently but humbly, in the footsteps of
Jesus. Dr. Quimby, in fact, was covering, both theoretically and
practically, the whole true and essential field of "Christian Science,"
while avoiding its nonsense and its humbugs, at a time when Mrs. Eddy, as
"Mary B. Glover," was a writer of love stories for "Peterson's
Magazine."[28]