"CHRISTIAN-SCIENCE" ORGANIZING FORCES.
As Mrs. Eddy has been a manufacturer and vender of "Christian Science" for
a comparatively short time--only a quarter of a century--many good people
who knew her at the inception of that successful industry are still on
earth, in an active condition of "mortal mind." They have volunteered to
furnish for this brief book a variety of plain and ornamental information
that is not essential to it. But, in justice to history and biography, one
point must not be omitted. They all agree that "Mother Eddy," like Caesar,
the Standard Oil Company, and the Sugar Trust, has more organizing
capacity than "the sons and daughters of God," to use her own phrase,
generally possess. With this capacity, it is also agreed that never a
Bonaparte, never a Jay Gould, never a Pierpont Morgan, could be more
handy in surmounting all over-nice impediments to practical success.
Thus by her rare combination of terrestrial and celestial genius, "Mother
Eddy" has been able to hold her copyrighted religion, "Christian Science,"
strictly under her personal regnancy, and direct it to the highest
financial, doctrinal, and healing ends. She permits no tinge of private
judgment, no stain of unauthorized opinion, and no mere finite criticism,
so far as she can silence it. She is the Church, and membership is
obedience. Hence she bitterly antagonizes all independent agencies of
scientific salvation, though with eyes rolled up, and with fervent
proclamations of unbounded "love." In her _Science and Health_, she
advises her readers not to read other "scientific works," as they are full
of "materialism," and are not "Scientifically Christian." Directly or
indirectly, too, there is always the point that money can be much better
invested in Mrs. Eddy's own "sacred" and "positively demonstrated"
writings. It would almost seem that, in her universal motherhood, Mrs.
Mary Baker G. Eddy must have borne Mohammed's great soldier who burned
the Alexandrian library in devotion to the _Koran_.
To a great organizer, a wholesale business is always more attractive than
retail trade. It is handled quite as easily, with less detail, and
thousands of small merchants contribute to the proceeds. The able founder
of "Christian Science" early realized this fact--in her case drawn from on
high, but sometimes reached through commercial experience. Having retired
into the wilderness of her mind, far from all monitions of "sense"; having
trained her memory to forget the existence of "matter," "error," and Mary
M. Patterson; having taken a three-years' vacation with her only peers,
"the ancient worthies" and "the Scriptures"; Mrs. Eddy came back at last,
among the human species, with the metaphysics and curative formulas of
"Christian Science." Then came practical transactions in "revelations" and
"mental medicine," which soon rivaled the sales of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing
Syrup and Lydia Pinkham's celebrated compound.
Though Mrs. Eddy has gradually taken into her service various literary
experts, theologico-commercial travelers and metaphysical auctioneers,
she has always supervised, in person, the wholesale department of
"Christian Science." On her return from the skies, she brought down a
large collection of documents in which "the whole science" was condensed
and canned, and all the medical prescriptions required to fulfil a
millennium of holiness and health. With these documents in hand she formed
classes of "loyal students," her definition of "loyalty" being "allegiance
to God" (as manifested in Mary Baker); "subordination of the human" (the
student) "to the divine" (the teacher); "steadfast justice" (no wobbling
over the cash); and strict adherence to "divine Truth and Love" (the
Mother of the Logos and the Holy Comforter forever glorified).
To be more specific, it was in the year 1867 that Mrs. Mary Baker Glover
Patterson, freed by divorce from the last-named culprit, and married to
Asa Gilbert Eddy, began, as she records it, the teaching of "Christian
Science Mind Healing" to "one student." Here was a good seed sown in
fructifying ground; for, in 1881, it had grown to be "The Massachusetts
Metaphysical College" of Boston.[36]
This vast institution was managed by Mrs. Eddy as chief impartress of
"science," her assistants being her husband, her adopted son, and a
General Bates. These four "scientists" constituted the faculty.
Mrs. Eddy's last husband is described, by those who knew him, as one of
the most humble and obedient men that ever blest a perfect woman in
immaculate matrimony. His value as a college professor may be inferred
from one reminiscence of him. His supreme better-half once sued a poor
young doctor who had fallen away from "science," and taken to homeopathy,
that she might collect her fee for having taught him "Christian Science
therapeutics." Her husband, Asa, was a witness for her, to prove the
pecuniary value of her instruction, and was asked, among other questions,
"What is Man?" "As near as I can make it out," replied Prof. Eddy, "Man is
an image." Mrs. Eddy lost her case, as the court was too unspiritual to
reduce her "metaphysics" to dollars and cents.[37] But the good Asa
showed that he was an "image" of Mary; and, in her _Retrospection and
Introspection_, she has gratefully embalmed his memory in a text from the
Psalms.
"Mark the perfect _man_, and behold the upright: for the end of _that_ man
_is_ peace."
The italics are not in the psalm, but are Mary's.
Some further conception of "the perfect man," Prof. Eddy, and the value of
Mother Eddy's estimate of him, may be gathered from an item which appeared
in the Boston _Evening Herald_ of December 7, 1878, stating that "Edward
J. Arens and Asa G. Eddy were indicted to-day by the Grand Jury for
soliciting James H. Sargent to kill Daniel H. Spofford." It appears that
Spofford, in order to probe the matter, led on the conspiracy, and so
became technically involved in it himself. Thus the affair became so mixed
up that, according to the official court-record, the District Attorney
concluded not to prosecute the indictment, and Arens and Eddy were
"discharged _on payment of costs_." The divine "Mother Eddy" surely could
not have instigated a conspiracy to murder Spofford (a troublesome
backslider from "Science"), though he and many other backsliders, who know
her well, have long labored under the impression that the whole enterprise
was hers.
The human head is a queer bulb, and often seems to be a direct evolution
from the squash. This hypothesis, illustrated by the researches of Darwin
and his school, accounts for the rapid growth of Mrs. Eddy's Massachusetts
Metaphysical College from 1881 to 1889, when, in the latter year, she
closed it. At that time, as she recollects things, her college was not
only filled, but "flooded" with students from all parts of America,
Europe, and the world. Three hundred applications were on the list, and
the number was rapidly increasing.[38]
If Mrs. Eddy were not so far above the world and the flesh that her
reasons for things seldom comport with a sub-lunar search into them, it
might be possible to believe that she discontinued her college because she
feared that "material organization," applied to "Christian Science,"
would obstruct "Love's Spiritual compact." Whatever it means, this at
least is what she _says_. The success of her college had shown her the
danger of placing people on "earthly pinnacles"; and even "mortal mind"
can see that such a setting-up might lead students away from the primal
Mother and the central contribution-box. Besides, she had always had
"conscientious scruples" against "giving diplomas" when she thought of
those same "earthly pinnacles."
It may throw some light on the sudden closing of "The Massachusetts
Metaphysical College" to note that, notwithstanding "Mother" Eddy's
"conscientious scruples" against granting mere "diplomas," she had issued
hundreds of metaphysico-medical degrees at high prices.
According to a statement of hers, she obtained her college charter from
the State of Massachusetts in 1881, "with the right to grant degrees." But
the act on which this grant was based was repealed in 1882. Then, in 1883,
the conferring of "any diploma or degree" by any "corporation" or
"association," was made a legal offense, punishable by a fine of not less
than $500. Being the "president," not of any "corporation" or
"association," but of a regular "college" (with a faculty of three beside
herself), Mother Eddy's legal mind has held that this law, if aimed at
her, failed to hit, though it knocked out all other mind-healing
colleges.[39] But, in 1889, when, as persistent rumor has it, the problem
was about to be solved by legal process against "Mother Eddy," the subject
was practically closed by the closing of her "college," and by her
retirement to New Hampshire, where "the wicked cease from troubling and
the weary are at rest."
Considering Mrs. Eddy's kind of "college-faculty" and "board," together
with her exhaustive copyrights and the hierarchical monopolies consequent
upon them, it is quite conceivable that when time was ripe she had no
difficulty in "unanimously" passing resolutions to discontinue her
"flourishing school." The little joker in this pack of resolutions soon
came out in one of them. It deftly touched the matter of "organization,"
and then propounded that "the hour" had "come" when "the great need" was
for "more of the Spirit," not "the letter," and that _Science and Health_
was the spirit's nutriment.
It is not directly stated by Mother Eddy in this connection, that God
Himself fixed the scale of prices for her book; but she does say it was
"God" who "impelled" her to "set a price" for her "instruction in
Christian-Science Mind-Healing." The price was three-hundred dollars a
head, for a college course of three weeks. At first she "shrank from
asking it." But "a strange providence" led Mary to these terms, and "God,"
she asserts, "has since shown" her, in "multitudinous ways," the "wisdom"
of her "decision."[40] The "strange providence" and "the multitudinous
ways" are not explained by her; but the "wisdom" of gathering together fat
bank-deposits is unanimously acknowledged in the Church Scientist.
When our republic was a hundred years old, it had become worthy of having
"The First Christian Science Association." That body was accordingly
organized, on the fourth day of July, 1876, by Mrs. Eddy and six of her
head-light reflectors. Three years later, the Association balloted on
forming a Church, and the Eddyites won by a large plurality. Rev. Mary
Baker G. Eddy was of course chosen its "first pastor," and during her
ministration it prospered in numbers and popularity. That is, she says so
in her _Retrospection and Introspection_. But owing to tons of work, which
increased upon her, she was unable to give the Church sufficient
attention, and no son or daughter of "Science" was competent to take her
place. Her church was "envied" and "molested" by other churches, and there
was danger of "Christian warfare"--which might have led to a diminution of
proselytes, and more horrible still, a loss of shekels. In such an
extremity, she "recommended" the dissolution of the First Church
Scientist, and again, as ever, her recommendation went through "without a
dissenting voice."
"This measure," she tells us, was followed by "a great revival" in the way
of "mutual love," with "spiritual power" and "prosperity." Those, we may
be sure, were money-making times. Mrs. Eddy's reasons for dissolving her
church were doubtless infallible. Still, that same church at once
resurrected itself and exalted its horn--the "Mother Church" in Boston,
and then children and grandchildren galore, in hundreds of secondary
"Hubs" and their suburbs.