Even senile decay overtook Mrs. Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, and Author of "Science and Health," and at last she fell a victim to this great delusion, and-died.
It is just here that this wretched system attracts its dupes. Mankind dislikes sickness and dreads death. It is humbling to fallen human nature to admit that such things are the judgment of God upon sin. So Mrs. Eddy came along, and persuaded men and women to dwell in this fools' paradise of her creation, and made a fortune out of it.
It may be comforting to be told that there is no evil, no suffering, no disease, no sin, no death. But alas! after all, what an uncomfortable fools' paradise to be in, for the evidences of sin, suffering, disease and death are too apparent and persistent to be ignored.
Evidently Mrs. Eddy herself felt this. She advises, "If from any injury or from any cause a Christian Scientist were seized with pain so violent that he could not treat himself mentally,-and the Scientists had failed to relieve him,-the sufferer could call a surgeon, who could give him a hypodermic injection; then, when the belief of pain was lulled, he could handle his own case mentally. Thus it is that we 'prove all things; [and] hold fast that which is good'" (S. & H., p. 464).
Is this not perfectly delicious? Well might Mark Twain, the famous humorist, find himself irresistibly drawn to pick fun out of the system. An imaginary pain resulting from imaginary injury leads the patient under certain circumstances by imaginary Mrs. Eddy's imaginary advice or permission to send for an imaginary doctor, who is called by the imaginary Mrs. Eddy an enemy of mankind and of the truth, who will use an imaginary syringe to insert imaginary fluid under imaginary skin to produce an imaginary effect on the imagination!
Poor Mrs. Eddy herself was woefully deficient in imagination. The following incident is well known, "Some years ago Mrs. Eddy herself had a tooth removed under local anesthesia. It caused her theories to be held up to ridicule in a good many quarters. In reply she gave out this ingenious explanation: that the dentist's belief in the means he employed was a mental force which combined with her own-exerted in a different direction-produced a painless operation as a logical mathematical RESULTANT OF FORCES" (Brooklyn Eagle Library, 1901).
A system so absurd, as well as false, justly deserves to be ridiculed.
And as to its system of healing, Dr. H. Goddard of Clarke University, found abundant evidence of cures both by Faith-healers commonly so called, such as Dowie and Schlatter, and by followers of New Thought. His general conclusion is that Faith-healing Mental Science is effective in cases where hypnotism would be effective, and fails where hypnotism would fail. Suggestion, he thinks, is the effective agent. Spiritualism claims the same power to heal. But none of these systems can replace lost organs or raise the dead. And if cures prove the truth of systems, we should have to believe in a dozen such systems, all with different doctrines.
The reader has just to put Christian Science teaching and Christian Scientist practice alongside each other, to behold the utter inconsistency of Christian Scientists.
For instance, we read. "Man in science is neither young nor old. He has neither birth nor death. He is not a beast, a vegetable, nor a migratory mind" (S. & H., p. 245).
"Never record ages ... Time-tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood" (S. & H., p. 246).
"Life is eternal. We should find this out, and begin the demonstration thereof" (S. & H., p. 247).
Yet Mrs. Eddy tells us where she was born, and what happened at different stages in her life. Her photographs show her age. Old age and senile decay asserted themselves, and in the end she-DIED. If her teaching and practice coincided we might believe her only deluded, but she just acted as everybody else as to food, drink, clothing, etc. And she had during her closing years a fine house, beautifully and luxuriously furnished, she had her servants, carriage and pair, coachman, etc., just as if she had never inculcated these fine theories.
In teaching her word was to be authoritative and final. If no proof was forthcoming, her ipse dixit was to be enough. She says: "Because you cannot walk on the water and raise the dead, you have no right to question the great right of divine Science in these questions. Be thankful that Jesus, who was the true demonstration of Science, did these things, and left his example for us" (S. & H., p. 329).
Christian Science can enable its dupes to walk upon the water, yet no Christian Scientist-not even Mrs. Eddy -has done this. But that need not shake the faith of the Christian Scientist. It is enough that Mrs. Eddy has said it. No proof is needed.
How different was the proclamation of the gospel by the Apostles. We read: "God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will" (Heb. 2:44God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will? (Hebrews 2:4)).
Again Mrs. Eddy writes: "Heat and cold are the products of mortal mind. The body when bereft of mortal mind at first cools, and afterward it is resolved to its primitive mortal elements. Nothing that lived ever died, and vice versa. Mortal mind produces animal heat, and then expels it through the abandonment of a belief or increases it to the point of destruction" (S. & H., pp. 374, 375).
So this extraordinary woman meanders on with her complacent contradictions. If there is no matter, only mind, what "primitive mortal elements" does the body consist, of? She says, "Nothing that lived ever died, and vice versa." Where does the "vice versa" come in? The extension of "vice versa" means that nothing that died ever lived. But how could anything die unless it had lived, or if it lived, according to Mrs. Eddy, it never died. If Mrs. Eddy was inspired to write her book, it was certainly not by God, for He would inspire consistent statements, and not foolish, high-sounding nonsense as this.
If "heat and cold" are the products of mortal mind, why did Mrs. Eddy use extra blankets when the weather got colder, why did she warm her house and put on warmer clothes like everyone else? She herself exposes the absolute folly and weakness of her vagaries again and again. She says, for instance- "One should not tarry in the storm if the body is freezing, nor should he remain in the devouring flames. Until one is able to prevent bad results he should avoid their occasion" (S. & H., p. 329).
Ah! it is this until, that is the loop-hole of Christian Science.
Again, we read: "A cup of coffee or tea is not the equal of truth whether for the inspiration of a sermon or for the support of bodily endurance" (S. & H., p. 80).
If Christian Science is true, all that is needed for housekeeping purposes is the purchase of Mrs. Eddy's book "Science and Health," and when meal time comes round, let each hungry person find the bodily refreshment he or she needs by the perusal of its wonderful truth. Let Christian Science households act according to their teaching. If truth is superior to coffee or tea for the refreshment of the tired body, then it were folly to take coffee or tea or food of any kind in preference thereto.
How different is the statement of Scripture: "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things" (Gen. 9:33Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. (Genesis 9:3)).
Whatever Mrs. Eddy preached, she herself partook of the good food provided by a bountiful Creator for the material need's of His creatures. What respect can one have for her preaching when her practicing failed at every point!
Could anything be more absurd than the following?- "The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural or necessary than would be the process of taking a fish out of water every day and covering it with dirt in order to make it thrive more vigorously thereafter in its natural element" ( S. & H., 1906, p. 413).
Though inspiration was claimed for this ridiculous statement, it was so ridiculous that in later editions the words, "and covering it with dirt," were omitted. One can really congratulate Mrs. Eddy's only child that his mother took an aversion to him, and turned her back upon him at an early stage in his existence.
Take the following choice bit,- "Divest yourself of the thought that there can be substance in matter, and the movements for mortal mind will be found to be equally possible for the body" (S. & H., p. 90).
Of course, when Mrs. Eddy traveled to distant places she went by train, and in her closing days she drove out in a carriage drawn by two black horses. If her statement above quoted was true, what need of steamers and trains and motor-cars for Christian Scientists?
It is really wearisome to repeat the vagaries of this woman; though she has shown herself astute in various ways, she says: "The less mind there is manifested the better. When the unthinking lobster loses its claw, the claw grows again. If the science of Life were understood, it would be found that the senses of Mind were never lost, and that matter has no sensation. Then the human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw-not with an artificial limb, but with the genuine" (S. & H., p. 489).
Mind is everything, we are told elsewhere. And now we are told the less mind we have the better. Yet we may have another imaginary limb like the lobster. But there is no limb, it never was lost, it never could be replaced. Where are we? On our heads, or our feet? The Indian juggler is a plain, simple man compared to this High Priestess of blasphemous folly and dexterous twaddle.
Oh, what a chance war presents to the Christian Scientist. Away with surgical knives, scalpels, and the like. To the front, ye Christian Scientists! Bring your Science and Health. Visit the base hospitals. Turn out the doctors, dressers, nurses, these enemies of mankind. Teach the heroes of the battlefield how to grow fresh arms, legs, jaws, etc. What a chance among the tens of thousands of patients! We shall hail your deeds as the dawn of a millennium of joy and peace for this sad, disease-stricken, death-ridden world. Put it to the proof, we beseech you.
But no, in the presence of all this sorrow and suffering and death you are dumb and impotent, or only mock the suffering and the dying by juggling with facts!
Mrs. Eddy says, "The less mind the better." Then the lunatic asylums will surely produce the superman of Christian Science creation. Let us doff our hats to the brainless idiot. He cannot feed or care for himself. He cannot walk, he knows not how to put one foot before the other. He cannot even read Science and Health. He is incapable of taking in the fact that such an illustrious person as Mrs. Eddy has ever lived. So much the better. We have at last reached Mrs. Eddy's great ideal -the acme of perfection.
We may well ask how it is that Christian Science has succeeded as it has.
Georgine Milmine, in her book, replies to this question with illuminating frankness: "Mrs. Eddy's philosophy makes a double appeal to human nature, offering food both to our inherent craving for the mystical and to our desire to do well in a worldly way, and teaching that these extremes are not incompatible with 'science.' Indeed, as one of the inducements offered to purchasers of the first edition of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy advertised it as a book that 'affords opportunity to acquire a profession by which you can accumulate a fortune.'...And in later and more prosperous days Mrs. Eddy has written in satisfied retrospect: 'In the early history of Christian Science, among my thousands of students few were wealthy. Now Christian Scientists are not indigent; and their comfortable fortunes are acquired by healing mankind morally, physically, and spiritually...' Worldly prosperity, indeed, plays an important part in the Christian Science religion to-day. It is, singularly enough, considered a sign of spirituality in the Christian Scientist. Poverty is believed to be an error, like sin, sickness, and death; and Christian Scientists aim to make what they call their financial demonstration early in their experience" (M., pp. 209, 210).
This accounts for a good deal; does it account for all? We believe not. There must be a great driving force behind this illusion, greater than the attractive forces appealing to the mystical side of human nature and its love of "filthy lucre." This driving force is without doubt SATANIC. There we get the secret of the whole thing. Satan has used as his tool a mixture of hysteria, ignorance, folly, subtlety, ambition, greed, will and immense driving force. The extraordinary hypnotic power exercised by Mrs. Eddy over her dupes was supernatural without a doubt-we are convinced it was SATANIC.
Undoubted and wonderful cases of healing have occurred in Christian Science. So they have in Spiritualism, Dowieism, Mormonism, the Tongues Movement, etc., etc. And all these false movements are unsound as to the Person of Christ and His blessed atoning work. By this test they are condemned root and branch; and their healings which cannot be explained as taking place by ordinary means, or under ordinary circumstances, are undoubtedly SATANIC.
The time is fast coming when all the little Antichrists will be absorbed by the Antichrist, and every delusion will be absorbed in the delusion foretold in Scripture.
Christian Science, Millennial Dawnism, Seventh-Day Adventism, Christadelphianism, Mormonism, the Tongues Movement and the like, are all indications that we are nearing the coming of the Lord, when all true believers shall be caught up, and then Christendom, bereft of every bit of reality, will take its awful plunge, as foretold by Scripture, into open apostasy.
Evidently power to heal diseases as well as other lying wonders are here indicated, as being a Satanic imitation of miraculous power to heal diseases as in Pentecostal days, when the apostles preached the gospel, "God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will" (Heb. 2:44God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will? (Hebrews 2:4)).
And as men are turning their backs on God and the truth, and refusing salvation, the day is not far distant for the fulfillment of the prophecy: "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess. 2:11, 1211And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:11‑12)).
In Mrs. Eddy's system there is no explanation of how the idea of sin came in. Every truth of Scripture is denied. In her own history there is not a line as to her finding "repentance toward God," or "faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" necessary. Her associates were spiritualists, mesmerists, etc-people without any true knowledge of God.
Every truth of God and fact in nature are denied, and nothing substituted but soul-destroying delusions of the most blasphemous nature.
Poor, deluded Mrs. Eddy has found out, as all her followers will find out, the truth of the philosopher Kant's proposition, that "A dream which we all dream together, and which we all must dream, is not a dream, but a reality."
May God preserve my reader from these antichristian snares, and may each have the joy and rest of knowing the blessedness of salvation through the atoning death and finished work upon the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Savior of sinners.
Part 2-Mrs. Eddy's "Manner Of Life."
The doctrines of Christian Science, as we have seen, stand condemned in every detail by Scripture as blasphemous and antichristian to the last degree. A brief account of the self-styled "Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science" will only strengthen, if possible, the absolute conviction that Mrs. Eddy was simply the tool of Satan. Without Satanic power behind her, her teachings would have been long ago laughed out of existence. But we must take the matter seriously, and earnestly strive to deliver those who are entangled in this terrible delusion, and warn those who stand in danger of being so entangled.
Mary Baker was born in 1821 at Bow, New Hampshire, U. S., the youngest of six children. Her father was a farmer, a man of iron will, fierce temper, intense prejudices and narrow mind.
Without a doubt she was hysterical, nervous, and subject to violent seizures-the temperament we are familiar with in that type of religious fanatics, who have dreams and visions and revelations.