At first the story is one of hard won success checkered by disaster and defections. Time and again students would revolt and leave her, sometimes in large numbers in comparison with the few adherents she had in her early struggling days. As some of them said, "We stand the brunt and burden of Christian Science, and Mrs. Eddy gets the money and the glory" (M., p.357).
In 1878 Mrs. Eddy sued Richard Kennedy. On appeal Kennedy won the case. In April, 1878, she sued George H. Tuttle and Charles S. Stanley, two of her students, and lost the case. The same month she sued Daniel Spofford, and lost the case. In May, 1878, came the witchcraft case, Brown vs. Spofford, of which Mrs. Eddy was the instigator, and in which she represented the plaintiff in court.
"These lawsuits reached a sensational climax when, in October, 1878, Asa Gilbert Eddy [Mrs. Eddy's husband] and Edward J. Arens were arrested on the charge of conspiracy to murder Daniel H. Spofford The case was called in the Superior Court in December, 1878, and an indictment was found on two counts'' (M., pp. 247, 257).
Let me give two instances of disillusionment. In 1871 Wallace W. Wright, of Lynn, began to practice as a Christian Science healer. Soon he began to have doubts, and wrote: "I began to question the propriety of calling this treatment 'moral science' instead of mesmerism. Away from the influence of argument, which the teacher of this so-called science knows how to bring to bear upon students with such force as to outweigh any attempts they may make at the time to oppose it, I commenced to think more independently, and to argue with myself as to the truth of the positions we were called upon to take. The result of this course was to convince me that I had studied the science of mesmerism" (M., p.149).
Mr. Wright publicly challenged Mrs. Eddy to restore the dead to life; to walk on the water; to live twenty-four hours without air or twenty-four days without food and water; to heal a broken bone; to restore sight where the optic nerve was destroyed. Mrs. Eddy retired from the controversy.
Perhaps the most powerful personality of Mrs. Eddy's adherents was Mrs. Woodbury. She joined the movement in 1379, and became one of her foremost healers and teachers. She wrote a great deal for the Journal, lectured as far west as Denver, organized classes and church societies, and possessed an amazing personal influence over those she came in contact with.
"In June, 1890, Mrs. Woodbury gave birth to a son, whom her followers believed was the result of 'immaculate conception,' and an exemplification of Mrs. Eddy's theory of 'mental generation.' Mrs. Woodbury named her child, 'The Prince of Peace.'....The fact that he was a fine healthy baby, and was never ill, seemed to Mrs. Woodbury's disciples conclusive evidence that he was the Divine principle of Christian Science made manifest in the flesh...they professed to believe that when he grew to manhood he would enter upon his Divine ministry.... When word was brought to Mrs. Eddy of the birth of Mrs. Woodbury's 'little Immanuel,' as he was often called, she was far from convinced. 'Child of light!' she exclaimed indignantly. 'She knows it is an imp of Satan!' " (M., pp. 431, 432).
Open rupture followed, and Mrs. Woodbury brought a libel suit against Mrs. Eddy. And in May, 1899, in the Arena, Mrs. Woodbury attacked Mrs. Eddy: "In this attack Mrs. Woodbury satirically touched upon Mrs. Eddy's conviction that she is the star-crowned woman of the Apocalypse, and then took up the Quimby controversy, producing Mrs. Eddy's early letters and newspaper contributions as evidence that she got her theory of mind-cure from Mr. Quimby. She criticized the English of Science and Health; ridiculed the Mother Room [a room elaborately ornamented in the Mother Church, Boston]; insinuated that Mrs. Eddy had illegally conferred degrees, and had been compelled to close her college for that reason accused her of an inordinate greed for money and 'trafficking in the temple.' She declared that Mrs. Eddy had been a medium, and that she was a victim of Demonophobia-the fear of witchcraft" (M., pp. 436, 437). In this article Mrs. Woodbury wrote of Mrs. Eddy: "Very tenacious is she of the paradoxical title carved on her Boston church, 'The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.' Surely a "Discoverer' cannot be the 'Founder' of that which she had been under the necessity of discovering; while a 'Founder' would have no need of discovering her own foundation. What she has really 'discovered' are ways and means of perverting and prostituting the science of healing to her own ecclesiastical aggrandizement, and to the moral and physical depravity of her dupes. As she received this system from Dr. Quimby, it meant simply the healing of bodily ills through a lively reliance on the wholeness and order of the Infinite Mind as clearly perceived and practically demonstrated by a simple and modest love of one's kind. What she has 'found' is a commercial system, monumental in its proportions, but already tottering to its fall" (M., pp. 438, 439). This is strong language, but our unprejudiced examination of Mrs. Eddy's "doctrine" and "manner of life" leads us to endorse it as none too severe.
But if we have to point out reverses and defeats, we must also place on record that Mrs. Eddy gradually became an object of almost worship in the eyes of her deluded followers.
Sibyl Wilbur, in her "Life of Mary Baker Eddy," has the following extravagant description: "It is well Mrs. Eddy was elevated above the throng or she would have been borne down by it. As it was, men leaped upon the stage and assisted women to follow. They wanted to take her hand, to tell her of wonderful healings, to touch her dress, if nothing more. A babble of rejoicing broke forth ... Some persons declared the address had healed them spontaneously. Men and women wept together ... When Mrs. Eddy came from her private suite and entered the drawing room the assembly almost immediately lost its head in one concerted intense desire to touch the hand of the woman who had so eloquently preached God's love as to make the sick well at the sound of her voice. They pressed forward upon her regardless of each other. Silks and laces were torn, flowers crushed, and jewels lost" (pp. 320, 321).
Can any doubt that Mrs. Eddy possessed the hypnotic art to high degree, or that her influence was demoniacal? Of her early days, before she met Quimby, we read, "When spiritualism swept over the country, Mrs. Glover took on the symptoms of a 'medium.' ... She heard mysterious rappings at night, she saw 'spirits' of the departed standing by her bedside, and she received messages in writing from the dead. There are people living who remember distinctly the spiritism craze in Tilton, and who witnessed Mrs. Glover's manifestations and mediumship" (M., p. 30).
Mrs. Eddy afterward denied that she had ever been a Spiritist, but our strong impression is that she was that all through her strange career.