The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
name of Chilblains.' The children as well as the adults, share in the
blessings of the Science. 'Through the study of the “little book” they
are learning how to be healthful, peaceful, and wise.' Sometimes
they are cured of their little claims by the professional healer,
and sometimes more advanced children say over the formula and cure
themselves.
A little Far-Western girl of nine, equipped with an adult vocabulary,
states her age and says, 'I thought I would write a demonstration to
you.' She had a claim derived from getting flung over a pony's head and
landed on a rock-pile. She saved herself from disaster by remember to
say 'God is All' while she was in the air. I couldn't have done it.
I shouldn't have even thought of it. I should have been too excited.
Nothing but Christian Science could have enabled that child to do that
calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came
down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it;
but the intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim
resulting was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and
shut. At school 'it hurt pretty bad--that is, it seemed to.' So 'I was
excused, and went down in the basement and said, “Now I am depending on
mamma instead of God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma.”' No
doubt this would have answered; but, to make sure, she added Mrs. Eddy
to the team and recited 'the Scientific Statement of Being,' which
is one of the principal incantations, I judge. Then 'I felt my eye
opening.' Why, it would have opened an oyster. I think it is one of the
touchingest things in child-history, that pious little rat down cellar
pumping away at the Scientific Statement of Being.
There is a page about another good child--little Gordon. Little Gordon
'came into the world without the assistance of surgery or anaesthetics.'
He was a 'demonstration.' A painless one; therefore his coming evoked
'joy and thankfulness to God and the Discoverer of Christian Science.'
It is a noticeable feature of this literature--the so frequent linking
together of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles.
When little Gordon was two years old, 'he was playing horse on the bed,
where I had left my “little book.” I noticed him stop in his play, take
the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about
for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there.'
This pious act filled the mother 'with such a train of thought as I had
never experienced before. I thought of the sweet mother of long ago
who kept things in her heart,' etc. It is a bold comparison; however,
unconscious profanations are about as common in the mouths of the lay
membership of the new Church as are frank and open ones in the mouths of
its consecrated chiefs.
Some days later, the family library--Christian Science books--was lying
in a deep-seated window. It was another chance for the holy child to
show off. He left his play and went there and pushed all the books to
one side except the Annex. 'It he took in both hands, slowly raised
it to his lips, then removed it carefully, and seated himself in the
window.' It had seemed to the mother too wonderful to be true, that
first time; but now she was convinced that 'neither imagination nor
accident had anything to do with it.' Later, little Gordon let the
author of his being see him do it. After that he did it frequently;
probably every time anybody was looking. I would rather have that child
than a chromo. If this tale has any object, it is to intimate that the
inspired book was supernaturally able to convey a sense of its sacred
and awful character to this innocent little creature without the
intervention of outside aids. The magazine is not edited with
high-priced discretion. The editor has a claim, and he ought to get it
treated.
Among other witnesses, there is one who had a 'jumping toothache,'
which several times tempted her to 'believe that there was sensation in
matter, but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth.' She would
not allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him
punch and drill and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its
ulcerations, and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and
she wouldn't once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it
didn't, and I have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that
her Christian Science faith did her better service than she could have
gotten out of cocaine.
There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by
an accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of
the other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered
any real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon. I can believe
this, because my own case was somewhat similar, as per my former
article.
Also there is an account of the restoration to perfect health, in
a single night, of a fatally injured horse, by the application of
Christian Science. I can stand a good deal, but I recognise that the ice
is getting thin here. That horse had as many as fifty claims: how
could he demonstrate over them? Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good,
Good-Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down but Nine, Set them up on
the Other Alley? Could he intone the Scientific Statement of Being?
Now, could he? Wouldn't it give him a relapse? Let us draw the line at
horses. Horses and furniture.
There is a plenty of other testimonies in the magazine, but these quoted
samples will answer. They show the kind of trade the Science is driving.
Now we come back to the question; Does it kill a patient here and there
and now and then? We must concede it. Does it compensate for this? I am
persuaded that it can make a plausible showing in that direction. For
instance: when it lays its hands upon a soldier who has suffered thirty
years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body and mind, what is
the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think: that it has restored
to life a subject who had essentially died ten deaths a year for thirty
years, and each of them a long and painful one. But for its interference
that man would have essentially died thirty times more, in the three
years which have since elapsed. There are thousand of young people in
the land who are now ready to enter upon a life-long death similar to
that man's. Every time the Science captures one of these and secures
to him life-long immunity from imagination-manufactured disease, it may
plausibly claim that in his person it has saved 300 lives. Meantime
it will kill a man every now and then; but no matter, it will still be
ahead on the credit side.
VIII
'We consciously declare that “Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures,” was foretold as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in
Revelation x. She is the “mighty angel,” or God's highest thought
to this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the
Bible in the “little book open” (verse 2). Thus we prove that
Christian Science is the second coming of Christ--Truth--Spirit.'
--Lecture by Dr. George Tomkins, D.D., C.S.
There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the
divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the
present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she
has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following
as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshipped, and
we must expect this feeling to spread territorially, and also to deepen
in intensity (1).
Particularly after her death; for then, as anyone can foresee,
Eddy-worship will be taught in the Sunday-schools and pulpits of the
cult. Already whatever she puts her trade-mark on, though it be only a
memorial spoon, is holy and is eagerly and passionately and gratefully
bought by the disciple, and becomes a fetish in his house. I say bought,
for the Boston Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; everything
it has for sale. And the terms are cash; and not cash only but cash in
advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual
Dollar, but a real one. From end to end of the Christian-Science
literature not a single (material) thing in the world is conceded to be
real, except the Dollar. But all through and through its advertisements
that reality is eagerly and persistently recognised. The hunger of the
Trust for the Dollar, its adoration of the Dollar, its lust after the
Dollar, its ecstasy in the mere thought of the Dollar--there has been
nothing like it in the world in any age or country, nothing so coarse,
nothing so lubricous, nothing so bestial, except a French novel's
attitude towards adultery.
The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways; the Christian-Science
Mother-Church and Bargain-Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of
spiritual wares to the faithful, always at extravagant prices, and
always on the one condition--cash, cash in advance. The Angel of the
Apocalypse could not go there and get a copy of his own pirated book
on credit. Many, many precious Christian-Science things are to be had
there--for cash: Bible Lessons; Church Manual; C.S. Hymnal; History of
the building of the Mother-Church; lot of Sermons; Communion Hymn,
'Saw Ye My Saviour,' by Mrs. Eddy, half a dollar a copy, 'words used
by special permission of Mrs. Eddy.' Also we have Mrs. Eddy's and the
Angel's little Bible-Annex in eight styles of binding at eight kinds
of war-prices: among these a sweet thing in 'levant, divinity circuit,
leather lined to edge, round corners, gold edge, silk sewed, each,
prepaid, $6,' and if you take a million you get them a shilling
cheaper--that is to say, 'prepaid, $5.75.' Also we have Mrs. Eddy's
'Miscellaneous Writings,' at noble big prices, the divinity-circuit
style heading the extortions, shilling discount where you take an
edition. Next comes 'Christ and Christmas,' by the fertile Mrs. Eddy--a
poem--I would God I could see it--price $3, cash in advance. Then follow
five more books by Mrs. Eddy at highwaymen's rates, as usual, some of
them in 'leatherette covers,' some of them in 'pebbled cloth,' with
divinity circuit, compensation balance, twin screw, and the other modern
improvements: and at the same bargain counter can be had the 'Christian
Science Journal.' I wish it were in refined taste to apply a rudely and
ruggedly descriptive epithet to that literary slush-bucket, so as to
give one an accurate idea of what it is like. I am moved to do it, but
I must not: it is better to be refined than accurate when one is talking
about a production like that.
Christian-Science literary oleomargarine is a monopoly of the Mother
Church Headquarters Factory in Boston; none genuine without the
trade-mark of the Trust. You must apply there, and not elsewhere; and
you pay your money before you get your soap-fat.
The Trust has still other sources of income. Mrs. Eddy is president
(and perhaps proprietor?) of the Trust's Metaphysical College in Boston,
where the student who has practised C.S. healing during three years the
best he knew how perfects himself in the game by a two weeks' course,
and pays one hundred dollars for it! And I have a case among my
statistics where the student had a three weeks' course and paid three
hundred for it.
The Trust does love the Dollar when it isn't a spiritual one.
In order to force the sale of Mrs. Eddy's Bible-Annex, no healer,
Metaphysical College-bred or other, is allowed to practise the game
unless he possess a copy of that holy nightmare. That means a large
and constantly augmenting income for the Trust. No C.S. family would
consider itself loyal or pious or pain-proof without an Annex or two in