Christian Science

s, rumors, innuendoes, dropped by her enemies; no, she has furnished all of the materia

good English under the inspiration of God, and climbed up it to the supremest summit of earthly grandeur attainable by man-where she sits serene to-day, beloved and worshiped by a multitude of human bei

times, it will happen a hundred million more. It has been millions of years since the first of these supernaturals appeared, and by the time the last one in that inconceivably remote future shall

m to remember them by, nothing to hold their disciples together, nothing to solidify their work and enable it to defy the assaults of time and the weather. They passed, and left a vacancy. They made one fatal mistake; they all made it, each in his tur

s that go to the making of the rest of her portr

If she should say, "Good-morning; how do you do?" she would copyright

new religion-fervent, sincere, devoted, grateful people. A year or two later she organi

thing, she says, although she was very poor. She tau

her own motion. She could have had no important advisers at that early day. If we accept it as her own idea and her own act-and I think we must-we have one key to her character. And it will explain subsequent acts of hers that would merely stun us and stupefy us without it. Shall we call it courage? Or shall we call it recklessness? Courage observes; reflects; calculates; surveys the whole situation; counts the c

character, definite aims, and a name which was a challenge, and defied all comers. It was "a

which was the same thing and relieved the pain. It had twenty-si

for she not only began to charge the student, but charged him a hundred dollars a week for the enlightenments. And got it? some may ask. Easily. Pupils flocked from far and near. They came by the hundred. Presently the term was cut down nearly half, but the price remained as before. To be exact, the term-cut was to seven lessons-price, three hundred dollars. The college "yielded a large income." This is believable.

ssment, but had other ways of plundering him. By advertisement she offered him privileges whereby he could add eighteen lessons to his

in seven years. "Over" is not definite, but it probably represents a non-paying surplus of learners over and above the paying four thousand. Charity students, doubtless. I think

TTS METAPHY

BAKER G. ED

mbus Aven

nce metaphysical healing includes twelve

daily lectures, and is open only to students f

six additional lectures on the Scriptures, and summary of the p

rst course at this college; six daily lectures compl

as students. All students are subject to examination and rejection; a

of clergymen recei

ent students, one hundred

tion on t

entered together, t

all strictl

ain, after a three-century vacation. Fifty or s

el can get into the rest of the game at anything short of par, cash down. For it is "in the spirit of Christ's charity, as one who is joyful to hear healing to the sick" that Mrs. Eddy is working the game. She sends the healing to them outside. She cannot bear it to

on, she does not mean students, she means candidates for that lofty place When she says students are "liable" to leave the class if found unfit to remain in it, she does not mean that if they find themselves unfit, or be found unfit by others, they will be likely to ask permission to leave the class; she means that if she finds them unfit she will be "liable"

h was on

pastor. It w

seat, with both eyes open, and looking sharply out for Number One; in the front seat, working Mortal Mind with fine effectiveness and giving Immortal Mind a rest for Sunday. When her Church was reorganized, by-and-by, the By-laws were retained. She saw to that. In these Laws for the government of her C

member of the Mother-Church (nor of any Christian Science Church) without signing it. It forms the first chapter of the By-laws, and

STOR E

nnect herself from the office entirely, when she retired, but appointed herself Pastor Emeritus. It is a misleading title, and belongs to the family of that phrase "without a creed." It advertises her as being a merely honorary official, with no

ht out and forecast all possible encroachments upon her planned autocracy, and barred the way agai

RD OF D

Pastor Emeritus, but it is a mistake. These great officials are of the phrase-family of the Church-Without-a-Creed and the Pastor-With-Nothing-to-Do; that is to say, of the family of Large-Names-Which-Mean-Nothing. The Board is of

tion until the Pastor Emeritus has examined the list and

der this By-law, she would own it. Such a first Board might chafe under such a rule as that, and try to legislate it ou

d nor annulled, except by consent

PRES

, or Serfs, or Ciphers

rms: "Subject to the appro

e She el

gerous. Mrs. Eddy reflected upon that; so she limits the President's term to a ye

RER AN

hey are elected by the Board of Dire

fully obedient and satisfactory to her, or she will elect and install their successors with a suddenness that can be unpleasant to the

idates for Church membership. The select body entitled First Members are the aristocracy of the Mother-Church, the Charter Members, the Aborigines, a sort

gilded and painted special messenger, and he strides into the Parliament, and business comes to a sudden and solemn and awful stop; and in the impressive hush that follows, the Chief Clerk reads the document. It is his "imperative duty." If he should neglect it, his official life would end. It is the same with this Mothe

e is the same lady that we found in the Autobiography, who was so naively vain of all that little ancestral military riffraff that she had dug up and annexed. A person's nature never changes. What it is in childhood

OF T

be wise and well to put a watch upon these assets-a watch equipped with properly large authority. By custom, a Board of Trustees. Mrs. Eddy has foreseen that probability-for she is a woman with a long, long look ahead, the long

it, the daring of

r Emeritus; President; Board of Directors; Tr

template her from a commercial point of view, there

AD

They hold that place, but they do not preach. Two of them are on duty at a time-a man and a woman. One reads a passage from the Bible, the other reads the explanation of it from Science and

lanatory of the Lesson-Sermon a

le magnitude of it rises before the mind. It far and away oversizes and outclasses the best business-idea yet invented for the safe-guarding and perpetuating of a religio

ulpits. This insures many differing interpretations of important Scripture texts, and this in turn in

sential Scriptures, and set the explanations down in her book. In her belief her underlings cannot improve upon those explanations, and in that ster

ead, this one must have come out of her own, there has been no other commercial skull in a thousand centuries that was equal to it. She has borrowed freely and wisely, but I am sure that this

ON OF

ers are taken at hap-hazard for the pulpits of other sect

ames of candidates for Readers before they are elected, and if sh

Board of Spectres is for. It certainly has no real function, no duty which the hired

y's government. The Readers are elected for but one ye

s right. Slight changes could be slyly made, repeated, and in time get acceptance with congregations. Branch sects could grow out of these pract

for everything she does, and everything she thinks she does, and everything she thinks, and everything she thinks she think

y to the Scriptures, before commencing to read from this book, sha

t get the habit of forgetting w

RISTO

rporation, and its membership limit is one hundred. Forty will answer, but if t

iscuss." That is, it can discuss "important questions relative to Church members", evide

he salaries o

es. That is, for Church membership. But its w

all be countersigned by a loyal student of Mrs. Eddy's

the personal property of Mrs. Eddy. Sh

y Church business that ma

it. The By laws have attended to that. No important business goes bef

But is its vote worth any more than mine would be? No, it isn't.

r First Members shall be approved by the

ns it. It has no functions, no authority, no real existence. It

gain and "see where we are

; Treasurer; Clerk; Future Board of Trustees; Proprietor of the Priesthood: Dictator o

H MEM

of the large features of Mrs. Eddy's remarkable make-u

ng admission to the applicant as a favor to him. The idea is worth untold shekels. She does not stand at the gate of the fold with welcoming arms spread, and rec

asked you to come here? Go away, and

and unendorsed sinner to come forward and enter into the joy, etc.-"just as he is"; accustomed to seeing him do it; accustomed to seeing him pass up the

s eyes which it lacked before. In time this interest can grow into desire. Mrs. Eddy knows that when you cannot get a man to try-free of cost-a new and effective remedy for a disease he is afflicted with, you can generally sell it to him if you will put a price upon it which he cannot afford.

alue in this system: it gives membership a high value in the eyes of the applicant; and at the same time the requirements exac

Metaphysical College must be si

. Eddy is proprie

ited by "one of Mrs. Eddy's loyal student

ddy, therefore her Church is safeguarded

dy can get in only "by invitation and recommendation from st

icants are to be challenged and obstructed, and tell us who is au

e sufficiently strenuous-to Mr. Sam Jones, at an

d by a majority vote of t

is Mrs. Eddy's property. She herself is the Sanhedrin. No

other have a large value for her, t

have been instituted more to invite than to deter, more to enhance the value of membership and make people long for it than to make it

ENGLISH

, for her, all things considered. The Church Readers must be "g

r defining the duties of the Clerk there is an indication that she harbors resentful memories

the Pastor Emeritus which he does not fully understand, he shall inform her of this fact before presen

m down, then, but instead she

to this By-law, the

is metropolis and bringing it on bended knee?" and I think it likely that the kindly disposed Clerk tried to translate it into English and lost his mind and had t

The book is not even marred by Mrs. Eddy's peculiar specialty-lumbering clumsinesses of speech. I believe the salaried polisher has weeded them all out but on

mark. "The Bible and Science and Health, with other works by the same author," could have come from no literary vacuum but the one which produced the r

eritus had commanded him to come and make proclamation that she was author of the Bible, and that she was thinking of discharging some Scriptural sonnets and other eni

ERS"

n much detail the qualifications and duties of Readers, she then skips some thirty pages and takes up the subject again. It looks like slovenliness, but it may be only art. The belated By-law has a sufficiently quiet look, but it has a ton of dynamite in it. It makes all the Christian

vidual and Church of which he is the Reader) to remove a Reader from this office in any Church of Christ, Scientist, both in

f any kind in him, she does not have to tell him nor his congregation why she dismisses and disgraces him and insults his meek flock, she does not have to explain to his family why she tak

a priest out of his pulpit and strip him of his office and his livelihood just upon a whim, a caprice

eeking and remorseless tyrant as a God. This worship is denied-by persons who are themselves w

tion"; she would call a sand-bar a nation if it should fall into a sentence in which she was speaking of peoples, for she would not know how to untangle it and get it out and classify it by itself. And the closing arrangement of that By-law is in true Eddysonian form, too. In it she reserves authority to make a Reader fill any office connected with a Science church-sexton, grave-digger, advertisi

ingdom outside of herself, and it does this unconditionally and (by auxiliary force of Laws already quoted) irrevocably. Still, she is no

ended nor annulled, except by

ious fancy try and see if he can i

OF SPIRIT

r membership in the Mother-Church is beli

te must be a believer in the doctrines of Christian Science "according to the platform and teaching contained in

and disastrously cripple its power. Mrs. Eddy will do the whole of the explaining, Herself-has done it, in fact. She has written several books. They are to be had (for cash in advance), they are all sacred; additions to them can never b

], with other works by the same author," must be his on

ooks the inquirer will not dream of trying to explain it to himself; he would shudder at the thought of such temerity, such profanity, he would be haled to the Inquisition and thence to the

. It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing impossible, profane, criminal, it authoritatively settles every dispute that can arise. It starts with finality-a point which the Roman Church has travelled t

submit doubtful passages to. A week or two ago (I am writing in the middle of January, 1903), the clergy and others hereabouts had a warm dispute in the papers over this question: Did Jesus anywher

iscussion broke out.

u hast and distrib

was worded

essed or he could not gain everlasting life, He did not mean it in the literal sense. My

man thought more of his wealth than he did of his soul, and

hose who are true believers and followers know what they have given up, and th

that verdict. That did not settle the matter, because the tenth said the language of J

utants do the like of that before. The nine merely furnished their own opinions, founded upon-nothing at all. In the other dispute ("Did Jesus anywhere claim to be God?") the same kind of men

t is unsupported by authority, while there was at

t that some of the differences are very slight-so slight as to be not distinctly important, perhaps-yet they have moved groups to withdraw from communions to which they belonged and set

ch of the New Jerusalem, Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ, Dunkards (4 bodies), Evangelical (2 bodies), Friends (4 bodies), Friends of the Temple, German Evangelical Protestant, German Evangelical Synod, Independent congregations, Jews (2 bodies), Latter-day Saints (2 bodies), Lutherans (22 bod

ects and s

ught of it. He came near thinking of it, for he mentions some of the subdivisions himself: "the 12 kinds of Presbyterians, the 17 kinds of Methodists, the 13 kinds of Baptists, etc." He overlooked the 12 kinds of Mennonites and the 22 kinds of Lutherans, bu

bidding, for all time, all explanations of her rel

er clerical staff shall furnish the explanations, not a line of them will she ever allow to be printed until she