"THE PRECIOUS VOLUME."

In the world of books, Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health is the specially "precious volume"; for she herself so designates and describes it at the head of a chapter in her Retrospection and Introspection.[30] To her, indeed, it is a very precious volume—more precious than even a goodly pile of "the precious metals." Her devotees exchange these for it with sublime certainty that they get more than the worth of their money; and being in great need of science, to say nothing of health, their profuseness may be forgiven.

But it should be said at once that "Christian Scientists" are neither a bad nor a specially crude sort of the world's queer inhabitants. They are fanatically honest; and, as a whole, they have just that "little knowledge" which has long been proverbial as "a dangerous thing." Then they are quite incapable of looking through the veil worn by their beatific "Mother."

In the eyes of the unregenerate, these children of hers frequently turn to Science and Health, or to a picture of its author celestially touched up, when it would be well to inspect their plumbing and wash their windows. But this is no broad case against them; for almost any sort of camp-meeting, without regard to sect, is apt to bring upon the wicked some small inconveniences.

As can readily be seen, Mrs. Eddy's lambs are often amusing, and thus brighten life for less spiritual beings.

There is my babe-eyed friend, Mr. Tott. He never committed a cent's worth of sin in his life. He is a veritable piece of the salt of the earth, a little over-salted. But his youth has departed, and his sight is failing. He used to wear glasses; but he discarded them for "Christian Science" and a dim, economic light. He sees a little yet, though chiefly with "the eye of the mind." With this eye, however, he beholds marvels of "healing" going on all around him, which he proclaims and verifies at the weekly meetings of his church. He buys all Mrs. Eddy's books and publications, as fast as they come out. By patient effort he deciphers something of their contents. Then, as he contemplates an assertive text from Science and Health, or some tale of Jonah interpreted by Mother Eddy's Key to the Scriptures, a celestial calm descends on his soul, and folds it in a fabric softer than silk. He knows that he is better in health than ever before, that he sees better, and that the entire universe is becoming unspeakably illuminated. Disease never touches his physical frame; he has merely "a belief of a cold," or "a belief of a corn." In the etherialized Mr. Tott only one thing ever suggests a remnant of "wicked matter." Cast a doubt on the sainthood of Mrs. Eddy, then you behold an angel in anger. He may not indulge in personal violence, but he swiftly threatens that, if once you breathe your unholy doubt aloud, "Judge Hanna," or some other Sampson of "Science," will reduce you to a grease-spot.[31]But, among all Mrs. Eddy's followers, her "precious volume," Science and Health, is paramountly precious to those who have paid their three hundred dollars for imbibing the inmost knowledge of her "unfathomable" religion, and have gone forth among the gentiles to teach and to heal. To a missionary "in science," the "precious volume" cannot be too preciously bound. Let the daintiest white of the white-winged dove encase its "inspired words," printed on translated tissue of ethereal linen. Let the sheen of the gold standard furnish splendor for the edges of the leaves, and letters for the cover. Let the book be held before the eyes of a new student or patient, with abysmal solemnity and mystic silence. Hypnotism, if you name it such, is bitterly disallowed; but "the precious volume" is so hallowed a thing that no danger can come from using it in the same way as the disk of a mesmerist. Impressiveness is the point—that self may depart, and "science" become boundless. Almost every religious sect in all history has had its fetich. "Christian Science" is not behind the procession. Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health is the fetich thereof. In a plain garment, for the poorer saints, it may be had for three dollars and eighteen cents. In the purest, holiest, most golden robe it costs six dollars.[32]

Let us look into Science and Health and see what it is; though the author warns us that something more than "mortal mind" is required to understand it. This she asserts and repeats with the voice, as it were, of a fog-horn grown eternal, until a multitude of people have come to think that the sound really contains significance. In her Retrospection and Introspection Our Lady of "The Precious Volume" says:[33]

"Science and Health is the textbook of Christian Science.... When the demand for this book increased, and people were healed by simply reading it, the copyright was infringed. I entered a suit at law, and my copyright was protected."

The case of "protected copyright" to which Mrs. Eddy refers, took place in 1883. A Mr. Arens had practised some sort of "mental healing," without the consent of the papal mother of "Christian Science." In connection with such healing he had issued some pamphlets, in which, according to the court records, he certainly came very near to reproducing certain sentences from Science and Health, which had a commercial value in his line, though they would not have sold for a cent out of "Science." The man's defense was that Mrs. Eddy's own works were not original with her, but had been copied from writings by Dr. Quimby.

Now Dr. Quimby, as we have seen, had sown the seed of the whole modern field of "mental healing," and Mrs. Eddy, as Mary M. Patterson, had told the whole truth about it. But Quimby's simple doctrine was that matter is a phase of mind; and hence that the mind of man, as an inlet of God's truth and power, can change the body and cure disease. Appropriating this thought, Mrs. Eddy had stretched it out and blown it up into the ponderous misfit labeled "Christian Science."

In 1883 none of Dr. Quimby's writings had been published, and there was no convenient evidence to prove that Mrs. Eddy had ascribed his mind-healing to "the Christ that was in him," and to his establishment of "Truth" in wrong-thinking sick patients. As no such facts were presented, and as Mr. Arens had clearly plagiarized Mrs. Eddy, whatever she had done, the court properly decided that her "copyright" be "protected." In other words, the merits of the case were not involved, though the decision has given Mother Eddy a chance to say, with her usual candor and logic, that the failure of Arens "to produce his proof is conclusive evidence that no such proof existed."

Science and Health is a book of nearly seven hundred pages, containing somewhat less than two hundred thousand words; but this brief of Un-Christian Non-Science includes Mrs. Eddy's Key to the Scriptures.

The eighty-second edition of "the precious volume" is the particular issue here elucidated. We shall make a few quotations from Science and Health, but only just enough to verify our criticism of it as a pretentious, untrue, and unhealthy book, which, in the interest of the public, needs to be exploded. For these quotations we shall give Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy full credit. It would be a crime, indeed, to accuse any one else of originating such capsules of metaphysical ipecac.

As laid down in Science and Health, the fundamental propositions of the mumbo-jumbo termed "Christian Science" are four in number.

First: God is All.

Second: God is Good. Good is Mind.

Third: God, Spirit, being All, nothing is matter.

Fourth: Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease. Disease, sin, evil, death, deny Good, omnipotent God, life.

Mrs. Eddy says that, to her, these are "self-evident propositions." They are proved, too, by "the rule of inversion." They are just as harmonious backward as forward. There is a little hitch in Number Four, which declares one way that God denies death, evil, sin, and disease, and the other way that these deny God. But this one exception to "the rule of inversion" only confirms it; for, according to Scripture, God is true, and "every [mortal] man a liar."

For the corner-stone, then, of Eddyism, we have self-evident propositions—self-evident to the mind of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy—and with these an appeal to Scripture. Truly enough this must be "Divine Science"; for no rational creature of modern times can suspect it of being human science, whether true or false. But, says the great teacher of it, "no human pen or tongue taught me the science," and "neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it." Well, never mind the overthrow. But, when Mrs. Eddy tells us that "no human pen or tongue" taught her "the science of mind-healing," we are obliged to infer that Dr. Quimby was more than human. How greatly would the plain but gifted Quimby have been shocked, had he foreknown that Mrs. Eddy would thus apotheosize him.

Through Science and Health we learn that "Christian Science" reveals, "incontrovertibly," that "Mind is All-in-all"—the only "realities" being "the divine Mind and idea." We learn, further, that this divine Mind is God, that God's idea is Man, and that by authority of Webster an "idea" is "an image in mind."

It would be truly pitiable for any theologian, or indeed for any believer in a spirit-principle of the cosmos, to attempt the "overthrow" of these venerable "revelations" now protected by Mrs. Eddy's copyright, but which were hoary with age even in the days of the Greek Academy. Barring Webster's definition of an idea, these "revelations" to Mrs. Eddy appear revealed in the Bible, though not copyrighted. As logical metaphysics, in recent times, Hegel reduced them to their utmost sublimation; and Hegel is excellent authority in many of our colleges, as well as with the good Dr. Harris, our United States Commissioner of Education at Washington.

Let us say once more that there is no trouble in effecting a spiritual derivation of the universe, except to our friends, "the materialists," who have themselves refined "matter" to things not much like it. The only trouble with an all-containing, all-pervading Spiritual Source of Existence, is in the funny havoc sometimes made of it by half-baked people, like "Christian Scientists."

To Dr. Quimby, "Mind," or "Spirit" was the principle of all things. To him, Matter was a condition of Spirit—"an idea," he said, "reduced to a solid"—a "solid" meaning a definite and real appearance to human sense. But this conception, which the old and regular school of metaphysicians have held for thousands of years, would not do for the genuine original "Mother of Christian Science" when she came to prescribe a dogma for the cure of all possible disease from leprosy to bunions. It was necessary, she thought, to have a stronger pill. She compounded it in the form that "matter," including the "mortal body," is not only "the objective state of the mortal mind," but that mortal mind is unmixed, "error," entailing all sin, disease, and death. Yet "error" is really "nothing"; or say something only to be denied. The duty of life, "in Science," is to make this denial effective. Matter, sin, disease, are absolute illusions and delusions of "mortal mind," which itself is just "error," to be wiped out. Now say so, and they are all gone. Or if they persist in seeming to be anywhere, be more firm with them. Sing the denial, as well as say it. Keep it up. Let nothing else intervene for a second. Let every paragraph you write be made of it. Give it ten thousand different forms, and each form ten thousand variations. If you fully concentrate your whole mind on this "divine" business, and pay the full price for learning it, you will elevate yourself into "perfect harmony" with "Immortal Mind." When you accomplish this undertaking, impurity and evil, sin, disease and death, will disappear as the shadow of their original nothingness, which they always are and ever were.

Here is the whole real substance of "the precious volume," Science and Health, including Mrs. Eddy's marvelous Key to the Scriptures. Still, the holy tome has some interesting particulars.

On opening it, and journeying only as far as page 2, one finds that, while "Christian Science" is copyrighted property, "the Divine Spirit" was the real author of it; for Mrs. Eddy explicitly declares that through "Christian Science" the Divine Spirit testified to her, and that the testimony unfolded her one basic, forever-echoed assumption that "matter" has nothing in it but "falsity."

Next comes up the Platonic conception—which, unfortunately for Plato, he neglected to copyright—that the Principle of Mind, with its reflection or "idea," constitutes the real universe. Mrs. Eddy pronounces this philosophical conception a scientific fact; but it was not "proved to the senses"—which, by the way, never perceive anything but "error"—until "Christian Science revealed it." Then it was proved "incontrovertibly, absolutely and divinely," by repairing Mrs. Eddy's back after a fall on ice.

From time immemorial, the history of philosophy has been familiar with the thought that the human body is a reflex and product of mind; a practical reality for all earthly conditions and purposes, but resolvable, from the view of spirit, into simply an objective appearance. The thought, too, has been frequent in poetry. Three hundred years ago Spenser sang:

"So every spirit, as it is more pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For, of the soul, the body form doth take,
For soul is form, and doth the body make.

Yet Mrs. Eddy claims this doctrine, too, as her "discovery," though, with her, it is not merely "mind," but the "mortal" or "misnamed" article, that produces the body. All such "mind" is unalloyed "error," and the body, or apparition of this error, is another error. It was this "discovery," she says, that led to her infallible proposition, the all-inclusiveness of Immortal Mind and the all-nothingness of matter, which she made the bed-rock of her all-healing "Science."

Matter being Nothing, and our bodies being nothing but error, there is great use, notwithstanding, for the one genuine medicine, "Christian Science." "Physical healing," with "mental healing" thrown in, is the large wholesale business of which Mother Eddy is proprietor and director. In the last analysis, according to the preface of Science and Health, this medicine is "Divine Principle." Such a remedy naturally dispels the unfounded belief of matter, the unfounded imaginings of sickness and sin, which drop out of supposed reality, and so out of existence.

As the term "Christian Science" is necessarily suggestive of Christian history, even Mrs. Eddy has not quite claimed the whole product of Christianity as originating in Science and Health. She does admit, with pious candor, that God imparted the spirit of Christian Science to Jesus and the Apostles. But the letter is another thing. "The absolute letter" waited for Mary Baker G. Eddy; and, were the blessed lady a living kaleidoscope, she could hardly add to the combinations and varieties in which she presents this claim to her readers.

Eddyism proclaims One God, all-inclusive, whose highest title is "Immortal Mind." But, "in Science," this God, being all-inclusive, as Unity, Identity, and Goodness—so otherwise all-exclusive—there is no room anywhere for a Devil, or say, rather, the recognition of one. If God is not only all, but all-good, no opposite to this principle can exist. However, there is "mortal mind," or "sense," with its image and creation, "matter," and in these are sin and disease. Still, mortal mind, matter, sin, disease, have no relation or reference to God. He "fills all Space."[34] They subsist neither by His creation nor permission. Hence they can not be—they are just naught.

But hold! Christian Science, with Science and Health, being present avatars to dispel sin and cure disease, such a science and such a book necessarily admit sickness and sin, both implicitly and explicitly. Now what is to be done in such a dilemma? Why, mortal mind, matter, evil, and all afflictions, while "nothing," are a kind of nothing that may be mentioned as "error" and ultimate "self-nullity." Thus, while Eddy Science, alias "Christian Science," has no real Devil, it has a very practical seeming Devil, and whips him from stump to stump with logic worse than himself. Finally, as he is not "substance," but "shadow," you knock him out by calling him names.

But the doctrine of the Trinity, as "demonstrated in Science," is the best abstract of the Eddy theology. This Trinity consists of one self-identical "Father-and-Mother God"; Man, "the Idea" or "Reflection"; then Christian Science, "the Holy Comforter."

The position of man, as theologized by Mrs. Eddy, is, if anything, more terribly mixed than that of the Devil. Man is "the image of God"; but, as God is All, man has "no real individuality." He cannot have personality of his own, as God has no "separability." Still this "God's idea," named man, somehow takes on an imaginary state, named "mortal mind," and this imaginary state has a dream of error and misery named "Sense." Human individuality, mortal mind, and sense, are all, in reality, null and void. Man, however, being God's idea and reflection, can never lose his unpossessed "true self." The divine contradictions of Science and Health are here insurmountable. Let no man try to rationalize them. Mrs. Eddy well remarks in her Retrospection and Introspection, that "Divine Science demands mighty wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as we sail into the eternal haven over the unfathomable sea of possibilities."

O Lord, how long!
Oh, bosh, how strong!

The fact is that any long-continued reading of Science and Health, with the innocence to imagine it either true, difficult or profound, is enough to turn a weak mind idiotic. To a trained thinker, the only danger from the book is an attack of nausea or a hemorrhage from laughing.