"CHRISTIAN-SCIENCE" ORGANIZING FORCES.

As Mrs. Eddy has been a manufacturer and vender of "Christian Science" for a comparatively short time—only a quarter of a century—many good people who knew her at the inception of that successful industry are still on earth, in an active condition of "mortal mind." They have volunteered to furnish for this brief book a variety of plain and ornamental information that is not essential to it. But, in justice to history and biography, one point must not be omitted. They all agree that "Mother Eddy," like CÆsar, the Standard Oil Company, and the Sugar Trust, has more organizing capacity than "the sons and daughters of God," to use her own phrase, generally possess. With this capacity, it is also agreed that never a Bonaparte, never a Jay Gould, never a Pierpont Morgan, could be more handy in surmounting all over-nice impediments to practical success.

Thus by her rare combination of terrestrial and celestial genius, "Mother Eddy" has been able to hold her copyrighted religion, "Christian Science," strictly under her personal regnancy, and direct it to the highest financial, doctrinal, and healing ends. She permits no tinge of private judgment, no stain of unauthorized opinion, and no mere finite criticism, so far as she can silence it. She is the Church, and membership is obedience. Hence she bitterly antagonizes all independent agencies of scientific salvation, though with eyes rolled up, and with fervent proclamations of unbounded "love." In her Science and Health, she advises her readers not to read other "scientific works," as they are full of "materialism," and are not "Scientifically Christian." Directly or indirectly, too, there is always the point that money can be much better invested in Mrs. Eddy's own "sacred" and "positively demonstrated" writings. It would almost seem that, in her universal motherhood, Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy must have borne Mohammed's great soldier who burned the Alexandrian library in devotion to the Koran.

To a great organizer, a wholesale business is always more attractive than retail trade. It is handled quite as easily, with less detail, and thousands of small merchants contribute to the proceeds. The able founder of "Christian Science" early realized this fact—in her case drawn from on high, but sometimes reached through commercial experience. Having retired into the wilderness of her mind, far from all monitions of "sense"; having trained her memory to forget the existence of "matter," "error," and Mary M. Patterson; having taken a three-years' vacation with her only peers, "the ancient worthies" and "the Scriptures"; Mrs. Eddy came back at last, among the human species, with the metaphysics and curative formulas of "Christian Science." Then came practical transactions in "revelations" and "mental medicine," which soon rivaled the sales of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup and Lydia Pinkham's celebrated compound.

Though Mrs. Eddy has gradually taken into her service various literary experts, theologico-commercial travelers and metaphysical auctioneers, she has always supervised, in person, the wholesale department of "Christian Science." On her return from the skies, she brought down a large collection of documents in which "the whole science" was condensed and canned, and all the medical prescriptions required to fulfil a millennium of holiness and health. With these documents in hand she formed classes of "loyal students," her definition of "loyalty" being "allegiance to God" (as manifested in Mary Baker); "subordination of the human" (the student) "to the divine" (the teacher); "steadfast justice" (no wobbling over the cash); and strict adherence to "divine Truth and Love" (the Mother of the Logos and the Holy Comforter forever glorified).

To be more specific, it was in the year 1867 that Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Patterson, freed by divorce from the last-named culprit, and married to Asa Gilbert Eddy, began, as she records it, the teaching of "Christian Science Mind Healing" to "one student." Here was a good seed sown in fructifying ground; for, in 1881, it had grown to be "The Massachusetts Metaphysical College" of Boston.[36]

This vast institution was managed by Mrs. Eddy as chief impartress of "science," her assistants being her husband, her adopted son, and a General Bates. These four "scientists" constituted the faculty.

Mrs. Eddy's last husband is described, by those who knew him, as one of the most humble and obedient men that ever blest a perfect woman in immaculate matrimony. His value as a college professor may be inferred from one reminiscence of him. His supreme better-half once sued a poor young doctor who had fallen away from "science," and taken to homeopathy, that she might collect her fee for having taught him "Christian Science therapeutics." Her husband, Asa, was a witness for her, to prove the pecuniary value of her instruction, and was asked, among other questions,

"What is Man?" "As near as I can make it out," replied Prof. Eddy, "Man is an image." Mrs. Eddy lost her case, as the court was too unspiritual to reduce her "metaphysics" to dollars and cents.[37] But the good Asa showed that he was an "image" of Mary; and, in her Retrospection and Introspection, she has gratefully embalmed his memory in a text from the Psalms.

"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace."

The italics are not in the psalm, but are Mary's.

Some further conception of "the perfect man," Prof. Eddy, and the value of Mother Eddy's estimate of him, may be gathered from an item which appeared in the Boston Evening Herald of December 7, 1878, stating that "Edward J. Arens and Asa G. Eddy were indicted to-day by the Grand Jury for soliciting James H. Sargent to kill Daniel H. Spofford." It appears that Spofford, in order to probe the matter, led on the conspiracy, and so became technically involved in it himself. Thus the affair became so mixed up that, according to the official court-record, the District Attorney concluded not to prosecute the indictment, and Arens and Eddy were "discharged on payment of costs." The divine "Mother Eddy" surely could not have instigated a conspiracy to murder Spofford (a troublesome backslider from "Science"), though he and many other backsliders, who know her well, have long labored under the impression that the whole enterprise was hers.

The human head is a queer bulb, and often seems to be a direct evolution from the squash. This hypothesis, illustrated by the researches of Darwin and his school, accounts for the rapid growth of Mrs. Eddy's Massachusetts Metaphysical College from 1881 to 1889, when, in the latter year, she closed it. At that time, as she recollects things, her college was not only filled, but "flooded" with students from all parts of America, Europe, and the world. Three hundred applications were on the list, and the number was rapidly increasing.[38]

If Mrs. Eddy were not so far above the world and the flesh that her reasons for things seldom comport with a sub-lunar search into them, it might be possible to believe that she discontinued her college because she feared that "material organization," applied to "Christian Science," would obstruct "Love's Spiritual compact." Whatever it means, this at least is what she says. The success of her college had shown her the danger of placing people on "earthly pinnacles"; and even "mortal mind" can see that such a setting-up might lead students away from the primal Mother and the central contribution-box. Besides, she had always had "conscientious scruples" against "giving diplomas" when she thought of those same "earthly pinnacles."

It may throw some light on the sudden closing of "The Massachusetts Metaphysical College" to note that, notwithstanding "Mother" Eddy's "conscientious scruples" against granting mere "diplomas," she had issued hundreds of metaphysico-medical degrees at high prices.

According to a statement of hers, she obtained her college charter from the State of Massachusetts in 1881, "with the right to grant degrees." But the act on which this grant was based was repealed in 1882. Then, in 1883, the conferring of "any diploma or degree" by any "corporation" or "association," was made a legal offense, punishable by a fine of not less than $500. Being the "president," not of any "corporation" or "association," but of a regular "college" (with a faculty of three beside herself), Mother Eddy's legal mind has held that this law, if aimed at her, failed to hit, though it knocked out all other mind-healing colleges.[39] But, in 1889, when, as persistent rumor has it, the problem was about to be solved by legal process against "Mother Eddy," the subject was practically closed by the closing of her "college," and by her retirement to New Hampshire, where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."

Considering Mrs. Eddy's kind of "college-faculty" and "board," together with her exhaustive copyrights and the hierarchical monopolies consequent upon them, it is quite conceivable that when time was ripe she had no difficulty in "unanimously" passing resolutions to discontinue her "flourishing school." The little joker in this pack of resolutions soon came out in one of them. It deftly touched the matter of "organization," and then propounded that "the hour" had "come" when "the great need" was for "more of the Spirit," not "the letter," and that Science and Health was the spirit's nutriment.

It is not directly stated by Mother Eddy in this connection, that God Himself fixed the scale of prices for her book; but she does say it was "God" who "impelled" her to "set a price" for her "instruction in Christian-Science Mind-Healing." The price was three-hundred dollars a head, for a college course of three weeks. At first she "shrank from asking it." But "a strange providence" led Mary to these terms, and "God," she asserts, "has since shown" her, in "multitudinous ways," the "wisdom" of her "decision."[40] The "strange providence" and "the multitudinous ways" are not explained by her; but the "wisdom" of gathering together fat bank-deposits is unanimously acknowledged in the Church Scientist.

When our republic was a hundred years old, it had become worthy of having "The First Christian Science Association." That body was accordingly organized, on the fourth day of July, 1876, by Mrs. Eddy and six of her head-light reflectors. Three years later, the Association balloted on forming a Church, and the Eddyites won by a large plurality. Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy was of course chosen its "first pastor," and during her ministration it prospered in numbers and popularity. That is, she says so in her Retrospection and Introspection. But owing to tons of work, which increased upon her, she was unable to give the Church sufficient attention, and no son or daughter of "Science" was competent to take her place. Her church was "envied" and "molested" by other churches, and there was danger of "Christian warfare"—which might have led to a diminution of proselytes, and more horrible still, a loss of shekels. In such an extremity, she "recommended" the dissolution of the First Church Scientist, and again, as ever, her recommendation went through "without a dissenting voice."

"This measure," she tells us, was followed by "a great revival" in the way of "mutual love," with "spiritual power" and "prosperity." Those, we may be sure, were money-making times. Mrs. Eddy's reasons for dissolving her church were doubtless infallible. Still, that same church at once resurrected itself and exalted its horn—the "Mother Church" in Boston, and then children and grandchildren galore, in hundreds of secondary "Hubs" and their suburbs.