Mrs. Eddy describes herself, and has made her followers believe her to be, the “discoverer and founder of Christian Science.”

It is very easy to disprove her claim to discovery, and to show her foundation stones to have been theft and falsehood and fraud. As a pretended “religion” it is all hers, and no one else lays claim to it; as a mental healing system, it is none of it hers and her pretensions to originality are wholly fictitious.

Let it be remembered, always, that on the first page of her book, “Science and Health,” as published in 1898, and in many other editions, Mrs. Eddy makes her claim to originality and revelation in the following unequivocal terms:

“In the year 1866 I discovered the science of metaphysical healing and named it Christian Science. God had been graciously fitting me during many years for a final revelation of the absolute principle of scientific mind healing.”

If, prior to 1866, God had been “graciously fitting” her during many years for the “final revelation,” it appears that, years afterwards, God’s work was not quite completed and her character entirely sublimated. Some of her friends in Lynn, in 1881, fifteen years after the date of her alleged revelation, became of the opinion that she was not, even then, absolutely perfect and withdrew from her church there, giving, in writing, as their reason, “her departure from the straight and narrow road which alone leads to growth of Christ-like virtue, made manifest by frequent ebullitions of temper, love of money and the appearance of hypocrisy.” How accurate was this early estimate of the woman as shown by every known act of her life!

The writer of the series of articles in McClure’s Magazine on Christian Science told me she had heard the criticism that it contained only the bad things about Mrs. Eddy, and she had been asked why she had not incorporated such good things as might be said of her. She assured me she had searched the whole of Mrs. Eddy’s life for a kindly, a generous, an unselfish, a fine womanly deed, and would have been only too glad to have recorded it, but had not found one?—?not one such act in the long life of more than fourscore years.

Mrs. Eddy claims discovery, and commits herself not only as to the time of her “discovery,” but as to the manner of it, and each claim, that of discovery, that of the time and that of the manner, is wholly and demonstrably false.

In October, 1862, Mrs. Mary M. Patterson (now Mary Baker G. Eddy) placed herself in the hands of Dr. Phineas P. Quimby of Portland, Maine, for treatment, with the result described by herself over her own signature in the Portland Evening Courier, of November 7, 1862, as follows:

“Three weeks ago I quitted my nurse and sickroom en route for Portland. The belief of my recovery had died out of the hearts of those who were most anxious for it. With this mental and physical depression, I visited P. P. Quimby, and in less than one week from that time I ascended by a stairway of one hundred and eighty-two steps to the dome of the City Hall, and am improving ad infinitum. This truth which he opposes to the error of giving intelligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, if received understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their normal action and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That this is a science capable of demonstration, becomes clear to the minds of those patients who reason upon the process of their cure. The truth which he establishes in the patient, cures him (although he may be wholly unconscious thereof), and the body, which is full of light, is no longer in disease.”

This was Mrs. Patterson-Eddy’s professed understanding of Dr. Quimby’s “science,” in 1862, after having been three weeks under his treatment, and any one familiar with Christian Science will not need to be told that it is the same thing. This “truth,” which Mrs. Patterson-Eddy in 1862 said Quimby opposed to the “error” of placing intelligence in matter and which, when established in the patient, cured him, is the very same “truth” which in her book, with tireless iteration, Mrs. Eddy opposes to the very same alleged “error,” which thereupon effects the same alleged “cure.” Every “Scientist” will at once recognize the A B C of “divine science.”

Dr. Quimby, who is spoken of by a lady, who knew him well at the time Mrs. Patterson-Eddy was taking his treatment and stealing his system, as a man of “absolute sincerity and purity of thought and life,” died in January, 1866, and Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson, not having conceived the plan of appropriating to herself the ideas and theories she had learned from him, almost immediately after his death wrote and published some verses about him, in which she compared Quimby with Jesus. She now speaks of him as a vulgar mesmerist or magnetic healer whose scribblings she put into grammatical form; she then, in 1866, glorified him as the Christian glorifies only the Saviour.

These verses, as here presented, are copied from a copy in Mrs. Eddy’s own handwriting, now in the possession of Mrs. Sarah Crosby of Waterville, Maine, to whom, in 1866, upon the death of Dr. Quimby, she sent them:

“Lines on the Death of Dr. P. P. Quimby, who Healed the Sick as did Jesus, in contradistinction to all Isms.

Comment cannot add to the force of these verses. Inferior as poetry, they constitute proof and argument not all the falsehoods and sophistries in the imagination of Mrs. Eddy and her corps of official defenders can meet and overcome.

In 1866, Mrs. Eddy reverently declared that Dr. Quimby had “healed the sick as Jesus did;” today speaking slightingly of the good old man, she says, “his healing was never considered anything but mesmerism.” Then she gratefully acknowledged that he had made her “whole”; now she says that his mesmeric treatment gave her but slight, temporary relief. Then, not having contemplated the great theft, she spoke of the “earnest, solemn, sacred trust” delivered to her and others by the trustful man; now she repudiates him altogether, and denies that she received any helpful suggestion from him. Then she spoke of herself as “seeking, though a trembler, where his footsteps trod;” now she scornfully says, “I used to take his scribblings and fix them over for him and give him my thoughts and language which, as I understand it, were far in advance of his.”

Can anything Mrs. Eddy says be believed, after this? Could ingenuity contrive a more violent contradiction in human speech? Standing absolutely alone, would anything more be needed to convict her, out of her own mouth, of the basest ingratitude and the most reckless fraud? But this is only one of a thousand items in the accumulated proof!

If Christian Science healing is, as Mrs. Eddy and all other Christian Scientists claim, a revival of the method employed by Jesus, then Mrs. Eddy here, in her own handwriting, admits that she learned it from Quimby. There is no possible escape from one horn or the other of the dilemma?—?either it is not Christian, or it is not Mrs. Eddy’s. It requires even less intelligence than Mrs. Eddy’s friends bring to bear upon her teachings to comprehend the conclusiveness of this demonstration.

Mrs. Eddy did not discover the Christian Science method of attempting to heal. Let me make this a little clearer by demonstrating the falsity of her story as to the manner in which she made the discovery.

Dr. Quimby died on January 16, 1866, and the first day of February, 1866, Mrs. Patterson-Eddy, then living in Swampscott, a suburb of Lynn, fell upon the icy sidewalk and injured herself; and she now fixes upon her alleged miraculous recovery from this injury as the precise way in which she made her great discovery and received her revelation.

In a sketch, published by her concern, The Christian Science Publishing Society of Boston, and endorsed and approved by her as an authorized statement, is the following account of how Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science:

“The manner of the discovery has been vividly described. In company with her husband, she was returning from an errand of mercy, when she fell upon the icy curbstone, and was carried helpless to her home. The skilled physicians declared that there was absolutely no hope for her, and pronounced the verdict that she had but three days to live. Finding no hope and no help on earth, she lifted her heart to God. On the third day, calling for her Bible, she asked the family to leave the room. Her Bible opened to the healing of the palsied man, Matt. ix. 2. The truth which set him free she saw. The power which gave him strength she felt. The life divine which healed the sick of the palsy restored her, and she rose from the bed of pain healed and free.”

In her autobiography, “Retrospection and Introspection,” she says:

“It was in Massachusetts, February, 1866, and after the death of the magnetic doctor, Mr. P. P. Quimby, whom spiritualists would associate therewith, but who was in no wise connected with this event, that I discovered the science of Divine Metaphysical healing, which I afterward named Christian Science. The discovery came to pass in this way. During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon.

“My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself and how to make others so.

“Even to the homeopathic physician who attended me, and rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then explain the modus of my relief. I could only assure him that the Divine Spirit had wrought the miracle, a miracle which later I found to be in perfect Scientific accord with divine law.”

Unfortunately for her reputation for veracity and fortunately for the truth of history. Dr. Alvin M. Cushing, the physician who attended Mrs. Eddy, or Patterson, upon this particular occasion, is still living and as an honored member of the profession is now practising in Springfield, Mass. Dr. Cushing expressly, and under oath, denies that he at any time believed or said that Mrs. Patterson was in a critical condition, or that there was no hope for her, or that she had but three or any other limited number of days to live, and he, with great positiveness, says that she did not, on the third day or any other day of her illness, say, or suggest, or pretend, or in any way whatever intimate that she had miraculously recovered or been healed, or that, discovering or perceiving the truth of the power employed by Christ to heal the sick, she had, by it, been restored to health, and he further says that, on the contrary, on the third day and later days of this illness, he himself gave her medicine, and again in August of the same year called upon her four or five times and gave her medicine.

Dr. Cushing still has his record book in which he, at the time, recorded each visit, every symptom and every particular of his treatment.

It must be a peculiar type of mind that can believe Mrs. Eddy’s story of this illness and recovery, after having the disinterested version of the attending physician. There is no reason why Dr. Cushing’s version should be doubted. There is no reason whatever why Mrs. Eddy’s should be believed.

But Mrs. Eddy herself furnishes, as usual, the most conclusive evidence of the falsity of this story of her miraculous cure. Her inventive faculty has ever been more remarkable than her memory, and what she has forgotten contradicts her.

On “the third day,” according to her latest version, she “arose from the bed of pain, healed and free,” but in a letter dated February 15, 1866, two weeks after the accident and while she was still suffering from its effects, she complained that she was then “slowly failing,” and implored Mr. Julius Dresser, to whom the letter was written, to help her.

Here is her story of the incident as written at the time:

Lynn, Feb. 15, 1866.

“Mr. Dresser,?—

“Sir: I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much-loved Friend, which perhaps you will not think over-wrought in meaning, others must of course.

“I am constantly wishing that you would step forward into the place he has vacated. I believe you would do a vast amount of good, and are more capable of occupying his place than any other I know of.

“Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and struck my back on the ice and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapors from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor, etc., but to find myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby.

“The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone, and will walk, but yet I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly.… Now can’t you help me. I believe you can. I write this with this feeling: I think I could help another in my condition, if they had not placed their intelligence in matter. This I have not done and yet I am slowly failing. Won’t you write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?…

“Respectfully,

“Mary M. Patterson.”

Not to comment upon the singularity of the administration of chloroform and ether to an unconscious person, it sufficeth to call attention to the manner in which again Mrs. Patterson contradicts Mrs. Eddy. She furnishes the most effective kind of corroboration of Dr. Cushing, and the whole thing is clearly seen to be an invention, so far as any unusual or peculiar or miraculous features are concerned. It is clear that Mrs. Eddy did not discover Christian Science in the manner claimed.

So much for that particular, and particularly silly perversion of the truth, and invention of the fictitious.

Mrs. Eddy has herself made it especially easy to prove her revelation to be a fraud and has supplied us with a form of proof especially convincing. It is conceivable that a claim to revelation, however intrinsically idiotic, might be made, the legal disproof of which might be difficult; but if I today say God revealed something to me a year ago, and if you find many persons of excellent character who tell you that three, four, five, six and seven months ago I openly, by word of mouth, and in writing, times without number, admitted having learned the whole thing from John Smith, it will be impossible to believe that God revealed it to me and to me alone. This is precisely the case with Mrs. Eddy and her Christian Science “religion.” Her oft-repeated admissions of appropriation disprove her “revelation” completely.

Absolutely conclusive evidence of the fraudulent character of Mrs. Eddy’s claim to originality, either by discovery or revelation, has come to light, and any one, who will take the trouble to examine it, will have no difficulty in arriving at positive certainty in the matter.

Now, remembering Mrs. Eddy’s claim to discovery by revelation from God in 1866, let us see what she was doing in 1867, 1868, 1869 and 1870, the years immediately following her alleged discovery.

Some years ago I delivered an address in Boston upon Christian Science that was extensively reported in the newspapers, and a day or two following the delivery of the lecture a gentleman called at my office and introduced himself as Horace T. Wentworth of Stoughton, Mass. He asked me if I knew that in 1868, 1869 and 1870 Mrs. Eddy had lived with his mother, Mrs. Sally Wentworth, at Stoughton.

I assured Mr. Wentworth that I had not heard of it, and asked him what she was doing while there.

“Why, she was teaching my mother Dr. P. P. Quimby’s system of mental healing,” said Mr. Wentworth, “and I have in my pocket my mother’s copy of the manuscript from which Mrs. Eddy taught.”

Mr. Wentworth pulled the manuscript out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was entitled, on the front page, “Extracts from Dr. P. P. Quimby’s Writings.” I glanced through the manuscript and discovered that it was copiously corrected and interlined in Mrs. Eddy’s handwriting and contained an introduction signed by her name. Perusal of it showed it to be in every particular precisely the same thing as Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science teachings regarding the cure of disease.

This was a most interesting discovery, and I carefully investigated the whole situation, made several trips to Stoughton for the purpose, and talked with many residents of the place who had known Mrs. Eddy well, and were perfectly familiar with her history while there. I subsequently procured the whole story in writing, under oath, by those who knew it personally. Since then, others following my published accounts, have detailed the Stoughton episode and McClure’s Magazine published it in full.

It appears that in 1867, Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson, went to Stoughton to live. She had separated from her second husband, Daniel Patterson, and not having then married her third husband, Eddy, called herself, and was known by the name of her first husband, Mary M. Glover.

Mrs. Glover first lived at Stoughton with one Hiram Crafts, and taught Crafts from manuscript a system of mental healing she told Crafts she had learned from Dr. P. P. Quimby. After learning it, Crafts undertook to practise it and had announcements printed and circulated declaring his system to have been the discovery of Dr. Quimby.

But Mrs. Glover and Mrs. Crafts did not seem to find one another’s society especially enjoyable, and for a time, Mrs. Crafts left Mrs. Glover in possession. In 1868, upon the invitation of Mrs. Sally Wentworth, Mrs. Glover moved to the Wentworths’ house at Stoughton, where she continued to live until 1870.

Mrs. Eddy’s writings will be searched in vain for any reference to Mrs. Wentworth, or to the fact that she spent about three years in the Wentworths’ house at Stoughton; but, in characteristic fashion, she hides the facts under this obscure and oracular utterance:

“I then (1866), withdrew from society, about three years, to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind that should take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great Curative Principle, God.”

Mrs. Wentworth invited Mrs. Glover to live with her and teach her the Quimby science of mind healing, and that is what Mrs. Glover did during the three years she was a member of Mrs. Wentworth’s family. She “pondered her mission,” etc., by avowedly teaching Dr. Quimby’s alleged science of mind healing, and she gave Mrs. Wentworth a copy of her, Mrs. Glover’s, manuscript copy of Quimby’s writings. This copy of Mrs. Eddy’s copy of what she then said were Quimby’s writings, in Mrs. Wentworth’s handwriting and containing corrections and interlineations in the handwriting of Mrs. Glover-Eddy, is the manuscript now in the possession of Mrs. Wentworth’s son, Horace T. Wentworth of Stoughton, Mass.

During Mrs. Glover’s sojourn at Mrs. Wentworth’s, the household consisted, besides Mrs. Wentworth and her guest, of her husband, Mr. Alanson C. Wentworth, and their two children, Lucy and Charles O. Wentworth. Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth died in 1882, but Lucy and Charles O. and Horace T. Wentworth are still living, and they, with their cousin, Mrs. Catherine I. Clapp, who was much at their house during Mrs. Glover’s visit, have stated the facts under oath and in such a manner that they must be believed.

Lucy Wentworth, now Mrs. Arthur L. Holmes, was about seventeen years of age when Mrs. Glover left her mother’s house. Mrs. Holmes, who still lives at Stoughton, says that she well remembers Mrs. Glover’s visit, and that she was teaching her mother a system of mental healing she said she had learned from Dr. Quimby.

“‘It wasn’t safe for anybody to say anything to me against Mrs. Glover,’ says Mrs. Holmes. ‘She spent all her time teaching my mother her new science. I was around her constantly, would rather be with her than with any one else, and I often used to hear her say, “I learned this from Dr. Quimby.” It is one of the distinct recollections of my childhood.’”

Charles O. Wentworth, now of Avon, Mass., says he, too, well remembers Mrs. Eddy’s visit during the years 1868, 1869 and 1870, and that he many times heard her say she had learned her mental science from Dr. Quimby. He says she avowed it openly, and always spoke of it as Dr. Quimby’s system.

Horace T. Wentworth, who was married and so not living at home with his parents, but who was often at their house, adds his positive testimony. He says:

“Never at any time during the years she was at our house, from 1868 to 1870, did Mrs. Glover give the slightest hint that any one other than Dr. Quimby had had any share in the origin of the system of mental healing she was teaching my mother. It could not then have entered her mind to claim it for herself. That was an afterthought. I heard Mrs. Glover over and over again say she got it all from Quimby.”

Mrs. Clapp’s statement is even more specific than the others. She is own cousin to the Wentworths and frequented their house at the time Mrs. Glover was visiting them, and knew that Mrs. Glover was teaching Mrs. Wentworth the Quimby system.

When Mrs. Clapp was recently asked if she had ever heard Mrs. Glover-Eddy say that she learned her system from Dr. Quimby, she replied:

“Yes, and I am not likely to forget it. It is fixed in my memory by a very reprehensible proceeding of my own. You see, Mrs. Glover used to say this to everybody who came in. She wasn’t content with mentioning once or twice that she had learned this from Dr. Quimby, she repeated it so often that we girls got deadly tired of hearing it.

“Now Mrs. Glover not only said it to the point of wearying us, but she had a peculiar way of saying it, and I am ashamed to say that I used to mock her?—?I, a young lady grown, who ought to have known better than to make fun of a person so much older.

“She always tried to be very gracious to everybody and she tried so hard that it gave her graciousness a ridiculous touch. She would fold her hands softly in her lap, smile gently, nod her head slowly at almost every word, and say in a sweet voice, ‘I learned this from Dr. Quimby and he made me promise to teach it to at least two persons before I die.’

“Well, this tiresome iteration, always with the same emphasis and the same exaggerated graciousness, used to excite the derision of the girls, and when Mrs. Glover wasn’t in hearing, I would take her off. I would say, ‘I learned this from Dr. Quimby,’ etc., at the same time nodding my head with a great exaggeration of Mrs. Glover’s gentle inclination, and putting tremendous emphasis on the words she emphasized, and wearing a fixed smile.

“I know it was an awful thing to do,” added Mrs. Clapp, penitently, “especially for a grown-up girl, but it used to make my cousins laugh and that made me feel that I had done something clever. Anyway, you see how it has fixed it on my memory.”

Mrs. Clapp well remembered seeing Mrs. Wentworth copy Mrs. Glover’s copy of Dr. Quimby’s writing.

“I once went to the Wentworths’ to get something,” she said, “and Mrs. Wentworth was busy copying this manuscript. I went to the buttery to get what I wanted, but couldn’t find it, and called Mrs. Wentworth. She got up to get it for me, but before doing so she put Mrs. Eddy’s copy of the Quimby manuscript in the desk and locked it. I suppose I looked surprised that she should take such pains when she was only stepping across the room, for a moment, and she noticed my look, and said, ‘Mrs. Glover made me promise never to leave this manuscript even for a moment without locking the desk.’”

While Mrs. Wentworth was copying the Quimby manuscript, Mrs. Clapp was employed by Mrs. Glover to copy a manuscript of her own for publication. This manuscript contained the first expression of the ideas subsequently given to the world by Mrs. Eddy. When the book was completed, Mrs. Glover paid Mrs. Clapp for the work and took it to Boston, but could not get a publisher to accept it.

Mrs. Clapp was quite familiar with the appearance of the Quimby manuscript from seeing Mrs. Wentworth copying it?—?she was Mrs. Wentworth’s niece?—?and also from seeing Mrs. Glover take it out to correct some of the work which Mrs. Clapp was doing. That would happen in this way. Mrs. Clapp would complete the copying of a page of Mrs. Glover’s book. Mrs. Glover would appear to be dissatisfied with it; she would take from her desk the original Quimby manuscript, the one from which Mrs. Wentworth had been copying, and compare this original with the work Mrs. Clapp had done. Then she would tear up Mrs. Clapp’s page and write it all over again, consulting the Quimby manuscript as she did so, and Mrs. Clapp would have the copying to do over again.

The unmistakable inference was that Mrs. Eddy was making her book out of the ideas contained in the original Quimby manuscript. Mrs. Clapp, with the irreverence of girlhood, had scant respect for the weighty ideas contained in the Quimby-Glover book, and there was one particular idea which she used to scoff at and make fun of to her intimates. It was to this effect:

“The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural or necessary than would be the process of taking a fish out of water every day and covering it with dirt to make it thrive more vigorously thereafter in its native element.”

Years afterward, Mrs. Clapp picked up a copy of “Science and Health,” and opened it to this identical sentence which had so often excited her girlish derision. It is on page 41, edition of 1898.

When Mrs. Wentworth died, in 1882, and the property was divided, the son Horace laid claim to the copy of the Quimby manuscript. He wanted it because it was in his mother’s handwriting (with the exception of Eddy’s corrections), and it would be a souvenir of her. He kept it with no other thought until now.

“But of late years,” said Mr. Wentworth, “as I have seen the amazing spread of this delusion, and the way in which men and women are offering up money and the lives of their children to it, I have felt that it is a duty I owe to the public to make it known.

“I have no hard feelings against Mrs. Eddy, no axe to grind, no interest to serve, I simply feel that it is due the thousands of good people, who have made Christian Science the anchorage of their souls and its founder the infallible guide of their daily life, to keep this no longer to myself. I desire only that people who take themselves and their helpless children into Christian Science shall do so with a full knowledge that this is not a divine revelation, but simply the idea of an old-time Maine healer.”

It may be assumed then, as proven, that as in 1868, 1869 and 1870 Mrs. Glover (Eddy) was teaching a system of mental healing she, at the time, said she had learned from Dr. P. P. Quimby, she couldn’t have discovered it herself in 1866. It now becomes interesting to know if there is any similarity between what we may call Quimbyism and Christian Science, between the teaching of Mrs. Glover-Eddy in 1870 and her teaching now.

On the outside, this Quimby-Glover manuscript is entitled, “Extracts From Doctor P. P. Quimby’s Writings,” and at the head of the first page, on the inside, it is further entitled, “The Science of Man, or The Principle Which Controls all Phenomena.”

There is a preface of two pages with Mary M. Glover’s name signed at the end. The “Extracts” are in the form of fifteen questions and answers, covering about thirty large pages, and are labeled, “Questions by Patients and Answers by Dr. Quimby.” The document contains an elaboration of Dr. Quimby’s mental healing system as taught by Mrs. Eddy, by her own acknowledgment, as late as 1870.

The contents of this Quimby-Glover manuscript having been communicated to Mr. George A. Quimby of Belfast, Maine, son of Dr. P. P. Quimby, he says, having compared it with his father’s writings in his possession, that it is a precise copy of them. He further says that an opportunity was afforded Mrs. Eddy to copy his father’s writings, as his father was accustomed to lend his manuscript to his patients, one of whom Mrs. Eddy was.

A perusal of this manuscript in comparison with Mrs. Eddy’s “Science and Health” shows, that every basic idea of Christian Science as a healing system was bodily appropriated by her from Dr. Quimby’s manuscripts and not obtained, as she says, by revelation from God. As contained in the manuscript and as taught by Dr. Quimby, there was no suggestion of a religious character to his teachings; the religious phase was an afterthought of Mrs. Eddy’s, as a means of facilitating the sale and distribution of her profit-yielding, copyrighted and “inspired” writings.

It may be here remarked that, at the outset, Mrs. Eddy especially deprecated the giving to Quimbyism, or Christian Science, a religious character, as I shall hereafter show in more detail, and she goes so far as to criticise the disciples of Jesus for founding, as she says, religious organizations and church rites.

Thus, at first, healing was the only phase of Christian Science. The religious feature was a subsequent invention.

Quimbyism, as contained in Mrs. Wentworth’s copy of Mrs. Glover’s copy of Dr. Quimby’s “Science of Man,” as revised and corrected in Mrs. Glover’s own handwriting, is compared with Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science as contained in her “Science and Health” in the following parallel passages from the two. A glance will show Dr. Quimby’s system of mental healing, as taught by Mrs. Glover, later Mrs. Eddy, in 1870, to be no other than the “Science of Metaphysical Healing” that Mrs. Eddy, formerly Mrs. Glover, now says was revealed to her in 1866:

Quimby: From Quimby’s “Science of Man,” as Expounded by Mrs. Eddy at Stoughton, 1868-69-70.

“If I understand how disease originates in the mind and fully believe it, why cannot I cure myself?”

Disease being made by our belief or by our parents’ belief or by public opinion, there is no one formula of argument to be adopted; but every one must fit in their particular case. Therefore it requires great shrewdness or wisdom to get the better of the error.” ....

Eddy: From Mrs. Eddy’s “Science and Health,” the Text-Book of the “Christian Science” She now Claims to have Discovered in 1866.

“Disease being a belief, a latent delusion of mortal mind, the sensation would not appear if this error was met and destroyed by Truth.”?—?Page 61, edition of 1898.

“Science not only reveals the origin of all disease as wholly mental, but it also declares that all disease is cured by mind.”?—?Page 62, edition of 1898.

Quimby:

“I know of no better counsel than Jesus gave to His disciples when He sent them forth to cast out devils and heal the sick, and thus in practice to preach the Truth, ‘Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.’ Never get into a passion, but in patience possess ye your soul, and at length you weary out the discord and produce harmony by your Truth destroying error. Then it is you get the case. Now if you are not afraid to face the error and argue it down, then you can heal the sick.”

Eddy:

“When we come to have more faith in the Truth of Being than we have in error, more faith in spirit than in matter, then no material conditions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error through Truth.”?—?Page 367, edition of 1898.

“We classify disease as error, which nothing but Truth or Mind can heal.”?—?Page 427, edition of 1898.

“Discord is the nothingness of error. Harmony is the somethingness of Truth.”?—?Page 172, edition of 1898.

Quimby:

“The patient’s disease is in his belief.”

“Error is sickness. Truth is health.”

Eddy:

“Sickness is part of the error which Truth casts out.”?—?Page 478, edition of 1898.

Quimby:

“In this science the names are given; thus God is Wisdom. This Wisdom, not an Individuality but a principle, embraces every idea form, of which the idea, man, is the highest,?—?hence the image of God, or the Principle.”

Eddy:

“God is the principle of man; and the principle of man remaining perfect, its idea or reflection?—?man?—?remains perfect.”?—?Page 466, edition of 1898.

“Man was and is God’s idea.”?—?Page 231, edition of 1898.

“Man is the idea of divine principle.”?—?Page 471, edition of 1898.

“What is God? Jehovah is not a person. God is principle.”?—?Page 169, edition of 1881.

Quimby:

“Understanding is God.”

Eddy:

“Understanding is a quality of God.”?—?Page 449, edition of 1898.

Quimby:

“All sciences are part of God.”

Eddy:

“All science is of God.”?—?Page 513, edition of 1898.

Quimby:

“Truth is God.”

“There is no other Truth but God.”

“God is Wisdom.”

“God is Principle.”

Eddy:

“Truth is God.”?—?Page 183, edition of 1898.

“Truth, God, is not the Father of error.”?—?Page 469, edition of 1898.

Quimby:

“Wisdom, Love and Truth are the Principle.”

Eddy:

“How can I most rapidly advance in the understanding of Christian Science? Study thoroughly the letter and imbibe the spirit. Adhere to its divine Principle, and follow its behests, abiding steadily in Wisdom, Love, and Truth.”?—?Page 491, edition of 1898.

Quimby:

“Error is matter.”

“Matter has no intelligence.”

“To give intelligence to matter is an error which is sickness.”

“Matter has no intelligence of its own, and to believe intelligence is in matter is the error which produces pain and inharmony of all sorts; to hold ourselves we are a principle outside of matter, we would not be influenced by the opinions of man, but held to the workings only of a principle, Truth, in which there are no inharmonies of sickness, pain, or sin.”

“For matter is an error, there being no substance, which is Truth in a thing which changes and is only that which belief makes it.”

“Christ was the Wisdom that knew Truth dwelt not in opinion and that matter was but opinion that could be formed into any shape which the belief gave to it, and that the life which moved it came not from it, but was outside of it.”

Eddy:

“Matter is mortal error,”?—?Page 169, edition of 1881.

“The fundamental error of mortal man is the belief that matter is intelligent.”?—?Page 122, edition of 1881.

“Laws of matter are nothing more or less than a belief of intelligence and life in matter, which is the procuring cause of all disease; whereas God, Truth, is its positive cure.”?—?Page 127, edition of 1881.

“There is no life, truth, intelligence, or substance in matter.”?—?Page 464, edition of 1898.

[It will be seen that every idea contained in this last passage, Mrs. Eddy’s famous “scientific statement of being,” the mental repetition of which constitutes Christian Science “treatment,” is taken from Dr. Quimby’s writings.]

This paralleling of Eddyism, or Christian Science, with Quimbyism shows that, as late as 1870, Mrs. Eddy professed to have learned from Quimby, that error is sickness; that belief is sickness; that discord is sickness; that there is no life, truth, intelligence, or substance in matter; that matter is error; that the belief of intelligence in matter is the cause of all disease; that Truth is God; that there is no other truth but God; that God is Principle; that Wisdom, Love and Truth are Principle; that Truth is health and cures sickness; that harmony, by destroying disharmony, cures disease; and, finally, that all disease originates in mind and is cured by mind alone.

And this is the sum total, the beginning and the end, of that strange thing Mrs. Eddy calls Christian Science, as it is contained and set forth in her book, “Science and Health.”

If the founder of Christian Science could be expected to give a candid answer to a plain question, might not some such respectful inquiry as the following at this point be pertinently propounded: If Mrs. Patterson, or Mrs. Glover, afterwards Mrs. Eddy, in 1868, 1869 and 1870 openly avowed that the “scientific mind healing” she then taught was the discovery of Dr. P. P. Quimby, when and how did Mrs. Eddy, formerly Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Glover, discover that she had discovered it herself in 1866?

But the question will not be answered for the reason that the sworn evidence of the Wentworths and Mrs. Clapp, together with the paralleling of Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science of today with her version of Quimbyism of 1870 shows, as clearly as words can show anything, that Mrs. Eddy’s claim to having received, in 1866, a final revelation from God, who for many years had been fitting her to receive it, is an invention, a fiction, a fraud, a lie that for wickedness and cruelty surpasses any lie ever invented by hypocrisy and greed.

The only person living who can meet this testimony and answer it is Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. Her newspaper puppets of the “Publication Committee” knew nothing about her at the time to which it relates. They have no knowledge whatever of the facts stated. They will affirm or deny anything they are told to affirm or deny; but their principal has maintained and will maintain discreet silence. She will not venture to deny that she wrote the letter to the Portland Courier, that she wrote the verses upon Dr. Quimby glorifying him as a second Jesus, that she lived at the Wentworths’ house during the years 1868, 1869 and 1870, and that she then taught from a copy of Quimby’s writings a mental healing system she then said she had learned from him.

Mrs. Eddy is bold, but not so bold as to give the lie direct to the sworn statements of Horace T. Wentworth, Catherine Isabel Clapp, Lucy Holmes and Charles O. Wentworth, all highly respected residents of the town of Stoughton. Mrs. Eddy will dare much; but she will hardly dare to dispute the evidence furnished by her own hand.

And silence is confession, and confession is acknowledgment of theft and falsehood and fraud, and hypocrisy beyond comparison.

Not upon such stones did the Jesus Christ, Whom Mrs. Eddy professes to emulate, construct the religion that bears His name; and there can be no greater irreverence than Mrs. Eddy’s calling her pretended religion “Christian,” and no greater absurdity than her calling it “Science.”

My purpose in showing Dr. Quimby’s authorship of Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science is to establish the falsity of her claim that God revealed it to her. The thing itself, as Dr. Quimby’s, is of no greater weight and of no more consequence than as Mrs. Eddy’s. Dr. Quimby and Mrs. Eddy were evidently upon the same intellectual plane, both uneducated and crude. He was a good and sincere and unselfish and trustful man, and she appropriated his ideas. They knew nothing of philosophy nor of science, and whether Christian Science be his or hers is of slight importance, except as the establishment of his authorship proves her to be the author of a fraud whose large proportions and successful workings challenge the kind of admiration one feels for the criminal whose great crime proves him to be a man of immense mental fertility and of profound understanding of human weakness.

When it is said that Mrs. Eddy stole her system from Dr. Quimby and then falsely pretended that she received it by revelation from God, her only response has been that the matter has been adjudicated by the courts, and it has been definitely settled that the charge is false. The adjudication in the courts had no bearing whatever upon this charge. One Edward J. Ahrens, a German adventurer, at one time an intimate of Mrs. Eddy’s, published copious extracts from her book, and, having been sued by her for infringement of copyright of her revelation and having failed to make any defense, the court adjudged his publications infringements of her copyright.

I am not aware that anyone has pretended that Mrs. Eddy did not write “Science and Health” in its crudest, original form, and is not entitled to the protection of copyright upon the book, but the fact that the court has decided that she is entitled to the protection of copyright, is no answer to the charge that certain claims and pretensions made in the book are false. The copyright, in her case, simply means that no one else has a right to publish her lies without her consent. To the simple minded, it may seem a little peculiar that Mrs. Eddy should insist upon exclusive rights to publish and sell, by procuring copyright, a book of which she says, not she, but God, was author and which she calls “God’s Book,” at a profit, not to God, but to her, of 500 per cent; but, as in the case of her three hundred dollar fee for twelve or seven lessons, to which I shall presently call attention, the worldly wisdom of her course has appeared in multitudinous ways, likewise multitudinous dollars!

It would seem like a waste of time to contend that God is not the author of “Science and Health;” that God, the All-wise, the All-loving, the All-powerful, did not wait nineteen hundred years after the death of Christ to complete the revelation of Himself made through Jesus; that of all the personalities who have lived upon this earth since the time of Jesus, the one selected by God to lead the world unto Him should be this uncultivated and vulgar woman, whose variegated career has been somewhat presented, and whose whole energies have been devoted to utilizing her pretended revelation for pecuniary profit. I say, it would seem to be an utter waste of time, were it not for the pathetic fact that thousands?—?sixty or seventy thousands?—?perhaps more?—?of the people of this country believe that Almighty God so acted.

It now being perfectly clear that Mrs. Eddy did not, as she says, receive Christian Science by revelation from God, she clearly has no warrant for pretending it to be a religion. As a religion, Christian Science is the shallowest fraud and imposture. It has no conceivable right to the name “Christian,” and every one of the beautiful churches erected in its honor is a monument simply to Mrs. Eddy’s deception and hypocrisy and lies and to the limitless gullibility of the human race, and every one of the many thousands of sincere and simple-minded people who at its services lift up their hearts in worship to God are the victims of an old woman’s insincere, mercenary appeal to their religious feelings.

No sane person can have followed this narrative thus far and not agree with me that, as a religion, there is no warrant for Christian Science, and those who will continue to the end will further agree with me that, as a healing system, it is just as fraudulent; that it kills the sweetest and tenderest emotions in the human heart by rooting out sympathy, charity and compassion; that there is no other hatred and vindictiveness equal to the hatred and vindictiveness of its founder and her leading votaries; that there is no other cruelty, no other greed, that can compare with theirs; that the so-called malicious animal magnetism, the witchcraft feature, is as wicked an invention as the human mind ever conceived, and that its attempted use for veritable assassination is as devilish as anything that could possibly emanate from the depths of hell; and, finally, that the inspired teaching of the three-or-four-times-married Mary Baker G. Eddy, regarding the most sacred and fundamental institution established among men, I refer to the institution of marriage, is so low and so vile that self-respecting people, when they come to understand it, must repudiate it from overwhelming shame. Insanity is not responsible for indecency; but those Christian Scientists who have not parted with their sanity, and are not in Christian Science for revenue only, will turn with horror from the woman and her work, when they know precisely what they are.

Surely one may be pardoned some warmth of indignation at the assumptions of this vulgar adventuress, this mercenary charlatan! It is difficult to think of them without impatience; it is impossible to speak of them without anger.