Let us now pass to consideration of another phase of Mrs. Eddy’s influence, more astounding, perhaps, than any we have considered, and more discreditable, if possible, to the age in which we live. I refer to the belief in what I have called the new-old witchcraft; that is to say, to the belief, taught by Mrs. Eddy as inspired truth, and accepted by her followers as revealed of God, that a maliciously disposed person has the power, by absent treatment, through his or her mind to cause any form of sickness, the most horrible of deaths, and complete domestic, social or business disaster to others. I shall quote somewhat liberally from Mrs. Eddy’s own statements in this regard, in order that there may be no question that I represent her correctly, and of these statements I invite thoughtful consideration.
In her first edition of “Science and Health,” published in 1875, Mrs. Eddy said, on page 123:
“In coming years the person or mind that hates his neighbor will have no need to traverse his fields, to destroy his flocks and herds, and spoil his vines; or to enter his house to demoralize his household; for the evil mind will do this through mesmerism; and not in propria personÆ be seen committing the deed. Unless this terrible hour be met and restrained by science, mesmerism, that scourge of man, will leave nothing sacred when mind begins to act under direction of conscious power.”
On page 382, Mrs. Eddy says:
“The silent argument used in his own behalf, as he manipulates the head, the malpractitioner would blush to make audibly. Suppose he has a juror for a patient, and establishes the mesmeric connection between them, he can influence more than law or evidence, the verdict of that honest juror.”
(Possibly this accounts for the presence in the court-room, at the trial of a case in which Mrs. Eddy was defendant, of a large number of the most potent Christian Science hypnotists.)
On page 177 of the 13th edition of “Science and Health,” Vol. II, Mrs. Eddy says:
“Mesmerism is practiced both with and without manipulation; but the evil deed without a sign is also done by the manipulator and mental malpractitioner.
“The secret mental assassin stalks abroad, and needs to be branded to be known in what he is doing.”
On page 175, Mrs. Eddy says:
“If the right mental practice can restore health, as is proven beyond a question, it is self-evident that a mental malpractice can impair the health of those ignorant of the cause and how to treat it.”
On page 179, Mrs. Eddy says:
“The evidence of the power that Mind exercises over the body has accumulated in weight and clearness until it culminates, at this period, in scientific statement and proof. Our courts recognize the evidence that goes to prove the committal of a crime; then, if it be clear that the so-called mind of one mortal has killed another, is not this mind proved a murderer, and shall not the man be sentenced whose mind, with malice aforethought, kills? His hands, without mortal mind to aid them, could not murder; but it is proven that this mind, without the aid of his hands, has killed.”
In “Science and Health,” thirty-sixth edition, published in 1888, Mrs. Eddy says, on page 220:
“It is hoped that eventually our laws will take cognizance of mental crime.”
On page 515, she says:
“This malicious animal-power (of which the Dragon is the type) seeks to kill his fellow-mortals, morally and physically, and then to charge the innocent with his crimes.”
On page 516, she says:
“The highest degree of human depravity, which is to be found in this propulsive will power, or Animal Magnetism.”
In “Miscellaneous Writings,” published in 1897, on page 222, Mrs. Eddy says:
“The crimes committed under this new regime of mind-power, when brought to light, will make stout hearts quail. Its mystery protects it now, for it is not yet known.”
In a long article entitled “Malicious Animal Magnetism,” written by Mrs. Eddy and published as hers in the Christian Science Journal for February, 1889, when the Journal was her property, she lays down her inspired teaching on that subject with unwonted clearness. She says:
“One of the greatest crimes practiced in, or known to, the ages is mental assassination. A mind liberated from the beliefs of sense, to do good, by perverting its power becomes warped into the lines of evil without let or hindrance. A mind taught its power to touch other minds by the transference of thought, for the ends of restoration from sickness, or, grandest of all, the reformation and almost transformation into the living image and likeness of God?—?this mind, by misusing its freedom, reaches the degree of total moral depravity.
“Does the community know this criminal? He sits at the friendly board and fireside; he goes to their places of worship; he takes his victim by the hand, and all the time claims the power and carries the will to stab to the heart, to take character and life from this friend who gives him his hand in full trust, and has, perhaps, toiled and suffered to benefit and bless him.…
“It is no longer possible to keep still concerning these things?—?nay, it is criminal to hold silence and to cover crime that grows bolder and picks off its victims as sharpshooters pick off the officers of an attacking force.
“These secret, heaven-defying enormities must be proclaimed, or we become guilty before God as accessory after the fact. If a friend were fallen upon and maltreated or murdered before our eyes, should we hold ourselves guiltless, should we count ourselves men and women, if we buried the secret of the violence and our knowledge of the assassins?
“Are we such cowards, knowing the facts that we do know, as to turn and run? Shall we see the evil, the deadly danger that threatens our brother, and, to hide ourselves, flee away not warning him?
“The Science of mind uncovers to Scientists secret sin, even more distinctly than so-called physical crimes are visible to the personal senses; crime is always veiled in obscurity, but Science fastens guilt upon its author through mind, with the certainty and directness of the eye of God Himself.
“Human laws will eventually be framed for these criminals that now go unwhipped of human justice. Human law even now recognizes crime as mental, for it seeks always the motive. Rude counterfeit as it is of Divine Justice, it metes out punishment or pardons according as it finds, or finds not, the evil intent, the mental element. The time has come for instructing human justice so that these secret criminals shall tremble before the omnipotent finger that points them out to the human executioner.”
If that isn’t witchcraft, I don’t know what witchcraft is. The Omnipotent finger will point out these criminals, who operate through silent and invisible mental influences, and justice will be meted out to them by the human executioner!
In a personal letter to a student Mrs. Eddy said:
“The mental malpractitioners or mesmerists employ the argument of poison to kill people. They cause you or your patients to suffer from arsenical poison in the blood or stomach, mercurial poison, morphine or any other form of mineral, vegetable or animal poison which they may name in their arguments.”
In the latest editions of her book, and in formal communications to her followers, Mrs. Eddy reaffirms her belief in this malicious power of mind, and again warns her followers against it. Her personal teaching to her students was even more extravagant than the language of her published works, and it was a common occurrence for her to frighten young girls and children nearly into fits with the dreadful fear that a malicious mind was seeking to cause them unspeakable disaster. She has taught that the malicious action of mind alone might, of itself, cause, and had caused, the pregnancy of woman, with consequences I must leave to your imagination. And all this damnable doctrine is accepted and believed by Mrs. Eddy’s “intelligent” followers as the truth revealed by God through the founder of Christian Science?—?believed with a belief that trembles.
I have talked with a gentleman who, years ago, with his family, lived for some six months in the house with Mrs. Eddy; and he said to me with great earnestness: “I lived there six months, and I tell you, sir, I would rather spend ten years in hell than another six months in Mrs. Eddy’s company. She nearly drove my children into frenzy with her malicious animal magnetism business.” Malicious animal magnetism is the name by which Mrs. Eddy now calls her witchcraft.
It has been also a regular part of the teachings of that bogus institution, the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, of which Mrs. Eddy was president, that malicious minds may, and today are, causing sickness, death and disaster to Christian Scientists and their families. I know it to be a fact that the lecturer there literally taught that Mrs. Josephine C. Woodbury, whom he named, possessed this power, and used it to the detriment of Christian Scientists and the cause; and to such an extent has this teaching regarding this particular lady spread that I think it would be hard to find a Christian Scientist in the United States who did not, or had not, believed Mrs. Woodbury had possessed and had exercised this power.
A Christian Scientist healer, guilty of an unpardonable impropriety with young lady patients, is called to account by their father, and, acknowledging his offence, says that he can only account for it on the ground that Mrs. Woodbury made him do it, by malicious animal magnetism. An aged lady, a Christian Scientist in a distant city, having fallen unaccountable several times upon the street, explains to her daughter that the cause of it is “that vile Mrs. Woodbury of Boston.” The child of a member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, dies, and the grief-stricken mother entertains the firm conviction that Mrs. Woodbury killed it. The husband of a member of Mrs. Eddy’s church has been sick for years here in Boston, and for years, without having known or seen Mrs. Woodbury, such has been the teaching at the Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston and of the alleged “College,” that she has had no doubt that Mrs. Woodbury caused her husband’s illness, and she has continually sought to protect her husband by a mental effort to throw the illness back upon Mrs. Woodbury. Meantime Mrs. Woodbury is, of course, utterly unconscious of all of these happenings and entirely innocent of any such criminal purposes and deeds.
And all this deviltry as revealed by God! All this medieval witchcraft in the name of Christ! Out upon it! I say. Let it no longer be tolerated amongst us!
Three hundred years ago, some nineteen or twenty estimable people in the town of Salem in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, because of the finding of a Court that they were witches, were legally hanged by the neck until they were dead. And should the inspired and infallible founder of Christian Science prevail in her benevolent intention of “instructing human justice so that these secret criminals shall tremble before the omnipotent finger that points them out to the human executioner,” the supposed offences of malicious animal magnetism, the invention of her disordered imagination, would be atoned upon the gibbet or at the stake.
In her published work Mrs. Eddy has expressly justified the employment of this alleged power for retaliation or defense. She says:
“It was years after we were personally attacked by mental malpractice before we defended ourselves or taught our students self defence. Until this attack was aimed at our life, we never resisted or even investigated it thoroughly and so discovered the full purpose and extent of a mental malpractice. But we gave our attention to it and found how to save the scattering remnants of our Christian students that had been mown down like grass. We resolved in the strength of God to save them and others from the hands of these murderers and to find, as sure defence, the ever present help. Since God has shown us our way in Christian healing, our mind often heals involuntarily. The malpractitioners know this and often have asked us about their patients to direct our thoughts to them, knowing the benefit therefrom. They know, as well as we, that it is impossible for science to produce sickness, but science makes sin punish itself. They should have feared for their own lives in their attempts to kill us. God is Supreme and the penalties of their sins they cannot escape. Turning the attention of the sick to us for the benefit they may receive from us, is another milder form or species of malpractice that is not safe; for if we feel their sufferings, not knowing the individual, we shall defend ourselves and the result is dangerous to the intruder.”
The retaliatory method of mental treatment devised by Mrs. Eddy consisted in an endeavor mentally to hurl cancer back upon the person she believed to be attempting to afflict her with cancer, or tumor upon the person attempting mentally to transmit tumor to her, or consumption upon the evil one thinking consumption at her, and the various forms of chemical poison upon those endeavoring to think mercurial, arsenical or other forms of poison into her organism. She told her students that she had the power of discerning such malicious mental activity on the part of those she believed to be her enemies, and that the way to protect her was to hurl the malicious thoughts backward and cause them, as it were, to recoil upon and destroy their authors.
When Mrs. Augusta Stetson of New York was accused of attempts at mental murder, she justified or tried to justify such endeavors on the ground that they were defensive and, as such, taught and sanctioned by Mrs. Eddy. Whatever Mrs. Stetson and other Christian Scientists know about the power to commit murder by mental means, they have learned from Mrs. Eddy; and if it be an offence against the Christian Science Church, as was decided in the case of Mrs. Stetson, to attempt to cause disease and to kill through the employment of mental powers, then Mrs. Eddy herself should follow Mrs. Stetson into exile from the communion of the saints.
Mrs. Stetson’s excommunication is an interesting sequel to an incident that occurred in Concord, N.H., in April of 1907. Mrs. Eddy was then living at Concord, and the litigation by the sons had been commenced in the preceding month. It had been the talk of the newspapers, from time to time, that Mrs. Stetson was nourishing an ambition to succeed Mrs. Eddy in the leadership of Christian Science upon Mrs. Eddy’s demise, and it had even been said that, expecting Mrs. Eddy’s death to occur at a particular time, Mrs. Stetson had come to Boston prepared with a most magnificent costume for attendance upon Mrs. Eddy’s ascension.
It was pretty generally known in Christian Science circles that Mrs. Stetson was maneuvering to succeed Mrs. Eddy as the official head of the movement, and doubtless the report reached Mrs. Eddy’s ears. At this time one Herman S. Herring was the first reader of Mrs. Eddy’s church at Concord and H. Cornell Wilson was acting as one of her secretaries at her home at Pleasant View. By some means, through the New York World, possession was obtained of a letter written by Herring to Wilson, dated April 27, 1907, in which he asked Mr. Wilson if “it would not be well to protect Mrs. Eddy from the Stetson argument specifically, or are the workers doing so?”
The meaning of this, of course, is that Herring assumed Mrs. Stetson was, by malicious mental endeavor, operating adversely to Mrs. Eddy, either to cause Mrs. Eddy to designate Mrs. Stetson as her successor, or to hasten Mrs. Eddy’s departure, by ascension or otherwise, from the world; and the “workers” referred to are the corps of Christian Science mental practitioners always maintained by Mrs. Eddy at her home by concentrated mental effort to erect and maintain a mental bulwark around her that shall be impenetrable by Mrs. Stetson’s or any other malicious mental bullets.
“It has troubled me,” said Herring, “but helped me, to hear that Frye was a channel for that diabolism.”
Mrs. Eddy has always contended that she herself was so immaculate that malicious animal magnetism could not immediately approach her; but injury to her might be effected through some less pure personality close to her. As no one was closer than Frye, it appears that he was believed to be the medium through which Mrs. Stetson was supposed to be operating, or attempting to operate, against Mrs. Eddy.
The newspaper reports of the Stetson trial and excommunication did not, so far as they came to my attention, contain any intimation that judgment had fallen upon Mrs. Stetson because of her mental attacks upon Mrs. Eddy; but there can be no doubt that Mrs. Eddy believes she had been the target of such attacks, and that the excommunication was Mrs. Eddy’s own act of retaliation upon Mrs. Stetson.
“The highest degree of human depravity,” Mrs. Eddy calls this alleged power to cause sickness and to cause death, which, when successfully employed, should be expiated upon the scaffold; and, deliberately and solemnly, with full understanding of the meaning of my language, I affirm and I charge that Mary Baker G. Eddy, the founder of Christian Science and the pretended successor to, and equal of, Jesus, has again and again and again sought to exercise it; that she, herself, has repeatedly thus sought to cause sickness, sought to cause death, and this, as everything else I have alleged, I will prove by legal evidence whenever Mrs. Eddy may be pleased to require it.
To bring out clearly the effect upon Mrs. Eddy’s daily life of her genuine belief in this diabolical thing she calls malicious animal magnetism, and her efforts to avail herself of the supposed power of mind to cause disease and death, the following letter, received from a gentleman, now a practising physician, who in his earlier manhood was attracted to Mrs. Eddy and her teachings, is incorporated here:
“I lived in the ‘College’ with Mrs. Eddy and her family for nearly a year, and had ample opportunity to observe all the things I now tell you; I shall not make a statement without knowing that it is absolutely true.
“As you desire information in regard to her teachings of malicious animal magnetism, I will confine myself mostly to that subject.
“Nearly two-thirds of the time of her class lectures was taken up with teaching us how to ‘meet the enemy,’ as she called Richard Kennedy, Edward Ames, Clara Choate, and her mother, Mrs. Childs. We were taught that Richard Kennedy, especially, was the ‘Arch Enemy’ of Christian Science, and of Mrs. Eddy herself; that he had learned the art of using ‘malicious animal magnetism’ on Mrs. Eddy and her students; that he had ‘secret service’ men and women who watched every movement of Mrs. Eddy, and of each one living with her; that we could not go out without some one following, and watching us, reporting to ‘the ring of enemies,’ namely, Kennedy Ames, Choate and Childs. We were taught that by being aware of all our movements?—?just how we looked, and who our patients were?—?they had the mental power to so mesmerize our minds as to cause us to meet with defeat in all our attempts to heal; that they were informed of the diseases and weaknesses from which we had been healed, and by malicious thoughts and concentration upon us could cause us to relapse into our old forms of disease.
“Mrs. Eddy was constantly having attacks of illness (always in the night). We were often called up about eleven o’clock at night to treat her, and were obliged to remain up until about two o’clock a.m. These attacks, we were told, were brought on by the ‘enemy,’ working through us, as her students. She claimed that the only way the ‘enemy’ could reach her was through her students, she being so strong and so pure that their ‘malicious animal magnetism’ could not reach her in any other way. So we used to go into the parlor, after breakfast and supper, each day, and mentally ‘take up the enemy.’ We were taught to recognize the error, and treat ourselves and the ‘enemy,’ so that they (‘the enemy’) could have no power over us, or our patients; and every time we gave the treatments we were taught to first ‘treat the enemy.’
“The result of all this was, that Mrs. Eddy was always full of fear; as the ‘enemy’ were supposed to have power to prevent all kinds of desired results, not only in healing, but in business, as well.
“I was taught that the postal clerks were so mesmerized that letters to and from the College would never reach their destination unless certain conditions were complied with; also that the telegraph operators were so under this malicious influence that a message sent by telegraph would not reach the person to whom it was sent unless certain precautions were taken. I was once sent from her house to West Newton to forward a telegraph message to Chicago, so that it would be sent by way of Worcester, instead of Boston, as all Boston operators were supposed to be so mesmerized by the ‘enemy’ that no message from Mrs. Eddy could reach its destination, if sent through their hands. And so I might run on for hours, giving you facts about such things.
“I was told to treat the ‘enemy’ (Kennedy, Ames, Choate and Childs) to cause their ‘old beliefs’ to return, ‘and prostrate them at once!’ ‘Old beliefs’ meant former diseases, from which they had been healed, in some cases even tumors and cancers.
“I could write pages of things said and done, to show that insane idea of the power of malicious men and women to nearly, if not quite, kill people. We were taught that they had killed several students of Mrs. Eddy. I was taught that Kennedy and Ames knew how to treat people in a way to cause ‘sixty symptoms of arsenic poisoning.’
“I was often called in the night to treat Mrs. Eddy, as she was sick. I have been sent to the homes of other students to call them in the night to help her out of her fears and spasms.
“I was sent in the month of May, 1884, at two o’clock a.m., to call lawyer Roberts to make her will, as it seemed she could not live till morning?—?all caused by ‘malicious animal magnetism,’ or ‘M.A.M.’ as we were in the habit of abbreviating it.
“I found Mrs. Eddy a strong-willed, obstinate, and arbitrary woman. Her business was obliged to be conducted as she dictated, whether right or wrong.
“I was one of four students told by Mrs. Eddy to treat certain clergymen of Boston to come into her classes and endorse Christian Science.
“The following incident might be of interest at this time:
“In the summer of 1884, Mrs. Eddy taught her first class in Chicago. For several weeks before going there she was constantly in a state of worry, or fear, that Mrs. Choate would ‘prostrate her,’ and so prevent her from going there, as she thought that Mrs. Choate herself wished to go and teach a class. Calvin A. Frye had purchased Mrs. Eddy’s ticket, and engaged a private compartment for her, and a berth for himself (to accompany her to Chicago), when, the night before she was to start, she was taken very ill (the work of Mrs. Choate, she believed it to be) and was not able to go the next day, as she had intended to do. She called in her students, at the College with her, to treat against Mrs. Choate, to prevent her mesmerism from prostrating her (Mrs. Eddy), and by the second day she was able to go to Chicago. We afterwards learned that at the same identical time, Mrs. Choate was ill, and thought that Mrs. Eddy was sending ‘malicious animal magnetism’ to prostrate her, and called in a former student of the college to treat against Mrs. Eddy’s mesmerism.
“So you see how fear controlled Mrs. Eddy (even at that distant day) and every one connected with her, and has continued to control every one taught by her, who has not escaped from the bondage of that teaching.
“This is only a fragment of what I might tell you in regard to Mrs. Eddy and her teachings at the time I was with her; but it is enough to show you what she taught and practised then, as well as now.”
Could anything be more insane than the condition of Mrs. Eddy’s household as indicated in this letter? Or could anything be more diabolical than her attempt, to which this gentleman and others are willing to make oath whenever they are called upon, by concerted mental operations to afflict her enemies with tumor and cancer?
But to be somewhat more specific. Some years ago Mrs. Eddy regarded Mr. Daniel H. Spofford, who had been one of her students and friends, as an enemy, and it was her determined and expressed purpose that he should in some manner be disposed of. The cause of Mrs. Eddy’s violent antipathy to Spofford is not quite clear, except perhaps upon the theory that all of her antipathies have been violent. It may be in some measure due to his unwillingness to pay her money he did not believe was due her, and to the failure of various litigations brought against him by her. Mrs. Eddy brought suit against Spofford upon one of her early contracts for $100 for teachings, ten per cent royalty on income, and $1,000 for omission to utilize the teachings; and she failed to recover in the courts. She actually caused a suit in equity to be brought against Spofford in the Superior Court at Salem, Mass., in which the court was asked to issue an injunction to restrain Spofford from using his mind to cause the illness of her patient, who was said to suffer physically from his malicious mental activity.
It is interesting to note that this singular proceeding was brought in the same jurisdiction in which, some hundreds of years ago, certain individuals were arraigned and tried for the crime of witchcraft, found guilty and hanged by the neck until they were dead.
Mrs. Eddy acted as attorney in fact for the plaintiff in this suit and the power of attorney is still of record in the case. The strange bill of complaint is as follows:
“Humbly complaining, the plaintiff, Lucretia L. S. Brown of Ipswich, in said County of Essex, showeth unto your Honors, that Daniel H. Spofford, of Newburyport, in said County of Essex, the defendant in the above entitled action, is a mesmerist and practices the art of mesmerism and by his said art and power of his mind influences and controls the minds and bodies of other persons and uses his said power and art for the purpose of injuring the persons and property and social relations of others and does by said means so injure them.
“And the plaintiff further showeth that the said Daniel H. Spofford has, at divers times and places since the year eighteen hundred and seventy-five, wrongfully and maliciously and with intent to injure the plaintiff, caused the plaintiff by means of his said power and art great suffering of body and mind and severe spinal pains and neuralgia and a temporary suspension of mind, and still continues to cause the plaintiff the same. And the plaintiff has reason to fear and does fear that he will continue in the future to cause the same. And the plaintiff says that said injuries are great and of an irreparable nature and that she is wholly unable to escape from the control and influence he so exercises upon her and from the aforesaid effects of said control and influence.”
Naturally Mrs. Eddy could find no lawyer sufficiently besotted, or shameless, to argue this case for her when it came up for hearing. She was present and such argument as was made was by one of her then dear friends, who afterwards became, as she believed, one of her dearest foes; but upon the filing of the demurrer by Mr. Spofford’s lawyer, raising the legal point that the bill of complaint did not set forth any cause of action, the court sustained the demurrer and threw the case out, declaring with a smile that it was not within the province of the court by its writ of injunction to control the operations of Mr. Spofford’s mind.
Whatever may have been the cause of Mrs. Eddy’s hatred of Spofford, she wished him killed, and to that end instructed her students to sit together daily, at noon and in the evening, and by concerted mental concentration hurl disease into Mr. Spofford.
I do not contend that Mrs. Eddy, or Christian Scientists or others, ever killed or can kill or afflict with disease any other person by absent mental treatment, and one of my strong reasons for this confident belief is that I am still permitted to walk the earth. I only seek to show the murderous purpose in the heart of the woman who is pretending to be the voice of God to this age and the equal of Jesus Christ.
Failing in her effort mentally to dispose of Spofford, did this vindictive woman endeavor to accomplish her purpose by any other method? I cannot precisely say, but what I can say is this: In December, 1878, after a hearing in the Police Court in Boston (in which one of the witnesses testified she had heard Mrs. Eddy say Spofford was a bad man and ought to be put out of the way), by which they were held for the grand jury in $3,000 bail, and after an examination by the Suffolk grand jury of some six or eight witnesses, one Edward J. Arens, and one Asa G. Eddy, third husband of Mary Baker G. Eddy, and then living with her as her husband, were duly indicted for a conspiracy to commit murder. To commit murder upon whom? Upon Daniel H. Spofford, the same Spofford Mrs. Eddy had solicited her followers to kill by mental means.
There were two counts in the indictment.
The first read: “That Edward J. Arens and Asa G. Eddy of Boston aforesaid, on the 28th day of July in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight, Boston, aforesaid, with Force and Arms, being persons of evil minds and dispositions did then and there unlawfully conspire, combine and agree together feloniously, wilfully, and of their malice aforethought, to procure, hire, incite and solicit, one James L. Sargent, for a certain sum of money, to wit, the sum of five hundred dollars, to be paid to said Sargent by them, said Arens and Eddy, feloniously, wilfully, and of his, said Sargent’s malice aforethought, in some way and manner and by some means, instruments, and weapons, to said jurors unknown, one, Daniel H. Spofford, to kill and murder. Against the law, peace and dignity of said Commonwealth.”
What connection there was between the failure of Mrs. Eddy’s efforts to kill Spofford or to have him killed by mental means and her husband’s alleged efforts to have him killed by physical means, I do not positively know. I did not hear Mrs. Eddy say to Mr. Eddy: Asa, we have tried and tried and tried to kill that man Spofford, but he is a tough proposition, and we have made no progress. Now you pay Sargent $500 to lie in wait for him with a club and we will see if that won’t settle him. That was the charge against Eddy. Nothing mental about the club form of treatment! I did not hear Mrs. Eddy say that to Eddy, but I very much doubt if he would have found himself in the position in which he was placed, if his dominating helpmeet had offered any objection to the thing of which he was accused. I do not know that Mrs. Eddy knew anything about Asa G. Eddy’s undertaking to have Spofford killed; but I do know that what I have stated is true, and I do know that the human mind necessarily makes deductions from circumstances; and I do not doubt every human mind that believes the facts to be as I have stated them, will make the same deduction that my mind makes.
For some unexplained reason this indictment was never prosecuted; but, upon the payment of costs by Eddy, was nol prossed. There was no disproof of the sworn testimony given in the Police Court. Eddy never asked for a hearing, he never insisted upon the vindication only a trial could give. He put his hand into his pocket and paid a considerable sum to escape a trial; and Mrs. Eddy and her friends call that a vindication. Does an innocent man accused of serious crime pay money to escape a trial, or does he demand a full hearing and establish his innocence?
And Spofford is not the only assumed enemy the good “Mother” of Christian Science has sought to dispose of by mental murder. Richard Kennedy and Clara E. Choate, both now living in Boston, and Edward J. Arens, also fell under the ban and at Mrs. Eddy’s instigation received so-called mental treatment designed to relieve them of the burden of the flesh by divers diseases.
Another one of her early friends, whom Mrs. Eddy ceased to love and grew to hate, was Richard Kennedy. He had been one of her earliest pupils, studying with her when she lived at the Wentworth house in Stoughton in the sixties; and they had carried on a sort of co-partnership at Lynn, Mrs. Eddy doing the teaching and Kennedy the healing.
But she had had a falling out with Kennedy as with her other early friends, Spofford and Arens, and she had dragged him into court as she had dragged them, Kennedy was a young man and an easy victim. He gave Mrs. Eddy his promissory note for a thousand dollars for her teachings, and after he had paid two hundred and fifty dollars on account she brought suit against him for the balance, seven hundred and fifty dollars, but again she lost her case.
After a time, somehow or other, the strange notion got into Mrs. Eddy’s head that Kennedy was the most malicious and Satanic of all her enemies, who were, by mental means, seeking her destruction. He was the very incarnation of the mind’s hellish power in its most malignant and effective form; and she denounced him in the following lurid language:
“The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method with the tortures of individuals, is repeating history and will fall upon his own sword and it shall pierce him through. Let him remember this when, in the dark recesses of thought, he is robbing, committing adultery, and killing; when he is attempting to turn friend away from friend, ruthlessly stabbing the quivering heart; when he is clipping the thread of life, and giving to the grave youth and its rainbow hues; when he is turning back the reviving sufferer to her bed of pain, clouding her first morning after years of night; and the Nemesis of that hour shall point to the tyrant’s fate, who falls at length upon the sword of justice.”
And in one of the editions of her book Mrs. Eddy went so far as to expressly accuse Kennedy of the crime of murder in the following extraordinary language:
“The husband of a lady who was the patient of this malpractitioner poured out his grief to us and said: ‘Dr. K—— has destroyed the happiness of my home, ruined my wife,’ etc.; and, after that, he finished with a double crime by destroying the health of that wronged husband so that he died. We say that he did these things because we have as much evidence of it as ever we had of the existence of any sin. The symptoms and circumstances of the cases, and the diagnosis of their diseases proved the unmistakable fact. His career of crime surpasses anything that minds in general can accept at this period. We advised him to marry a young lady whose affection he had won, but he refused; subsequently she was wedded to a nice young man, and then he alienated her affections from her husband.”
All of this, of course, by absent mental treatment!
It is a matter of record in the Superior Court of the State of New Hampshire, by sworn testimony, that Mrs. Eddy sought to relieve herself of the imagined malicious mental treatment of Mr. Kennedy by instructing her friends to sit together at stated times daily and, holding his lungs in a diseased condition in their minds, hurl consumption at him with all the power of concentrated malevolent thought.
Kennedy, who is living today, and with whom I am well acquainted, is as gentle and kindly a person as can be imagined; and, while Mrs. Eddy was working herself into a frenzy over his supposed malignity, and having consumption mentally hurled at him, was pursuing the even tenor of his way without thought of her except as an occasional memory of a bitter experience. Mrs. Eddy hated Kennedy as she hated Spofford, and she wanted Kennedy killed as she wanted Spofford killed; and, as in the case of Spofford, she solicited her friends and students to undertake by mental coÖperation to terminate his mundane career.
It may relieve the minds of some to know that Mrs. Eddy’s kindly purpose did not succeed with any of the persons whose illness was sought, as I have related. Spofford, Kennedy and Mrs. Choate did not succumb to the malicious absent treatment, but are still present with us in the flesh. Arens died, I am told, but some time after Mrs. Eddy had given him up as hopelessly tenacious of life.
But one more incident and I have done?—?I have kept the worst until the last.
A sad and tragic episode in connection with the litigation instituted by her sons in reference to Mrs. Eddy’s mental condition, was the suicide at the Parker House, in Boston, on April 20, 1907, of Miss Mary C. Tomlinson, sister of Irving C. Tomlinson, a former Universalist minister, but then and now a Christian Science healer, and of Rev. Vincent Tomlinson, a Universalist minister of Worcester, Mass. Miss Tomlinson had lived with her brother Irving at Concord, N.H., and had been a Reader in the Christian Science Church there and an ardent disciple of Christian Science and of Mrs. Eddy, being much in company with her and absolutely devoted to her service. After the law suit by Mrs. Eddy’s sons began, all the closest friends of Mrs. Eddy in Concord (as well as elsewhere) were called upon to defend her from the attack, and, by the peculiar method of absent and silent mental treatment, both Mr. Glover and his senior counsel, Mr. Chandler, were pressed by the so-called “workers” to the utmost of the powers they supposed themselves to possess.
Miss Mary C. Tomlinson was not in the least degree unwilling to exercise her powers of absent treating of persons in order to repel the Stetson argument; nor even unwilling to treat Glover and Chandler in the ordinary way, trying to make them abandon the lawsuit; but when the decision was made at Concord, to treat Mrs. Eddy’s own son and his lawyer in hostile fashion?—?by sending arsenical poison into their veins, or otherwise putting them to death, Miss Tomlinson’s whole nature revolted. She had implicit faith in Christian Science, she worshiped Mrs. Eddy, she believed in the existence of malicious animal magnetism and its devilish power and in the methods of counter-working to prevent its evil work; but she had never before seen an attempt made to use absent treatment diabolically?—?by putting to death the enemies of the Church of Christ, Scientist. When she opened her eyes to the enormity to be practised in the name of a revengeful church, her mind revolted. She determined to leave Concord, to renounce Mrs. Eddy and all her works and to denounce the system to which she had been so earnest a servant. Indeed the intense revulsion of feeling seems to have upset her mental balance. Following up her determination, she went to Boston on April 19 and wandered about, uncertain what to do with herself, at last finding her way to the Parker House in the hands of a Christian Scientist, where her two brothers, being telegraphed for, came to take charge of her.
Here the tragedy begins. The Parker House manager wished her to be seen by Dr. Payne, the hotel physician; but did not succeed in getting him admission to her rooms. He did, however, send to her a nurse from Boothby Hospital, a Miss Telfair, who arrived about nine p.m. Later, Mr. Vincent Tomlinson, the Universalist minister, came and with the nurse took charge of his sister.
About eleven o’clock Mr. Irving C. Tomlinson, the Christian Science healer, arrived and at once took controlling charge of Miss Tomlinson?—?saying that he understood the case and knew what to do. Mr. Vincent Tomlinson left the rooms and took a room down the corridor which his brother had engaged. The nurse was not allowed to stay in the room with Miss Tomlinson but was placed out in the corridor, while Mr. Irving Tomlinson took off his shoes and coat and laid down in a connecting room. About one o’clock in the morning there was the sound of a window being raised in Miss Tomlinson’s room and the nurse entered quickly from the corridor as Irving came in from his room. They found she had opened the window, and she said to Irving, when he remonstrated, that she wanted to look out. They induced her to go back to bed and Irving then locked on the inside the door from her room into the corridor and took out the key and kept it. Miss Telfair went into the corridor again and Irving went into his own room. About three a.m., Miss Telfair heard the door connecting with Irving’s room shut and locked by Miss Tomlinson. Again she heard the window opened, but, having been locked out, could not get to Miss Tomlinson. She called for the porter and they finally got into Miss Tomlinson’s room by breaking down the door connecting it with Irving’s. They found the window wide open and the room empty. Miss Tomlinson had thrown herself down four stories to the street. She was brought back to her room, but never spoke, and died about five a.m.
She had worshiped Mrs. Eddy. She had been one of the most devoted of her disciples, and when she came to a realization of the infamies being practised in the name of Christ, life lost every ray of light and every particle of charm, and she dashed herself to death upon the stones of the streets of Boston.
Small matter for wonder that, when the bruised and mangled body had been carried to the chamber Miss Tomlinson had occupied, the Universalist minister, standing by his dead sister, should solemnly say to his brother, the renegade Universalist minister, the Christian Science healer, “Irving, the blood of our sister is upon the skirts of Mrs. Eddy!”
The story is now completely told. Of those who have followed me to the end, I ask, was it incumbent upon me, knowing the facts as I know them and as I have here presented them, to crowd them down into my soul and by suppressing them become a party to Mrs. Eddy’s monstrous imposition? Just because the author of all of this fraud, falsehood, hypocrisy, blasphemy and attempted crime is a woman, now an aged woman, should I therefore stand silently by and permit her longer to masquerade before mankind as like unto the pure and holy Jesus? I think not. That has not seemed to me to be my duty in the matter. I have done my duty as I have seen it, and I will stand by the position taken and the facts affirmed.
Is it possible for any decent person, man or woman, to peruse this book and then acknowledge himself or herself a disciple of Mary Baker G. Eddy? Is it conceivable that any sane man or woman, with full knowledge of the facts of her life, can honestly profess belief in her disgusting imposture? Can any one who feels, as I do, that Jesus is the common glory of all who bear a human heart, without resentment and without anger witness the endeavor of this vulgar creature to place herself by His side? Can any devout Christian have any other feeling than one of abhorrence for the blasphemous woman and the bunco game she dares to say is “authorized by Christ”?
If I have made good, if I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish, I ask every man and every woman who reads this book to lose no opportunity to show this hateful thing, miscalled Christian Science, in its true light to those with whom they come in contact. Let it have no quarter. Hit it every time you have a chance and hit it as hard as you can. It is not entitled to respectful treatment. Nothing is more impossible than to love Jesus, even a little, and to have the slightest, the very slightest, tolerance for Mrs. Eddy and her frauds.
A Christian Science speaker recently, in a suburb of Boston, in concluding an address exhorted her hearers to “follow Mrs. Eddy, as Mrs. Eddy follows the Saviour.” Not follow the Saviour, but follow Mrs. Eddy in Mrs. Eddy’s way of following the Saviour.
As Mrs. Eddy follows the Saviour.
By faking a revelation from God? By stealing the ideas of another and ascribing them to God’s voice in her private ear? By putting on the cloak of religion in order to pick the pockets of those whose hands are clasped in prayer? By copyrighting a “religion,” and suing those who infringe her copyright? By fixing, under the pretended guidance of God, upon the extortionate sum of three hundred dollars for twelve lessons in “the divine power that heals”? By invoking the aid of the courts to compel poor creatures to pay her, at the rate of twenty-five dollars per hour, for telling them of God, and His Christ? By organizing a church in which membership is made dependent upon activity in the sale of her puerile and profitable wares? By denouncing as vile debauchery the sweetest and purest and noblest relation of men and women? By declaring the children, in whom our souls delight, to be the offspring of “legalized lust”? By refusing to put forth her professed Godlike power to soothe any pain, even that of the sister she loved, to save any life, even that of her own grandchild? By constituting herself the veritable autocrat of the Bedlamites and reigning with despotic sway over the multitudes of her self-abased dupes? By never telling the truth, unless there was money in it, and never hesitating at a lie that would add one simple soul to the number of her victims or one soiled dollar to her bulging exchequer? By living a life of unvarying deception and uncleanness, and professing, with eyes rolled heavenward, to be “as pure as the angels”? By seeking, with Satanic zeal and hatred, the destruction of her fancied enemies, through the attempted mental infliction of disease and suffering and death?
As Mrs. Eddy follows the Saviour?
Not thus, not thus, O Saviour of mankind! not thus have followed in the royal road which thou hast trod ages of worshipers!
