Christian Science is the most shallow and sordid and wicked imposture of the ages. Upon a substratum of lies a foundation of false pretense has been laid, upon which has been built a superstructure of outward beauty in which multitudes of credulous people gather to glorify the founder as God’s chief anointed.

Never before has the world witnessed a masquerade like that of Christian Science. Being everything that Christianity is not, it puts on the garb of Christianity and seizes the name of Christ the better to attract and the more strongly to hold people of shallow mind, but sincere heart. Having nothing in it remotely worthy of the name of science, it meaninglessly appropriates scientific terms and phrases in order to parade before the world with an air of learning.

The founder of this pretended religion, this bogus healing system, audaciously and irreligiously professing equality of character and of power with Jesus, has, throughout her whole long life, been in every particular precisely antithetical to Christ. Sordid, mercenary, unprincipled, the consuming passion of her life has been the accumulation of money, and she has stopped at no falsehood, no fraud and no greater wickedness that seemed to put her in the way of adding to her accumulations, or overcoming her supposed enemies.

Jesus condemned nothing so forcefully as the mercenary spirit. With a whip he scourged the money changers from the Temple, and in language that burned as flaming fire he denounced the hypocrites and liars of his time as “like unto whited sepulchers that are indeed beautiful outward, but within are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”

If the language of this book seem severe, if its denunciations are emphatic, if things are called by their right names and facts handled without the least equivocation, if contrasts are drawn between the founder of Christianity and the founder of Christian Science that seem to border upon the irreverent, let it not be assumed that there is in the heart of the author the slightest particle of personal animosity, or in his attitude toward real Christianity and Christ anything but the most complete reverence.

It is time the plain facts should be stated in plain terms, that the hand of truth should ruthlessly tear away the mask of falsehood from the face of hypocrisy and expose to the horrified gaze of mankind the hideous lineaments upon which are indelibly and unmistakably written the craft and insincerity of utter selfishness and monstrous greed, and the hardness of a cruelty almost unbelievable.

Without egotism, I may say that no other man knows, as I know, the true inwardness of Christian Science, because no other man has come face to face with it again and again on so many occasions as I have, and no other has been in the position I have to force from the lips of reluctant witnesses, under the sanction of an oath, unwilling and discrediting testimony.

Ten years ago I knew nothing and cared less about Christian Science, assuming it to be a sincere, but deluded, manifestation of the childish credulity to which the human race is prone. But ten years of investigations and repeated professional employments, in which it became my duty as a lawyer to get at the actual facts with the aid of legal process, have qualified me, as no other not having had my experience can be qualified, to set forth the amazing story in utter nakedness. In order that it may appear that I am talking from a basis of knowledge, and not of rumor or gossip or speculation, let me briefly narrate the professional experiences above referred to.

My first encounter with Christian Science came about through an employment by the Arena Company, publishers of the Arena magazine, in 1899. In the May number of the magazine for that year an article by Mrs. Josephine C. Woodbury, that was in the nature of an exposÉ of Christian Science, was published, and instead of bringing suit against Mrs. Woodbury or the magazine for the statements contained in the article, an endeavor was made, in Mrs. Eddy’s interest, to suppress the magazine by a suit in equity to restrain its publication based upon the incorporation in the article of a photograph of Mrs. Eddy said to have been copyrighted. The Arena Company retained me to represent its interests in the litigation, and during that employment I was brought in contact with the author of the article, and from her got my first inkling of the real character of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and her religio-medical-commercial system.

Mrs. Woodbury had been a Christian Scientist for many years, during a long portion of which time she enjoyed Mrs. Eddy’s confidence as one of her leading lieutenants. She had accumulated many letters from Mrs. Eddy, and all her published utterances, whether in book or pamphlet form, from the beginning of the movement down to that time. Mrs. Woodbury was a woman of forceful, dominating personality, of much greater culture than Mrs. Eddy and the rank and file of her following, and in course of time she attracted to herself a personal popularity and influence that so threatened Mrs. Eddy’s, that it became important, if her ascendency was to be maintained unimpaired, that Mrs. Woodbury be cast into outer darkness and her influence wholly destroyed. Occasion was readily found for this and, in due time, without warning, without a notice of the charges made against her, and without an opportunity to be heard, Mrs. Woodbury was excommunicated from the Boston Christian Science Church and cut off from fellowship with the faithful. This placed her in a position where rational reflection was forced upon her, and she speedily came to the necessary conclusion that she had been duped.

Arriving at this conclusion, with a courage much to be admired Mrs. Woodbury wrote and published in the Arena magazine the article to which I have referred, and in unmeasured terms laid open the sinister and sordid quality of the whole movement, and exposed the consummate selfishness and greed in the heart of its “founder.” The article went forth in the Arena, and Christian-Sciencedom was up in arms. Mr. Septimus J. Hanna, then editor of the Christian Science Journal, Mrs. Eddy’s organ, hastened to Concord, New Hampshire, to confer with Mrs. Eddy regarding ways and means of meeting it, and the method of squaring the account with Mrs. Woodbury was considered and determined.

Let it be remembered that the article in the Arena was published in the May, 1899, number. Almost immediately after the appearance of the article, Mrs. Woodbury’s husband, to whom she had been much devoted, died and pÆans of rejoicing went up from the Christian Scientists that the Judge of all the world had thus righteously punished one who had dared to assail the sanctified personality of “God’s voice to this age.”

Mrs. Eddy’s personal opportunity came in the month of June, 1899, when, in her annual message to the “Mother Church” in Boston, she undertook to dispose once and for all of Mrs. Woodbury. In language, seldom or never before equaled for cruelty and brutality, Mrs. Eddy assailed Mrs. Woodbury. Pretending, herself, to be the woman “clothed with the sun,” spoken of in the Book of Revelation, Mrs. Eddy denounced Mrs. Woodbury as the Babylonish woman there referred to. She said:

“The doom of the Babylonish woman referred to in Revelation is being fulfilled. This woman, drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, drunk of the wine of her fornication, would enter even the church and retaining the heart of the harlot and the purpose of the destroying angel … poison such as drink of the living water.” And further: “And a voice was heard saying, come out of her my people and hearken not to her lies that ye receive not her plagues, for her sins have reached unto Heaven and God hath remembered her iniquities. Double unto her double, according to her work: in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double. For she saith in her heart I am no widow.… Therefore shall her plague come in one day, death, mourning and famine: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. That which the revelator saw in spiritual vision will be accomplished. The Babylonish woman is fallen: and who shall mourn over the widowhood of lust, of her that hath become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and the cage of every unclean bird.”

I make no defense of Mrs. Woodbury’s absurdities when she was a Christian Scientist. She went the limit. Nothing could have exceeded her confidence in Mrs. Eddy’s teachings and her zeal for the cause; but I am absolutely certain that there was nothing in Mrs. Woodbury’s life in the slightest degree justifying the reflections upon her chastity, and Mrs. Eddy’s attack was utterly baseless and wanton and purely vengeful.

Immediately upon publication of this message and its public reading in the “Mother Church” in Boston, all Christian Scientists recognized the person thus assailed. Either from native shrewdness, or by advice of friends or perhaps of lawyers, Mrs. Eddy had abstained from using Mrs. Woodbury’s name in the message; but no Christian Scientists anywhere had any doubt that Mrs. Woodbury was the subject of Mrs. Eddy’s attack and, on every hand, Christian Scientists openly expressed their gratification that Mrs. Woodbury had thus been finally suppressed. The next day after the publication, I asked a Christian Scientist with whom I was intimately acquainted, whom Mrs. Eddy referred to in the passage quoted from her message. The unhesitating response was, “Why, that vile Mrs. Woodbury, of course.”

The acquaintance, begun with Mrs. Woodbury through my employment by the Arena Company, developed into the relationship of attorney and client after the publication of Mrs. Eddy’s message; and it was determined to bring suit against Mrs. Eddy for this attack and against other Christian Science officials responsible for its publication. Before beginning, I advised Mrs. Woodbury that, as she was not named in the article, her identity at the trial could only be established by persons who understood her to be referred to, and I asked her if she believed that prominent Christian Scientists, who had openly avowed such an understanding, could be relied upon to tell the truth upon the witness stand. She assured me of her confident belief that they could and that none of them would go upon the witness stand and deliberately commit perjury; but at the time of the trial, having called as witnesses only those close to Mrs. Eddy who had made avowal of their understanding that Mrs. Woodbury was the subject of Mrs. Eddy’s attack, none of them admitted that, at the time of the publication, they had any such understanding. As the language was wholly unintelligible to any one but Christian Scientists, the suit necessarily failed; but it would not have failed if, at that time, I had had the familiarity I now have with Mrs. Eddy’s private correspondence; for I should have been able to introduce in evidence letters of hers clearly showing that Mrs. Woodbury was the Babylonish woman of her message.

In the course of the preparation for the trial of this case, all of Mrs. Woodbury’s letters from Mrs. Eddy and all of Mrs. Eddy’s published utterances from the beginning down to that time, including every edition of her book, “Science and Health,” and every number of the Christian Science Journal, were turned over to me by my client and studied with most thorough and painstaking care. Then it was I learned that Christian Science was a deliberate fraud foisted upon mankind by Mrs. Eddy in the name of religion for the mere purpose of extorting money from credulous people. Since that time I have been intensely interested in following the matter up and adding to my store of facts, until now I am confident that no man can read this book, no man and no woman who has not parted with every scrap of sanity and who retains elemental decency in his or her heart, and not be in entire accord with my conclusions.

Some time after the Woodbury-Eddy litigation, I was retained by Rev. Minot J. Savage, then of New York City, to collect for him, and at his expense, in legally evidential form, the facts showing unmistakably Mrs. Eddy’s false pretense and fraud, and in pursuance of this employment I examined numerous individuals and took their statements under oath for Mr. Savage. Later, when McClure’s magazine undertook the publication of the facts of Mrs. Eddy’s career, I was employed to procure the sworn statements of many individuals in support of the magazine’s story, and shortly thereafter I was retained by Mrs. Eddy’s two sons, George W. Glover, born to her by her first husband, and Edward J. Foster, her son by adoption, to cooperate with their other lawyers, Hon. William E. Chandler, Ex-United States Senator from New Hampshire being senior counsel, in the prosecution in the courts of New Hampshire of a suit in equity for the appointment of a receiver to have charge of their mother’s large estate for her benefit, upon the ground that, through old age mental weakness and delusions, if not actual insanity, she was incompetent to have the care of it. This litigation never reached a determination in the courts, but the family controversy was ultimately settled by a family settlement in which the two sons were paid approximately $300,000 for a relinquishment of their prospective interest in their mother’s estate and an agreement not to contest any will or other instrument disposing of her property.

As the Massachusetts attorney in this litigation, it became my duty in the City of Boston to examine, under oath, many of Mrs. Eddy’s most intimate friends, and the highest officials of organized Christian Science, who, by legal process, were compelled to produce many hundreds of personal letters received by them from her. This last professional experience completed my understanding of Christian Science, and the facts herein set forth are, almost without exception, based, either upon Mrs. Eddy’s own published utterances, her private correspondence, the sworn testimony of witnesses, or the admissions under oath of her most confidential friends and followers; and I give my book to the world with a full understanding of the responsibility I assume and a complete willingness to justify in any legal tribunal every statement I make.

Let it not be supposed, however, that I am presenting the spectacle of a cowardly man attacking a weak and unprotected woman. Mrs. Eddy is the head and front of a powerful and rich organization, the leader of a movement that numbers many thousands of adherents, amongst them some thousands of more or less masculine men. She is Christian Science, and Christian Science is Mrs. Eddy. Anything that money can buy or fanaticism give is constantly at her disposal, and back of her, as behind the greatest and the humblest, stands the sovereign law. Whoever offends another, is accountable to the law; and if anything I say offend against her right to enjoy the reputation warranted by her life, I can and should be called to speedy and strict account. If the contents of this book are not true, I, myself, proclaim that the severest legal penalty would inadequately punish me for its publication. If, on the other hand, what I say be true, as I am confident there can be no doubt in any honest mind that follows me to the end, then decent people, men or women, can no longer afford to give the slightest countenance to Mary Baker G. Eddy and her impostures, be they called by the name of religion, or be they pretended cure-alls for the ills to which our human flesh is heir.

I challenge Mrs. Eddy and the whole Christian Science combination to dare to prosecute me for libel, and I affirm and shall continue to affirm that their omission so to do is an acknowledgment of the truth of every statement I make. She knows I am telling nothing but the truth, and that the whole truth, to be brought out upon a judicial investigation, would be more damning than the truth as I have presented it. The whole truth cannot be told outside of a judicial tribunal.

In presenting the substance of this book in the form of a lecture to the people of the country, from one ocean to the other, the only response has been slander and defamation of me, the last resort of the accused who can make no defense; but nobody has met my facts with anything like evidence, or undertaken in any serious manner to disprove the truth of my most damaging charges.

I beg every one who reads this book not to be diverted from the facts by any personal abuse of me that may follow its publication. It is the only response that has been or can be made to my presentation, and I am accustomed to it from the paid spokesmen of a cult that, so far as its ruling spirits are concerned, more resembles an organization of outlaws banded together for plunder, than a religious establishment based upon the sublime teachings of the Man of Sorrows.

The knowledge I possess I could not suppress without making myself a party to one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated against the human race; and I will not, by my silence, permit myself to become an ally with Mrs. Eddy and her associates in that crime.

History is but repeated in Christian Science. “We have seen,” said Macaulay, “an old woman with no talents beyond the cunning of a fortune teller, and with the education of a scullion, exalted into a prophetess and surrounded by tens of thousands of devoted followers, many of whom were, in station and in knowledge, immeasurably her superiors, and all this in the nineteenth century, and all this in London.”

Marveling as he thus did at the success of Joanna Southcott’s parody upon religion in the early part of the last century, what would Macaulay have thought of Mary Baker G. Eddy’s utterly unintelligible hodge-podge, which she falsely calls both a discovery and a revelation, a science and a religion, and what would he have thought of her following?

Mrs. Eddy is in no respect superior to Miss Southcott in the matter of origin and education. One was as obscure and as unlearned as the other. In one respect at least the Southcott woman was superior to the Eddy woman. The former was at least honest; she believed in her mission. There is no evidence that she built up a pretended religion upon a foundation of lies. She was, at the worst, an unbalanced creature with a form of religious mania. She did not grow rich out of her followers. She did not use her supposed revelation as a business asset and sell it for what it would bring. She did not take out a copyright on her “religion,” and monopolize its sale for extraordinary profit. There was no taint of commercialism about her frenzies. She died poor.

The founder of Christian Science, on the contrary, is everything that Joanna Southcott was not. She is mercenary, insincere, shameless, and bold to a degree surpassing that of all other persons who have duped mankind. Upon theft and falsehood she has laid the foundations of the “religion” by the sale of which she has accumulated a fortune.

F. W. P.