Coming now to what makes it worth our while to consider the career of this remarkable woman, let me present the facts regarding her relation to the life and to the activities of the world of today, and how and by what very devious means she has reached and maintains the position she now holds.

What does Mrs. Eddy claim to be, and what is she believed to be by many thousands of people who have made her their religious leader and guide, and reverence her as the devout Christian reverences Christ?

Mrs. Eddy claims that she is the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy, that she and her book are specifically referred to and prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

She says, “My attention is especially called to the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse or Revelation of Saint John, on account of its suggestiveness in connection with this nineteenth century. In this opening of the sixth seal, there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the present age, and the establishment of Christian Science in this period. ‘And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’”

With eyes downcast, with “bated breath and whispering humbleness,” bashfully pointing to herself, in low tones that inspire awe, she says, “The woman clothed with the sun, Mary Baker G. Eddy.”

Again, she says: “Saint John writes in the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelation: ‘And I saw another mighty angel come down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was, as it were, the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book, open, and he set his right foot upon the earth.’ Is this angel, or message from God, Divine Science that comes in a cloud? This angel had in his hand a little book open for all to read and understand. Then will a voice from harmony cry, Go and take the little book. Take up Divine Science. Study it, ponder it. It will be indeed sweet at its first taste when it heals you, but murmur not over Truth if you find its digestion bitter.”

The “little book,” “Science and Health,” of God’s authorship, but copyrighted by Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and to be had of her publisher in Boston by any one who has three dollars or more, according to binding, to pay for it!

Intentionally vague as are these oracular utterances, we cannot but catch her evident meaning: In me behold the woman clothed with the sun; in my book, the “little book” sent down from Heaven, and in Christian Science the message from God contained in the little book held in the hand of the angel!

Christian Scientists get this down without so much as a murmur! This is one of the easy things she has given them to swallow.

Besides this, Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf that she herself is the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus, that her mission is to complete the religion of Christ.

In the earlier days she placed her mission above that of Jesus, inasmuch as the idea of God given by her was, she said, “higher, clearer and more permanent than before.” But, later, she seems to have been satisfied with equality only, and says, “The second appearing of Jesus is unquestionably the second advent of the advancing idea of God as in Christian Science.”

She, however, patronizingly points out the short-comings of Jesus. “Our Master healed the sick, practiced Christian healing, and taught the generalities of this divine principle to his students, but he left no definite word for demonstrating his principle of healing and preventing disease. This remained to be discovered through Christian Science,” and “Had wisdom characterized all his sayings, he would not have prophesied his own death and thereby hastened or caused it.” While in speaking of herself she said, “The works I have written on Christian Science contain absolute truth and my necessity was to tell it. I was a scribe under orders, and who can refrain from transcribing what God indites?” So wisdom did not characterize all of the sayings of Jesus; but Mrs. Eddy speaks absolute truth!

In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her property and published by her, and upwards of twenty years after the time she says God had selected her to complete the religion of Jesus, it was claimed for her, and with her sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to establish the claim. “Now a word about the horror many good people have of our making the author of ‘Science and Health’ equal with Jesus!” says the writer, and in the first paragraph of the article, the question is asked, “Do we, then, say that the author of ‘Science and Health’ is equal with Jesus?” A little further on appears the statement, “Jesus demonstrated over all the beliefs of this false sense of life, even over the belief of death, the last enemy to be overcome.” And further, “Mrs. M. B. G. Eddy has worked out for us, as on a blackboard, every point in the demonstrations, or so-called miracles of Jesus, showing us how to meet and overcome the one, and perform the other” and, throughout the article, its whole clearly apparent purpose is to carry the conviction that in attributes and power Mrs. Eddy is the entire equal of Jesus.

In an illustrated “poem” entitled “Christ and Christmas,” written by Mrs. Eddy, and published and copyrighted by her in 1894, there is a picture labeled “Christian Unity,” in which Jesus is represented as seated upon a stone holding the right hand of Mary?—?Mary Baker G. Eddy. In the left hand of the woman is a scroll bearing the legend “Christian Science,” and about the head of each figure, that of Jesus and that of the Christian Science woman, there is a halo. The picture is illustrative of these lines on the opposite page:

At the time this book was announced by Mrs. Eddy, in December, 1893, she publicly said of it, “‘Christ and Christmas’ voices God through song and object lesson.” The price of the book was three dollars. How convenient to be able to command a market by voicing God! How kind God has been to Mrs. Eddy’s business ventures!

At the time of this publication, Mrs. Eddy, who claimed to have shared in making the illustrations (which her man Hanna called “exquisite bits of art,” but which are, doubtless, the vulgarest products of the art of book-making of many years), at this time, I say, Mrs. Eddy unquestionably wished this “Christian Unity” illustration to signify the unity of Christianity and Christian Science, as represented by the founder of Christianity and the founder of Christian Science, and about her own head, as about the head of Christ, she hangs a halo! The two Messiahs, masculine and feminine, and representing “Our Father and our Mother God,” hand in hand, absolute equality. Christian Unity!

Her private correspondence has been full of pretensions to direct meditation with God, and her followers have been induced unquestioningly to comply with her wishes regarding the most trivial things because she but voiced a wish communicated to them through her by God.

“God, our God has just told me,” she says, “who to recommend to you for editor of the Christian Science Journal,” And, “No man or woman has told me of this obnoxious feature, but my Father has, and it shall be stopped by His servant who has given His word to the world.” And, “God’s law ‘to feed my sheep,’ to give Science and Health at once to those hungering for it, must be obeyed.” (To those hungering three dollars worth!) And, “I ought not to have consulted with man on the copyright of God’s Book.” And, “Come to see me next Saturday, a.m., on nine o’clock train, and God will settle this matter.” And, “Now what can I do, only to spread His word of warning and wait for all students to grow up to understand His ways, and mine when God directed.” And, “God will not let me be silent relative to your business here yesterday, but demands me to answer, reminding you of your feelings toward me.” And, “Push the Book to as fast as possible completion. It is God’s Book, and he says give it at once to the people.” (At three dollars per copy!) And, “You know they cannot be made sick for printing and binding God’s Book.”

But Jove nods; Mrs. Eddy stumbles. Sometimes it is the Christian Science devil that, impersonating God, whispers to her. “I regret,” she says, “having named the one I did to you for editor. It was a mistake, he is not fit. It was not God evidently that suggested that thought, but the person who suggests many things mentally; but I have before been able to discriminate.” This incident suggests the importance of one, who is the channel of wireless telegraphy from God, being able to discriminate between messages from Heaven and messages from Hell, and having the power to prevent satanic interference with the medium of communication.

In a late edition of “Science and Health” Mrs. Eddy speaks of Jesus as “the masculine representative of the spiritual idea,” and says, “the impersonation of the spiritual idea had a brief history in the earthly life of our Master, but of His Kingdom there shall be no end, for Christ’s, God’s idea, will eventually rule all nations and people, imperatively, absolutely, finally,?—?with Divine Science. This immaculate idea, represented first by man and last by woman, will baptize with fire,” etc.

By “Divine Science,” Mrs. Eddy, of course, means Christian Science, as the terms are used interchangably with her, and with characteristic modesty she places herself by the side of the Master?—?He being the first and masculine, and she the last and feminine, representative of the “immaculate idea.”

What marvelous presumption! What ineffable audacity!

The Mary Baker G. Eddy, who in speaking of a woman she disliked savagely exclaimed, “I’d like to tear her heart out and trample it under my feet!” who, at Lynn, because of her abuse of her husband and violent outbursts of temper, was known as the “she devil”; who, four years after the time of her pretended selection by God for a divine mission, being denied hospitality she had abused in the Wentworth household at Stoughton, left in a fury of passion after having, with obvious intent, put live coals from her stove upon a heap of newspapers in the closet; who figured first as a spiritualist medium, giving public sÉances for money, and later as the president of a bogus medical college issuing illegal degrees; who unfeelingly abandoned the only child born to her, and looked with unflinching eyes upon the detached heart of her deceased husband; who has become the champion fraud and impostor of the age; who in the livery of heaven has for forty years wrought in the direct interest of hell,?—?this Mrs. Eddy, the self-constituted representative with Jesus of the immaculate idea! this woman and the immaculate Jesus mentioned in the same breath!