I have said that Mrs. Eddy’s influence as the founder of Christian Science is not confined to the religious activities of her followers, but extends into their domestic and marital relations and even their business affairs. One of the harmful results of Mrs. Eddy’s “inspired” teachings consists in the estrangement so frequently caused between husband and wife where either one or the other of them is a Christian Scientist. If both happen to be fast in the faith, the occasion for disharmony between them is not so great; for then the marital relation is suspended by mutual consent.

I cannot say that I have found very much sympathy on the part of husbands, even nominal Christian Science husbands, with Mrs. Eddy’s views upon the marriage relation; but I do know of many cases in which they have so influenced wives as to lead to the complete destruction of anything like real marriage.

Mrs. Eddy disapproves of marriage altogether. “These words of St. Matthew,” she says, “have special application to Christian Science, namely, ‘It is not good to marry.’”

In the first place, St. Matthew never said anything of the kind; and, in the second place, if he had said it, it would have been only so much to his discredit. No sane and sincere person has ever denounced marriage; and not only did St. Matthew not disapprove of it, but, in his Gospel, Jesus is quoted as having said: “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh.” And the beautiful affection of Jesus for children is sufficient evidence of his high approval of marriage.

Mrs. Eddy, having been married three or four times, now emphatically disapproves of marriage, and a marriage between Christian Scientists is decidedly objectionable. There has never been a marriage in a Christian Science church. There is no Christian Science marriage ceremony and no Christian Science official authorized to perform a marriage. The marriage relation, as such, is regarded as sensuous and impure, and the marriage of an official of the church in any part of the country would mean instant loss of power and influence together with his office and its emoluments.

“Is marriage nearer right than celibacy?” asks Mrs. Eddy. “Human knowledge inculcates that it is, while science indicates that it is not.” Science is thus distinguished from human knowledge. Mrs. Eddy’s science is a thing imparted to her by Omniscience, and Omniscience, she says, indicates that marriage is not nearer right than celibacy. It is a part of Mrs. Eddy’s teaching and the teaching of her students, that a woman cannot be an effective healer, if she really love a man and be a true wife, and that a man cannot accomplish the best results in healing through Christian Science if he really love a woman and be a true husband.

With this objection to marriage goes also the objection to children, so that the birth of children in Christian Science families is of rare occurrence and is regarded as evidence of unspiritual living and is decidedly discrediting. “Sensual and mortal beliefs, material suppositions of life,” Mrs. Eddy calls children.

The effect of this teaching is shown in the difference between Christian Science Sunday Schools and Christian Sunday Schools. The membership of the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian Sunday Schools is about the same as their church membership; while in Christian Science Sunday Schools there is but one child for every five church members.

Mrs. Eddy’s objection to children does not appear to be to children themselves, but simply to children begotten and born as they have been from the beginning of man’s existence until now and will be until the end. It is a part of Mrs. Eddy’s inspired doctrine that, when Christian Science has made a conquest of the world and the “spiritual creation is discerned,” there will be no more marriage and the human race be propagated without regard to sex. “Until it be learned,” she says, “that generation rests on no sexual basis, let marriage continue,” and “until time matures human growth, marriage and progeny will continue unprohibited in Christian Science,” and “To abolish marriage at this period and maintain morality and generation, would put ingenuity to ludicrous shifts, yet this is possible in Science.” Insane as this teaching is, Mrs. Eddy’s alleged “intelligent” following believe it to be the teaching of Infinite Wisdom, and as such make it the desire of their lives.

Charming doctrine this for civilized people to make the regulator of their lives! Oh, charming! But Mrs. Eddy goes further and denounces marriage in the roundest and almost unprintable terms.

The most impressive and conspicuous incident in Christian Science history was the dedication in June, 1906, of the “Mother Church” in Boston, a beautiful building that cost upwards of two million dollars. In order to get her views regarding marriage before the faithful, in the most impressive manner, Mrs. Eddy incorporated them in her message which was read at the church dedication ceremonies. She took the bit in her teeth, as it were, and notwithstanding efforts to dissuade her or induce her to modify her statement, insisted upon getting her views before her following in their most extreme and obnoxious form, characterizing marriage as “synonymous with legalized lust.”

It has been denied by Mrs. Eddy’s press agents that she gave utterance to this opinion of marriage; but it will be found in her dedication message as published in the Christian Science Sentinel for June 16, 1906, and the Christian Science Journal for July, 1906.

To one not insane or degenerate, to all noble souls, marriage is the sweetest and purest relationship imaginable and fatherhood and motherhood are nothing less than divine; but this three-or-four-times-married woman gives us to understand that, so far as she knows it, marriage is “legalized lust.” I should think a so much married woman would deliberate a long time before she would give public utterance to such a view of the marriage relation. Far be it from me to dispute her own experience. Her whole teaching regarding the institution shows that it is impossible for her to conceive of what marriage means to a noble man and a noble woman who have found unity in its sacred bond; and when she applies that vile epithet to society’s fundamental institution, I tell her, though she pretend to voice God Himself, that she lies and the truth is not in her. How is it possible for a husband who loves and respects his wife, or a wife who loves and respects her husband, or parents who adore their children, to have anything but contempt for this woman and her odious teachings?

If Mrs. Eddy’s God were, in fact, the true God, and if Christian Science were a revelation from Him, and if all the miracles they pretend to have performed had been performed, I should still not bow down to their God nor worship him; I should not prostrate myself at their shrines nor have fellowship with them, so long as the attempt is made to place the stigma of impurity upon the purest of all pure things in the world to me, my child.

Yes, this is the twentieth century. No, we are not living in the year 500 nor yet in the year 1000. The ideas and doctrines, the beliefs and practices of Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science belong to the darkest period of the dark ages, but they are very real and very potent things in the lives of many thousands of people upon whom the light of the world’s highest civilization shines.