Mr. Farlow, Mr. Hanna and other paid agents of Mrs. Eddy from time to time meet these various accusations with the response that, while Mrs. Eddy has made a great deal of money, she has given away a great deal; and, while she possesses the powers aforesaid, she lives in retirement, at Concord, N.H., and lets the organization run itself. Let us see what there is in these defenses.

Has Mrs. Eddy given away many thousands of dollars? Mr. Hanna quotes Mrs. Eddy as having said, “I could have been worth many millions of money. My college alone was an annual income of forty thousand dollars; but I managed to give away enough to balance my account with conscience.” It may be inferred from this that, but for what Mrs. Eddy has given away, she would today be worth many millions; consequently that she has given away millions. She has given away money, with reservations, but whenever she has so given it, it has been to enhance her comfort, to extend her power, or to add to her glory; and again and again, by herself and her chosen representatives, by Mr. Hanna and Mr Farlow, have false representations been made of the amounts given by her. This is important. Let me give a view of Mrs. Eddy’s character as displayed in these business transactions.

Much has been made of Mrs. Eddy’s gift of the land upon which the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, stands. In her book entitled “Pulpit and Press,” copyrighted by Mrs. Eddy, and published in 1895, is the statement that the cost of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, “is two hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars, exclusive of the land, a gift from Mrs. Eddy, which is valued at some forty thousand dollars.” Valued at some forty thousand dollars! Mrs. Eddy, of course, here intends to convey an impression that this gift of the land was a gift by her of some forty thousand dollars’ worth of real estate. In none of her many published references to this peculiar transaction has Mrs. Eddy told the truth, or any material part of the truth.

The land upon which the church stands was originally owned by a society known as The Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and it was originally mortgaged for nine thousand dollars to Mr. Nathan Matthews. This original society, by contributions, fairs, etc., raised enough money to reduce the amount of the mortgage to about five thousand dollars, when, according to Mrs. Eddy’s statement in her book “Pulpit and Press,” “Owing to a heavy loss, they were unable to pay the mortgage; therefore I paid it, and through trustees gave back the land to the church.”

Mrs. Eddy did not pay the mortgage. She did not give back the land to the church. What she did was quite other than what she says she did. Through her agents, she took an assignment of the mortgage for the balance of five thousand dollars due upon it, foreclosed it, crowded out all of the original contributors, members of the Church of Christ, Scientist, acquired the title herself, and gave it to trustees for a new organization, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, reserving to herself a right to re-enter and repossess herself of the land with any church that might be constructed upon it. And this cost Mrs. Eddy five thousand dollars, not forty thousand, as she would have us understand, and as Mr. Farlow has represented; nor even twenty thousand, as the more modest Hanna intimates.

Real-estate men in Boston would wonder how it was possible for Mrs. Eddy legally to acquire, for the sum of five thousand dollars, by the proper foreclosure of a mortgage, property upon which Mr. Nathan Matthews had been willing to lend nine thousand dollars. Indeed, it is remarkable that Mrs. Eddy should, at an open foreclosure sale, have been able to buy for five thousand dollars a property hundreds of men in the city of Boston would have been only too glad to have paid, at the time, upwards of ten thousand dollars for. Was this foreclosure regular, or was it fraudulent, as were so many of Mrs. Eddy’s transactions? To one who has delved into her methods, as I have, it would seem as if everything that she touched became tainted with fraud or false pretense; and it is simply incredible that here in the city of Boston, after due advertisement, and at a legal public auction, a piece of real estate could be purchased for but little more than half the money so sagacious an investor as Mr. Matthews was willing to lend upon it. And what of the owners of the equity in this land, who were Mrs. Eddy’s own friends and followers, and whom she thus despoiled? They had contributed about $7,000 and were left nothing, while Mrs. Eddy for $5,000 acquired all.

Mrs. Eddy, herself, says, “the property was transferred in a circuitous and novel way, the wisdom of which a few persons have since scrupled,” and that her intent, while “spiritually inalienable,” was “materially questionable.” It is interesting to note that the instruments employed by Mrs. Eddy for the executing of the “materially questionable” transaction were two Boston lawyers who have since been disbarred.

Again, in the Christian Science Journal for February, 1898, is an editorial statement, evidently prepared by Editor Hanna under Mrs. Eddy’s direction, in which an effort is made to meet the criticism upon Mrs. Eddy’s mercenary methods, he refers to three instances which he calls “evidences of a generosity and self-sacrifice that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude, even while surpassing our comprehension.”

Now, what are these evidences of this extraordinary “generosity and self-sacrifice”?

The first is the gift of the land to the church. “Years ago,” says Mr. Hanna, “she donated a lot of ground in Boston, on which to erect the Mother Church, that was then valued at twenty thousand dollars, and now estimated to be worth more than double that sum.” Mr. Hanna, it should be observed, does not say, “which cost her five thousand dollars,” but which “was then valued at twenty thousand dollars”; and he does not say anything about the reserved right to re-enter and repossess herself of the land and all the buildings that might be constructed upon it, which right she secured for not more than $5,000. If it was “then valued at twenty thousand dollars,” as Hanna says, or at forty thousand dollars, as Mrs. Eddy’s book says, how did Mrs. Eddy get it for five? Perhaps Mr. Hanna can tell. Mr. Hanna can tell many things, if he will. He has sworn that?—?so help him God!?—?he is completely ignorant of the belief of the members of the church of which he was the first reader, or minister, regarding the founder of the alleged religion he pretends to profess and professes to expound, so we may not ask him anything about that; but he may be able to tell us how his “generous” and “self-denying” leader secured for five thousand dollars Boston real estate worth twenty or forty thousand. It is a trick some of our real-estate speculators would be glad to learn.

Another of these evidences of a “generosity and self-sacrifice” surpassing Mr. Hanna’s comprehension is a conveyance in perpetuity to the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, of the real estate of the Christian Science Publishing Society; to wit, the lots and buildings known as 95 and 97 Falmouth Street, “valued,” says Mr. Hanna, at “not less than twenty-two thousand dollars.”

Again the wily Hanna gives us what he calls the value and not the cost to Mrs. Eddy; and again, like a true disciple of his cautious teacher, he suppresses the fact that the property in question was conveyed to Mrs. Eddy three days before she conveyed it to the church, by the Christian Science Publishing Society, for the nominal sum of one dollar. Mrs. Eddy always reserves very substantial rights, and here she reserved to herself the right to use and occupy as much room, conveniently and pleasantly located, as she might require for her own publishing business. If, at any time, she shall require the whole of the premises for her publishing business, she has the right, under her deed, to occupy the whole, and this right she acquired for one dollar, and did not part with. Mr. Hanna is a great stickler for values when contending for Mrs. Eddy’s great generosity. It sounds rather better, and makes a better showing for his patron, to say that her gift (to which she reserves, if she wishes it, the exclusive use) is valued at $22,000, than to state the cold truth that it cost her the sum of one dollar.

Another of these evidences of unselfishness on Mrs. Eddy’s part, too great for Mr. Hanna’s understanding, is the transfer to the church in perpetuity of the Christian Science Journal, Quarterly, and all the literary publications of the society, and every right and privilege whatsoever connected therewith, saving only the right to copyright the Journal in her own name; and these properties the astute Hanna again “values” at fifty thousand dollars. Again he says nothing about what they cost Mrs. Eddy, and again he says nothing about the right she reserved to herself. These properties, as in the case of the real estate, were acquired three days before she gave them to the church, by Mrs. Eddy, from the Christian Science Publishing Society, for the large sum of one dollar, and she reserved not only the right to copyright the Christian Science Journal, which was the only value the Journal possessed, but she reserved the right to withdraw the Journal from the trust and from the church at any time she pleased. In other words, she procured title to the Journal, with a subscription list of 20,000 and over, for $1.00 and did not give the Journal to the church or the society at all. What she did give to the church, according to the official record, cost her nothing, and what she acquired was a prosperous periodical with a paying subscription list of 20,000 or more.

These wonderful beneficences, which fairly startle Mr. Hanna, and which cost Mrs. Eddy $5,002, and Hanna says were “worth” $90,000, left her with a right, under certain circumstances, to take absolute possession of the land and the church, which cost her nothing and cost others over two hundred thousand dollars, guaranteed to her pleasant and permanent business quarters without expense of any kind, gave her complete control, amounting to ownership, of the Christian Science Journal, and made her the dictator and authoritative head, if she wishes to be, of the business end of Christian Science as conducted at the headquarters of the Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston. This was Mrs. Eddy’s own benefit from her outlay of $5,002, and yet the Honorable Septimus J. Hanna, with upturned eyes, piously exclaims:

“Let us endeavor to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to God for His goodness to us and our cause and to His servant, our Mother in Israel, for these evidences of a generosity and self-sacrifice that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude, even while surpassing our comprehension.”

In a published statement, Mr. Farlow has said:

“As to Mrs. Eddy’s wealth, I want to say she has given away, during the past five years, more than double the sum total of the entire profits from the sale of her books from their first publication to the present time.”

I denounce this statement of Mr. Alfred Farlow’s as utterly false, and I defy him to name the beneficiaries of these hundreds of thousands of dollars he says his employer has given away. I challenge this official prevaricator of Mrs. Eddy’s religio-commercial enterprise to give the public the particulars of these alleged gifts. He cannot give them. They do not exist, and his falsehood is only one of many fabrications boldly put forth to bolster the tottering structure that has so long afforded him and his colleagues in fraud a comfortable financial refuge.

The public will be wise if it decline to accept, without verification, any statement that Mrs. Eddy or Mr. Hanna or Mr. Farlow may make. Mrs. Eddy, it would seem, cannot tell the truth, and Messrs. Hanna and Farlow, it would seem, are paid to tell lies.

But the story is only half told, and what follows is more damning than what has gone before.