The Church of St. Bunco Part 5

Next comes up the Platonic conception--which, unfortunately for Plato, he neglected to copyright--that the Principle of Mind, with its reflection or "idea," const.i.tutes the real universe. Mrs. Eddy p.r.o.nounces this philosophical conception a scientific fact; but it was not "proved to the senses"--which, by the way, _never perceive anything but "error"_--until "Christian Science revealed it." Then it was proved "incontrovertibly, absolutely and divinely," by repairing Mrs. Eddy's back after a fall on ice.

From time immemorial, the history of philosophy has been familiar with the thought that the human body is a reflex and product of mind; a practical reality for all earthly conditions and purposes, but resolvable, from the view of spirit, into simply an objective appearance. The thought, too, has been frequent in poetry. Three hundred years ago Spenser sang:

"So every spirit, as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight.

_For, of the soul, the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make._

Yet Mrs. Eddy claims this doctrine, too, as her "discovery," though, with her, it is not merely "mind," but the "mortal" or "misnamed" article, that produces the body. All such "mind" is unalloyed "error," and the body, or apparition of this error, is another error. It was this "discovery," she says, that led to her infallible proposition, the all-inclusiveness of Immortal Mind and the all-nothingness of matter, which she made the bed-rock of her all-healing "Science."

Matter being Nothing, and our bodies being nothing but error, there is great use, notwithstanding, for the one genuine medicine, "Christian Science." "Physical healing," with "mental healing" thrown in, is the large wholesale business of which Mother Eddy is proprietor and director.

In the last a.n.a.lysis, according to the preface of _Science and Health_, this medicine is "Divine Principle." Such a remedy naturally dispels the unfounded belief of matter, the unfounded imaginings of sickness and sin, which drop out of supposed reality, and so out of existence.

As the term "Christian Science" is necessarily suggestive of Christian history, even Mrs. Eddy has not quite claimed the whole product of Christianity as originating in _Science and Health_. She does admit, with pious candor, that G.o.d imparted the _spirit_ of Christian Science to Jesus and the Apostles. But the _letter_ is another thing. "The absolute letter"

waited for Mary Baker G. Eddy; and, were the blessed lady a living kaleidoscope, she could hardly add to the combinations and varieties in which she presents this claim to her readers.

Eddyism proclaims One G.o.d, all-inclusive, whose highest t.i.tle is "Immortal Mind." But, "in Science," this G.o.d, being all-inclusive, as Unity, Ident.i.ty, and Goodness--so otherwise all-_ex_clusive--there is no room anywhere for a Devil, or say, rather, the _recognition_ of one. If G.o.d is not only all, but all-good, no opposite to this principle can exist.

However, there is "mortal mind," or "sense," with its image and creation, "matter," and in these are sin and disease. Still, mortal mind, matter, sin, disease, have no relation or reference to G.o.d. _He_ "fills all s.p.a.ce."[34] _They_ subsist neither by His creation nor permission. Hence they _can not be_--they are just _naught_.

But hold! Christian Science, with _Science and Health_, being present avatars to dispel sin and cure disease, such a science and such a book necessarily admit sickness and sin, both implicitly and explicitly. Now what is to be done in such a dilemma? Why, mortal mind, matter, evil, and all afflictions, while "nothing," are a kind of nothing that may be mentioned as "error" and ultimate "self-nullity." Thus, while Eddy Science, alias "Christian Science," has no real Devil, it has a very practical _seeming_ Devil, and whips him from stump to stump with logic worse than himself. Finally, as he is not "substance," but "shadow," you knock him out by calling him names.

But the doctrine of the Trinity, as "demonstrated in Science," is the best abstract of the Eddy theology. This Trinity consists of one self-identical "Father-and-Mother G.o.d"; Man, "the Idea" or "Reflection"; then Christian Science, "the Holy Comforter."

The position of man, as theologized by Mrs. Eddy, is, if anything, more terribly mixed than that of the Devil. Man is "the image of G.o.d"; but, as G.o.d is _All_, man has "no real individuality." He cannot have personality of his own, as G.o.d has no "separability." Still this "G.o.d's idea," named man, somehow takes on an imaginary state, named "mortal mind," and this imaginary state has a dream of error and misery named "Sense." Human individuality, mortal mind, and sense, are all, in reality, null and void.

Man, however, being G.o.d's idea and reflection, can never lose his unpossessed "true self." The divine contradictions of _Science and Health_ are here insurmountable. Let no man try to rationalize them. Mrs. Eddy well remarks in her _Retrospection and Introspection_, that "Divine Science demands mighty wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as we sail into the eternal haven over the unfathomable sea of possibilities."

O Lord, how long!

Oh, bosh, how strong!

The fact is that any long-continued reading of _Science and Health_, with the innocence to imagine it either true, difficult or profound, is enough to turn a weak mind idiotic. To a trained thinker, the only danger from the book is an attack of nausea or a hemorrhage from laughing.

CHAPTER VII.

"KEY" TO THE EDDY SCRIPTURE, SCIENCE AND HEALTH.

Mrs. Eddy's Un-Christian Non-Science may be summarized as a caricature of her early "New England Orthodoxy," crazily combined with New England Transcendentalism, coated with a kind of free-thought permissible only to her own "divine Science," all overlying Dr. Quimby's "Science of Health,"

and carefully put under copyright.

Let us now see a few moonstone gems from her "precious volume"--just enough to ill.u.s.trate our criticism of it and not infringe on her monopolized territory.

It may be explained, by the way, that the United States statute governing copyright precludes the reproduction and sale of books and pamphlets, _as wholes_, without permission of the authors; and protects even _parts_ of dramas, pictures, and other "works of art"--the intent being, of course, to protect, also, one of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not steal."

But, if an untrue and injurious book could not be a.n.a.lyzed, and a dozen extracts taken from it in proof of criticism, no literary quack could be exposed, in protection of the truth and the public. In that case, the Copyright Law would be worse than the old "Fugitive Slave Bill," and it would be a sacred duty to get into jail, if necessary, for violating it.

Fortunately there is no such need. The law was not drawn in the interest of charlatans and malefactors, and has never been interpreted against the decencies of justice.

Following "Mother" Eddy's example in connection with our quotations from her _Science and Health_, we shall interpret them in a strictly "scientific" light, as she, with miraculous nerve, in her _Key to the Scriptures_, has done with other sacred writings. Thus we shall illumine _Science and Health_ in the same way that she has illumined _Genesis_ and _The Apocalypse_.

_Science and Health_, 7.[35]--"In the year 1866 I discovered the Science of Metaphysical Healing, and named it Christian Science. G.o.d had been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--History reveals to us, for sure, that "Mother Eddy," has always _claimed_ to have discovered and founded the only genuine and original Christian Science. Though she was once a patient of Dr. P. P. Quimby, and at that time one Mary M. Patterson said that Quimby cured disease by mental truth--"the truth that Christ taught"--this miserable episode has nothing to do with the case. Mrs. Eddy has told us that the Patterson woman was a creature "ignorant" of "Science," whom Dr.

Quimby used to "mesmerize." He cured her of a seven-years' complaint in the mortal body, but so addled her head that she had no knowledge of what she talked about. Thus, Mrs. Patterson's impression that Dr. Quimby was the modern founder of mind-healing has no weight. The truth was not in her. But Mother Eddy, notwithstanding she herself was once that same Mrs.

Patterson, discovered all truth and all science, without regard to any of her previous statements.

_Science and Health_, 453.--"A Christian Scientist needs my work on Science and Health for his textbook, and so do all his students and patients.... It is the voice of Truth to this age, and contains the whole of Christian Science, or the Science of healing through Mind.... It was the first published book containing a statement of Christian Science....

It registered this revealed Truth, uncontaminated with human hypotheses.

Other works, which have borrowed from this book without giving it credit, have adulterated the Science."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--It is evident that everybody "in Science"

should buy its real Bible, _Science and Health_; for the Old and the New Testament, while it is policy to use them in the Church Scientist, are in dreadful need of exegesis by Mary Baker G. Eddy. She is the one religious person, altogether scientific, that now exists in the world. She is "uncontaminated truth," and anything that interferes with her abets larceny and spreads leprosy. Moreover, it is a financial crime against her, conducive to heart-disease. Let it again be stated that "the precious volume," _Science and Health_, is cheap for cash, ranging from only $3.18 to $6.

_Science and Health_, _Pref._ VIII.--"The question, What is Truth? is answered by demonstration--by healing disease and sin."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--That truth can only be set on its absolute end by curing megrims and other unhealthiness, has been incontrovertibly settled by the religious experience of "Mother Eddy" herself. When she rose into the revelation that matter is nothing--not even a phenomenal condition of anything--the truth instantly spliced her broken spine. It was this "demonstration by healing" that transformed the ignorant, deluded, mesmerized Mary M. Patterson, into our holy, scientific, infallible Lady of the "Precious Volume."

_Science and Health_, 2 _and_ 3, _pa.s.sim._--"The divine Spirit, testifying through Christian Science, unfolded to me the demonstrable fact that matter possesses neither sensation nor life.... Human experiences show the falsity of all material things.... My discovery that erring, mortal, misnamed _mind_, produces all the organism and action of the mortal body, led up to my demonstration that Mind is All, and matter is naught, as the leading factor in Mind-Science.... The revelation of Truth in the understanding came to me gradually, and apparently through divine power.

When a new spiritual idea is borne to earth, the prophetic Scripture of Isaiah is renewedly fulfilled: 'Unto us a child is born ... and his name shall be Wonderful.'"

_Interpretation "in Science."_--That there is absolutely nothing in anything you see, feel, hear, taste or smell, is eternally laid down as "the leading factor in Mind-Science." Though the ideas of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy are all wonderful, this is the most surpa.s.singly wonderful of all.

But Mother Eddy herself is much more wonderful than even her ideas. As little Mary Baker she was wonderful in her likeness to little Samuel; as Mary M. Patterson, she was more wonderful as a mesmerized victim of Dr.

Quimby; and, as Mary Baker G. Eddy, she is most wonderful, as the Ark of the Covenant of the only true Medicinal Religion. All Mother Eddy's writings point, all the time, to this beautiful lesson.

_Science and Health_, 5.--"No a.n.a.logy exists between the vague hypotheses of Agnosticism, or Millenarianism, and the demonstrable truths of Christian Science; and I find the will, or sensuous reason of the human mind, to be opposed to the divine Mind, expressed through Divine Science."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--All the ancient and modern "isms," except Eddyism, we must sit on and blot out. The most of them are unpopular, and don't bring us in anything. But he who opposes Eddyism contradicts the Divine Mind, expressed through Divine Science, which, logically, must be the production of our Divine Mother.

_Science and Health_, 8.--"The phrase _mortal mind_ implies something untrue, and, therefore, unreal."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--This truth is to be taken as infallible on all occasions. Still, the unreality, mortal mind, is a thing to be healed by Christian Science, and there is money in the metaphysical pills.

_Science and Health_, 21.--"There is no physical science, inasmuch, as all true Science proceeds from divine Intelligence."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--Shut up your arithmetic, geometry, physics, and astronomy. They amount to nothing. There is no truly scientific book except _Science and Health_.

_Science and Health_, 25.--"Must Christian Science come through the Christian churches, as some insist? This Science has come already, and come through the one whom G.o.d called."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--Christian Science, my beloved, is copyrighted property, and can only spread through the owner and her deputies. The "one whom G.o.d called" is Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy.

_Science and Health_, 244, 245, 473, 284.--"The act of describing disease makes the disease. Warning people against disease frightens them into it.

This obnoxious habit ought to cease.... The unscientific pract.i.tioner says: 'You are ill; you must rest.' Science objects to all this.... Mind controls the body and brain.... A cup of tea is not the equal of Truth....

A material body is a mortal belief.... The medicine of Science is divine Mind."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--Your doctor is a fool, whether he be allopathic, homeopathic, magnetic, or even of any _unauthorized_ school of mind-healing. Dismiss him, and send for a Christian Science M. D., authorized to practise by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. If he can't cure you, it will not be his fault; it will be simply because your mind, or the minds around you, or both, are out of tune with _Science and Health_ and _its Key to the Scriptures_.

_Science and Health_, 259, 480, 475.--"Electricity, the offspring of finite mind, is unreal.... The physical universe expresses the conscious and unconscious thoughts of mortals. Physical force and mortal mind are one.... Matter is neither self-existent nor a product of Spirit. An image of mortal thought, reflected on the retina, is all the eye beholds."

_Interpretation "in Science."_--That a force like electricity has no reference to any principle or power but finite mind, will always be hard for an unscientized person to believe. But Mother Eddy knows, and her word must go. Still, the unreality of electricity is not quite so to people "out of science." If one toys with a trolley-wire before he has read and understood _Science and Health_, he may experience a slight shock of reality, if he lives long enough. But one who has purchased Mrs. Eddy's great work, and who reads it constantly, need have no fear of electrocution, or anything else. His mortal mind has pretty nearly departed from him. His "physical universe" is hardly a picture of "conscious thoughts," and his "unconscious thoughts," whatever such things may be, will never lead him into much danger.