Christian Science

by Mark Twain

  "He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away."

  This is "Mother Mary's" telegraphed version:

  "He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the sick hath He not sent empty away."

  To judge by the Official Report, the bursting of this bombshell in that massed convention of trained Christians created no astonishment, since it caused no remark, and the business of the convention went tranquilly on, thereafter, as if nothing had happened.

  Did those people detect those changes? We cannot know. I think they must have noticed them, the wording of St. Luke's verse being as familiar to all Christians as is the wording of the Beatitudes; and I think that the reason the new version provoked no surprise and no comment was, that the assemblage took it for a "Key"—a spiritualized explanation of verse 53, newly sent down from heaven through Mrs. Eddy. For all Scientists study their Bibles diligently, and they know their Magnificat. I believe that their confidence in the authenticity of Mrs. Eddy's inspirations is so limitless and so firmly established that no change, however violent, which she might make in a Bible text could disturb their composure or provoke from them a protest.

  Her improved rendition of verse 53 went into the convention's report and appeared in a New York paper the next day. The (at that time) Scientist whom I mentioned a minute ago, and who had not been present at the convention, saw it and marvelled; marvelled and was indignant—indignant with the printer or the telegrapher, for making so careless and so dreadful an error. And greatly distressed, too; for, of course, the newspaper people would fall foul of it, and be sarcastic, and make fun of it, and have a blithe time over it, and be properly thankful for the chance. It shows how innocent he was; it shows that he did not know the limitations of newspaper men in the matter of Biblical knowledge. The new verse 53 raised no insurrection in the press; in fact, it was not even remarked upon; I could have told him the boys would not know there was anything the matter with it. I have been a newspaper man myself, and in those days I had my limitations like the others.

  The Scientist hastened to Concord and told Mrs. Eddy what a disastrous mistake had been made, but he found to his bewilderment that she was tranquil about it, and was not proposing to correct it. He was not able to get her to promise to make a correction. He asked her secretary if he had heard aright when the telegram was dictated to him; the secretary said he had, and took the filed copy of it and verified its authenticity by comparing it with the stenographic notes.

  Mrs. Eddy did make the correction, two months later, in her official organ. It attracted no attention among the Scientists; and, naturally, none elsewhere, for that periodical's circulation was practically confined to disciples of the cult.

  That is the tale as it was told to me by an ex-Scientist. Verse 53—renovated and spiritualized—had a narrow escape from a tremendous celebrity. The newspaper men would have made it as famous as the assassination of Caesar, but for their limitations.

  To return to the Claim. I find myself greatly embarrassed by Mrs. Eddy's remark: "I regard self-deification as blasphemous." If she is right about that, I have written a half-ream of manuscript this past week which I must not print, either in the book which I am writing, or elsewhere: for it goes into that very matter with extensive elaboration, citing, in detail, words and acts of Mrs. Eddy's which seem to me to prove that she is a faithful and untiring worshipper of herself, and has carried self-deification to a length which has not been before ventured in ages. If ever. There is not room enough in this chapter for that Survey, but I can epitomize a portion of it here.

  With her own untaught and untrained mind, and without outside help, she has erected upon a firm and lasting foundation the most minutely perfect, and wonderful, and smoothly and exactly working, and best safe-guarded system of government that has yet been devised in the world, as I believe, and as I am sure I could prove if I had room for my documentary evidences here.

  It is a despotism (on this democratic soil); a sovereignty more absolute than the Roman Papacy, more absolute than the Russian Czarship; it has not a single power, not a shred of authority, legislative or executive, which is not lodged solely in the sovereign; all its dreams, its functions, its energies, have a single object, a single reason for existing, and only the one—to build to the sky the glory of the sovereign, and keep it bright to the end of time.

  Mrs. Eddy is the sovereign; she devised that great place for herself, she occupies that throne.

  In 1895, she wrote a little primer, a little body of autocratic laws, called the Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those laws in force, in permanence. Her government is all there; all in that deceptively innocent-looking little book, that cunning little devilish book, that slumbering little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels. In that book she has planned out her system, and classified and defined its purposes and powers.

  MAIN PARTS OF THE MACHINE

  A Supreme Church. At Boston. Branch Churches. All over the world One Pastor for the whole of them: to wit, her book, Science and Health. Term of the book's office—forever.

  In every C.S. pulpit, two "Readers," a man and a woman. No talkers, no preachers, in any Church-readers only. Readers of the Bible and her books—no others. No commentators allowed to write or print.

  A Church Service. She has framed it—for all the C.S. Churches—selected its readings, its prayers, and the hymns to be used, and has appointed the order of procedure. No changes permitted.

  A Creed. She wrote it. All C.S. Churches must subscribe to it. No other permitted.

  A Treasury. At Boston. She carries the key.

  A C.S. Book—Publishing House. For books approved by her. No others permitted.

  Journals and Magazines. These are organs of hers, and are controlled by her.

  A College. For teaching C.S.

  DISTRIBUTION OF THE MACHINE'S POWERS AND DIGNITIES

  Supreme Church. Pastor Emeritus—Mrs. Eddy. Board of Directors. Board of Education. Board of Finance. College Faculty. Various Committees. Treasurer. Clerk. First Members (of the Supreme Church). Members of the Supreme Church.

  It looks fair, it looks real, but it is all a fiction.

  Even the little "Pastor Emeritus" is a fiction. Instead of being merely an honorary and ornamental official, Mrs. Eddy is the only official in the entire body that has the slightest power. In her Manual, she has provided a prodigality of ways and forms whereby she can rid herself of any functionary in the government whenever she wants to. The officials are all shadows, save herself; she is the only reality. She allows no one to hold office more than a year—no one gets a chance to become over-popular or over-useful, and dangerous. "Excommunication" is the favorite penalty-it is threatened at every turn. It is evidently the pet dread and terror of the Church's membership.

  The member who thinks, without getting his thought from Mrs. Eddy before uttering it, is banished permanently. One or two kinds of sinners can plead their way back into the fold, but this one, never. To think—in the Supreme Church—is the New Unpardonable Sin.

  To nearly every severe and fierce rule, Mrs. Eddy adds this rivet: "This By-law shall not be changed without the consent of the Pastor Emeritus."

  Mrs. Eddy is the entire Supreme Church, in her own person, in the matter of powers and authorities.

  Although she has provided so many ways of getting rid of unsatisfactory members and officials, she was still afraid she might have left a life-preserver lying around somewhere, therefore she devised a rule to cover that defect. By applying it, she can excommunicate (and this is perpetual again) every functionary connected with the Supreme Church, and every one of the twenty-five thousand members of that Church, at an hour's notice—and do it all by herself without anybody's help.

  By authority of this astonishing By-law, she has only to say a person connected with that Church is secretly practicing hypnotism or mesmerism; whereupon, immediate excommunication, without a hearing, is his portion! She does not have to order a
trial and produce evidence—her accusation is all that is necessary.

  Where is the Pope? and where the Czar? As the ballad says:

  "Ask of the winds that far away

  With fragments strewed the sea!"

  The Branch Church's pulpit is occupied by two "Readers." Without them the Branch Church is as dead as if its throat had been cut. To have control, then, of the Readers, is to have control of the Branch Churches. Mrs. Eddy has that control—a control wholly without limit, a control shared with no one.

  1. No Reader can be appointed to any Church in the Christian Science world without her express approval.

  2. She can summarily expel from his or her place any Reader, at home or abroad, by a mere letter of dismissal, over her signature, and without furnishing any reason for it, to either the congregation or the Reader.

  Thus she has as absolute control over all Branch Churches as she has over the Supreme Church. This power exceeds the Pope's.

  In simple truth, she is the only absolute sovereign in all Christendom. The authority of the other sovereigns has limits, hers has none, none whatever. And her yoke does not fret, does not offend. Many of the subjects of the other monarchs feel their yoke, and are restive under it; their loyalty is insincere. It is not so with this one's human property; their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere, enthusiastic. The sentiment which they feel for her is one which goes out in sheer perfection to no other occupant of a throne; for it is love, pure from doubt, envy, exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has no spot—that form of love, strong, great, uplifting, limitless, whose vast proportions are compassable by no word but one, the prodigious word, Worship. And it is not as a human being that her subjects worship her, but as a supernatural one, a divine one, one who has comradeship with God, and speaks by His voice.

  Mrs. Eddy has herself created all these personal grandeurs and autocracies—with others which I have not (in this article) mentioned. They place her upon an Alpine solitude and supremacy of power and spectacular show not hitherto attained by any other self-seeking enslaver disguised in the Christian name, and they persuade me that, although she may regard "self-deification as blasphemous," she is as fond of it as I am of pie.

  She knows about "Our Mother's Room" in the Supreme Church in Boston—above referred to—for she has been in it. In a recently published North American Review article, I quoted a lady as saying Mrs. Eddy's portrait could be seen there in a shrine, lit by always-burning lights, and that C.S. disciples came and worshiped it. That remark hurt the feelings of more than one Scientist. They said it was not true, and asked me to correct it. I comply with pleasure. Whether the portrait was there four years ago or not, it is not there now, for I have inquired. The only object in the shrine now, and lit by electrics—and worshiped—is an oil-portrait of the horse-hair chair Mrs. Eddy used to sit in when she was writing Science and Health! It seems to me that adulation has struck bottom, here.

  Mrs. Eddy knows about that. She has been there, she has seen it, she has seen the worshippers. She could abolish that sarcasm with a word. She withholds the word. Once more I seem to recognize in her exactly the same appetite for self-deification that I have for pie. We seem to be curiously alike; for the love of self-deification is really only the spiritual form of the material appetite for pie, and nothing could be more strikingly Christian-Scientifically "harmonious."

  I note this phrase:

  "Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings."

  "Rights" is vague; I do not know what it means there. Mrs. Eddy is not well acquainted with the English language, and she is seldom able to say in it what she is trying to say. She has no ear for the exact word, and does not often get it. "Rights." Does it mean "honors?" "attributes?"

  "Eschews." This is another umbrella where there should be a torch; it does not illumine the sentence, it only deepens the shadows. Does she mean "denies?" "refuses?" "forbids?" or something in that line? Does she mean:

  "Christian Science denies divine honors to human beings?" Or:

  "Christian Science refuses to recognize divine attributes in human beings?" Or:

  "Christian Science forbids the worship of human beings?"

  The bulk of the succeeding sentence is to me a tunnel, but, when I emerge at this end of it, I seem to come into daylight. Then I seem to understand both sentences—with this result:

  "Christian Science recognizes but one God, forbids the worship of human beings, and refuses to recognize the possession of divine attributes by any member of the race."

  I am subject to correction, but I think that that is about what Mrs. Eddy was intending to convey. Has her English—which is always difficult to me—beguiled me into misunderstanding the following remark, which she makes (calling herself "we," after an old regal fashion of hers) in her preface to her Miscellaneous Writings?

  "While we entertain decided views as to the best method for elevating the race physically, morally, and spiritually, and shall express these views as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine organ, no supernatural power."

  Was she meaning to say:

  "Although I am of divine origin and gifted with supernatural power, I shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of elevating the race?"

  If she had left out the word "our," she might then seem to say:

  "I claim no especial or unusual degree of divine origin—"

  Which is awkward—most awkward; for one either has a divine origin or hasn't; shares in it, degrees of it, are surely impossible. The idea of crossed breeds in cattle is a thing we can entertain, for we are used to it, and it is possible; but the idea of a divine mongrel is unthinkable.

  Well, then, what does she mean? I am sure I do not know, for certain. It is the word "our" that makes all the trouble. With the "our" in, she is plainly saying "my divine origin." The word "from" seems to be intended to mean "on account of." It has to mean that or nothing, if "our" is allowed to stay. The clause then says:

  "I shall claim no especial gift on account of my divine origin."

  And I think that the full sentence was intended to mean what I have already suggested:

  "Although I am of divine origin, and gifted with supernatural power, I shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of elevating the race."

  When Mrs. Eddy copyrighted that Preface seven years ago, she had long been used to regarding herself as a divine personage. I quote from Mr. F. W. Peabody's book:

  "In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her property, and published by her, it was claimed for her, and with her sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to establish the claim."

  "Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf, that she herself was the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus."

  The following remark in that April number, quoted by Mr. Peabody, indicates that her claim had been previously made, and had excited "horror" among some "good people":

  "Now, a word about the horror many good people have of our making the Author of Science and Health 'equal with Jesus.'"

  Surely, if it had excited horror in Mrs. Eddy also, she would have published a disclaimer. She owned the paper; she could say what she pleased in its columns. Instead of rebuking her editor, she lets him rebuke those "good people" for objecting to the claim.

  These things seem to throw light upon those words, "our [my] divine origin."

  It may be that "Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings," and forbids worship of any but "one God, one Christ"; but, if that is the case, it looks as if Mrs. Eddy is a very unsound Christian Scientist, and needs disciplining. I believe she has a serious malady—"self-deification"; and that it will be well to have one of the experts demonstrate over it.

  Meantime, let her go on living—for my sake. Closely examined, painstakingly studied, she is easily the most interesting person on the planet, and, in several ways, as easily the most extraordinary w
oman that was ever born upon it.

  P.S.—Since I wrote the foregoing, Mr. McCrackan's article appeared (in the March number of the North American Review). Before his article appeared—that is to say, during December, January, and February—I had written a new book, a character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own acts and words, and it was then—together with the three brief articles previously published in the North American Review—ready to be delivered to the printer for issue in book form. In that book, by accident and good luck, I have answered the objections made by Mr. McCrackan to my views, and therefore do not need to add an answer here. Also, in it I have corrected certain misstatements of mine which he has noticed, and several others which he has not referred to. There are one or two important matters of opinion upon which he and I are not in disagreement; but there are others upon which we must continue to disagree, I suppose; indeed, I know we must; for instance, he believes Mrs. Eddy wrote Science and Health, whereas I am quite sure I can convince a person unhampered by predilections that she did not.

  As concerns one considerable matter I hope to convert him. He believes Mrs. Eddy's word; in his article he cites her as a witness, and takes her testimony at par; but if he will make an excursion through my book when it comes out, and will dispassionately examine her testimonies as there accumulated, I think he will in candor concede that she is by a large percentage the most erratic and contradictory and untrustworthy witness that has occupied the stand since the days of the lamented Ananias.

  CONCLUSION

  Broadly speaking, the hostiles reject and repudiate all the pretensions of Christian Science Christianity. They affirm that it has added nothing new to Christianity; that it can do nothing that Christianity could not do and was not doing before Christian Science was born.