________________________________________________
_ I feel almost sure that Mrs. Eddy's inspiration--works are getting out of
repair. I think so because they made some errors in a statement which
she uttered through the press on the 17th of January. Not large ones,
perhaps, still it is a friend's duty to straighten such things out and
get them right when he can. Therefore I will put my other duties aside
for a moment and undertake this helpful service. She said as follows:
"In view of the circulation of certain criticisms from the pen of Mark
Twain, I submit the following statement:
"It is a fact, well understood, that I begged the students who first gave
me the endearing appellative 'mother' not to name me thus. But, without
my consent, that word spread like wildfire. I still must think the name
is not applicable to me. I stand in relation to this century as a
Christian discoverer, founder, and leader. I regard self-deification as
blasphemous; I may be more loved, but I am less lauded, pampered,
provided for, and cheered than others before me--and wherefore? Because
Christian Science is not yet popular, and I refuse adulation.
"My visit to the Mother-Church after it was built and dedicated pleased
me, and the situation was satisfactory. The dear members wanted to greet
me with escort and the ringing of bells, but I declined, and went alone
in my carriage to the church, entered it, and knelt in thanks upon the
steps of its altar. There the foresplendor of the beginnings of truth
fell mysteriously upon my spirit. I believe in one Christ, teach one
Christ, know of but one Christ. I believe in but one incarnation, one
Mother Mary, and know I am not that one, and never claimed to be. It
suffices me to learn the Science of the Scriptures relative to this
subject.
"Christian Scientists have no quarrel with Protestants, Catholics, or any
other sect. They need to be understood as following the divine Principle
God, Love and not imagined to be unscientific worshippers of a human
being.
"In the aforesaid article, of which I have seen only extracts, Mark
Twain's wit was not wasted In certain directions. Christian Science
eschews divine rights in human beings. If the individual governed human
consciousness, my statement of Christian Science would be disproved, but
to understand the spiritual idea is essential to demonstrate Science and
its pure monotheism--one God, one Christ, no idolatry, no human
propaganda. Jesus taught and proved that what feeds a few feeds all.
His life-work subordinated the material to the spiritual, and He left
this legacy of truth to mankind. His metaphysics is not the sport of
philosophy, religion, or Science; rather it is the pith and finale of
them all.
"I have not the inspiration or aspiration to be a first or second Virgin-
Mother--her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent. What I am remains to
be proved by the good I do. We need much humility, wisdom, and love to
perform the functions of foreshadowing and foretasting heaven within us.
This glory is molten in the furnace of affliction."
She still thinks the name of Our Mother not applicable to her; and she is
also able to remember that it distressed her when it was conferred upon
her, and that she begged to have it suppressed. Her memory is at fault
here. If she will take her By-laws, and refer to Section 1 of Article
XXII., written with her own hand--she will find that she has reserved
that title to herself, and is so pleased with it, and so--may we say
jealous?--about it, that she threatens with excommunication any sister
Scientist who shall call herself by it. This is that Section 1:
"The Title of Mother. In the year 1895 loyal Christian Scientists had
given to the author of their text-book, the Founder of Christian Science,
the individual, endearing term of Mother. Therefore, if a student of
Christian Science shall apply this title, either to herself or to others,
except as the term for kinship according to the flesh, it shall be
regarded by the Church as an indication of disrespect for their Pastor
Emeritus, and unfitness to be a member of the Mother-Church."
Mrs. Eddy is herself the Mother-Church--its powers and authorities are in
her possession solely--and she can abolish that title whenever it may
please her to do so. She has only to command her people, wherever they
may be in the earth, to use it no more, and it will never be uttered
again. She is aware of this.
It may be that she "refuses adulation" when she is not awake, but when
she is awake she encourages it and propagates it in that museum called
"Our Mother's Room," in her Church in Boston. She could abolish that
institution with a word, if she wanted to. She is aware of that. I will
say a further word about the museum presently.
Further down the column, her memory is unfaithful again:
"I believe in . . . but one Mother Mary, and know I am not that one,
and never claimed to be."
At a session of the National Christian Science Association, held in the
city of New York on the 27th of May, 1890, the secretary was "instructed
to send to our Mother greetings and words of affection from her assembled
children."
Her telegraphic response was read to the Association at next day's
meeting:
"All hail! He hath filled the hungry with good things and the sick hath
He not sent empty away.--MOTHER MARY."
Which Mother Mary is this one? Are there two? If so, she is both of
them; for, when she signed this telegram in this satisfied and
unprotesting way, the Mother-title which she was going to so strenuously
object to, and put from her with humility, and seize with both hands, and
reserve as her sole property, and protect her monopoly of it with a stern
By-law, while recognizing with diffidence that it was "not applicable" to
her (then and to-day)--that Mother--title was not yet born, and would not
be offered to her until five years later. The date of the above "Mother
Mary" is 1890; the "individual, endearing title of Mother" was given her
"in 1895"--according to her own testimony. See her By-law quoted above.
In his opening Address to that Convention of 1890, the President
recognized this Mary--our Mary-and abolished all previous ones. He said:
"There is but one Moses, one Jesus; and there is but one Mary."
The confusions being now dispersed, we have this clarified result:
Were had been a Moses at one time, and only one; there had been a Jesus
at one time, and only one; there is a Mary and "only one." She is not a
Has Been, she is an Is--the "Author of Science and Health; and we cannot
ignore her."
1. In 1890, there was but one Mother Mary. The President said so.
2. Mrs. Eddy was that one. She said so, in signing the telegram.
3. Mrs. Eddy was not that one for she says so, in her Associated Press
utterance of January 17th.
4. And has "never claimed to be "that one--unless the signature to the
telegram is a claim.
Thus it stands proven and established that she is that Mary and isn't,
and thought she was and knows she wasn't. That much is clear.
She is also "The Mother," by the election of 1895, and did not want the
title, and thinks it is not applicable to her, end will excommunicate any
one that tries to take it away from her. So that is clear.
I think that the only really troublesome confusion connected with these
particular matters has arisen from the name Mary. Much vexation, much
misunderstanding, could have been avoided if Mrs. Eddy had used some of
her other names in place of that one. "Mother Mary" was certain to stir
up discussion. It would have been much better if she had signed the
telegram "Mother Baker"; then there would have been no Biblical
competition, and, of course, that is a thing to avoid. But it is not too
late, yet.
I wish to break in here with a parenthesis, and then take up this
examination of Mrs. Eddy's Claim of January 17th again.
The history of her "Mother Mary" telegram--as told to me by one who ought
to be a very good authority--is curious and interesting. The telegram
ostensibly quotes verse 53 from the "Magnificat," but really makes some
pretty formidable changes in it. This is St. Luke's version:
"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. _
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