students. At $300 a student for "twelve half-day lessons," her regular fee, this means a revenue of $1,200,000. Pretty good start in business. She treated some people during that period and some treatments are recorded at the neat sum of $250 for thinking a few minutes about the case. As the number of her sick followers has been astonishingly large it is easy to realize the fact that she must have laid a comfortable nest egg outside of her college receipts. In 1899 she had sold about $500,000 worth of her first book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Since 1883, it is claimed, she has sold also some editions of her book entitled "Miscellaneous Writings" at $2.25 per copy. Besides these she has published numerous other writings which are all sold at a high price. It is claimed that there are more than a million "Christian Scientists" today, all of whom must understand "Science and Health" to be admitted as real "Christian Scientists." It is fair to believe that at least a half (if not every alleged member) has paid for this book, not to say anything about rank outsiders who have purchased it too. This low estimate would bring the modest sum of $1,500,000 to Mrs. Eddy for this one print alone. The Christian Scientist Publishing Society of Boston, the authoritative distributor of "Christian Science" literature for the mother church-Mrs. Eddy's church-from which healers hatch and evolve, issues a monthly Christian Science Journal at $2.00; a weekly Sentinel at $1.65; a quarterly, pamphlets galore, tracts, etc., all for sale. The Mother's Evening Prayer (doubtless an improvement on the Lord's Prayer) is for sale at $1; (why did not Christ charge for the Lord's Prayer?) The Communion Hymn is offered for 50 cents; a Church Manual is offered for $1; a Christian Science Hymnal for $1.15; (story of) The Mother Church $1.50; The New World for 75 cents; Woman's Cause for 32 cents. This "Woman's Cause" is the cheapest thing Mrs. Eddy ever offered. If we judge from this and her matrimonial ventures, we are led to think that she perhaps thinks less of wives than she does of husbands. There are about 471 organizations of so-called "Christian Science" churches in the world, (although some of them are mere bed-rooms in size, and 108 associations without the designation of church, or about 578 congregations all told. All of them advertise in the Christian Science Journal (monthly) at $2 annually for the first line, which means $1,156, and $1 for each subsequent line. There are twenty one-fourth pages of such "ads" in the August number with 120 to 130 lines in each, or to be lenient, say: 20 pages of 125 lines, or 2500...... per year, with the.... We have the total of................. $2500 00 1156 00 of congregt'n ads ..$3656 00 alone, for any change Some 3700 "Chris per year for the fixed church ads of which a charge of 50 cents is made. tian Science" practitioners advertise in the same journal. Most of them have but one line. At $2 a line, (the fixed price demanded), it means $7400 a year of fixed "ads," for change of which a charge of 50 cents is also made. Eightyfive "Christian Science" institutes advertise at $20 each per year, or a total of $1700 a year income for these "ads." The total for all these specific, morally compulsory "ads," set up once for the whole year or changed on payment of 100 per cent more than the cost is..................... 3656 7400 1700 12756 A circulation of 500,000 (half the number of Chr.students) at $2....1000000 Revenue per year........ $1012756 and then there is a per per capita tax and contribution to the Mother Church, Mrs. Eddy's church, which should be sent to Stephen A. Chase, Treasurer, Box 36, Fall River, Mass. What this is I can't say, but, judging from the high price of everything sold by "Christian Science," we are safe in not counting this tax in dimes. Now with this immense revenue from so many sources rolling directly into the coffers of Mrs. Eddy, her publishing house and her Mother Church, and with 500 churches and real property scattered over the land and worth twelve or thirteen million dollars; and with 3,700 advertised and authorized practitioners of mind therapeutics or "Christian Science" healers, anxious for work, and notwithstanding the following declaration of Mrs. Eddy in the preface of her book, "Science and Health," "In the spirit of Christ's charity as one who hopeth all things, endureth all things and is joyful to bear consolation to the sorrowing and healing to the sick," there is not one "Christian Science" charity clinic anywhere in the world for the poor; there is not one place where the suffering can receive "Christian Science" consolation without pay; there is no indication in "Christian Science"teachings or doctrines, that a healer would do charity work as the true physician does, as truly sympathetic people of any denomination do. It is money, money, money, and every scheme and move from the foundation of the "Christian Science" business to this day has been the building of a wheel within a wheel to grind money out of the credulous in the name of God and sweet charity. THE TEACHING OF "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE." It would not be so difficult for ordinary reasoning people to study "Christian Science" were the purports of its lessons susceptible to argument, and the teachers themselves would argue, but everything that the creed teaches is, judging from the ordinary common sense of man, radically and palpably absurd and the "Scientist" will not reason; one can scarcely retain sufficient patience to tolerate the audacity and effrontery with which by too many of the "Christian Scientists" this peculiar dogma is flaunted before civilization and pushed before individuals on every occasion. Every page of the book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" teems with statements absolutely incompatible with common sense, logic and human experience. Here are a few taken as I read the book. Pages seven and eight: "Usage classes both evil and good together as mind, though to be understood, the author calls sick and sinful humanity mortal mind." Here is a falsehood. There is no usage in the world classing evil and good together as mind. Nor can evil, sin or sickness be logically classed together. Evil, per se, may be mingled with good and may proceed from diverse causes for which the sufferers from its consequences may not be responsible, but that special form of evil known as sin is a conscious and willful deviation from righteousness; and that other form known as disease is the result of the usually unwittingly violation of natural law. Consequently, Mrs. Eddy, in this grouping of bad and good and denying sin (Life, God, Omnipotent, Good, deny sin) proclaims sin (unrighteousness) to be trivial. Hence she teaches immorality. And in denying disease and treating it for money she testifies herself to her own fallacy and duplicity, for she avers thereby that disease is real and that money is matter, two things that she denies where her financial interests demand it. Mrs. Eddy denies the reality of the body, yet, page 10, she specifically declares this affirmation of her's untrue in this manner: "Bodies are corporeal." Mrs. Eddy speaks much of mortal mind and spiritual mind and denies the existence of the brain as the home thereof. How came she to enunciate this idea? Was it not through her natural brain, hazy as it may be? Could her shadow have conceived it as well as her body? What did the work-the substantial body with brains or its shadow without material brains? Mrs. Eddy says (page 41) that "Jesus used no drugs" in his treatments, "and acted in direct disobedience to natural laws." Yes, but Jesus did not heal for the purpose of demonstrating his ability as a curist, but for the purpose of showing his divine origin and power. His cures are recorded as miracles, i. e., achievements purposely made in defiance of natural laws. And Jesus healed quickly, instantaneously, instead of by the slow degrees of natural laws which operate in every patient of the Eddyites as attested by themselves and their healers. On page forty-two Mrs. Eddy, referring to drugs, writes: "The prescription which succeeds in one instance fails in another and this is owing to the different states of the patient." Here she admits the value of drugs in disease and yet elsewhere she denies the merit or existence of both. Bright Mrs. Eddy! Sane Mrs. Eddy! On page forty-five she declares that "the blood, heart, lungs, brain, etc., have nothing to do with life." May I venture to say that a person having a persistent delusion that he is not real, is usually termed, and justly, too, a true lunatic and probably placed in an asylum? On page forty-six she declares that it is impossible for a boil to be painful, because "matter without mind is not painful." How about matter with mind? In her many platitudes Mrs. Eddy betrays her concealed knowledge of facts and does ascribe mind-both mortal and immortal-to human beings. Possibly if she sat on a boil she might be reminded of its real painful existence. On page forty-seven she states that "we have smallpox because others have it" and denies the contagiousness of it by the agency of a virus and denies finally its existence altogether except in imagination. Unfortunately for this elastic theory, Mrs. X, "Christian Scientist," who caused a stampede last winter by running away from Brooklyn by train to another state to avoid quarantine did not escape smallpox and now she affirms that Mrs. Eddy's claim is false. A pretty face, even when borne by a "Christian Scientist," if it is marred by smallpox, is not likely to uphold the theory of the non-reality of this pest or of the afflicted face. On page forty-seven again, Mrs. Eddy prints that "If a child is exposed to contagion or infection the mother is frightened and the child becomes ill through this fear." what of motherless children for whom no one fears or cares and who sicken and die of diphtheria? What of the thousands who contract scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid fever, from sources unknown to the mother, guardian or friends and whose condition is not discovered until after full development? On page fifty-one she says, "The profession of medicine originated in idolatry with pagan priests." What of Mrs. Eddy's Christian medico-religious creed which can be traced back directly to paganism hundreds of years before Christ? On page fifty-two she speaks of "needed operation" |