V
The wind came up strong again after sunset, and all night long went noisily about the gables, and piped down our trembling old chimneys. It did not lessen with the approach of morning, and when I thrust open the window, an hour or so after dawn, there was a low-hanging gray sky and a great, driving stir in the air. I had hardly pushed the casement out, had one brief vision of bare tormented trees, felt a slap of rain, and heard, not far away, the measured beating of breakers as they charged at the foot of our cliff, when the wind, plucking the latch from my grasp, slammed the lattice and went yelling around the corner of the house like a jocular demon. I began to dress, thinking, as I had often thought before, that the place had a kind of fantastic kinship with the sea; every timber in it seemed to strain and creak to the repeated onsets of the storm, like those of any ship. The house stood steady enough, yet our position, open to all the winds of heaven, and within a few hundred paces of the furious water, was surely such as none but a sailor would have chosen. We rode out the weather in the open, so to speak, with abundant sea-room. And, for the better carrying out of the simile, there presently arose, somewhere outside, a long, drawling hail, calculated, with a mariner's nicety, to overcome the wind. "Ah-o-oy! The house, ah-o-oy!"
It came from the landward-looking or highroad side of the house—about two points on the starboard bow, as old Crump would have said. And, in fact, when I reached the door, there was Crump himself huddled in a pea-jacket on the seat of his cart, with his gray pony drooping dolefully between the shafts. I could just see them above the ragged hedge that divided our little front yard from the public way. Towering columns of rain swept across the landscape; Crump and the pony looked soaked to the core; and I was admiring the Spartan devotion to duty that brought him out at this hour, in such weather, when he began another wailing like a castaway banshee: "Ah-o-oy, the house! Pendarves, ah-o-oy!"
I set a hand to either side of my mouth and roared an answering hail to him up the wind. We were a bare twenty yards apart, but if he had not chanced at that moment to look in my direction, I doubt if he would have been aware of me, for all my efforts. The wind, in a fresh swoop, snatched the sound from my lips and ranged through the house with a turmoil of banging doors, falling crockery, and wildly fluttering draperies. As it was, he caught sight of me, shouted something unintelligible, and gesticulated toward a formless heap tucked up in oilskins behind him in the cart. Then he descended laboriously and signaled for help to remove it.
"What is it? What has he got?" screamed Mary Smith in my ear. She must have come running from the back of the house at the recent outburst of racket. Her petticoats swirled; her red curls streamed (they were shining with wet). She had certainly been outdoors already, as early as it was, in the teeth of all this blow, and I was startled by the pale anxiety of her look. "What is it? Who is there?" she cried again shrilly.
"Nobody but Crump with my baggage," I cried back. "What's the matter?"
"Oh, Mr. Pendarves, haven't you seen them? They are both gone! I've looked everywhere about the house. They were gone when I got up, and I can't find them high or low!"
"You mean Captain Pendarves—and the other?"
She nodded, with terror-struck eyes on me; then, raising on tiptoe, screamed painfully, with
her mouth close to my ear (it was almost impossible to hear otherwise): "He—your grandfather—has done it before. He's always restless in a storm. He goes down to the shore sometimes. I'm so afraid——" her look said the rest.
"Ask him—ask Crump; maybe he's seen them," she added in a shriek, as I started to the carrier's help. It was but a few steps to the gate, yet I reached it wet through, half blinded by sheets of water driven slantwise in my face, and with the breath nearly beaten out of me. In the open, thus, the storm seemed to increase tenfold in violence; it filled the vast cloudy hollow of the sky with reverberating din; and I felt, or fancied I felt, the solid ground shiver with the pounding of the waves on the ledges along the Cat's Mouth.
Crump greeted me with a cheerful grin; he had all the seaman's tolerance for the vagaries of the weather.
"Coming on to blow some, ain't it?" he remarked at the top of his lungs. "Your old apple-tree's carried away—that one in the corner of the orchard, I mean. I could see it as I came along by the upper road."
"Have you seen my grandfather anywhere about?" I shouted.
He could not have understood the question, for he answered, squinting up at me knowingly as he stooped over his end of my chest: "I see you got rid of him, Mr. Nick, and in short order, too. I spoke him a little way back, bound for Sidmouth with all sails set—at least, he was laying a course that way. Come on board, ma'am!" He pulled his forelock and made a leg respectfully before Mary (albeit eying her with no small interest) as we shoved our burden through the door. The girl clapped it shut, with a sharp struggle against the draught, and in the momentary silence that followed we stood awkwardly and apprehensively surveying one another, while the hurricane rumbled outside.
"I asked you if you had seen my grandfather," I said to Crump, at last.
"Seen the cap'n? Why, no, sir," he said, surprised. "I was telling you I saw——" He stopped, with a glance at Mary.
"Yes, go on. You saw him? Where? What was he doing?" she said sharply.
"I was saying he crossed my bows laying his course for Sidmouth, or that way," said Crump, evidently striving for a witness-box exactness. "He didn't answer my hail. Looked like he was in too much of a hurry."
Mary cast a troubled look about. "Did he have anything with him? A portmanteau, or carpet-bag, or anything to carry clothes?"
"Not that I noticed," said Crump carefully. "Looked as if he was going out in ballast—except his pockets; there was something in his pockets, I should say."
I stared at Mary in some perplexity. What the fat man did, or what should become of him, were, indeed, matters of indifference to me, except so far as they concerned her. I was well enough pleased that he should go, but there was something unusual in the manner of his going; it was a headlong flight. To tell the truth, I had looked for further trouble with him. What would the girl do now? And where was Captain Pendarves? She met me with eyes at once frightened and resolute.
"First of all we must find Captain Pendarves—we must go look for him," she said, answering my thought and making up my mind for me in a trice. (She has a way of doing this, displaying the most unerring accuracy at it any time these twenty years!) And, in the turn of a hand, she had kilted up her skirts, tied a shawl, over her head, and was making for the kitchen door.
"Lord love you, miss, you can't go out in this!" said Crump, aghast.
"Why not? I've been out in it once already."
"But, Mary!" I cried, and tried to withhold her. "What good can you do? Here is Crump, and here am I. We'll find them both. This is no work for a woman. You are wet, you may get hurt——"
"And you?" she retorted. Then, in a lower voice, "Don't stop me, Mr. Pendarves; don't try to keep me from going. I can't stay quietly here, and wait, and wait, and not know what's happened. I think I should go mad. I must go. You are wasting time; your grandfather—oh, can't you understand?"
I understood only that she was frantic with anxiety, and might have offered further remonstrance had it not been for the sudden defection of Crump. He edged a little nearer, and gently jogged my elbow.
"I'm with ye, miss," he announced, with startling alacrity; and, as we followed her out, he explained to me in a hoarse and perfectly audible whisper behind one hand: "I'm always with 'em when they get that look on, Mr. Nicol. Catch me adrift on a lee shore! I've learned a lot since I signed with Sarah."
The breakfast-table had been laid, and the empty chairs stood around it in their places, under the smiling supervision of the admiral's portrait. In the kitchen, Mary had a bright fire going, her neat towels hanging to dry. She opened the door, and the next instant this pretty and comforting picture was shut behind us, and there we were crouching in the rain under the eaves, with the wind bellowing overhead.
"IT LAY BEFORE US, A CONSIDERABLE HEAP OF GOLD AND SILVER COINS, TARNISHED BUT RECOGNIZABLE"
Mary stood on tiptoe again to scream: "I've been all over except in the orchard—you can see the shore from there."
I took her hand within my arm, and we struggled forward. As we drew nearer the cliff, the loud and awful noise of breakers in the Cat's Mouth silenced the storm; yet the wind was no whit diminished. A man could hardly have kept his feet, I think, along the cliff path. Before we reached the corner where the ancient tree that had weathered so many gales lay prostrate, uprooted at last, although we had as yet no view of the immediate shore, we could see a white aureole of spray hang, vanish, and return in a breath, yards in air above the Brown Cow. We fetched a compass around the orchard, stumbling and staggering among stumps and matted weeds and half-hidden logs without finding my grandfather, or any trace of him; and Crump having dropped behind, we had lost sight of him when that eery screech he adopted to make himself heard traveled to us down the wind. He was kneeling by the dislodged roots of our old tree, and, as he caught my eye, began an uncouth pantomime of surprise and wonder; then stooped, grasped a handful of something, and held it aloft with extravagant gestures. He bawled again, and, having got closer by this time, I heard the words:
"Doubloons, Mr. Nick! Pieces-of-eight! Spanish dollars! Doubloons!"
"Heaven help us all!" went through me, "Here's another gone mad."
The spectacle put our search momentarily from my mind. I knew Crump's head to be none of the strongest, and I should never have guessed what had actually happened—for surely this was a strange place and way in which to stumble upon old Admiral Pendarves' treasure!
Yet that was what the carrier had done; he was never saner in his life. It lay before us, a considerable heap of gold and silver coins, tarnished but recognizable, in a rotting wooden keg sunk into the ground at the foot of the tree and partly meshed in its roots. Crump plowed among the coins with his hand.
"There's a mort of money here, Mr. Nicol," he said, "and there's been more. Look, here's some of it scattered out in the grass; it couldn't have got away out there of itself. And here's a footprint in the mud." He looked up thoughtfully. "Likely some of it's on its way to Sidmouth now," said he. "I thought his pockets bulged."
"Well, I wish him joy of it!" said I.
"Lord, you could have the law on him for that, Mr. Nicol. Ain't you going to?"
"Not I!" said I, holding Mary's hand.
Something in this attitude must have moved Crump to his next remark. He looked us both over with an impartial and dispassionate air, cast a calculating eye on the treasure; then, "Enough left to get married and set up on, anyway," he said weightily. "There's worse things in the world than being married—though you'd hardly believe it. That's what I often says to Sarah!"
At that Mary Smith snatched her hand suddenly from mine and moved toward the edge of the cliff, crying out that we must continue our search. I climbed the orchard wall and looked along the shore. Here the cliff dropped away almost sheer, and the narrow strip of shingle at its base was lost in the surf. Farther to the north it widened a little with the curve of the shore, and through a swaying curtain of rain I could follow it to a point we called the Notch, near the entrance of the Cat's Mouth; of late years they have dredged the channel and moored a bell-buoy off this headland. There was nothing alive in sight; some prone black objects I saw, with a start, were only a few fisher-boats drawn up on the sand, and none too safe. I looked out to sea; the tide was making, and, where the strait drew in toward the Cat's Teeth, the waves fought and clamored with a horrid vigor, like living monsters. Their huge voices outdid the winds, and, as one after another made forward, towered, and broke upon the reefs, the Teeth disappeared in a welter of foam. Hereabout we found the old man at last.
Where he had got a boat, or with what madman's strength he had launched it, we could not guess. It was midway of the Cat's Mouth that I first caught sight of him, at no great distance measured by feet and inches, but as far beyond human aid as if the wide Atlantic had separated us. He was standing up in the stern, with folded arms, in something the posture he may have maintained on the poop of his ship in old days—where, perhaps, he fancied himself at this moment. I trust that reason was withheld from him in the utter hour; and certainly, although I could not discern his features, I saw him make no gesture either to invite help or to indicate that he had any understanding of his position. If mad, I thought (right or wrong) his death thus less ignoble than his life had become; if sane, he held a strong and steadfast heart, and bore himself well on his last voyage. By some strange chance, the boat spun and tossed among the breakers, yet kept an even keel, and boat and man together made a viking end. For, so standing, unconscious or unmoved, he went down, before our eyes, between the white and pointed reefs of the Cat's Teeth.
BOB, DÉBUTANT
BY HENRY GARDNER HUNTING
ILLUSTRATIONS BY DENMAN FINK
Of course, Bob knew that, as an abstract ethical principle, it is wrong to fight. His mother had been endeavoring to impress that idea upon him, from the moment it was first decided that he should go to public school till his books and his lunch-box were packed and he was on his way thither; and she had succeeded fairly well, for she had exacted a promise from him faithfully to avoid personal encounters as wholly sinful and unbecoming.
As a matter of fact, Bob knew only so much about fighting as he had learned through round-eyed, somewhat frightened observation of a very few entirely bloodless encounters among older boys; and, inasmuch as he had found himself consistently excluded from nearly all other, more peaceful pursuits and interests of these older ones, it was not unnatural that he should feel merely a spectator's interest in their fistic battles also, and that he should look upon them as he would have looked upon any other natural phenomenon—with some excitement, perhaps, but with no personal concern.
Bob admired his mother. To him, she was the most beautiful and the most resourceful woman in the world. He had found her judgment upon many subjects so wise that he was quite prepared to believe her position in this matter (which did not appear to be vital) completely and unquestionably correct, and to promise accordingly.
But conditions which exist on the big, bare public-school playgrounds, away alike from parental restraint and parental protection, are quite different from those in the home door-yard, and the code which obtains in the ward-school world is not an open book to all mothers of chubby-fisted sons who are called upon to observe it. It seems difficult for mothers to comprehend that a normal boy's standing on the school-ground is, like that of a young cock in a barn-yard, simply a matter of mettle and muscle.
So it was as early as Bob's second day at school—on the first Papa Jack had gone with him—that a revelation came both to him and to his mother. To him it was a painful revelation,
first because he had this new code to learn, and afterward because of his promise; and it was the latter thing that made the real difficulty. When you are a small boy you can easily adapt yourself and your habits of mind to new conditions and environment; but when you have some one else to think of, and when you are bound by a promise, that complicates matters.
"SCHOOL-BAG AND LUNCH-BOX DROPPED FROM HIS HANDS"
"HE SET HIS FACE ONCE MORE TOWARD SCHOOL AND WALKED VERY FAST"
Now, one "Curly" Davis—who was said to have been christened Charles, but whose astonishingly spiral locks surely constituted better authority for a name than any possible application of baptismal water—was, by right of reputed might, dictator of the Vine Street Primary. Curly was alleged to be of pugnacious disposition, and had not been bred to appreciation of the Golden Rule. He had the outward bearing of one who has reason for confidence in his personal prowess. He was popularly believed to have fought many fights and fierce,—just when and where his admirers seemed not to consider important,—and he had a reputation for ferocity rather disproportionate to his stature. He had a way of glaring at you, too, if you happened to be a new boy at school, which was sufficiently suggestive of a sanguinary temperament to overawe the average youngster and to render quite unnecessary any more active demonstration.
Like all despots who rule through fear, Curly had a following. It was made up of lesser lights of like tastes and ambitions, who toadied to and imitated the tyrant simply to avoid the unpleasant necessities which the alternative involved. These followers, numbering some six or eight, through their unity of aim and Curly's leadership, had gained a certain ascendency over the far greater, but unorganized, body of would-be independents who, chafe as they might under the yoke, dared not attempt to throw it off; and these loyal retainers were zealous in service of their lord's interests and pleasure.
On that beautiful fall morning when Bob first went alone to school, he had not been ten minutes on the playground, standing upon its outer edge, school-bag and lunch-box in hand, to gaze upon its novelties, before a satellite of Curly's, one Percy Emery, espied him. Instantly it was as though Percy had discovered some new quarry, unearthed a fresh specimen of some genus, edible and choice.
"Hi, Curly," he yelled, with the eager loyalty of his kind, "come 'ere. 'Ere's a new one. Look at the school-bag to 'im."
Curly, who was at the moment engaged in the pleasing pastime of hectoring a scared little five-year-old who ought still to have been in the
kindergarten, pricked up his ears at the cry and, like a hungry bird of prey leaving a mouse for a lamb, promptly swooped down upon the new game. His movement was the signal for the gathering of a crowd, and, before Bob was fairly aware that he was the object of attention, he had become the center of a curious group whose interest, if not wholly hostile, was in the main certainly not friendly. The dictator himself confronted him with unmistakably bellicose intentions.
"New shoes!" said Curly contemptuously, selecting the first obviously vulnerable point open to a shaft of insult. "New shoes! Spit on 'em!" He suited the action to the word, and immediately word and act alike were imitated by two or three of his more ardent admirers.
"Stop!" said Bob. He did not know what it meant. He backed away from his persecutors.
"Aw, stop, eh?" mocked Curly. "Who are you? What's yer name?"
"Bob McAllister."
"Bob! Bob-tail! Bob-cat!" chanted Curly, in gratuitous insult of which only bantam shamelessness is capable. "Stop, will I? Who'll make me? You? You want to fight?"
He danced about Bob's quiet little figure, snapping his fingers in the new boy's eyes. Then, suddenly, he swung his wiry body and swept a stinging blow in Bob's face.
A yell of delight from the despot's own drowned a weaker chorus of protest. Curly backed and squared, ready for some show of retaliation or resistance, a scornful little grin on his face.
"Come on, now. Fight! Stop me!" he cried.
But Bob did not move. Curly's blow had landed fair on the tender little red lip, and it had cut against the teeth behind; a tiny scarlet stream flowed down Bob's smooth little chin. In his eyes the dizziness of the first jar gradually gave way to slow amazement. Then the tears welled up, hot tears which overflowed the lids and ran scalding down the cheeks, but they did not conceal or quench a glitter which grew to a bright flame behind them.
Bob's school-bag and lunch-box dropped from his hands. The pudgy fists which had never before been clinched with belligerent purpose, but which were, nevertheless, a boy's fists, doubled themselves into hard little knots; but still he stood quiet.
So far as his whirling little mind could think, he thought thus: So this was fighting; this was what he had promised mother not to do; what he had promised—had promised—promised. He was not so big, this boy who had struck him,
not so big. Bob was not afraid. But that a promise is a thing to be kept inviolate he had learned, oh, years ago, from Papa Jack, along with all the other of-course-ities of life, like telling the truth, keeping your troubles to yourself, and not being a cry-baby or a telltale. And a promise to mother—well, nothing could be more sacred. Yet here was a new condition which he had never met before, a new situation which suddenly made him see in an altogether different aspect a question supposedly settled—this question of to fight or not to fight. It made his sweeping promise to mother suddenly seem to have been very ill-advised indeed. He wondered if his mother could have known that he would meet this kind of thing at school. In that first instant after Curly's blow was struck, instinct told him that fists were made to be used, and reason added that self-defense is right; and now something else was stirring in his heart—something which might not, perhaps, be wholly unexpected, under such circumstances, to stir in the heart of a boy whose grandfather had carried a musket at Gettysburg and whose father had worn khaki at San Juan. He wondered if his mother could have known.
"A RING OF BOYS—EXCITED, EAGER, YELLING"
But Bob's fists only clinched; they did not strike. All the sturdy little muscles in his small body stiffened, and he stood with head up and eyes blazing, but he did not strike. And then the school-bell suddenly began to ring, and the group about him broke away; and Curly Davis started off, shouting back something about fixing him after school, and—he was alone.
Bob stood still. He realized that the last bell for school had rung. He knew that he should have gone in with the others. That was what he had been sent to school for, certainly. But he stood still.
The tears had dried upon his face, and so had the thin little line of red on his chin. His lip was swelling, and felt as if a hazelnut or a big bean had been pushed up under it and were sticking to and stinging the skin. He stooped and picked up his school-bag and lunch-box, stood still again for a moment, and then walked away. He was not going to school, and, naturally, as there was nowhere else to go, he was going home.
But a great, heavy weight seemed to have settled down upon his breast and pressed in upon it, and it was hard to breathe. His thoughts were still confused, but he was wondering—wondering. Why was it? Why had
they treated him so? Why had they singled him out to attack him? Why had that boy with the curly hair struck him? Why had the others laughed? Didn't they like him? Didn't any one like him? Why, what had he done? His heart swelled with sudden misery and wretchedness. Why was such an unkind thing permitted in the world? And then again returned that something which stirred inside him, something hot and hard, which made his cheeks and eyes burn and his fingers clinch once more. And then again the question, "Could mother have known?"
Mrs. McAllister saw him coming a block away, and she ran down to the gate to meet him as he trudged in. Bob looked up into his mother's face. The quick concern in her eyes, as she saw the battered little lip and the stained chin, came nearer to making him sob than Curly's blow had done; but, though the tears would well up and his throat felt very tight, he only swallowed and carefully wet the puffed lip with his tongue.
"Why, Bobbie, Bobbie, what is the matter?" cried his mother, dropping down on her knees on the walk beside him. She put both her hands on his shoulders and turned his face toward her; and Bob looked straight into her troubled blue eyes, and suddenly began to feel better—began to feel, indeed, that he did not have to care so much, after all.
"Oh, Bobbie, have you been fighting?"
Bob shook his head.
"How did you get your lip hurt so? Did you fall down?"
Again he shook his head. He didn't know just how to tell her. It wasn't fighting. At least, he didn't fight; it had been that other boy. But, somehow, he did not want to say that; he did not want to tell; he wanted something, but he did not know just what it was. He found himself forgetting how he had felt a moment before, and then he discovered that he was not thinking about what he wanted at all. He was thinking what a very blue blue his mother's eyes were when she looked at him so, and, all at once, he felt more sorry for her than for himself, because she looked so troubled; and he kissed her quickly, and hurt his lip.
Mrs. McAllister led him into the house. "Won't you tell mother, Bob?" she asked.
But he couldn't. He was feeling better—much better—but he couldn't tell. There was another reason now, that he hadn't thought of before: it would make her feel more sorry. And
after all, it didn't matter so much; that is, it didn't if— He looked up at her with a new thought.
"But, Bob, you must tell mother all about it," she was saying, as she carefully bathed his chin and lip, and so he had to shake his head again.
"Then you must tell papa this noon, Bob."
Bob considered. No, he couldn't tell Papa Jack, either. He felt pretty sure father himself wouldn't tell about such a thing if he were a boy. He was silent.
Mrs. McAllister began to move about her work, though she still looked at him frequently and anxiously. Bob went away to the window, and stood looking out. He remembered how he had started out that morning, with school-bag and lunch; he remembered how he had approached the school-grounds, and how big and strange and attractive a place it had seemed to him at first, and what a good time all those boys had been having; and then he remembered how, suddenly, he had found them all around him, summoned by the call of that boy with the hateful grin, and how Curly Davis had sneered and spat and struck. Suddenly he found himself tingling all over, and pressing a burning forehead against the cool glass, and digging his knuckles into the corner of the sash till they ached. Then he went into the library, and lay down on father's big leather couch, and thought and thought.
Papa Jack came home for lunch at noon, and mother told him. Bob heard them in the hall.
"He says he didn't fight," said his mother, "and he says he didn't fall down. He won't tell me, and I told him he must tell you. I don't know why he doesn't want to tell; he isn't ashamed or very much frightened, and he didn't cry after he came home."
Bob heard Papa Jack's footsteps cross the hall and come in upon the hard-wood library floor, and then on the big rug by the library couch. Papa Jack sat down beside him and put his big fingers around Bob's little ones.
"Well, what about it, Son?"
Bob looked up and smiled. Always such a pleasant, warm feeling came over him when Papa Jack came near him and talked to him.
"What about it, Son?"
But Bob could not reply. His eyes grew serious as they looked back into his father's.
"What did this, Bob?" asked Papa Jack, gently touching the hazelnut bruise with a finger.
"A boy," said Bob.
"What boy?" asked Papa Jack. "A big boy?"
Silence, and then a shake of the head.
"Did you strike him first?"
Again Bob shook his head.
"What did you do to him?"
Still another shake of the head.
"Do you mean he just came up and struck you without any provocation?"
"He laughed," said Bob.
"What else?"
"Spit on my new shoes," reddening.
Papa Jack drew his mustache down between his lip and teeth. "Hm! He did, eh? What else?"
"Said 'Bob-tail, bob-cat,'"
Papa Jack looked puzzled.
"Said I was—Bob, bob-tail, bob-cat," explained Bob.
"Oh!" Papa Jack seemed to see light. "And then he struck you?"
A nod once more.
Mr. McAllister looked out the window and his fingers closed tightly around Bob's. "When was this, Bob—before school?"
"Mm."
"And you came right home?"
A nod.
"Did you strike him back?"
Bob's eyes widened. "No."
Papa Jack's eyes widened also. "Why?"
"Because."
"Because what, Bob?"
"Because mama said not to fight."
"And you promised?"
Bob nodded again.
"I see." Papa Jack's eyes suddenly lighted with something Bob did not understand, and he sat looking down at Bob for a long minute. "I see," he said again, and then he turned and called to mother. "Helen!" And mother came in, with a piece of white sewing in her hands.
"Helen," said Papa Jack, "it's a case of bullying. The boy promised you not to fight, and he didn't. It's a mistake, mother. He's been set upon by some young bully, and couldn't defend himself because of his promise."
Mother looked at Bob; there was distress in her eyes, but something else came into them, too.
"It's only the beginning, dear—the beginning of battles," said Papa Jack, and he put his other hand on mother's.
"Bob," he said, "mother doesn't mean you're not to defend yourself. Understand? By fighting, mother only means beginning fights, picking fights, provoking other boys to fight. We have to defend ourselves. It isn't right to pick a fight; that's what mother means."
Bob saw tears come into his mother's eyes. Papa Jack saw them, too.
"There's only one way among boys, Helen
dear. The bullies must be fought, you know. Our boy's got to be a boy's boy if he's to be a man's man by-and-by."
Suddenly mother bent over and kissed Bob, and held him, with her arms thrust under and about him—held him hard.
"The only thing, Bob, is to be a man always. Be square and white. Do the right thing. I can't tell you what it will be every time; neither can anybody else: but you your own self will know. It may be right even to fight sometimes, for yourself and for others who are bullied; but every boy knows for himself when it's right and when it's wrong. If he does as he knows, he'll do right."
It was a quiet lunch that day. Father and mother talked little and the meal was quickly over. Bob hardly knew what he himself ate or did or thought. There was a strange excitement in his heart and in his head, a feeling that he could not define. It was not that he was going back to school after dinner. It was not that he would probably meet those boys again, nor that he would sooner or later have to face again that Curly Davis. Neither was it that, when he did face Curly Davis, he meant to—yes, to fight him. No, it was none of these things, though his heart did beat the faster as he thought of them. It was something else; it was something about what his father had said, not so much his words, but the way he had said "a man's man" and "we must defend ourselves"—something that thrilled him, made him proud and humble, all at once. Someway, father seemed to have taken a new attitude toward him, and in that change even Bob seemed to see father's recognition that babyhood was over for his small son.
Mother stood in the door and watched him go. She had been crying again, a little; she had even wanted to keep him at home. But father had said, "No, let him go; as well now as to-morrow," and so she had kissed him and cried again, a little. And then she had begged him to "try to keep away from those bad little boys," and to "play only with good boys who did not want to fight"; and Bob had said yes—doubtfully. He waved his hand to her from the gate, and again from the corner of the block, and then he set his face once more toward school, and walked very fast.
It was five o'clock when Bob came home again. School closed at four, but the clock on the library mantel was tinkling five when he opened the door and closed it very softly. He didn't want mother to see him just then.
He was trembling and very white—his little mirror by the window showed him that. There was a brown-and-blue bruise just in the corner of his little brown eyebrow, of which he had felt carefully a dozen times on the way home, but which did not look so big in the glass as it had felt. There was a rubbed place on his chin, and the soft knuckles of his hands were grimy and stained. He laid his school-bag and box carefully on a chair, and went to look out the window for a moment. And then a strange feeling came over him.
—This was his little room; yes, it was his—the same little room; the same white curtains, the same little window, the same view of the little green door-yard and the apple-tree and the cedar-hedge; the same soft sunset light coming in upon him where it had come so many, many other evenings, ever since he could remember. But the boy—that little boy who had looked upon it all, who had lived there and loved the white curtains and the sun and the apple-tree—where was he? he wondered.
When he closed his eyes he could see just one thing—one whirling, seething vision: a ring of boys, excited, eager, yelling, laughing, cheering, with only here and there a frightened face; and there in the midst himself and another—some one who was striking and kicking and scratching at him, but whose blows he did not seem to feel, so hard and fierce and fast he himself was striking, and so hotly ran his blood. And in his ears were ringing the cries which had gone up at the end, when that other boy—he of the curly hair—had suddenly, at last, turned from him and run away through the crowd, beaten and sniveling and—alone. And he remembered that he had felt sorry then—oh, so sorry—sorry for that other boy!
He washed his face and hands carefully, and looked again in the little mirror. Perhaps mother wouldn't notice—much. He opened his door and crept softly down the stairs and into the library, and there was mother, looking anxiously from the window, and father, who had just come in, putting on his hat as if he were going out again. And they both turned and looked at him; and mother ran and caught him up in her arms, just as if he were that baby-boy again—that baby he had been yesterday. He wondered.
Father looked at the brown bruise and the scuffed knuckles critically, while mother held him with her face against his hair.
"Do you think he'll bother you any more, Bob?" father asked, just as if the whole story had been told.
Bob shook his head, and mother suddenly clasped him closer, while father turned away with a grim smile. And Bob himself just wondered—wondered about that baby-boy he had been yesterday.
TWO PORTRAITS BY GILBERT STUART
A NOTE ON A RECENT ACCESSION OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
BY SAMUEL ISHAM
The name of Don Josef de Jaudenes y Nebot has not impressed itself deeply on the memory of the world. It does not appear in the great, many-volumed biographical dictionaries nor in the indexes of the standard histories of the United States. Even in the library of the Hispanic Society of America there is no record of him. He was, however, a man of some importance in the early diplomacy of the nation. The beginning of his official career may be definitely determined by a letter of Washington's of July 20, 1791, in which he says: "I yesterday had Mr. Jaudenes, who was in this country with Mr. Gardoqui and is now come over in a public character, presented to me for the first time by Mr. Jefferson."
Gardoqui came to America in 1786 as chargé d'affaires for the negotiation of a treaty with Spain. The "public character" in which Jaudenes was presented in 1791 was that of commissioner of Spain, and he had united with him on the commission Josef de Viar, all their official documents being signed with both names. Their main business, like Gardoqui's, was the negotiation of a treaty between Spain and the United States; a treaty which was to settle boundaries, rights of trade between the two nations, and also the question of the "occlusion" of the Mississippi River; but there was much outside diplomatic sparring over the disputes between the Governor of Louisiana and the Georgians about trespasses and conflicting rights. The last communication of the commissioners was dated in 1794. The next year the negotiations were transferred to Madrid and the treaty was signed there and Jaudenes probably then returned to Spain. There seems to be no trace of him after that.
The only other facts in regard to him are to be gathered from the two pictures recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which are the subject of this article. They are signed G. Stuart, R. A., New York, September 8, 1794, and bear inscriptions in Spanish which, to complete the record, are here given in full:
Don Josef de Jaudenes y Nebot Comisario Ordenador de los Reales Exercitos y Ministro Embiado de Su Magestad Catholica cerca de los Estados Unidos de America. Nació en la Ciudad de Valencia Reyno de España el 25 de Marzo de 1764.
Doña Matilde Stoughton de Jaudenes—Esposa de Don Josef de Jaudenes y Nebot Comisario Ordenador de los Reales Exercitos de Su Magestad Catholica y su Ministro Embiado cerca de los Estados Unidos de America. Nació en la Ciudad de Nueva-York en los Estados Unidos el 11 de Enero de 1778.
We learn from these that Don Josef was thirty and his bride in her seventeenth year, and that she was born in New York. Unfortunately this is all that we know about her. Stoughton is a sufficiently familiar name in the colonial records of the New England and Middle States, but the lady of the portrait has not yet been identified nor has a search of the newspapers of the day revealed any mention of her marriage. It may very probably have taken place on September 8th, 1794, the date placed after Stuart's name on both canvases; but the journalists of that time took less note of such international alliances than those of the present. Something more about the lady is, however, certain to be found by the genealogists and delvers in old diaries and correspondence, for the wedding of the young Spanish diplomat with the pretty American girl just midway in her teens must have set tongues wagging and pens inditing. How the match turned out we do not know, but some argument as to their happiness may be based on the fact that Jaudenes' successor, the Marquis d'Yrujo, followed his example and took an American bride in the person of Miss Sally McKean, who was also painted by Stuart.
Two Portraits by Gilbert Stuart
reproduced by permission of
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Printed from plates made by the Colorplate Engraving Company, New York
Doña Matilde Stoughton de Jaudenes Wife of the First Minister from Spain to the United States
Don Josef de Jaudenes y Nebot First Minister from Spain to the United States
Having thus disposed (somewhat unsatisfactorily, it is true) of the personality of the sitters, we can turn to the portraits themselves. The accompanying reproductions make extended description unnecessary. They are characteristic Stuarts, more elaborate, more complete, than most of his subsequent work,
but showing clearly his personal point of view and the difference between his portraits and those of his contemporaries. He is less poetic, more literal than the rivals with whom he had contended, not unsuccessfully, for the patronage of London society. For him a pretty girl is a pretty girl, and it is enough. He seats her comfortably in a chair and paints her as she is. One cannot imagine him turning her into a nymph, a shepherdess, or a priestess of Hymen, or painting her with a very modish coiffure on her head and a pair of blue-ribboned sandals on her bare feet. These things Reynolds did habitually and moreover put his figures in attitudes with up-rolled eyes and extended arms and filled out his larger canvases with altars and tombs and allegorical attributes. This he did to bring his pictures in accord with those of the old masters whom he laboriously studied and deeply admired. His achievement fully justified him. His sumptuous canvases, rich in color, elaborate in composition, perfected with every technical resource, have ever since remained unequalled of their kind.
In spite of his stay in West's studio, Stuart had none of this respect for tradition nor any wish to attempt the grand style. In this he was more like Gainsborough, but Gainsborough invested his portraits, even of prosaic sitters, with a strange, penetrating, poetic charm such as no other painter has been able to convey. Ranking artists in the order of their merit is an unprofitable business, but it may gratify some methodical minds to have it stated that these canvases by Stuart are not in the same class as good Gainsboroughs or Reynolds. With the best of other contemporary portraits they stand approximately on a footing of equality. In spite of the quiet pose, the lack of strongly contrasted light and shade and all of the clever tricks and forced accents of Lawrence and his followers, they are alive and alert. The characterization is excellent. The young people were not of so profound or complicated a nature as the Father of his Country, and the faces are not wrought out with the delicate subtlety of the Gibbs-Channing Washington which hangs between them, but they are clear-cut, compelling belief in their truth. The execution, too, has all of Stuart's skill. Others may have attempted higher things, but none did what he attempted with such perfect ease and sureness. In neither of the canvases is there a sign of uncertainty, hesitation, or alteration. Each touch is put exactly where it should be and left. There is none of the scumbling and glazing and re-working so common in the English portraits of the time. It is to this that the canvases owe their admirable freshness which makes them look as if painted yesterday. The heads have all of Stuart's pearly gray and rose tones unimpaired by ill-usage or restoration. The clothes and accessories are more swiftly and summarily done, the silver lace and the high lights being touched in with amazing sureness and cleverness. The composition and arrangement is pleasing, and Stuart's besetting fault of putting his heads too low on the canvas is excused and justified in the case of Don Josef by the necessity of having his portrait correspond with that of his wife, whose elaborate and stylish head-dress fills the top of her picture. In short, New York is to be congratulated on the winning back after a sojourn abroad of more than a century of these two most important and charming paintings executed here in the early days of the Republic.
At this point this article might well end, but there may be some who recall that last summer for a week or so there appeared in the papers articles headed "Fakes at the Museum" or "The Metropolitan Gets Lemons," which assailed the genuineness of these portraits. The discussion did not get far beyond the daily press, which, after its habit, registered the charges as picturesquely and vehemently as it could, but attempted no serious investigation of them. They were brought by a critic whose position as a special student of Stuart entitled them to respectful consideration, but after giving them that they do not seem conclusive or even important. They were based on the fact that the pictures were signed G. Stuart, R. A., and bore coats of arms and long Spanish inscriptions. It was claimed that this made the genuineness of the canvases doubtful, for Stuart signed few of his paintings—possibly none except the standing Washington in the Philadelphia Academy; he was not an R. A. (Royal Academician); nor was he a heraldic illuminator. Furthermore, the painting of the male portrait and the dress and accessories in the companion piece did not seem to the critic to agree with Stuart's handling. To make his impressions fit with the pictures, the critic supposed that Stuart painted a smaller portrait of Jaudenes and started one of his wife, which through some freak of temper he left (as he frequently did) with only the head and part of the background finished. These being brought to Spain, some artist there finished the lady's portrait, painted from Stuart's original a companion piece of her husband, and added to both the coats of arms, the inscriptions, and Stuart's name.
Now, frankly, this is not possible. As for the portrait of Doña Matilde being left unfinished, there exists in Stuart's handwriting a
list of gentlemen who are to have copies of his portrait of Washington, consisting of thirty-two names. A few take two copies, no one takes more save Jaudenes, who subscribes for five. The list is dated April 20th, 1795, which is seven months after the date on the pictures, and is the strongest possible evidence that Jaudenes was greatly pleased with Stuart—presumably on account of these portraits—and is entirely irreconcilable with the idea that the painter had quarreled with the diplomat's wife or left her portrait unfinished.
As to the coats of arms, the most casual examination makes it clear that they were painted by another hand than executed any part of the portraits. In all probability they were done after the canvases reached Spain, and the inscriptions and signatures would naturally have been added at the same time. Stuart would never have engrossed a long Spanish inscription, and that he should have signed his name (contrary to his habit) and have added the "R. A." to which he had no right is most unlikely. What is most unlikely of all, however, is that there should have been found in Spain an artist capable of painting a portrait like the Don Josef. Both heads are absolutely alike in handling, in texture, in mixing of the pigments, and in all of those things are absolutely characteristic of Stuart, whose methods were peculiarly his own and could not be caught even by men like Sully, who not only intently studied his processes but sat and watched him when he was at work. That a Spaniard with entirely different training and ideals could have reproduced them is impossible.
As for the costumes, it may be admitted that they differ from most of Stuart's American work; but the difference is more in subject than in method and is chiefly noticeable because he never again painted a gentleman in silver-sprigged scarlet waistcoat and small clothes. He hated such work, and his position in America enabled him to do as he chose, and he could tell sitters that if they wanted clothes they could go to a mantua-maker or a tailor, he painted the works of God. So distasteful was such labor to him that we know that he employed assistants in the details of some of his Washington portraits. In the present canvases the heads are painted with an interest and a thoroughness very different from that displayed in the costumes. These latter are skilfully done. The dexterity displayed is amazing and such as no copyist is at all likely to have had, but it is dexterity applied to getting a striking result as quickly as possible and with the least possible effort of hand or brain.
Now, to explain this, we should remember that Stuart only returned to America in 1793, and the pictures are both dated September 8, 1794. Whatever that date may mean, both pictures were presumably finished before then and were thus among the first, perhaps the very first, important works that Stuart did in New York. He would consequently have every motive, both from the desire to establish his reputation and from the position and charm of his sitters, to do his very best. The workmanship should be compared, not with what he did afterwards in America but rather with what he had done before in England and Ireland, when he was compelled by the exigencies of his sitters and the rivalry of his fellow artists to give some importance to costume and composition. Unfortunately, Stuart's foreign work is practically unknown to Americans (and to foreigners also, for that matter). There is little of it in the public galleries, and a large proportion of it has probably been rechristened with other and more attractive names. As far as we may judge from a few examples and from the many engravings after it (some of them large enough and good enough to give an idea of the handling), the costumes were done much in the style of those we are considering.
After all, the strongest argument for the authenticity of the portraits is the portraits themselves. They are beautiful, they are skilful, done in Stuart's style and entirely worthy of him. To suppose them done by any one else involves the doubter at once in a maze of improbabilities and impossibilities. The present writer is willing to put himself on record as quite convinced that they were painted by Stuart and are wholly by his own hand and are unusually important specimens of his work.
MARY BAKER G. EDDY
THE STORY OF HER LIFE AND THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
BY
GEORGINE MILMINE
XIV
MRS. EDDY'S BOOK AND DOCTRINE
"No human tongue or pen taught me the Science contained in this book, 'Science and Health'; and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it."—Mary Baker G. Eddy.
Although Mrs. Eddy's book, "Science and Health," was not published until 1875, from the time Mrs. Eddy left P. P. Quimby in 1864 she had been struggling to get his theories before the public. Dr. Patterson, her second husband, left her in 1866, and for the next four years Mrs. Eddy was able to make a bare living by her "Science," wandering about among the little shoe towns near Boston and teaching Quimby's theories here and there for her board and lodging. She went from house to house with her precious copy of Quimby's "Questions and Answers"[2] and the pile of letter-paper, covered with her own notes, which she was forever rewriting and revising. The one thing that everybody knew about Mrs. Glover (Eddy) was that she "was writing a book." While she was staying with the Wentworths, in Stoughton, she carried her pile of manuscript to Boston, and when the printer to whom she showed it demanded to be paid in advance, she tried to persuade Mrs. Wentworth to lend her the money. Had the printer who looked over that confused mass of notes known that they were the nucleus of a book of which over five hundred thousand copies would be sold by 1907, and had he printed the manuscript then and there, Christian Science in its present form would never have existed. For at that time Mrs. Eddy had not dreamed of calling her system of mind cure anything but Dr. Quimby's "Science." She talked of Quimby to every one she met; could talk, indeed, of little else. When she introduced the subject of mental healing to a stranger—and she never lost an opportunity—it was always with that conscious smile and the set phrases which the village girls used to imitate: "I learned this from Dr. Quimby, and he made me promise to teach at least two persons before I die."
The story of the Quimby manuscript from 1867 to 1875 and of the gradual growth of Mrs. Eddy's feeling of possession, has already been recounted in an earlier chapter of this history.[3] By the time the first edition of "Science and Health" appeared, Mrs. Eddy said no more about Quimby or her promise to him. Mrs. Eddy has always been able to believe anything she wishes to believe, especially about her own conduct and about that of persons who have displeased her, and it is very probable that by this time she had persuaded herself that she really owed very little to the old Maine philosopher.
How "Science and Health" was Published
Although Mrs. Eddy had been working upon her book for about eight years, writing and rewriting with almost incredible patience, she was unwilling to assume any financial risk in getting it printed. George Barry and Elizabeth Newhall, two of her students, agreed to furnish the sum of one thousand dollars, which the Boston printer asked for issuing an edition of one thousand copies. Mrs. Eddy made so many changes in the proofs, continuing her revisions even after the plates had been cast, that she ran the cost of the edition up to about twenty-two hundred dollars, and Miss
Newhall and Mr. Barry lost about fifteen hundred dollars on the book. They would, indeed, have lost more, had not Daniel Spofford, much against Mrs. Eddy's will, paid over to them six hundred dollars which he had received for the copies of the book he had sold. Although Mrs. Eddy at that time owned the house in which she lived and had some money in bank, she did not, either then or later, suggest reimbursing Barry or Miss Newhall for their loss.
Aside from the fact that she was unwilling to risk money upon it, Mrs. Eddy believed intensely in her book. One of her devoted students sent copies of "Science and Health" to the University of Heidelberg, to Thomas Carlyle, and to several noted theologians. But the book made no stir outside of Lynn, where it caused some perplexity. There was little about it, indeed, to suggest that it would be an historic volume. It was a book of 564 pages, badly printed and poorly bound; a mass of inconsequential statements and ill-constructed, ambiguous sentences which wander about the page with their arms full, so to speak, heedlessly dropping unrelated clauses about as they go.
Although the basic ideas of the book are Quimby's, and even much of the terminology, the first edition of "Science and Health" was certainly written by Mrs. Eddy. Not only is there every internal evidence of her hand in the style of the book, but a number of her students are still alive who went over portions of the manuscript with her and worked with her upon the proofs. The same George Barry who helped to pay for the publication of the book copied out in longhand twenty-five hundred pages of the manuscript. He brought suit against Mrs. Eddy for payment for "copying the manuscript of the book 'Science and Health,' and aiding in the arrangement of capital letters and some of the grammatical constructions." He produced some of Mrs. Eddy's manuscript in court, and the judge allowed him more than the usual copyist's rate "on account of the difficulty which a portion of the pages presented to the copyist by reason of erasures and interlineations," as it is put in the judge's finding.
Although Mrs. Eddy's book has been enlarged and greatly improved as to its order and grammar, the first edition contains all the essential elements of her philosophy, if such it may be called. Mr. Wiggin did good work in translating the book into comparatively conventional English, and gave a kind of unity to paragraphs and sentences, and later revisers have greatly improved upon his work; but the first edition gave a fairly complete and, on the whole, a comprehensible statement of Mrs. Eddy's platform.
Mrs. Eddy's religion claims to be a system of metaphysics, a system of therapeutics, and an improved form of Christianity. As the founder of a system of idealistic philosophy, Mrs. Eddy does indeed, as Mr. Alfred Farlow says, "begin where the sages of the world left off." Other philosophers have reached the conclusion that we can have no absolute knowledge of matter, since our evidence regarding it consists of sense impressions, and that we can absolutely assert of matter only that it exists in human consciousness; but Mrs. Eddy begins boldly with, "There is no such thing as matter." She reaches her conclusion by steps which she deems complete and logical:
- God is All in all.
- God is good. Good is Mind.
- God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
Mrs. Eddy calls attention to the fact that even if read backward, these propositions mean identically the same as when read in the usual order, and she seems to regard this as conclusive proof of their logical truth. She says, "The metaphysics of Christian Science, like the rules of mathematics, prove the rule by inversion. For example: there is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and no mind in matter," etc.
In his article upon Christian Science, published in The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1904, Dr. John Churchman says:
The uncompromising idealism, however, which Mrs. Eddy offers us not only has these defects, but is guilty of a far more serious charge. It poses as an explanation, and is in reality a total evasion. To deny that matter exists, and assert that it is an illusion, is only another way of asserting its existence; you are freed by your suggestion from explaining the fact, but forced by it to explain the illusion. It is the old mistake of imagining that an escape from a problem is a solution. You are out of the frying-pan, it is true, but you are in the fire instead.[4]
Having thus disposed of matter, Mrs. Eddy seems to think that her definition has actually changed the nature of the case, and that though we live in houses, eat food, and endure the changes of the seasons, our relation to the material universe is changed because she has defined matter as an illusion.
It is not, however, Mrs. Eddy's definition which is so remarkable, but her application of it. Having stated that matter is an illusion, she asserts that "matter cannot take cold";[5] that matter cannot "ache, swell and be inflamed";[6] that a boil cannot ache;[7] that "every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man, is rendered null and void by the law of God".[8]
There is No Material Universe
Quimby acknowledged the actual existence of the universe, of the physical body, and of disease; Mrs. Eddy teaches that they are all illusory. The earth, the sun, the millions of stars, says Mrs. Eddy, exist only in erring "mortal mind"; and mortal mind itself does not exist. All phenomena of nature are merely illusory expressions of this fundamental error. "The compound minerals or aggregate substances composing the earth, the relations which constituent masses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances, and revolution of the celestial bodies, are of no real importance.... Material substances, astronomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of speculative theories ... will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of spirit." "Earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity" are merely the "vapid fury of mortal mind." "Heat and cold are products of mind"—even a "mill at work, or the action of a water wheel," is only a manifestation of "mortal mind force." Apart from mortal belief, there is no such thing as climate.
"Repulsion, attraction, cohesion, and powers supposed to belong to matter are constituents of mind," Mrs. Eddy says. By this she does not mean that these forces exist, for us, in our minds, but that at some time in the dim past "mortal mind" imagined matter and imagined these properties in it. Christ, she says, was able to walk upon the water and to roll away the stone of the sepulcher because he had overcome the human belief in the laws of gravity. (Yet, Mrs. Eddy is continually reminding us that the fall of an apple led Newton to discover a great law, etc.) "Geology," Mrs. Eddy says, "has never explained the earth's formations. It cannot explain them." "Natural Science is not really natural or scientific, because it is deduced from the evidences of the senses." "Vertebra, articulata, mollusca, and radiata are evolved by mortal and material thought." "Theorizing about man's development from mushrooms to monkeys, and from monkeys into men, amounts to nothing in the right direction, and very much in the wrong." But it is not only with the natural sciences that Mrs. Eddy is displeased. "Human history," she says, "needs to be revised, and the material record expunged."
Having dismissed the history of the race as trivial, the natural sciences as unscientific, the evidence of the senses as a cheat, and matter as non-existent, Mrs. Eddy proceeds to propound her own curious theory of the Universe and man. She has a theory; incomplete, but ingenious.
Mrs. Eddy's Exegesis
Mrs. Eddy says that her theory of the universe is founded, not upon human wisdom, but upon the Bible; and so it is, but she uses both addition and subtraction very liberally to get her Biblical corroboration. The Bible may be interpreted in two ways, Mrs. Eddy says, literally and spiritually, and what she sets out to do is to give us the spiritual interpretation. Her method is simple. She starts with the propositions that all is God and that there is no matter, and then reconstructs the Bible to accommodate these statements. Such portions of the Bible as can be made, by judicious treatment, to corroborate her theory, she takes and "spiritually interprets,"[9] that is, tells us once and for all what the passages really mean; and such portions as cannot possibly be converted into affirmative evidence she rejects as errors of the early copyists. Mrs. Eddy insists that the Bible is the record of truth, but a study of her exegesis shows that only such portions of it as meet with Mrs. Eddy's approval and lend themselves—under very rough handling—to the support of her theory, are accepted as the record of truth; the rest is thrown out as a mass of erroneous transcription. Mrs. Eddy's keen eye at once detects those meaningless passages which have for so long beguiled the world, just as it readily sees in familiar texts an entirely new meaning. She explains the creation of the world from the account in the first chapter of Genesis, but the unknown author of this disputed book would never recognize his narrative when Mrs. Eddy gets through with it.
Mrs. Eddy's Account of the Creation[10]
To begin with, Mrs. Eddy says, there was God, "All and in all, the eternal Principle." This Principle is both masculine and feminine; "Gender is embraced in Spirit, else God could never have shadowed forth from out Himself, the idea of male and female." But, Mrs. Eddy adds, "We have not as much authority for calling God masculine as feminine, the latter being the last, therefore highest idea given of Him."
Mrs. Eddy next sets about the creation. The "waters" out of which God brought the dry land, she says, were "Love"; the dry land itself was "the condensed idea of creation." When God divided the light from the darkness, it means, says Mrs. Eddy, that "Truth and error were distinct from the beginning, and never mingled." But Mrs. Eddy has always insisted on the idea that "error" is a delusion which arose first in the mind of mortal man; what is error doing away back here before man was created, and why was God himself compelled to take measures against it? Certainly the account of the Creation which came from Lynn is even more perplexing than that which is related in the Pentateuch.
With regard to the creation of grass and herbs, Mrs. Eddy eagerly points out that "God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew." And that, she says, proves that "creations of Wisdom are not dependent on laws of matter, but on Intelligence alone." She admits here that the Universe is the "idea of Creative Wisdom," which is getting dangerously near the very old idea that matter is but a manifestation of spirit. Call the universe "matter," and Mrs. Eddy flies into a rage; call it "an idea of God," and she is serenely complaisant. There was certainly never any one so put about and tricked by mere words; on the whole, it may be said that the English language has avenged itself on Mrs. Eddy.
Arriving at the creation of the beasts of the field, Mrs. Eddy says that "The beast and reptile made by Love and Wisdom were neither carnivorous nor poisonous." Ferocious tendencies in animals are entirely the product of man's imagination. Daniel understood this, we are told, and that is why the lions did not hurt him.
When she comes to the creation of man, Mrs. Eddy accepts the first account given in Genesis, but the second, which states that God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, she rejects as untrustworthy. The first account, she says, "was science; the second was metaphorical and mythical, even the supposed utterances of matter; the scripture not being understood by its translators, was misinterpreted."
The Story of Adam
"The history of Adam is allegorical throughout, a description of error and its results," etc. Man was created in God's likeness, free from sin, sickness, and death; but this Adam, who crept in, Mrs. Eddy does not explain how, was the origin of our belief that there is life in matter and was to obstruct our growth in spirituality. Mrs. Eddy says, "Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, a dam, or obstruction." This original method of word-analysis she seems to regard as final evidence concerning Adam. About the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy changes her mind. In the later editions of her book she says it is absurd to believe that God ever put Adam into a hypnotic sleep and performed "a surgical operation" upon him. In the first edition she says it is a mere chance that the human race is not still propagated by the removal of man's ribs. "The belief regarding the origin of mortal man has changed since Adam produced Eve, and the only reason a rib is not the present mode of evolution is because of this change," etc.
Not to be warned by the footprints of time, Mrs. Eddy pauses in her revision of Genesis to wonder "whence came the wife of Cain?" But on the whole she profits by the story of Cain, for here she finds one of those little etymological clews which never escape her penetration. The fact that Adam and all his race were but a dream of mortal mind is proved, she says, by the fact that Cain went "to dwell in the land of Nod, the land of dreams and illusions." Mrs. Eddy offers this seriously, as "scientific" exegesis.
Mrs. Eddy's conclusion about the Creation seems to be that we are all in reality the offspring of the first creation recounted in Genesis, in which man is not named but is simply said to be in the image of God; but we think we are the children of the creation described in the second chapter; of the race that imagined sickness, sin, and death for itself. The tree of knowledge which caused Adam's fall, Mrs. Eddy says, was the belief of life in matter, and she suggests that the forbidden fruit which Eve gave to Adam may have been "a medical work, perhaps."
Mrs. Eddy Denies the Atonement
When she comes to the Atonement, Mrs. Eddy says that Christ did not come to save
mankind from sin, but to show us that sin is a thing imagined by mortal mind, that it is an illusion which can be overcome, like sickness and death. It was by his understanding of the truths of Christian Science that Christ remained sinless, healed the sick, and that he "demonstrated" over death in the sepulcher and rose on the third day. His sacrifice had no more efficacy than that of any other man who dies as a result of his labors to bring a new truth into the world, and we profit by his death only as we realize the nothingness of sickness, sin, and death. "God's wrath, vented on his only son, is without logic or humanity, and but a man-made belief."
The Trinity, as commonly accepted, Mrs. Eddy denies, though she seems to admit a kind of triune nature in God by saying over and over again that he is "Love, Truth, and Life."
The Holy Ghost she defines as Christian Science; "This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science."
Mrs. Eddy's Revision of the Lord's Prayer
In the course of Mrs. Eddy's revision of the Bible, she paused to "spiritually interpret" the Lord's prayer. She has revised the prayer a great many times, and different renderings of it are given in different editions of "Science and Health." The following is taken from the edition of 1902:
"Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, adorable One. Thy kingdom is within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know—as in heaven, so on earth—God is supreme. Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections. And infinite Love is reflected in love. And Love leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth from sin, disease, and death. For God is now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love."
In this interpretation the petitions have been converted into affirmations, and Mrs. Eddy's prayer seems a somewhat dry enumeration of the properties of the Deity rather than a supplication.
This method of "spiritual interpretation" has given Mrs. Eddy the habit of a highly empirical use of English. At the back of her book, "Science and Health," there is a glossary in which a long list of serviceable old English words are said to mean very especial things. The word "bridegroom" means "spiritual understanding"; "death" means "an illusion"; "evening" means "mistiness of mortal thought"; "mother" means God, etc., etc. The seventh commandment, Mrs. Eddy insists, is an injunction against adulterating Christian Science, although she also admits the meaning ordinarily attached to it. In the Journal of November, 1889, there is a long discussion of the ten commandments by the editor, in which he takes up both personal chastity and the Pure Food laws under the command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Mrs. Eddy insists, and doubtless believes, that her "Science" is simply an elaboration, a more advanced explanation, of the teachings of the New Testament. Yet on the subject of repentance, which occupies so important a place in the teachings of Christ, we hear never a word, and upon that consciousness of sin, which is the burden of the Epistles, she is consistently silent. Paul's reiterated explanation of original sin, of the Atonement and Redemption, are ignored. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" is made to read: "As in error all die, so in Truth shall all," etc. Even Paul's "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" is made substantially to mean, Who shall deliver me from the belief that there is sensation in matter? Whatever cannot be "spiritually interpreted" into a confirmation of Mrs. Eddy's theory that sin, sickness, and death are non-existent, she refuses to consider.
Mrs. Eddy's Therapeutics
Mrs. Eddy's theology is, of course, a mere derivative of her system of therapeutics, an attempt to base her peculiar variety of mind-cure upon Biblical authority. In her therapeutics there is nothing new except its extremeness. That the mind is able, in a large degree, to prevent or to cause sickness and even death, all thinking people admit. Mrs. Eddy's fundamental propositions are that death is wholly unnecessary and that the body and the organs of the body have nothing to do with life. A man could live just as well after his lungs had been removed as before, if he but thought he could. "Cold, heat, exercise, study, food, infection, etc., never caused a sick or healthy condition in man." "Scrofula, fever, consumption, rheumatism or small-pox never produced pain or inharmony." "A dislocation of the tarsal joint (ankle-joint) would produce insanity as perceptible as that produced by congestion of the brain, were it not that mortal mind thinks this joint less intimately connected with mind than is the brain."
Sight and hearing do not depend upon the eyes and ears. The nervous system can really cause no suffering. "Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure." "Nerves have no more sensation, apart from what belief bestows
upon them, than the fibre of a plant." What really suffers is mind, or belief; and, if we change that belief, the pain will disappear. "You say a boil is painful," says Mrs. Eddy, "but that is impossible, for matter without mind is not painful. The boil simply manifests your belief in pain, through inflammation and swelling; and you call this belief a boil."
Mrs. Eddy even argues against spanking children because "the use of the rod is virtually a declaration to the child's mind that sensation belongs to matter."[11]
Mrs. Eddy's idea is that our lungs are necessary to us because we think they are, just as we think heavy underwear is necessary in winter. Horses and cows, certainly, do not think much about their lungs, but Mrs. Eddy says that domestic animals are controlled by the beliefs of their human masters, and that we have corrupted the horse and have taught him to have epizoötic and colic. "What," says Mrs. Eddy, "if the lungs are ulcerated? God is more to a man than his lungs." "Have no fears that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed.... Your body would suffer no more from tension or wounds than would the trunk of a tree which you gash, were it not for mortal mind."
All functional and organic diseases are produced by a popular belief in their reality. "No gastric juice accumulates ... apart from the action of mortal thought."
"Inflammation, hemorrhages, tubercles, decompositions are all dream shadows," "Man is the same after, as before, a bone is broken or a head chopped off."
But as to who invented the idea of pain and whence came the superstition that we must have lungs to breathe and that the heart is necessary to life, Mrs. Eddy maintains a discreet silence. Sin, sickness, and death, she says, are beliefs which originated in mortal mind. And how and when did mortal mind originate? Mortal mind does not exist, she answers, therefore it had no origin. This reasoning satisfies her; she believes it perfectly adequate.
It is not only the diseased body which is to be disregarded and put out of mind, but all hygienic precautions. Mrs. Eddy particularly objects to diets, and she says that one food is as good as another. God gave man "dominion not only over the fish in the sea, but over the fish in the stomach also," she once said.
There is no such thing as fatigue: "You would not say that a wheel is fatigued; and yet the body is just as material as the wheel. If it were not for what the human mind says of the body, the body would never be weary, any more than the inanimate wheel."
Mrs. Eddy denies that physical exercise strengthens the muscles. "Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise has produced this result, or that a less-used arm must be weak.... The trip-hammer is not increased in size by exercise. Why not, since muscles are as material as wood and iron?"
Constant bathing, Mrs. Eddy says, received a "useful rebuke from Jesus' precept, 'Take no thought ... for the body,' We must beware of making clean merely the outside of the platter."
A Sensationless Body the Goal of Existence
"A sensationless body," Mrs. Eddy says, is the ultimate hope of Christian Science. Since insensibility to pain is the ultimate good which her system of philosophy offers, it is natural that she should often point us to the lower forms of animal life for our exemplars. "The conditions of life become less imperative in lower organisms, or where there is less mind and belief on this subject." She points out hopefully that certain marine animals multiply their species by self-division. "The less mind there is manifested in matter, the better. When the unthinking lobster loses his claw, it grows again." If we but believed that matter has no sensation, "then the human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw." She points out the fact that flowers produce their seed without pain. "The snowbird sings and soars amid the blasts; he has no catarrh from wet feet."
"Obesity," Mrs. Eddy says, "is an adipose belief of yourself as a substance."
Mrs. Eddy's Physiology
The most discouraging thing about Mrs. Eddy's dissertations upon anatomy and physiology is that she seems to know so little about the physical facts and laws which she despises. She says, for instance, that a father "plunged his infant babe, only a few hours old, into water for several minutes and repeated this operation daily until the child could remain under water for twenty minutes, moving and playing without harm, like a fish." Does Mrs. Eddy actually believe that a child could live under water for twenty minutes? Again: "The supposition that we can correct insanity by the use of purgatives and narcotics is in itself a species of insanity." Where did Mrs. Eddy get the idea that such treatment was ever supposed to cure "insanity"? Mrs. Eddy says the fact that a finger which has been amputated continues to hurt is proof that nerves have nothing
to do with pain, because, she states, "the nerve is gone"!
Mrs. Eddy says that when we burn a finger, not fire but mortal mind causes the injury. To this statement she adds: "Holy inspiration has created states of mind which are able to nullify the action of the flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the Babylonian furnace; while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous combustion." That is, if mortal mind worked hard enough, we could burn our fingers without any fire, or we could produce the fire by willing it.
The action of drugs depends entirely upon the belief of mortal mind. Stimulants, narcotics, poisons, affect the system solely because they are reputed to do so. And yet, with all her ingenuity, Mrs. Eddy has to admit that if a man took arsenic unknowingly it would probably kill him. This, she says, is because of the consensus of opinion that arsenic is deadly. Such would probably be her explanation of the destructive processes which go on in the world without the knowledge of man; fire consumes the forest, the tiger kills the antelope, and the bite of the cobra kills the tiger because the human mind has attributed such tendencies to fire, to the tiger, and to the cobra.
Mrs. Eddy's View of History
All the emanations of mortal mind are evil. Our redemption, Mrs. Eddy says, lies in Divine Mind, of which we are a part. "Spirit imparts the understanding which leads into all Truth.... This understanding is not intellectual, is not aided by scholarly attainments." There is no mistaking Mrs. Eddy's meaning; the thing in us which is capable of cultivation and expansion, that which inquires and investigates and reasons, is mortal mind, and is therefore evil. All the physical sciences are the harmful inventions of mortal mind, and the slow and painful accumulation of exact knowledge has been but the harmful activity of the baser element in human nature. There was never such a discouraging view of human history.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that everything which civilization most cherishes has been the direct result of that spirit of inquiry and of those inductive processes of reasoning which Mrs. Eddy despises. If the morality of the civilized world is higher to-day than it was in the fifth century, it is not because men know any more about moral laws than they did two thousand years ago, but because this same spirit of inquiry has made cleaner living possible and imperative. Mrs. Eddy says that Christian Science would abolish war; but the diminution of war has come about, not through any growth of "Divine Mind" but, as Buckle pointed out, through three triumphs of the experimental tendency of the intellect;—the discovery of gunpowder, the discovery that war was detrimental to trade and to the best economic conditions, and the improvement in methods of transportation. Contemplating the history of civilization from Mrs. Eddy's point of view, we have simply gone on developing this injurious thing, "mortal mind"—applying our intelligence to the study of the physical universe—and have gone on piling up false belief on false belief. It is "matter" that is our great delusion and that stands between us and a full understanding of God; and matter exists, or seems to exist, only because we have invented it and invented laws to govern it and have given properties to its various manifestations. The more we know about the physical universe, the heavier do we make our chains; our progress in the physical sciences does but increase the dose of the drug which enslaves us. And there have been but two breaks in this jumbled dream of "error": the first when Jesus Christ "demonstrated the nothingness of matter," the second when Mrs. Eddy proclaimed its nothingness from Lynn.
With a "sensationless body" for the goal of existence, the savage was certainly much higher in "the scale of being" than the nations of modern Europe, and Mrs. Eddy is perfectly right when she refers us to the amœba and crustacea. Happy, indeed, the lobster who thinks so little about his anatomy that his lost claw is replaced by another!
From all her flights Mrs. Eddy comes back to her starting-point: physical well-being. Not for a single page are we permitted to forget that her religion is primarily a kind of "doctoring"; therapeutics made religion, or religion made therapeutics. She makes the fact that Christ healed the sick the principal feature of his mission, and makes it authority for her assumption that religion and therapeutics are essentially one. Certainly the burden of the New Testament is not that man may avoid suffering, but that he may suffer with noble fortitude.
Lack of Religious Feeling in Mrs. Eddy's Book
But it is before such a word as fortitude that Mrs. Eddy's book takes on its most discouraging aspect. Her foolish logic, her ignorance of the human body, the liberties which she takes with the Bible, and her burlesque exegesis, could easily be overlooked if there were any nobility of feeling to be found in "Science and Health"; any great-hearted pity for suffering, any humility
or self-forgetfulness before the mysteries of life. Mrs. Eddy professes to believe that she has found the Truth, and that all the long centuries behind her have gone out in darkness and wasted effort, yet not one page of her book is tinged with compassion. "Oh that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" If there were one sentence like that in "Science and Health" no one would stop to quarrel with Mrs. Eddy's metaphysics.
But if there is little intelligence displayed in Mrs. Eddy's book, there is even less emotion. It is not exaggeration to say that "Science and Health" is absolutely devoid of religious feeling. God remains for Mrs. Eddy a "principle" indeed, toward which she has no attitude but that of a somewhat patronizing and platitudinous expositor. She discusses sin and death and human suffering as if they were curves or equations.
Malicious Animal Magnetism
In all the editions of Mrs. Eddy's book there is the same shiftiness, the same hardness, and the same astonishing complacency, and the text of the first three editions is disfigured by innumerable ebullitions of spite and hatred. In the first edition the first fifteen pages of the chapter on "Healing the Sick" are given up to an attack upon Richard Kennedy, the young man who was her first practitioner, and of whose personal popularity she was so bitterly jealous. The second edition, a small volume, is largely made up of denunciations of Daniel Spofford. The third edition opens with a preface (signed Asa G. Eddy) attacking Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ground that they were libelous.
Mrs. Eddy's one original elemental contribution to Quimbyism, was her doctrine of Malicious Animal Magnetism; a grewsome superstition born of her own vindictiveness and distrust. Mrs. Eddy's more enlightened followers have for years tried to divert attention from this one of her doctrines, and there are hundreds of Christian Scientists in the field who know and think very little about it. But it has been a very important consideration in the lives of those who have come into personal contact with Mrs. Eddy. Between 1875 and 1888 many of Mrs. Eddy's students left her because in her lectures and conversation she dwelt more upon the malign power of mesmerism than upon the salutary power of truth. In her contributions to the Journal during those years she frequently took up Animal Magnetism; she tells her followers over and over again that she will denounce it, and that she will not be silenced. For several years there was a regular department in the Journal with the caption "Animal Magnetism," but the crimes which were charged to mesmerists were by no means confined to this department. "Also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress," the Journal again and again affirms.
Poverty a False Belief
Mrs. Eddy surmounts economics as easily as she does physics and chemistry and physiology. Poverty is only a form of "error," a false belief. It can be abolished as readily as sin or disease or old age. She advertised the first edition of "Science and Health" as a book that "affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which you can accumulate a fortune." "In the early history of Christian Science," Mrs. Eddy says, "among my thousands of students few were wealthy. Now, Christian Scientists are not indigent; and their comfortable fortunes are acquired by healing mankind morally, physically, and spiritually." Her healers should be well paid, she says. "Christian Science demonstrates that the patient who pays what he is able to pay, is more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equivalent for health." In Mrs. Eddy's book[12] she publishes a long testimonial from a man who relates how Christian Science has helped him in his business.
This view of poverty has been generally accepted among Mrs. Eddy's followers. One contributor to the Journal writes: "We were demonstrating over a lack of means, which we had learned was just as much a claim of error to be overcome with truth as ever sickness or sin was."[13]
Another contributor writes: "The lack of means is a lupine ghost sired by the same spectre as the lack of health, and both must be met and put to flight by the same mighty weapons of our spiritual warfare."[14]
In the files of the Journal there are many reports of the material prosperity of individual Christian Scientists. It is an evidence of "at-oneness" with God to prosper in business just as it is to overcome disease.
In the Journal of September, 1904, a contributor says:
"Is it reasonable to believe, as we have believed, that popular fancy, whims, climate, the state of politics, any or all of a hundred lawless elements, are able to ruin a man's business while he stands by and doesn't know enough even to make an intelligent protest?"
Government, civilization, and even "climate" are demonstrated to be unreal, but the reality and importance of "business" is never questioned, and that each and every Christian Scientist should get on in the world remains a matter of indubitable moment, even to Mrs. Eddy herself.
Mrs. Eddy's Views on Marriage
Among the many incidental ideas which Mrs. Eddy has added to Quimbyism are her theory that the Godhead is more feminine than masculine, and her qualified disapproval of matrimony. Quimby himself had a large family and saw nothing unspiritual in marriage. In defining the real purpose of marriage Mrs. Eddy says nothing about children; "to happify existence by constant intercourse with those adapted to elevate it, is the true purpose of marriage." In her chapter on marriage she says: "The scientific morale of marriage is spiritual unity.... Proportionately as human generation ceases, the unbroken links of eternal harmonious being will be spiritually discerned."
In her chapter called "Wedlock" in Miscellaneous Writings (1897) Mrs. Eddy, after a vague and evasive discussion of the subject, squarely puts the question: "Is marriage nearer right than celibacy? Human knowledge inculcates that it is, while Science indicates that it is not." In the same chapter she further says: "Human nature has bestowed on a wife the right to become a mother; but if the wife esteems not this privilege, by mutual consent, exalted and increased affections, she may win a higher."
Mrs. Eddy apparently believes that Jesus Christ taught us to ignore family relations: "Jesus acknowledged no ties of the flesh. He said: 'Call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your father which is in heaven.' Again he asked: 'Who is my mother, and who are my brethren but they who will do the will of my father?' We have no record of his calling any man by the name of father."
Future of Christian Science
Whoever has watched the amazing growth of the Christian Science sect must feel some curiosity as to its future. Mrs. Eddy's followers are by no means the only people who are trying to meet, by suggestive treatment, nervous diseases and the many functional disorders which result from overwork, worry, and discouragement. The foremost neurologists of all countries are employing more and more this suggestive method which is the essential reality in Christian Science healing. The followers of the "New Thought" school apply this principle in their own way, and the hundreds of unaffiliated "mind curists" and "mental healers" are each applying it in ways more or less honest and legitimate.
In October, 1906, Dr. Elwood Worcester and Dr. Samuel McComb, the rector and the associate rector of the Emmanuel (Episcopal) Church of Boston, organized the Emmanuel Church Health Class, for the treatment of nervous disorders. Believing that, as Professor William James has said, "the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith," the workers at Emmanuel Church have been endeavoring to cure nervous disorders by putting the patient at peace with himself. Every patient is examined by a physician, and if the root of his disorder proves to be nervous (hysteria, alcoholism, a drug habit, insomnia, or any one of the many forms of neurasthenia) he is admitted into the Health Class for psycho-therapeutical treatment. Here he is encouraged to unburden himself of the distress or perplexity which haunts him, and is given the kind of suggestive treatment which seems best adapted to his disorder. Dr. Worcester studied psychology under Wundt, in Germany, and taught it for six years at Lehigh University. Dr. McComb studied psychology at Oxford. The records of the Emmanuel Health Class show that of the 178 cases treated between March, 1907, and November, 1907, the condition of seventy-five patients has been improved, forty-eight have not been helped at all, while in fifty-five cases the result is unknown.[15]
Mrs. Eddy's Opposition to the Mind Cure Movement
Mrs. Eddy and her followers have given a demonstration too great to be overlooked, of the fact that many ills which the sufferer believes entirely physical can be reached and eradicated by "ministering to a mind diseased," by persuading the sick man continually to suggest to himself ideas of health and hope
and happiness and usefulness, instead of brooding upon the emptiness and unanswered needs of his life or upon his failing physical powers. Mrs. Eddy's sect, more than any other one of the cults which believe in and practise this method of bettering the patient's physical condition through his mind, has forced the most hide-bound medical practitioners to take account of this old but newly applied force in therapeutics.
But what is Mrs. Eddy's own attitude toward the general awakening to the value of psycho-therapeutics in the treatment of human diseases? She declares that every kind of mind cure and suggestive treatment except her own is dangerous and harmful. As one of Mrs. Eddy's students wrote in the Christian Science Journal, September, 1901, "The loyal Christian Scientist knows that neither he nor his patient should read or study the books of any other author than those of our beloved Leader in order to learn the Science of the Christ truth, which she is teaching and demonstrating to this age."
Mrs. Eddy's own editorials in the Journal are never so bitter as when she is attacking the mental healers who do not practise her own copyrighted variety of mind cure. Recently the Christian Science Sentinel of January 18, 1908, stated that Mrs. Eddy cannot countenance the work done at the Emmanuel Church. Mr. Archibald McClellan, the editor of that publication, published an article entitled "No Christian Psychology." He says: "Christian Psychology is equivalent to Christian phrenology, physiology and mythology, whereas Jesus predicted and demonstrated Christian healing on the basis of Spirit, God. He never complicated Spirit with matter, etc.... Her teachings (Mrs. Eddy's) show further that she cannot consistently endorse as Christianity the two distinctly contradictory statements and points of view contained in the term 'Christian psychology'—otherwise Christian materialism."
Mrs. Eddy holds that any system of healing which at all takes account of, or admits physical structure, is not Christian.
Mrs. Eddy's endeavor has been to convert a universal principle into a personal property. And she has gone a wonderfully long way toward doing it. Thousands of people believe that they owe their health and happiness to a healing principle which was revealed by God to Mrs. Eddy and by Mrs. Eddy to mankind; that since the ministry of Jesus Christ upon earth no one of the human race has understood this principle except Mrs. Eddy, and that she is the only human being now alive who fully understands it; that when she dies her works alone will stand between the world and darkness.
But all the while that Mrs. Eddy was energetically copyrighting, and pruning, and expelling, and disciplining, that other stream which came from Quimby, through Dr. Evans and through Julius Dresser and his wife, was slowly and quietly doing its work.[16] Mind Cure and New Thought grew up side by side with Christian Science. As organizations they were not nearly so effective, and their ranks, like Mrs. Eddy's, were often darkened by the adventuress and the battered soldier of fortune. But the Mental healers and the New Thought healers treated the sick on exactly the same principle which Mrs. Eddy's successful healers employed.
As to the future of Mrs. Eddy's church, her own attitude toward every attempt to investigate and to apply liberally the principle of mental healing, seems to determine that. It has been possible for her, during her own lifetime, absolutely to prohibit preaching, thinking, independent writing,—investigation or inquiry of any sort—in her churches. But after her death, when that compelling hand is withdrawn, either the church must renew itself from among the ignorant and superstitious, as Mormonism has done, or it must permit its members to use their minds. Those who use their minds will discover that Christian Science is only one method of applying a general truth, and that it is a method which is hampered by a great deal that is illogical and absurd; that if Christian Science, as Mrs. Eddy has promulgated it, were universally believed and practised, it would be the revolt of a species against its own physical structure; against its relation to its natural physical environment, against the needs of its own physical organism, against the perpetuation of its kind. The moment a Christian Scientist realizes that the helpful and hopeful principle of his religion can operate quite independently of all the inconsequential theories which Mrs. Eddy has attached to it, that moment he is, of course, lost to Mrs. Eddy. Mrs. Eddy's church organization stands as a sort of dyke between the general principle of mind cure
and Mrs. Eddy's very empirical, violent, and temperamental interpretation of that principle. It is the future of psycho-therapeutics that will determine the future of Christian Science. If "Mind Cure," "Christian Psychology," and regular physicians offer the benefits of suggestive treatment in a more rational and direct way than does Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy's church will find in them very formidable competition. On the other hand, if Christian Scientists throw down their barriers and join the general mind-cure movement, and the two branches of Quimbyism meet, then half of Mrs. Eddy's life-work is lost. The labor of her days has been to keep these two streams apart; to prove one the true and the other the false. Her efforts to stem the progress of all other schools of mental healing have been secondary only to her efforts to advance her own. Yet, unconsciously and against her own wish, she has been the most effective instrument in promoting the interest of the whole movement.
On the theoretical side, Mrs. Eddy's contribution to mental healing has been, in the main, fallacious, pseudodoxal, and absurd, but upon the practical side she has been wonderfully efficient. New movements are usually launched and old ideas are revivified, not through the efforts of a group of people, but through one person. These dynamic personalities have not always conformed to our highest ideals; their effectiveness has not always been associated with a large intelligence or with nobility of character. Not infrequently it has been true of them—as it seems to be true of Mrs. Eddy—that their power was generated in the ferment of an inharmonious and violent nature. But, for practical purposes, it is only fair to measure them by their actual accomplishment and by the machinery they have set in motion.