Again, she says: “Saint John writes in the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelation: ‘And I saw another mighty angel come down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was, as it were, the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book, open, and he set his right foot upon the earth.’ Is this angel, or message from God, Divine Science that comes in a cloud? This angel had in his hand a little book open for all to read and understand. Then will a voice from harmony cry, Go and take the little book. Take up Divine Science. Study it, ponder it. It will be indeed sweet at its first taste when it heals you, but murmur not over Truth if you find its digestion bitter.”
The “little book,” “Science and Health,” of God’s authorship, but copyrighted by Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and to be had of her publisher in Boston by any one who has three dollars or more, according to binding, to pay for it!
Intentionally vague as are these oracular utterances, we cannot but catch her evident meaning: In me behold the woman clothed with the sun; in my book, the “little book” sent down from Heaven, and in Christian Science the message from God contained in the little book held in the hand of the angel!
Christian Scientists get this down without so much as a murmur! This is one of the easy things she has given them to swallow.
Besides this, Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf that she herself is the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus, that her mission is to complete the religion of Christ.
In the earlier days she placed her mission above that of Jesus, inasmuch as the idea of God given by her was, she said, “higher, clearer and more permanent than before.” But, later, she seems to have been satisfied with equality only, and says, “The second appearing of Jesus is unquestionably the second advent of the advancing idea of God as in Christian Science.”
She, however, patronizingly points out the short-comings of Jesus. “Our Master healed the sick, practiced Christian healing, and taught the generalities of this divine principle to his students, but he left no definite word for demonstrating his principle of healing and preventing disease. This remained to be discovered through Christian Science,” and “Had wisdom characterized all his sayings, he would not have prophesied his own death and thereby hastened or caused it.” While in speaking of herself she said, “The works I have written on Christian Science contain absolute truth and my necessity was to tell it. I was a scribe under orders, and who can refrain from transcribing what God indites?” So wisdom did not characterize all of the sayings of Jesus; but Mrs. Eddy speaks absolute truth!
In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her property and published by her, and upwards of twenty years after the time she says God had selected her to complete the religion of Jesus, it was claimed for her, and with her sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to establish the claim. “Now a word about the horror many good people have of our making the author of ‘Science and Health’ equal with Jesus!” says the writer, and in the first paragraph of the article, the question is asked, “Do we, then, say that the author of ‘Science and Health’ is equal with Jesus?” A little further on appears the statement, “Jesus demonstrated over all the beliefs of this false sense of life, even over the belief of death, the last enemy to be overcome.” And further, “Mrs. M. B. G. Eddy has worked out for us, as on a blackboard, every point in the demonstrations, or so-called miracles of Jesus, showing us how to meet and overcome the one, and perform the other” and, throughout the article, its whole clearly apparent purpose is to carry the conviction that in attributes and power Mrs. Eddy is the entire equal of Jesus.
In an illustrated “poem” entitled “Christ and Christmas,” written by Mrs. Eddy, and published and copyrighted by her in 1894, there is a picture labeled “Christian Unity,” in which Jesus is represented as seated upon a stone holding the right hand of Mary—Mary Baker G. Eddy. In the left hand of the woman is a scroll bearing the legend “Christian Science,” and about the head of each figure, that of Jesus and that of the Christian Science woman, there is a halo. The picture is illustrative of these lines on the opposite page:
“As in blessed Palestine’s hour, so in our age