’Tis the same hand unfolds His Power and writes the page.”
At the time this book was announced by Mrs. Eddy, in December, 1893, she publicly said of it, “‘Christ and Christmas’ voices God through song and object lesson.” The price of the book was three dollars. How convenient to be able to command a market by voicing God! How kind God has been to Mrs. Eddy’s business ventures!
At the time of this publication, Mrs. Eddy, who claimed to have shared in making the illustrations (which her man Hanna called “exquisite bits of art,” but which are, doubtless, the vulgarest products of the art of book-making of many years), at this time, I say, Mrs. Eddy unquestionably wished this “Christian Unity” illustration to signify the unity of Christianity and Christian Science, as represented by the founder of Christianity and the founder of Christian Science, and about her own head, as about the head of Christ, she hangs a halo! The two Messiahs, masculine and feminine, and representing “Our Father and our Mother God,” hand in hand, absolute equality. Christian Unity!
Her private correspondence has been full of pretensions to direct meditation with God, and her followers have been induced unquestioningly to comply with her wishes regarding the most trivial things because she but voiced a wish communicated to them through her by God.
“God, our God has just told me,” she says, “who to recommend to you for editor of the Christian Science Journal,” And, “No man or woman has told me of this obnoxious feature, but my Father has, and it shall be stopped by His servant who has given His word to the world.” And, “God’s law ‘to feed my sheep,’ to give Science and Health at once to those hungering for it, must be obeyed.” (To those hungering three dollars worth!) And, “I ought not to have consulted with man on the copyright of God’s Book.” And, “Come to see me next Saturday, a.m., on nine o’clock train, and God will settle this matter.” And, “Now what can I do, only to spread His word of warning and wait for all students to grow up to understand His ways, and mine when God directed.” And, “God will not let me be silent relative to your business here yesterday, but demands me to answer, reminding you of your feelings toward me.” And, “Push the Book to as fast as possible completion. It is God’s Book, and he says give it at once to the people.” (At three dollars per copy!) And, “You know they cannot be made sick for printing and binding God’s Book.”
But Jove nods; Mrs. Eddy stumbles. Sometimes it is the Christian Science devil that, impersonating God, whispers to her. “I regret,” she says, “having named the one I did to you for editor. It was a mistake, he is not fit. It was not God evidently that suggested that thought, but the person who suggests many things mentally; but I have before been able to discriminate.” This incident suggests the importance of one, who is the channel of wireless telegraphy from God, being able to discriminate between messages from Heaven and messages from Hell, and having the power to prevent satanic interference with the medium of communication.
In a late edition of “Science and Health” Mrs. Eddy speaks of Jesus as “the masculine representative of the spiritual idea,” and says, “the impersonation of the spiritual idea had a brief history in the earthly life of our Master, but of His Kingdom there shall be no end, for Christ’s, God’s idea, will eventually rule all nations and people, imperatively, absolutely, finally,—with Divine Science. This immaculate idea, represented first by man and last by woman, will baptize with fire,” etc.
By “Divine Science,” Mrs. Eddy, of course, means Christian Science, as the terms are used interchangably with her, and with characteristic modesty she places herself by the side of the Master—He being the first and masculine, and she the last and feminine, representative of the “immaculate idea.”
What marvelous presumption! What ineffable audacity!
The Mary Baker G. Eddy, who in speaking of a woman she disliked savagely exclaimed, “I’d like to tear her heart out and trample it under my feet!” who, at Lynn, because of her abuse of her husband and violent outbursts of temper, was known as the “she devil”; who, four years after the time of her pretended selection by God for a divine mission, being denied hospitality she had abused in the Wentworth household at Stoughton, left in a fury of passion after having, with obvious intent, put live coals from her stove upon a heap of newspapers in the closet; who figured first as a spiritualist medium, giving public séances for money, and later as the president of a bogus medical college issuing illegal degrees; who unfeelingly abandoned the only child born to her, and looked with unflinching eyes upon the detached heart of her deceased husband; who has become the champion fraud and impostor of the age; who in the livery of heaven has for forty years wrought in the direct interest of hell,—this Mrs. Eddy, the self-constituted representative with Jesus of the immaculate idea! this woman and the immaculate Jesus mentioned in the same breath!