The Religio-Medical Masquerade: A Complete Exposure of Christian Science

by Frederick William Peabody

My first encounter with Christian Science came about through an employment by the Arena Company, publishers of the Arena magazine, in 1899. In the May number of the magazine for that year an article by Mrs. Josephine C. Woodbury, that was in the nature of an exposé of Christian Science, was published, and instead of bringing suit against Mrs. Woodbury or the magazine for the statements contained in the article, an endeavor was made, in Mrs. Eddy’s interest, to suppress the magazine by a suit in equity to restrain its publication based upon the incorporation in the article of a photograph of Mrs. Eddy said to have been copyrighted. The Arena Company retained me to represent its interests in the litigation, and during that employment I was brought in contact with the author of the article, and from her got my first inkling of the real character of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and her religio-medical-commercial system.

Mrs. Woodbury had been a Christian Scientist for many years, during a long portion of which time she enjoyed Mrs. Eddy’s confidence as one of her leading lieutenants. She had accumulated many letters from Mrs. Eddy, and all her published utterances, whether in book or pamphlet form, from the beginning of the movement down to that time. Mrs. Woodbury was a woman of forceful, dominating personality, of much greater culture than Mrs. Eddy and the rank and file of her following, and in course of time she attracted to herself a personal popularity and influence that so threatened Mrs. Eddy’s, that it became important, if her ascendency was to be maintained unimpaired, that Mrs. Woodbury be cast into outer darkness and her influence wholly destroyed. Occasion was readily found for this and, in due time, without warning, without a notice of the charges made against her, and without an opportunity to be heard, Mrs. Woodbury was excommunicated from the Boston Christian Science Church and cut off from fellowship with the faithful. This placed her in a position where rational reflection was forced upon her, and she speedily came to the necessary conclusion that she had been duped.

Arriving at this conclusion, with a courage much to be admired Mrs. Woodbury wrote and published in the Arena magazine the article to which I have referred, and in unmeasured terms laid open the sinister and sordid quality of the whole movement, and exposed the consummate selfishness and greed in the heart of its “founder.” The article went forth in the Arena, and Christian-Sciencedom was up in arms. Mr. Septimus J. Hanna, then editor of the Christian Science Journal, Mrs. Eddy’s organ, hastened to Concord, New Hampshire, to confer with Mrs. Eddy regarding ways and means of meeting it, and the method of squaring the account with Mrs. Woodbury was considered and determined.

Let it be remembered that the article in the Arena was published in the May, 1899, number. Almost immediately after the appearance of the article, Mrs. Woodbury’s husband, to whom she had been much devoted, died and pæans of rejoicing went up from the Christian Scientists that the Judge of all the world had thus righteously punished one who had dared to assail the sanctified personality of “God’s voice to this age.”

Mrs. Eddy’s personal opportunity came in the month of June, 1899, when, in her annual message to the “Mother Church” in Boston, she undertook to dispose once and for all of Mrs. Woodbury. In language, seldom or never before equaled for cruelty and brutality, Mrs. Eddy assailed Mrs. Woodbury. Pretending, herself, to be the woman “clothed with the sun,” spoken of in the Book of Revelation, Mrs. Eddy denounced Mrs. Woodbury as the Babylonish woman there referred to. She said:

“The doom of the Babylonish woman referred to in Revelation is being fulfilled. This woman, drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, drunk of the wine of her fornication, would enter even the church and retaining the heart of the harlot and the purpose of the destroying angel … poison such as drink of the living water.” And further: “And a voice was heard saying, come out of her my people and hearken not to her lies that ye receive not her plagues, for her sins have reached unto Heaven and God hath remembered her iniquities. Double unto her double, according to her work: in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double. For she saith in her heart I am no widow.… Therefore shall her plague come in one day, death, mourning and famine: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. That which the revelator saw in spiritual vision will be accomplished. The Babylonish woman is fallen: and who shall mourn over the widowhood of lust, of her that hath become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and the cage of every unclean bird.”

I make no defense of Mrs. Woodbury’s absurdities when she was a Christian Scientist. She went the limit. Nothing could have exceeded her confidence in Mrs. Eddy’s teachings and her zeal for the cause; but I am absolutely certain that there was nothing in Mrs. Woodbury’s life in the slightest degree justifying the reflections upon her chastity, and Mrs. Eddy’s attack was utterly baseless and wanton and purely vengeful.

Immediately upon publication of this message and its public reading in the “Mother Church” in Boston, all Christian Scientists recognized the person thus assailed. Either from native shrewdness, or by advice of friends or perhaps of lawyers, Mrs. Eddy had abstained from using Mrs. Woodbury’s name in the message; but no Christian Scientists anywhere had any doubt that Mrs. Woodbury was the subject of Mrs. Eddy’s attack and, on every hand, Christian Scientists openly expressed their gratification that Mrs. Woodbury had thus been finally suppressed. The next day after the publication, I asked a Christian Scientist with whom I was intimately acquainted, whom Mrs. Eddy referred to in the passage quoted from her message. The unhesitating response was, “Why, that vile Mrs. Woodbury, of course.”

The acquaintance, begun with Mrs. Woodbury through my employment by the Arena Company, developed into the relationship of attorney and client after the publication of Mrs. Eddy’s message; and it was determined to bring suit against Mrs. Eddy for this attack and against other Christian Science officials responsible for its publication. Before beginning, I advised Mrs. Woodbury that, as she was not named in the article, her identity at the trial could only be established by persons who understood her to be referred to, and I asked her if she believed that prominent Christian Scientists, who had openly avowed such an understanding, could be relied upon to tell the truth upon the witness stand. She assured me of her confident belief that they could and that none of them would go upon the witness stand and deliberately commit perjury; but at the time of the trial, having called as witnesses only those close to Mrs. Eddy who had made avowal of their understanding that Mrs. Woodbury was the subject of Mrs. Eddy’s attack, none of them admitted that, at the time of the publication, they had any such understanding. As the language was wholly unintelligible to any one but Christian Scientists, the suit necessarily failed; but it would not have failed if, at that time, I had had the familiarity I now have with Mrs. Eddy’s private correspondence; for I should have been able to introduce in evidence letters of hers clearly showing that Mrs. Woodbury was the Babylonish woman of her message.

In the course of the preparation for the trial of this case, all of Mrs. Woodbury’s letters from Mrs. Eddy and all of Mrs. Eddy’s published utterances from the beginning down to that time, including every edition of her book, “Science and Health,” and every number of the Christian Science Journal, were turned over to me by my client and studied with most thorough and painstaking care. Then it was I learned that Christian Science was a deliberate fraud foisted upon mankind by Mrs. Eddy in the name of religion for the mere purpose of extorting money from credulous people. Since that time I have been intensely interested in following the matter up and adding to my store of facts, until now I am confident that no man can read this book, no man and no woman who has not parted with every scrap of sanity and who retains elemental decency in his or her heart, and not be in entire accord with my conclusions.