In the summer of 1902, there died in the city of Boston, after seven years of illness, Mrs. Mary Ann Baker, the widow of Mrs. Eddy’s deceased brother, Samuel Baker. The relations between the sisters-in-law had, for years, been most cordial, and I have seen and read Mrs. Eddy’s autograph letters in which she professed, only a few days before her sister’s death, the greatest affection for her.
Mrs. Baker’s disease, of which Mrs. Eddy from the beginning to the end was fully informed, was cancer of the breast, and her suffering during the seven years of illness from that awful disease may be better imagined than described.
At Mrs. Eddy’s request, Mrs. Baker had submitted to Christian Science “treatment,” the healer selected by Mrs. Eddy being Mrs. Janette E. Weller, a close friend of Mrs. Eddy and her confidential representative in Boston; but Mrs. Baker derived no benefit from it whatever, and died in the care of Dr. H. S. Dearing of Boston.
From one end of the country to the other I have asked Christian Scientists this question:
If Mrs. Eddy, for hire, had healed, at one sitting, a cancer that had so eaten into the neck of a stranger that the jugular vein stood out like a cord, why, I ask, why in the name of God, did she not, for her love’s sake, stay the progress of the loathsome disease that for seven years ate into the breast of the sister she loved? Until Mrs. Eddy or one of her professed disciples has answered that question, let her not look for followers amongst people who know of this incident and have hearts; for she hadn’t the power or she hadn’t the wish to save her sister, and the want of power would prove the baseness of her falsehoods, as the want of a wish would prove the adamantine quality of her heart.
If Mrs. Eddy possessed this miraculous power, why did she permit her third husband to die of heart disease by her side, when one treatment of hers would have saved him? Why did she not reach out her all-powerful hand and save her own granddaughter, the child of her only son, when piteous appeal to her was made by the child’s father? Why, instead of putting forth the slightest personal effort, did she recommend the employment of a Boston healer, so called, a retired sea captain, one Joseph Eastaman by name, to give absent treatment in Boston to the poor girl dying in South Dakota? Imagine a retired sea captain sitting in his office in Boston, closing his eyes, placing his aged hand upon his vacant forehead and trying to think health and life into Mrs. Eddy’s granddaughter nearly two thousand miles away! If Mrs. Eddy could have saved her own flesh and blood and did not, what must have been the condition of that thing Mrs. Eddy calls her heart? Who that has human feeling in his heart would not give his life for his child or his grandchild? and this woman, posing as the successor to and as like unto Him who said, “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven,” and claiming to have performed miracles equal to any ascribed to Him in the Gospels, did absolutely nothing to save the life of her granddaughter!
If Mrs. Eddy had been the miracle worker she claims to have been, why did she turn poor, devoted Mrs. Leonard, herself a renowned healer of the cult, who had slaved in her household for years, and had for months and years been dying of diabetes under her very eyes—why did Mrs. Eddy turn Mrs. Leonard out of the house at Concord, New Hampshire, shortly before her death of that distressing disease? Was it because Mrs. Eddy didn’t wish the striking discredit of her professed powers that would follow Mrs. Leonard’s death upon the Eddy premises? Having the power to save her life, as she claims, all Mrs. Eddy did for Mrs. Leonard was to ask her, when death became imminent, to be so good as to go away and die elsewhere.
Mrs. Eddy estimates values in terms of dollars and cents, and yet, possessing the mastery over death, she put forth no effort to save the life of Joseph Armstrong, her close friend of many years, a director in her church from its foundation, her personal business manager who had made a fortune for her, and yet departed this life of pleurisy with effusion in the summer or fall of 1907. If Mrs. Eddy could save any human life, she would have saved this one, so pecuniarily precious above all other lives to her.
If she had such marvelous power, why did she allow her personal coachman, the man who had sat on the seat of her carriage as she took her daily drive, to die in her house of a disease of which he had been “completely cured” by Christian Science? Why did she let her close, personal friend, her leading lecturer and proselyter, Edward E. Kimball, die in the prime of life and at the height of his usefulness to her cause? Why has she turned a deaf ear to the prayers that have been addressed to her by broken-hearted parents who have so often journeyed to her home to beg her to exert her God-like power to save from the grave their dying child? Why has she for thirty years and more refused to even try to heal any one, to attempt to allay any pain however fearful, or save any human life however beautiful and however precious?
If Mary Baker G. Eddy has the power she boldly claims to have, and if she has wrought the miracles she says she has wrought, she has that power, then, I say, she has the heart of a very fiend; for not once in thirty years has she consented to try, out of ordinary humanity, to prevent suffering or to save life.