Referring to this charge of three hundred dollars for twelve lessons, Mrs. Eddy, in her book, “Retrospection and Introspection,” has perpetrated one the funniest passages to be found in all literature:
“When God impelled me to set a price on Christian Science mind healing,” she says, “I could think of no financial equivalent for the impartation of a knowledge of that divine power which heals; but I was led to name three hundred dollars as the price for each pupil in one course of lessons at my college; a startling sum for tuition lasting barely three weeks. This amount greatly troubled me. I shrank from asking it, but was finally led by a strange Providence to accept this fee. God has since shown me in multitudinous ways the wisdom of this decision.”
The idea of setting a price on Christian Science mind healing never occurred to Mrs. Eddy until God called it to her attention and impelled her to it. Unaided, it was impossible for her to have thought of or wished to establish a financial equivalent for the impartation of a knowledge of that “divine power which heals,” but, led by Divine Providence, she finally consented to name three hundred dollars as the price. God, from his seat at the center of the universe, turning His attention from the laws that hold the spheres in their orbits, leaning earthward, whispered in the attentive woman’s ear, “Mary, a price should be charged for my word. It is a private snap, all your own, and three hundred dollars is about the proper figure.”
So troubled was this diffident person by the divine command, that she positively shrank, retreated before it with her hands clasped tight behind her. How persistent must the Almighty have been to have overcome such hesitancy! How He must have labored to convince the woman that His revelation was expressly designed for her pecuniary profit. But God triumphed and Mrs. Eddy yielded, and subsequently in multitudinous ways Providence demonstrated to her the wisdom of her decision—multitudinous ways—and multitudinous dollars.
So shrinkingly did Mrs. Eddy prevail upon herself, finally, to accept this God-ordained financial equivalent for “impartation of the divine power that heals” to those who could afford to pay in advance for it at the rate of twenty-five dollars per hour, that a large imagination may possibly conceive of the struggle with herself necessary to enable her to bring suit in the courts to recover from those she had been foolish enough to trust, notwithstanding her noble resolution to carry on a strictly cash business; and surely it will be quite impossible for any one, however gifted with imaginative faculty, to realize what the poor creature must have suffered to overcome the “shrinking” that possessed her modest soul so far as to enable her to increase her charge by almost a hundred per cent, as she did in a couple of years.
If we may judge by results, it must be admitted that the wisdom, the commercial wisdom, of her decision, whether shown by God or not, was quite clearly demonstrated, as Mrs. Eddy says that “during seven years some four thousand students were taught by me (her) in this college.” Four thousand students, at three hundred dollars per student, for a “college” course of twelve lessons! Four thousand times three hundred equals one million two hundred thousand, and one million two hundred thousand dollars may be said to be fairly reasonable compensation for instruction, even in Christian Science, covering a period of seven years, especially as it was all in the family. A family of three, even three adults, as frugal and thrifty as these, could comfortably provide themselves with the necessaries of life upon an income of one hundred and seventy thousand dollars a year.
Mrs. Eddy has put herself to some trouble to show that she got the full three hundred dollars from every one of the four thousand students. I don’t think she did, but I have no doubt she tried to. However, she says she did, in these words:
“I wrote ‘Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,’ taught students for a tuition of $300 each and seldom taught without having charity scholars, sometimes a dozen or upwards in one class. Afterwards, with touching tenderness, those very students sent me the full tuition money. However, I returned this money with love; but it was again mailed to me in letters begging me to accept it, saying, ‘Your teachings are worth much more to me than money can be.’”
God had decided that three hundred dollars was a financial equivalent for the teaching; but the grateful students deemed its value beyond financial computation. Presumably the payment of the large tuition was, in itself, a means of grace and power, just as those who have paid the healers’ bills most promptly have recovered most speedily.
According to its founder, “Christian Science demonstrates that the patient who pays whatever he is able to pay for being healed is more apt to recover than he who withholds the slight equivalent for health.” Pay well, extremely well, for teaching if you aim to become a great healer; and impress upon your patients the pronounced curative properties of prompt and liberal payment of their bills for treatment!