The most impressive and conspicuous incident in Christian Science history was the dedication in June, 1906, of the “Mother Church” in Boston, a beautiful building that cost upwards of two million dollars. In order to get her views regarding marriage before the faithful, in the most impressive manner, Mrs. Eddy incorporated them in her message which was read at the church dedication ceremonies. She took the bit in her teeth, as it were, and notwithstanding efforts to dissuade her or induce her to modify her statement, insisted upon getting her views before her following in their most extreme and obnoxious form, characterizing marriage as “synonymous with legalized lust.”
It has been denied by Mrs. Eddy’s press agents that she gave utterance to this opinion of marriage; but it will be found in her dedication message as published in the Christian Science Sentinel for June 16, 1906, and the Christian
Science Journal for July, 1906.
To one not insane or degenerate, to all noble souls, marriage is the sweetest and purest relationship imaginable and fatherhood and motherhood are nothing less than divine; but this three-or-four-times-married woman gives us to understand that, so far as she knows it, marriage is “legalized lust.” I should think a so much married woman would deliberate a long time before she would give public utterance to such a view of the marriage relation. Far be it from me to dispute her own experience. Her whole teaching regarding the institution shows that it is impossible for her to conceive of what marriage means to a noble man and a noble woman who have found unity in its sacred bond; and when she applies that vile epithet to society’s fundamental institution, I tell her, though she pretend to voice God Himself, that she lies and the truth is not in her. How is it possible for a husband who loves and respects his wife, or a wife who loves and respects her husband, or parents who adore their children, to have anything but contempt for this woman and her odious teachings?
If Mrs. Eddy’s God were, in fact, the true God, and if Christian Science were a revelation from Him, and if all the miracles they pretend to have performed had been performed, I should still not bow down to their God nor worship him; I should not prostrate myself at their shrines nor have fellowship with them, so long as the attempt is made to place the stigma of impurity upon the purest of all pure things in the world to me, my child.
Yes, this is the twentieth century. No, we are not living in the year 500 nor yet in the year 1000. The ideas and doctrines, the beliefs and practices of Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science belong to the darkest period of the dark ages, but they are very real and very potent things in the lives of many thousands of people upon whom the light of the world’s highest civilization shines.
Christian Science Witchcraft
Let us now pass to consideration of another phase of Mrs. Eddy’s influence, more astounding, perhaps, than any we have considered, and more discreditable, if possible, to the age in which we live. I refer to the belief in what I have called the new-old witchcraft; that is to say, to the belief, taught by Mrs. Eddy as inspired truth, and accepted by her followers as revealed of God, that a maliciously disposed person has the power, by absent treatment, through his or her mind to cause any form of sickness, the most horrible of deaths, and complete domestic, social or business disaster to others. I shall quote somewhat liberally from Mrs. Eddy’s own statements in this regard, in order that there may be no question that I represent her correctly, and of these statements I invite thoughtful consideration.
In her first edition of “Science and Health,” published in 1875, Mrs. Eddy said, on page 123: