About eleven o’clock Mr. Irving C. Tomlinson, the Christian Science healer, arrived and at once took controlling charge of Miss Tomlinson—saying that he understood the case and knew what to do. Mr. Vincent Tomlinson left the rooms and took a room down the corridor which his brother had engaged. The nurse was not allowed to stay in the room with Miss Tomlinson but was placed out in the corridor, while Mr. Irving Tomlinson took off his shoes and coat and laid down in a connecting room. About one o’clock in the morning there was the sound of a window being raised in Miss Tomlinson’s room and the nurse entered quickly from the corridor as Irving came in from his room. They found she had opened the window, and she said to Irving, when he remonstrated, that she wanted to look out. They induced her to go back to bed and Irving then locked on the inside the door from her room into the corridor and took out the key and kept it. Miss Telfair went into the corridor again and Irving went into his own room. About three a.m., Miss Telfair heard the door connecting with Irving’s room shut and locked by Miss Tomlinson. Again she heard the window opened, but, having been locked out, could not get to Miss Tomlinson. She called for the porter and they finally got into Miss Tomlinson’s room by breaking down the door connecting it with Irving’s. They found the window wide open and the room empty. Miss Tomlinson had thrown herself down four stories to the street. She was brought back to her room, but never spoke, and died about five a.m.
She had worshiped Mrs. Eddy. She had been one of the most devoted of her disciples, and when she came to a realization of the infamies being practised in the name of Christ, life lost every ray of light and every particle of charm, and she dashed herself to death upon the stones of the streets of Boston.
Small matter for wonder that, when the bruised and mangled body had been carried to the chamber Miss Tomlinson had occupied, the Universalist minister, standing by his dead sister, should solemnly say to his brother, the renegade Universalist minister, the Christian Science healer, “Irving, the blood of our sister is upon the skirts of Mrs. Eddy!”
The story is now completely told. Of those who have followed me to the end, I ask, was it incumbent upon me, knowing the facts as I know them and as I have here presented them, to crowd them down into my soul and by suppressing them become a party to Mrs. Eddy’s monstrous imposition? Just because the author of all of this fraud, falsehood, hypocrisy, blasphemy and attempted crime is a woman, now an aged woman, should I therefore stand silently by and permit her longer to masquerade before mankind as like unto the pure and holy Jesus? I think not. That has not seemed to me to be my duty in the matter. I have done my duty as I have seen it, and I will stand by the position taken and the facts affirmed.
Is it possible for any decent person, man or woman, to peruse this book and then acknowledge himself or herself a disciple of Mary Baker G. Eddy? Is it conceivable that any sane man or woman, with full knowledge of the facts of her life, can honestly profess belief in her disgusting imposture? Can any one who feels, as I do, that Jesus is the common glory of all who bear a human heart, without resentment and without anger witness the endeavor of this vulgar creature to place herself by His side? Can any devout Christian have any other feeling than one of abhorrence for the blasphemous woman and the bunco game she dares to say is “authorized by Christ”?
If I have made good, if I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish, I ask every man and every woman who reads this book to lose no opportunity to show this hateful thing, miscalled Christian Science, in its true light to those with whom they come in contact. Let it have no quarter. Hit it every time you have a chance and hit it as hard as you can. It is not entitled to respectful treatment. Nothing is more impossible than to love Jesus, even a little, and to have the slightest, the very slightest, tolerance for Mrs. Eddy and her frauds.
A Christian Science speaker recently, in a suburb of Boston, in concluding an address exhorted her hearers to “follow Mrs. Eddy, as Mrs. Eddy follows the Saviour.” Not follow the Saviour, but follow Mrs. Eddy in Mrs. Eddy’s way of following the Saviour.
As Mrs. Eddy follows the Saviour.
By faking a revelation from God? By stealing the ideas of another and ascribing them to God’s voice in her private ear? By putting on the cloak of religion in order to pick the pockets of those whose hands are clasped in prayer? By copyrighting a “religion,” and suing those who infringe her copyright? By fixing, under the pretended guidance of God, upon the extortionate sum of three hundred dollars for twelve lessons in “the divine power that heals”? By invoking the aid of the courts to compel poor creatures to pay her, at the rate of twenty-five dollars per hour, for telling them of God, and His Christ? By organizing a church in which membership is made dependent upon activity in the sale of her puerile and profitable wares? By denouncing as vile debauchery the sweetest and purest and noblest relation of men and women? By declaring the children, in whom our souls delight, to be the offspring of “legalized lust”? By refusing to put forth her professed Godlike power to soothe any pain, even that of the sister she loved, to save any life, even that of her own grandchild? By constituting herself the veritable autocrat of the Bedlamites and reigning with despotic sway over the multitudes of her self-abased dupes? By never telling the truth, unless there was money in it, and never hesitating at a lie that would add one simple soul to the number of her victims or one soiled dollar to her bulging exchequer? By living a life of unvarying deception and uncleanness, and professing, with eyes rolled heavenward, to be “as pure as the angels”? By seeking, with Satanic zeal and hatred, the destruction of her fancied enemies, through the attempted mental infliction of disease and suffering and death?
As Mrs. Eddy follows the Saviour?