“Have I given you the impression that I was combating Xn Science? or that I am caring how the Xn Scientists ‘hail’ my articles? Relieve yourself of those errors. I wrote the articles to please MYSELF; and it had not occurred to me to care what the ‘Scientists’ might think of them. I am not combating Xn Science—I haven’t a thing in the world against it. Making fun of that shameless old swindler, Mother Eddy, is the only thing about it I take any interest in. At bottom I suppose I take a private delight in seeing the human race making an ass of itself again—which it has always done whenever it had a chance. That’s its affair—it has the right—and it will sweat blood for it a century hence, and for many centuries thereafter.
“It distresses me a little to hear you talk about ‘sanity in the affairs of men.’ So far as I know, men have never shown any noticeable degree of sanity in their affairs, and to me it seems rather large flattery to intimate that they are capable of it.
“See them get down and worship that old creature. A century hence, they’ll all be at it. Sanity—in the human race! This is really fulsome.”
There is no other possible explanation than this of Mrs. Eddy’s success. It is based, as Mark Twain says, upon the irresistible propensity of the human race to make an ass of itself every time it gets a chance. It is astounding, but it is a fact, that by many thousands of people in the United States in the year of grace 1910 this aged, illiterate, unprincipled, vulgar woman is regarded as the agent and representative of the Almighty God. I do not know how many times I have been told that because I have endeavored to make the people of the country understand that Christian Science is based wholly upon Mrs. Eddy’s falsehoods, I am therefore irreverently assailing the Almighty upon His throne. I confess I am not much disturbed by this particular criticism, because I feel that, if it be a fact, the Almighty will deal with me indulgently, knowing the integrity of my motives, and that, however aggressive I may become, the Almighty is in no danger.
The more I have studied and learned of the life of this strange creature and the more closely I have observed her effect upon the lives of those who come under her sway, the more strongly I am convinced of the harmfulness of her influence. It is literally derationalizing thousands of people, it is turning multitudes from the pursuit of knowledge and steeping them in a superstition worse than that of the Middle Ages. It is remorselessly separating husband and wife, parent and child. It is the mother and promoter of a new-old witchcraft which has so taken possession of the minds and lives of people that they live in constant terror of its supposed baneful work. This Christian Science witchcraft has reached the proportion amongst the faithful almost of panic, and of it more hereafter. But of all of the harmful influences of this alleged medical science, which is an unmitigated nonsense or deviltry, and of this alleged religion which, so far as its founder is concerned, is the very quintessence of irreverence and hypocrisy, of all of the evil consequences of the life and work of this monumental imposture, the unrelieved suffering of helpless children is the worst.
Mrs. Eddy teaches and her followers believe that God has revealed to her, as absolute truth, that sickness, pain and suffering do not in reality exist, and many are the deluded mothers upon whom this belief has taken so fast a hold that they permit their helpless children to suffer and to die without the slightest effort to alleviate the suffering, and with the continued iteration and reiteration of the insane notion that the child cannot be sick and cannot suffer, because sickness and suffering are unreal. Meantime the sickness of the child is real, the suffering terribly real, and after protracted suffering it dies without the turning of a hand to relieve its pain or to save its life. Those sane parents who have endured the anguish of seeing their child suffer, say from abscess in the ear, or from any one of the other forms of torture with which nature stretches our little ones upon beds of pain, will appreciate the enormity of this crime.
I recently talked with a lady who had been visiting her Christian Science sister whose little boy, eight or ten years of age, became sick during my friend’s visit. He went to his mother and said, “Mother, I have a terrible pain and feel very sick, and think I ought to have a doctor.”
What did the Christian Science mother do? Did she coddle the little fellow, take off his clothes and put him to bed and tell him the good doctor would soon be there and that he would be all well again very shortly? Nothing of the kind. “Richard,” she said, “it is very wrong of you to talk that way, when you have that error of belief. You know you are not sick, Richard, and cannot be sick; you know how to treat yourself when you have that false belief. Treat yourself, run away and play, and don’t bother me any more.”
Little Richard turned from his Christian Science mother and resumed his play, so long as he could stagger about on his little feet and keep up the sad pretense. And when he could not keep on his feet any longer, he sat down upon the floor with his toys about him, moaning with pain and holding his hand upon his side. Meantime his Christian Science mother busied herself about her family duties, totally ignoring him.
The time came when little Richard could not any longer sit up and completely lost interest in his toys; and then he fell over upon the floor, and died—died with his clothes on, died with his toys about him, died absolutely neglected by his mother in his extremity, died without the slightest sane endeavor to save his life.
And so it is everywhere in Christian Science families throughout the length and breadth of this land. Nothing but the employment of a fool-man or a fool-woman, called a Christian Science healer, to administer a Christian Science treatment, which consists only of the inaudible repetition of Mrs. Eddy’s meaningless jargon, can be done by a Christian Science parent to save the life of his child without repudiating Mrs. Eddy’s fundamental teaching that sickness is unreal and giving the lie to her “inspired” insanity that there are no such things as pain and death.
Who has not, for years past, read such items as these in the daily papers? “Christian Science parent arrested. Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin’s twelve years’ old child died without medical attendance.”