The Trinity, as commonly accepted, Mrs. Eddy denies, though she seems to admit a kind of triune nature in God by saying over and over again that he is "Love, Truth, and Life."
The Holy Ghost she defines as Christian Science; "This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science."
Mrs. Eddy's Revision of the Lord's Prayer
In the course of Mrs. Eddy's revision of the Bible, she paused to "spiritually interpret" the Lord's prayer. She has revised the prayer a great many times, and different renderings of it are given in different editions of "Science and Health." The following is taken from the edition of 1902:
"Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, adorable One. Thy kingdom is within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know—as in heaven, so on earth—God is supreme. Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections. And infinite Love is reflected in love. And Love leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth from sin, disease, and death. For God is now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love."
In this interpretation the petitions have been converted into affirmations, and Mrs. Eddy's prayer seems a somewhat dry enumeration of the properties of the Deity rather than a supplication.
This method of "spiritual interpretation" has given Mrs. Eddy the habit of a highly empirical use of English. At the back of her book, "Science and Health," there is a glossary in which a long list of serviceable old English words are said to mean very especial things. The word "bridegroom" means "spiritual understanding"; "death" means "an illusion"; "evening" means "mistiness of mortal thought"; "mother" means God, etc., etc. The seventh commandment, Mrs. Eddy insists, is an injunction against adulterating Christian Science, although she also admits the meaning ordinarily attached to it. In the Journal of November, 1889, there is a long discussion of the ten commandments by the editor, in which he takes up both personal chastity and the Pure Food laws under the command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Mrs. Eddy insists, and doubtless believes, that her "Science" is simply an elaboration, a more advanced explanation, of the teachings of the New Testament. Yet on the subject of repentance, which occupies so important a place in the teachings of Christ, we hear never a word, and upon that consciousness of sin, which is the burden of the Epistles, she is consistently silent. Paul's reiterated explanation of original sin, of the Atonement and Redemption, are ignored. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" is made to read: "As in error all die, so in Truth shall all," etc. Even Paul's "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" is made substantially to mean, Who shall deliver me from the belief that there is sensation in matter? Whatever cannot be "spiritually interpreted" into a confirmation of Mrs. Eddy's theory that sin, sickness, and death are non-existent, she refuses to consider.
Mrs. Eddy's Therapeutics
Mrs. Eddy's theology is, of course, a mere derivative of her system of therapeutics, an attempt to base her peculiar variety of mind-cure upon Biblical authority. In her therapeutics there is nothing new except its extremeness. That the mind is able, in a large degree, to prevent or to cause sickness and even death, all thinking people admit. Mrs. Eddy's fundamental propositions are that death is wholly unnecessary and that the body and the organs of the body have nothing to do with life. A man could live just as well after his lungs had been removed as before, if he but thought he could. "Cold, heat, exercise, study, food, infection, etc., never caused a sick or healthy condition in man." "Scrofula, fever, consumption, rheumatism or small-pox never produced pain or inharmony." "A dislocation of the tarsal joint (ankle-joint) would produce insanity as perceptible as that produced by congestion of the brain, were it not that mortal mind thinks this joint less intimately connected with mind than is the brain."