Mrs. Eddy's one original elemental contribution to Quimbyism, was her doctrine of Malicious Animal Magnetism; a grewsome superstition born of her own vindictiveness and distrust. Mrs. Eddy's more enlightened followers have for years tried to divert attention from this one of her doctrines, and there are hundreds of Christian Scientists in the field who know and think very little about it. But it has been a very important consideration in the lives of those who have come into personal contact with Mrs. Eddy. Between 1875 and 1888 many of Mrs. Eddy's students left her because in her lectures and conversation she dwelt more upon the malign power of mesmerism than upon the salutary power of truth. In her contributions to the Journal during those years she frequently took up Animal Magnetism; she tells her followers over and over again that she will denounce it, and that she will not be silenced. For several years there was a regular department in the Journal with the caption "Animal Magnetism," but the crimes which were charged to mesmerists were by no means confined to this department. "Also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress," the Journal again and again affirms.
Poverty a False Belief
Mrs. Eddy surmounts economics as easily as she does physics and chemistry and physiology. Poverty is only a form of "error," a false belief. It can be abolished as readily as sin or disease or old age. She advertised the first edition of "Science and Health" as a book that "affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which you can accumulate a fortune." "In the early history of Christian Science," Mrs. Eddy says, "among my thousands of students few were wealthy. Now, Christian Scientists are not indigent; and their comfortable fortunes are acquired by healing mankind morally, physically, and spiritually." Her healers should be well paid, she says. "Christian Science demonstrates that the patient who pays what he is able to pay, is more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equivalent for health." In Mrs. Eddy's book[12] she publishes a long testimonial from a man who relates how Christian Science has helped him in his business.
This view of poverty has been generally accepted among Mrs. Eddy's followers. One contributor to the Journal writes: "We were demonstrating over a lack of means, which we had learned was just as much a claim of error to be overcome with truth as ever sickness or sin was."[13]
Another contributor writes: "The lack of means is a lupine ghost sired by the same spectre as the lack of health, and both must be met and put to flight by the same mighty weapons of our spiritual warfare."[14]
In the files of the Journal there are many reports of the material prosperity of individual Christian Scientists. It is an evidence of "at-oneness" with God to prosper in business just as it is to overcome disease.
In the Journal of September, 1904, a contributor says:
"Is it reasonable to believe, as we have believed, that popular fancy, whims, climate, the state of politics, any or all of a hundred lawless elements, are able to ruin a man's business while he stands by and doesn't know enough even to make an intelligent protest?"
Government, civilization, and even "climate" are demonstrated to be unreal, but the reality and importance of "business" is never questioned, and that each and every Christian Scientist should get on in the world remains a matter of indubitable moment, even to Mrs. Eddy herself.