Christian Science

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Christian Science


"He is a worried and fretted and fearful man; afraid of himself and his
propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid of treading on serpents
or drinking deadly things."

Then he gives us this contrast:

"The average Christian Scientist has put all anxiety and fretting under
his feet. He does have a victory over fear and care that is not achieved
by the average orthodox Christian."

He has put all anxiety and fretting under his feet. What proportion of
your earnings or income would you be willing to pay for that frame of
mind, year in, year out? It really outvalues any price that can be put
upon it. Where can you purchase it, at any outlay of any sort, in any
Church or out of it, except the Scientist's?

Well, it is the anxiety and fretting about colds, and fevers, and
draughts, and getting our feet wet, and about forbidden food eaten in
terror of indigestion, that brings on the cold and the fever and the
indigestion and the most of our other ailments; and so, if the Science
can banish that anxiety from the world I think it can reduce the world's
disease and pain about four-fifths.

In this October number many of the redeemed testify and give thanks; and
not coldly, but with passionate gratitude. As a rule they seem drunk
with health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of it, the
unspeakable glory and splendor of it, after a long, sober spell spent in
inventing imaginary diseases and concreting them with doctor-stuff. The
first witness testifies that when "this most beautiful Truth first dawned
on him" he had "nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to"; that those he
did not have he thought he had--and this made the tale about complete.
What was the natural result? Why, he was a dump-pit "for all the
doctors, druggists, and patent medicines of the country." Christian
Science came to his help, and "the old sick conditions passed away," and
along with them the "dismal forebodings" which he had been accustomed to
employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a healthy and cheerful
man, now, and astonished.

But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have
been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he
watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and
compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human
invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing
imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against sub-sequent
applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, "I am
well! I am sound!--sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound,
perfectly well! I have no pain; there's no such thing as pain! I have
no disease; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind;
all is Mind, All-Good Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a
series, ante and pass the buck!"

I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it
doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to
the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was
used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from
unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every
purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely
that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious spirit
a powerful reinforcement in his case.

The second witness testifies that the Science banished "an old organic
trouble," which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs
and the knife for seven years.

He calls it his "claim." A surface-miner would think it was not his
claim at all, but the property of the doctor and his pal the surgeon--for
he would be misled by that word, which is Christian-Science slang for
"ailment." The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him there is no
such thing, and he will not use the hateful word. All that happens to
him is that upon his attention an imaginary disturbance sometimes
obtrudes itself which claims to be an ailment but isn't.

This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has now gone over to the
new sect. He was "almost blind and deaf." He was treated by the C. S.
method, and "when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually." Saw
spiritually? It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable; but this C. S. magazine
is poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.

The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims:

Indigestion,
Rheumatism,
Catarrh,
Chalky deposits in
Shoulder-joints,
Arm-joints,
Hand-joints,
Insomnia,
Atrophy of the muscles of
Arms.
Shoulders,
Stiffness of all those joints,
Excruciating pains most of the time.

These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but "I never realized any physical relief from that source."
After thirty years of torture, he went to a Christian Scientist and took
an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later, he "began to
eat like a well man." Then "the claims vanished--some at once, others
more gradually"; finally, "they have almost entirely disappeared." And
--a thing which is of still greater value--he is now "contented and
happy." That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist
Church specialty. And, indeed, one may go further and assert with
little or no exaggeration that it is a Christian-Science monopoly. With
thirty-one years' effort, the Methodist Church had not succeeded in
furnishing it to this harassed soldier.

And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims,
declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the
praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is
cured; and St. Vitus's dance is made a pastime. Even without a fiddle.
And now and then an interesting new addition to the Science slang appears
on the page. We have "demonstrations over chilblains" and such things.
It seems to be a curtailed way of saying "demonstrations of the power of
Christian-Science Truth over the fiction which masquerades under the name
of Chilblains." The children, as well as the adults, share in the
blessings of the Science. "Through the study of the 'little book' they
are learning how to be healthful, peaceful, and wise." Sometimes they
are cured of their little claims by the professional healer, and
sometimes more advanced children say over the formula and cure
themselves.

A little Far-Western girl of nine, equipped with an adult vocabulary,
states her age and says, "I thought I would write a demonstration to
you." She had a claim, derived from getting flung over a pony's head and
landed on a rockpile. She saved herself from disaster by remembering to
say "God is All" while she was in the air. I couldn't have done it. I
shouldn't even have thought of it. I should have been too excited.
Nothing but Christian Science could have enabled that child to do that
calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came
down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it; but the
intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim resulting
was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and shut. At
school "it hurt pretty badly--that is, it seemed to." So "I was excused,
and went down to the basement and said, 'Now I am depending on mamma
instead of God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma.'" No doubt
this would have answered; but, to make sure, she added Mrs. Eddy to the
team and recited "the Scientific Statement of Being," which is one of the
principal incantations, I judge. Then "I felt my eye opening." Why,
dear, it would have opened an oyster. I think it is one of the
touchingest things in child-history, that pious little rat down cellar
pumping away at the Scientific Statement of Being.

There is a page about another good child--little Gordon. Little Gordon
"came into the world without the assistance of surgery or anaesthetics."
He was a "demonstration." A painless one; therefore, his coming evoked
"joy and thankfulness to God and the Discoverer of Christian Science."
It is a noticeable feature of this literature--the so frequent linking
together of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles.
When little Gordon was two years old, "he was playing horse on the bed,
where I had left my 'little book.' I noticed him stop in his play, take
the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about
for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there."
This pious act filled the mother "with such a train of thought as I had
never experienced before. I thought of the sweet mother of long ago who
kept things in her heart," etc. It is a bold comparison; however,
unconscious profanations are about as common in the mouths of the lay
member ship of the new Church as are frank and open ones in the mouths of
its consecrated chiefs.

Some days later, the family library--Christian-Science books--was lying
in a deep-seated window. This was another chance for the holy child to
show off. He left his play and went there and pushed all the books to
one side, except the Annex "It he took in both hands, slowly raised it to
his lips, then removed it carefully, and seated himself in the window."
It had seemed to the mother too wonderful to be true, that first time;
but now she was convinced that "neither imagination nor accident had
anything to do with it." Later, little Gordon let the author of his
being see him do it. After that he did it frequently; probably every
time anybody was looking. I would rather have that child than a chromo.
If this tale has any object, it is to intimate that the inspired book was
supernaturally able to convey a sense of its sacred and awful character
to this innocent little creature, without the intervention of outside
aids. The magazine is not edited with high-priced discretion. The
editor has a "claim," and he ought to get it treated.

Among other witnesses there is one who had a "jumping toothache," which
several times tempted her to "believe that there was sensation in matter,
but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth." She would not
allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and
drill and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its ulcerations,
and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't
once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't, and I
have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that her Christian
Science faith did her better service than she could have gotten out of
cocaine.

There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by an
accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of the
other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered any
real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon.

Also, there is an account of the restoration to perfect health, in a
single night, of a fatally injured horse, by the application of Christian
Science. I can stand a good deal, but I recognize that the ice is
getting thin, here. That horse had as many as fifty claims; how could
he demonstrate over them? Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good,
Good-Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down but Nine, Set them up on the
Other Alley? Could he intone the Scientific Statement of Being? Now,
could he? Wouldn't it give him a relapse? Let us draw the line at
horses. Horses and furniture.

There is plenty of other testimonies in the magazine, but these quoted
samples will answer. They show the kind of trade the Science is driving.
Now we come back to the question, Does the Science kill a patient here
and there and now and then? We must concede it. Does it compensate for
this? I am persuaded that it can make a plausible showing in that
direction. For instance: when it lays its hand upon a soldier who has
suffered thirty years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body and
mind, what is the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think: that it
has restored to life a subject who had essentially died ten deaths a year
for thirty years, and each of them a long and painful one. But for its
interference that man in the three years which have since elapsed, would
have essentially died thirty times more. There are thousands of young
people in the land who are now ready to enter upon a life-long death
similar to that man's. Every time the Science captures one of these and
secures to him life-long immunity from imagination-manufactured disease,
it may plausibly claim that in his person it has saved three hundred
lives. Meantime, it will kill a man every now and then. But no matter,
it will still be ahead on the credit side.

[NOTE.--I have received several letters (two from educated and ostensibly
intelligent persons), which contained, in substance, this protest: "I
don't object to men and women chancing their lives with these people, but
it is a burning shame that the law should allow them to trust their
helpless little children in their deadly hands." Isn't it touching?
Isn't it deep? Isn't it modest? It is as if the person said: "I know
that to a parent his child is the core of his heart, the apple of his
eye, a possession so dear, so precious that he will trust its life in no
hands but those which he believes, with all his soul, to be the very best
and the very safest, but it is a burning shame that the law does not
require him to come to me to ask what kind of healer I will allow him to
call." The public is merely a multiplied "me."--M.T.]




CHAPTER VII

"We consciously declare that Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures, was foretold, as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in
Revelation x. She is the 'mighty angel,' or God's highest thought to
this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the Bible
in the 'little book open' (verse 2). Thus we prove that Christian
Science is the second coming of Christ-Truth-Spirit."--Lecture by Dr.
George Tomkins, D.D. C.S.

There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the
divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the
present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she
has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following
as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshiped, and
we must expect this feeling to spread, territorially, and also to deepen
in intensity.

Particularly after her death; for then, as any one can foresee,
Eddy-Worship will be taught in the Sunday-schools and pulpits of the
cult. Already whatever she puts her trade-mark on, though it be only a
memorial-spoon, is holy and is eagerly and gratefully bought by the
disciple, and becomes a fetish in his house. I say bought, for the
Boston Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; everything it has is
for sale. And the terms are cash; and not only cash, but cash in
advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual
Dollar, but a real one. From end to end of the Christian Science
literature not a single (material) thing in the world is conceded to be
real, except the Dollar. But all through and through its advertisements
that reality is eagerly and persistently recognized.

The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways; the Christian-Science
Mother-Church and Bargain-Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of
spiritual wares to the faithful, and always on the one condition--cash,
cash in advance. The Angel of the Apocalypse could not go there and get
a copy of his own pirated book on credit. Many, many precious Christian
Science things are to be had there for cash: Bible Lessons; Church
Manual; C. S. Hymnal; History of the building of the Mother-Church; lot
of Sermons; Communion Hymn, "Saw Ye My Saviour," by Mrs. Eddy, half a
dollar a copy, "words used by special permission of Mrs. Eddy." Also we
have Mrs. Eddy's and the Angel's little Blue-Annex in eight styles of
binding at eight kinds of war-prices; among these a sweet thing in
"levant, divinity circuit, leather lined to edge, round corners, gold
edge, silk sewed, each, prepaid, $6," and if you take a million you get
them a shilling cheaper--that is to say, "prepaid, $5.75." Also we have
Mrs. Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings, at 'andsome big prices, the
divinity-circuit style heading the exertions, shilling discount where
you take an edition Next comes Christ and Christmas, by the fertile Mrs.
Eddy--a poem--would God I could see it!--price $3, cash in advance.
Then follow five more books by Mrs. Eddy, at highwayman's rates, some of
them in "leatherette covers," some of them in "pebble cloth," with
divinity-circuit, compensation-balance, twin-screw, and the other modern
improvements; and at the same bargain-counter can be had The Christian
Science Journal.

Christian-Science literary discharges are a monopoly of the Mother-Church
Headquarters Factory in Boston; none genuine without the trade-mark of
the Trust. You must apply there and not elsewhere.

One hundred dollars for it. And I have a case among my statistics where
the student had a three weeks' course and paid three hundred for it.

The Trust does love the Dollar, when it isn't a spiritual one.

In order to force the sale of Mrs Eddy's Bible-Annex, no healer,
Metaphysical-College-bred or other, is allowed to practice the game
unless he possesses a copy of that book. That means a large and
constantly augmenting income for the Trust. No C.S. family would
consider itself loyal or pious or pain-proof without an Annex or two in
the house. That means an income for the Trust, in the near future, of
millions; not thousands-millions a year.

No member, young or old, of a branch Christian-Scientist church can
acquire and retain membership in the Mother-Church unless he pay
"capitation tax" (of "not less than a dollar," say the By-Laws) to the
Boston Trust every year. That means an income for the Trust, in the near
future, of--let us venture to say--millions more per year.

It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in 1920 there will be ten
million Christian Scientists, and three millions in Great Britain; that
these figures will be trebled in 1930; that in America in 1920 the
Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1930 politically
formidable, and in 1940 the governing power in the Republic--to remain
that, permanently. And I think it a reasonable guess that the Trust
(which is already in our day pretty brusque in its ways) will then be the
most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical politico-religious master
that has dominated a people since the palmy days of the Inquisition. And
a stronger master than the strongest of bygone times, because this one
will have a financial strength not dreamed of by any predecessor; as
effective a concentration of irresponsible power as any predecessor has
had; in the railway, the telegraph, and the subsidized newspaper, better
facilities for watching and managing his empire than any predecessor has
had; and, after a generation or two, he will probably divide Christendom
with the Catholic Church.

The Roman Church has a perfect organization, and it has an effective
centralization of power--but not of its cash. Its multitude of Bishops
are rich, but their riches remain in large measure in their own hands.
They collect from two hundred millions of people, but they keep the bulk
of the result at home. The Boston Pope of by-and-by will draw his
dollar-a-head capitation-tax from three hundred millions of the human
race, and the Annex and the rest of his book-shop stock will fetch in as
much more; and his Metaphysical Colleges, the annual Pilgrimage to Mrs.
Eddy's tomb, from all over the world-admission, the Christian-Science
Dollar (payable in advance)--purchases of consecrated glass beads,
candles, memorial spoons, aureoled chrome-portraits and bogus autographs
of Mrs. Eddy; cash offerings at her shrine no crutches of cured cripples
received, and no imitations of miraculously restored broken legs and
necks allowed to be hung up except when made out of the Holy Metal and
proved by fire-assay; cash for miracles worked at the tomb: these
money-sources, with a thousand to be yet invented and ambushed upon the
devotee, will bring the annual increment well up above a billion. And
nobody but the Trust will have the handling of it. In that day, the
Trust will monopolize the manufacture and sale of the Old and New
Testaments as well as the Annex, and raise their price to Annex rates,
and compel the devotee to buy (for even to-day a healer has to have the
Annex and the Scriptures or he is not allowed to work the game), and that
will bring several hundred million dollars more. In those days, the
Trust will have an income approaching five million dollars a day, and no
expenses to be taken out of it; no taxes to pay, and no charities to
support. That last detail should not be lightly passed over by the
reader; it is well entitled to attention.

No charities to support. No, nor even to contribute to. One searches in
vain the Trust's advertisements and the utterances of its organs for any
suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged
prisoners, hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions,
libraries, old people's homes, or any other object that appeals to a
human being's purse through his heart.

I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and otherwise, and
have not yet got upon the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent
upon any worthy object. Nothing makes a Scientist so uncomfortable as to
ask him if he knows of a case where Christian Science has spent money on
a benevolence, either among its own adherents or elsewhere. He is
obliged to say "No" And then one discovers that the person questioned has
been asked the question many times before, and that it is getting to be a
sore subject with him. Why a sore subject? Because he has written his
chiefs and asked with high confidence for an answer that will confound
these questioners--and the chiefs did not reply. He has written again,
and then again--not with confidence, but humbly, now--and has begged for
defensive ammunition in the voice of supplication. A reply does at last
come to this effect: "We must have faith in Our Mother, and rest content
in the conviction that whatever She does with the money it is in
accordance with orders from Heaven, for She does no act of any kind
without first 'demonstrating over' it."

That settles it--as far as the disciple is concerned. His mind is
satisfied with that answer; he gets down his Annex and does an
incantation or two, and that mesmerizes his spirit and puts that to
sleep--brings it peace. Peace and comfort and joy, until some inquirer
punctures the old sore again.

Through friends in America I asked some questions, and in some cases got
definite and informing answers; in other cases the answers were not
definite and not valuable. To the question, "Does any of the money go to
charities?" the answer from an authoritative source was: "No, not in the
sense usually conveyed by this word." (The italics are mine.) That
answer is cautious. But definite, I think--utterly and unassailably
definite--although quite Christian-Scientifically foggy in its phrasing.
Christian-Science testimony is generally foggy, generally diffuse,
generally garrulous. The writer was aware that the first word in his
phrase answered the question which I was asking, but he could not help
adding nine dark words. Meaningless ones, unless explained by him. It
is quite likely, as intimated by him, that Christian Science has invented
a new class of objects to apply the word "charity" to, but without an
explanation we cannot know what they are. We quite easily and naturally
and confidently guess that they are in all cases objects which will
return five hundred per cent. on the Trust's investment in them, but
guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this case, a sort of
nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we know of the
Trust's trade principles and its sly and furtive and shifty ways.

Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands its business. The Trust
does not give itself away. It defeats all the attempts of us
impertinents to get at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our
diligence, we have not been able to get it to confess what it does with
the money. It does not even let its own disciples find out. All it says
is, that the matter has been "demonstrated over." Now and then a lay
Scientist says, with a grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously
rich, but he stops there; as to whether any of the money goes to other
charities or not, he is obliged to admit that he does not know. However,
the Trust is composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture
that if it had a charity on its list which it was proud of, we should
soon hear of it.