Christian Science

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


It was out of powers approaching Mrs. Eddy's--though not equalling them
--that the Inquisition and the devastations of the Interdict grew. She
will transmit hers. The man born two centuries from now will think he
has arrived in hell; and all in good time he will think he knows it.
Vast concentrations of irresponsible power have never in any age been
used mercifully, and there is nothing to suggest that the Christian
Science Papacy is going to spend money on novelties.

Several Christian Scientists have asked me to refrain from prophecy.
There is no prophecy in our day but history. But history is a
trustworthy prophet. History is always repeating itself, because
conditions are always repeating themselves. Out of duplicated conditions
history always gets a duplicate product.




READING LETTERS AT MEETINGS

I wonder if there is anything a Member can do that will not raise Mrs.
Eddy's jealousy? The By-laws seem to hunt him from pillar to post all
the time, and turn all his thoughts and acts and words into sins against
the meek and lowly new deity of his worship. Apparently her jealousy
never sleeps. Apparently any trifle can offend it, and but one penalty
appease it--excommunication. The By-laws might properly and reasonably
be entitled Laws for the Coddling and Comforting of Our Mother's Petty
Jealousies. The By-law named at the head of this paragraph reads its
transgressor out of the Church if he shall carry a letter from Mrs. Eddy
to the congregation and forget to read it or fail to read the whole of
it.




HONESTY REQUISITE

Dishonest members are to be admonished; if they continue in dishonest
practices, excommunication follows. Considering who it is that draughted
this law, there is a certain amount of humor in it.




FURTHER APPLICATIONS OF THE AXE

Here follow the titles of some more By-laws whose infringement is
punishable by excommunication:


Silence Enjoined.
Misteaching.
Departure from Tenets.
Violation of Christian Fellowship.
Moral Offences.
Illegal Adoption.
Broken By-laws.
Violation of By-laws. (What is the difference?)
Formulas Forbidden.
Official Advice. (Forbids Tom, Dick, and Harry's clack.)
Unworthy of Membership.
Final Excommunication.
Organizing Churches.

This looks as if Mrs. Eddy had devoted a large share of her time and
talent to inventing ways to get rid of her Church members. Yet in
another place she seems to invite membership. Not in any urgent way, it
is true, still she throws out a bait to such as like notice and
distinction (in other words, the Human Race). Page 82:

"It is important that these seemingly strict conditions be complied with,
as the names of the Members of the Mother-Church will be recorded in the
history of the Church and become a part thereof."

We all want to be historical.




MORE SELF-PROTECTIONS

The Hymnal. There is a Christian Science Hymnal. Entrance to it was
closed in 1898. Christian Science students who make hymns nowadays may
possibly get them sung in the Mother-Church, "but not unless approved by
the Pastor Emeritus." Art. XXVII, Sec. 2.

Solo Singers. Mrs. Eddy has contributed the words of three of the hymns
in the Hymnal. Two of them appear in it six times altogether, each of
them being set to three original forms of musical anguish. Mrs. Eddy,
always thoughtful, has promulgated a By-law requiring the singing of one
of her three hymns in the Mother Church "as often as once each month."
It is a good idea. A congregation could get tired of even Mrs. Eddy's
muse in the course of time, without the cordializing incentive of
compulsion. We all know how wearisome the sweetest and touchingest
things can become, through rep-rep-repetition, and still
rep-rep-repetition, and more rep-rep-repetition-like "the sweet
by-and-by, in the sweet by-and-by," for instance, and "Tah-rah-rah
boom-de-aye"; and surely it is not likely that Mrs. Eddy's machine has
turned out goods that could outwear those great heart-stirrers, without
the assistance of the lash. "O'er Waiting Harpstrings of the Mind" is
pretty good, quite fair to middling--the whole seven of the stanzas--but
repetition would be certain to take the excitement out of it in the
course of time, even if there were fourteen, and then it would sound like
the multiplication table, and would cease to save. The congregation
would be perfectly sure to get tired; in fact, did get tired--hence the
compulsory By-law. It is a measure born of experience, not foresight.

The By-laws say that "if a solo singer shall neglect or refuse to sing
alone" one of those three hymns as often as once a month, and oftener if
so directed by the Board of Directors--which is Mrs. Eddy--the singer's
salary shall be stopped. It is circumstantial evidence that some
soloists neglected this sacrament and others refused it. At least that
is the charitable view to take of it. There is only one other view to
take: that Mrs. Eddy did really foresee that there would be singers who
would some day get tired of doing her hymns and proclaiming the
authorship, unless persuaded by a Bylaw, with a penalty attached. The
idea could of course occur to her wise head, for she would know that a
seven-stanza break might well be a calamitous strain upon a soloist, and
that he might therefore avoid it if unwatched. He could not curtail it,
for the whole of anything that Mrs. Eddy does is sacred, and cannot be
cut.




BOARD OF EDUCATION

It consists of four members, one of whom is President of it. Its members
are elected annually. Subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval. Art. XXX., Sec. 2.

She owns the Board--is the Board.

Mrs. Eddy is President of the Metaphysical College. If at any time she
shall vacate that office, the Directors of the College (that is to say,
Mrs. Eddy) "shall" elect to the vacancy the President of the Board of
Education (which is merely re-electing herself).

It is another case of "Pastor Emeritus." She gives up the shadow of
authority, but keeps a good firm hold on the substance.




PUBLIC TEACHERS

Applicants for admission to this industry must pass a thorough three
days' examination before the Board of Education "in Science and Health,
chapter on 'Recapitulation'; the Platform of Christian Science; page 403
of Christian Science Practice, from line second to the second paragraph
of page 405; and page 488, second and third paragraphs."




BOARD OF LECTURESHIP

The lecturers are exceedingly important servants of Mrs. Eddy, and she
chooses them with great care. Each of them has an appointed territory in
which to perform his duties--in the North, the South, the East, the West,
in Canada, in Great Britain, and so on--and each must stick to his own
territory and not forage beyond its boundaries. I think it goes without
saying--from what we have seen of Mrs. Eddy--that no lecture is delivered
until she has examined and approved it, and that the lecturer is not
allowed to change it afterwards.

The members of the Board of Lectureship are elected annually--

"Subject to the approval of Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy."




MISSIONARIES

There are but four. They are elected--like the rest of the domestics
--annually. So far as I can discover, not a single servant of the Sacred
Household has a steady job except Mrs. Eddy. It is plain that she trusts
no human being but herself.




THE BY-LAWS

The branch Churches are strictly forbidden to use them.

So far as I can see, they could not do it if they wanted to. The By-laws
are merely the voice of the master issuing commands to the servants.
There is nothing and nobody for the servants to re-utter them to.

That useless edict is repeated in the little book, a few pages farther
on. There are several other repetitions of prohibitions in the book that
could be spared-they only take up room for nothing.




THE CREED
It is copyrighted. I do not know why, but I suppose it is to keep
adventurers from some day claiming that they invented it, and not Mrs.
Eddy and that "strange Providence" that has suggested so many clever
things to her.

No Change. It is forbidden to change the Creed. That is important, at
any rate.



COPYRIGHT

I can understand why Mrs. Eddy copyrighted the early editions and
revisions of Science and Health, and why she had a mania for copyrighting
every scrap of every sort that came from her pen in those jejune days
when to be in print probably seemed a wonderful distinction to her in her
provincial obscurity, but why she should continue this delirium in these
days of her godship and her far-spread fame, I cannot explain to myself.
And particularly as regards Science and Health. She knows, now, that
that Annex is going to live for many centuries; and so, what good is a
fleeting forty-two-year copyright going to do it?

Now a perpetual copyright would be quite another matter. I would like to
give her a hint. Let her strike for a perpetual copyright on that book.
There is precedent for it. There is one book in the world which bears
the charmed life of perpetual copyright (a fact not known to twenty
people in the world). By a hardy perversion of privilege on the part of
the lawmaking power the Bible has perpetual copyright in Great Britain.
There is no justification for it in fairness, and no explanation of it
except that the Church is strong enough there to have its way, right or
wrong. The recent Revised Version enjoys perpetual copyright, too--a
stronger precedent, even, than the other one.

Now, then, what is the Annex but a Revised Version itself? Which of
course it is--Lord's Prayer and all. With that pair of formidable
British precedents to proceed upon, what Congress of ours--

But how short-sighted I am. Mrs. Eddy has thought of it long ago. She
thinks of everything. She knows she has only to keep her copyright of
1902 alive through its first stage of twenty-eight years, and perpetuity
is assured. A Christian Science Congress will reign in the Capitol then.
She probably attaches small value to the first edition (1875). Although
it was a Revelation from on high, it was slim, lank, incomplete, padded
with bales of refuse rags, and puffs from lassoed celebrities to fill it
out, an uncreditable book, a book easily sparable, a book not to be
mentioned in the same year with the sleek, fat, concise, compact,
compressed, and competent Annex of to-day, in its dainty flexible covers,
gilt--edges, rounded corners, twin screw, spiral twist, compensation
balance, Testament-counterfeit, and all that; a book just born to curl up
on the hymn-book-shelf in church and look just too sweet and holy for
anything. Yes, I see now what she was copyrighting that child for.




CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

It is true in matters of business Mrs. Eddy thinks of everything. She
thought of an organ, to disseminate the Truth as it was in Mrs. Eddy.
Straightway she started one--the Christian Science Journal.

It is true--in matters of business Mrs. Eddy thinks of everything. As
soon as she had got the Christian Science Journal sufficiently in debt to
make its presence on the premises disagreeable to her, it occurred to her
to make somebody a present of it. Which she did, along with its debts.
It was in the summer of 1889. The victim selected was her Church
--called, in those days, The National Christian Scientist Association.

She delivered this sorrow to those lambs as a "gift" in consideration of
their "loyalty to our great cause."

Also--still thinking of everything--she told them to retain Mr. Bailey in
the editorship and make Mr. Nixon publisher. We do not know what it was
she had against those men; neither do we know whether she scored on
Bailey or not, we only know that God protected Nixon, and for that I am
sincerely glad, although I do not know Nixon and have never even seen
him.

Nixon took the Journal and the rest of the Publishing Society's
liabilities, and demonstrated over them during three years, then brought
in his report:

"On assuming my duties as publisher, there was not a dollar in the
treasury; but on the contrary the Society owed unpaid printing and paper
bills to the amount of several hundred dollars, not to mention a
contingent liability of many more hundreds"--represented by advance
--subscriptions paid for the Journal and the "Series," the which goods
Mrs. Eddy had not delivered. And couldn't, very well, perhaps, on a
Metaphysical College income of but a few thousand dollars a day, or a
week, or whatever it was in those magnificently flourishing times. The
struggling Journal had swallowed up those advance-payments, but its
"claim" was a severe one and they had failed to cure it. But Nixon cured
it in his diligent three years, and joyously reported the news that he
had cleared off all the debts and now had a fat six thousand dollars in
the bank.

It made Mrs. Eddy's mouth water.

At the time that Mrs. Eddy had unloaded that dismal gift on to her
National Association, she had followed her inveterate custom: she had
tied a string to its hind leg, and kept one end of it hitched to her
belt. We have seen her do that in the case of the Boston Mosque. When
she deeds property, she puts in that string-clause. It provides that
under certain conditions she can pull the string and land the property in
the cherished home of its happy youth. In the present case she believed
that she had made provision that if at any time the National Christian
Science Association should dissolve itself by a formal vote, she could
pull.

A year after Nixon's handsome report, she writes the Association that she
has a "unique request to lay before it." It has dissolved, and she is
not quite sure that the Christian Science Journal has "already fallen
into her hands" by that act, though it "seems" to her to have met with
that accident; so she would like to have the matter decided by a formal
vote. But whether there is a doubt or not, "I see the wisdom," she says,
"of again owning this Christian Science waif."

I think that that is unassailable evidence that the waif was making
money, hands down.

She pulled her gift in. A few years later she donated the Publishing
Society, along with its real estate, its buildings, its plant, its
publications, and its money--the whole worth twenty--two thousand
dollars, and free of debt--to--Well, to the Mother-Church!

That is to say, to herself. There is an act count of it in the Christian
Science Journal, and of how she had already made some other handsome
gifts--to her Church--and others to--to her Cause besides "an almost
countless number of private charities" of cloudy amount and otherwise
indefinite. This landslide of generosities overwhelmed one of her
literary domestics. While he was in that condition he tried to express
what he felt:

"Let us endeavor to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to . . . our
Mother in Israel for these evidences of generosity and self-sacrifice
that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude, even while surpassing our
comprehension."

A year or two later, Mrs. Eddy promulgated some By-laws of a
self-sacrificing sort which assuaged him, perhaps, and perhaps enabled
his surpassed comprehension to make a sprint and catch up. These are to
be found in Art. XII., entitled.




THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY

This Article puts the whole publishing business into the hands of a
publishing Board--special. Mrs. Eddy appoints to its vacancies.

The profits go semi-annually to the Treasurer of the Mother-Church. Mrs.
Eddy owns the Treasurer.

Editors and publishers of the Christian Science Journal cannot be elected
or removed without Mrs. Eddy's knowledge and consent.

Every candidate for employment in a high capacity or a low one, on the
other periodicals or in the publishing house, must first be "accepted by
Mrs. Eddy as suitable." And "by the Board of Directors"--which is
surplusage, since Mrs. Eddy owns the Board.

If at any time a weekly shall be started, "it shall be owned by The First
Church of Christ, Scientist"--which is Mrs. Eddy.




CHAPTER VIII

I think that any one who will carefully examine the By-laws (I have
placed all of the important ones before the reader), will arrive at the
conclusion that of late years the master-passion in Mrs. Eddy's heart is
a hunger for power and glory; and that while her hunger for money still
remains, she wants it now for the expansion and extension it can furnish
to that power and glory, rather than what it can do for her towards
satisfying minor and meaner ambitions.

I wish to enlarge a little upon this matter. I think it is quite clear
that the reason why Mrs. Eddy has concentrated in herself all powers, all
distinctions, all revenues that are within the command of the Christian
Science Church Universal is that she desires and intends to devote them
to the purpose just suggested--the upbuilding of her personal glory
--hers, and no one else's; that, and the continuing of her name's glory
after she shall have passed away. If she has overlooked a single power,
howsoever minute, I cannot discover it. If she has found one, large or
small, which she has not seized and made her own, there is no record of
it, no trace of it. In her foragings and depredations she usually puts
forward the Mother-Church--a lay figure--and hides behind it. Whereas,
she is in manifest reality the Mother-Church herself. It has an
impressive array of officials, and committees, and Boards of Direction,
of Education, of Lectureship, and so on--geldings, every one, shadows,
spectres, apparitions, wax-figures: she is supreme over them all, she can
abolish them when she will; blow them out as she would a candle. She is
herself the Mother-Church. Now there is one By-law which says that the
Mother-Church:

"shall be officially controlled by no other church."

That does not surprise us--we know by the rest of the By-laws that that
is a quite irrelevant remark. Yet we do vaguely and hazily wonder why
she takes the trouble to say it; why she wastes the words; what her
object can be--seeing that that emergency has been in so many, many ways,
and so effectively and drastically barred off and made impossible. Then
presently the object begins to dawn upon us. That is, it does after we
have read the rest of the By-law three or four times, wondering and
admiring to see Mrs. Eddy--Mrs. Eddy--Mrs. Eddy, of all persons--throwing
away power!--making a fair exchange--doing a fair thing for once more,
an almost generous thing! Then we look it through yet once more
unsatisfied, a little suspicious--and find that it is nothing but a sly,
thin make-believe, and that even the very title of it is a sarcasm and
embodies a falsehood--"self" government:

"Local Self-Government. The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in
Boston, Massachusetts, shall assume no official control of other churches
of this denomination. It shall be officially controlled by no other
church."

It has a most pious and deceptive give-and-take air of perfect fairness,
unselfishness, magnanimity--almost godliness, indeed. But it is all art.


In the By-laws, Mrs. Eddy, speaking by the mouth of her other self, the
Mother-Church, proclaims that she will assume no official control of
other churches-branch churches. We examine the other By-laws, and they
answer some important questions for us:

1. What is a branch Church? It is a body of Christian Scientists,
organized in the one and only permissible way--by a member, in good
standing, of the Mother-Church, and who is also a pupil of one of Mrs.
Eddy's accredited students. That is to say, one of her properties. No
other can do it. There are other indispensable requisites; what are
they?

2. The new Church cannot enter upon its functions until its members have
individually signed, and pledged allegiance to, a Creed furnished by Mrs.
Eddy.

3. They are obliged to study her books, and order their lives by them.
And they must read no outside religious works.

4. They must sing the hymns and pray the prayers provided by her, and
use no others in the services, except by her permission.

5. They cannot have preachers and pastors. Her law.

6. In their Church they must have two Readers--a man and a woman.

7. They must read the services framed and appointed by her.

8. She--not the branch Church--appoints those Readers.

9. She--not the branch Church--dismisses them and fills the vacancies.

10. She can do this without consulting the branch Church, and without
explaining.

11. The branch Church can have a religious lecture from time to time.
By applying to Mrs. Eddy. There is no other way.

12. But the branch Church cannot select the lecturer. Mrs. Eddy does
it.

13. The branch Church pays his fee.

14. The harnessing of all Christian Science wedding-teams, members of
the branch Church, must be done by duly authorized and consecrated
Christian Science functionaries. Her factory is the only one that makes
and licenses them.

[15. Nothing is said about christenings. It is inferable from this that
a Christian Science child is born a Christian Scientist and requires no
tinkering.]

[16. Nothing is said about funerals. It is inferable, then, that a
branch Church is privileged to do in that matter as it may choose.]

To sum up. Are any important Church-functions absent from the list? I
cannot call any to mind. Are there any lacking ones whose exercise could
make the branch in any noticeable way independent of the Mother. Church?
--even in any trifling degree? I think of none. If the named functions
were abolished would there still be a Church left? Would there be even a
shadow of a Church left? Would there be anything at all left? even the
bare name?

Manifestly not. There isn't a single vital and essential Church-function
of any kind, that is not named in the list. And over every one of them
the Mother-Church has permanent and unchallengeable control, upon every
one of them Mrs. Eddy has set her irremovable grip. She holds, in
perpetuity, autocratic and indisputable sovereignty and control over
every branch Church in the earth; and yet says, in that sugary, naive,
angel-beguiling way of hers, that the Mother-Church:

"shall assume no official control of other churches of this
denomination."

Whereas in truth the unmeddled-with liberties of a branch Christian
Science Church are but very, very few in number, and are these:

1. It can appoint its own furnace-stoker, winters.
2. It can appoint its own fan-distributors, summers.
3. It can, in accordance with its own choice in the matter, burn, bury,
or preserve members who are pretending to be dead--whereas there is no
such thing as death.
4. It can take up a collection.

The branch Churches have no important liberties, none that give them an
important voice in their own affairs. Those are all locked up, and Mrs.
Eddy has the key. "Local Self-Government" is a large name and sounds
well; but the branch Churches have no more of it than have the privates
in the King of Dahomey's army.




"MOTHER-CHURCH UNIQUE"

Mrs. Eddy, with an envious and admiring eye upon the solitary and
rivalless and world-shadowing majesty of St. Peter's, reveals in her
By-laws her purpose to set the Mother-Church apart by itself in a stately
seclusion and make it duplicate that lone sublimity under the Western
sky. The By-law headed "Mother-Church Unique" says--

"In its relation to other Christian Science churches, the Mother-Church
stands alone.

"It occupies a position that no other Church can fill.

"Then for a branch Church to assume such position would be disastrous to
Christian Science,

"Therefore--"

Therefore no branch Church is allowed to have branches. There shall be
no Christian Science St. Peter's in the earth but just one--the
Mother-Church in Boston.




"NO FIRST MEMBERS"

But for the thoughtful By-law thus entitled, every Science branch in the
earth would imitate the Mother-Church and set up an aristocracy. Every
little group of ground-floor Smiths and Furgusons and Shadwells and
Simpsons that organized a branch would assume that great title, of "First
Members," along with its vast privileges of "discussing" the weather and
casting blank ballots, and soon there would be such a locust-plague of
them burdening the globe that the title would lose its value and have to
be abolished.

But where business and glory are concerned, Mrs. Eddy thinks of
everything, and so she did not fail to take care of her Aborigines, her
stately and exclusive One Hundred, her college of functionless cardinals,
her Sanhedrin of Privileged Talkers (Limited). After taking away all the
liberties of the branch Churches, and in the same breath disclaiming all
official control over their affairs, she smites them on the mouth with
this--the very mouth that was watering for those nobby ground-floor
honors--

"No First Members. Branch Churches shall not organize with First
Members, that special method of organization being adapted to the
Mother-Church alone."

And so, first members being prohibited, we pierce through the cloud of
Mrs. Eddy's English and perceive that they must then necessarily organize
with Subsequent Members. There is no other way. It will occur to them
by-and-by to found an aristocracy of Early Subsequent Members. There is
no By-law against it.