Mary Baker Eddy, Her Early Life
and the Founding of Christian Science
Part II
Mary Baker Eddy built up the largest and most powerful organization ever founded by any woman in America. Probably no other woman so handicapped with personal health issues, homeless for years, so tortured by hatred and hampered by petty animosities, has ever risen from a state of helplessness and dependence to a position of such power and authority. In part I Mary's childhood and early years exposed her hysteria and hypochondria, and in part II is revealed the delusion of persecution she developed later in life. After meeting Phineas Quimby and obtaining some temporary measure of healing Mrs. Glover developed the idea that she could bring this healing technique to the world, and not only teach it, but become the most important person in the world since the coming of Jesus. Yet she had not achieved any great success as a healer herself (although she proclaimed she had some fantastic healings yet never provided any proof) so that she had come to see that her power lay almost exclusively in teaching the theory. Her first great success in teaching was with Richard Kennedy, who developed a prosperous business.
In part I of this series, I left off in 1870 when Mrs. Glover had formed a lucrative business relationship with Kennedy who had become immensely popular and successful in his practice. Yet, after a year, Glover and Kennedy began arguing over what she taught and what he practiced. Kennedy felt her sweeping statements about what could be healed were untrue, but Mrs. Glover would not be moved, a trait she carried all her life. When thwarted in her youth she had fits, when thwarted as an adult she used pen and paper and wrote scathing comments about others she blamed were controlled by mesmerism. Anyone who would not agree with her was accused of being controlled by malicious mesmerism.
Before Mrs. Eddy's obsession with mesmerism/animal magnetism, she would often be fixated with the idea of her suffering illnesses because her students "followed her in thought" after they were released from their illnesses. She believed she would become sapped of her energies by them. From that suffering state she wrote incoherently (without punctuation) to a student In April, 1877:
DEAR STUDENT: I am in Boston to-day feeling very very little better for the five weeks that are gone. I cannot finish the Key (second edition of her book) yet I will be getting myself and all of a sudden I am seized as sensibly by some others belief as the hand could lay hold of me my sufferings have made me utterly weaned from this plane and if my husband was only willing to give me up I would gladly yield up the ghost of this terrible earth plane and join those nearer my Life. . . . Cure Miss Brown or I shall never finish my book. Truly yrs. M.
Mrs. Eddy's excuse for her weaknesses was that she took on the sins of others because she suffered a congenital susceptibility to assume the mental and physical ills of others (although she absolutely denied the influence of heredity in her teachings). She was slowly formulating the idea that her life and teachings were the second coming of Christ, and she held the mental belief that her suffering was as Christ had experienced in his ministry. She believed Jesus bore mankind's sins in his own person; that is, he felt the suffering that their error brought, and through this consciousness he then destroyed error. Yet she taught, had the Master utterly conquered the belief of Life in matter, he would not have felt their infirmities; therefore, he had not yet risen to this his final demonstration. Of course Mrs. Eddy did rise above it, as stated in her 1881 edition of Science and Health, she wrote, "In years past we suffered greatly for the sick when healing them, but even that is all over..." or so she hoped.
Where did this malicious mesmerism idea come from?
Animal magnetism was a term to describe a peculiar influence one person was able to exert over another by physical contact. In this sense animal magnetism is similar, if not identical, with the term mesmerism, connected directly to the experiments of Mesmer. Mrs. Eddy said, "As used in Christian Science, animal magnetism is the specific term for Error, or Mortal Mind." Though there is no such thing as evil, according to Eddy, "there is an accumulated belief in evil, a tradition which overshadows us" Mrs. Eddy said. The belief in evil, then, is the only evil that exists. This belief is "Mortal Mind (evil, disease, and death), and Mortal Mind is Mesmerism".
Wilbur, in Life of Mary Baker Eddy describes animal magnetism according to Mrs. Eddy:
"The term animal magnetism became broad enough to include any and all action of the human mind, applying it to that peculiar power, influence, or force which is possessed by the creature in contradistinction to the Creator. Since Christian Science has introduced the proposition that God is the only real Mind, the carnal mind in all its varied manifestations is naturally, in the interest of self-preservation, arrayed against it. Therefore, every willful phase of this human opposition which is created by the introduction of Science is malicious. Hence the use of the term malicious animal magnetism. It is magnetism because it refers to a supposed power independent of God; malicious, in keeping with the Scriptural declaration, "The Carnal mind is enmity against God." Mrs. Eddy refers to it as the human antipode of Divine Science. It is a term which is broad enough to include all that is opposed to God. It includes every phase of evil, every phase of human antagonism to truth."
Accusing Others of MAM
Mrs. Eddy continued to suffer from illness, pain and "fits" the rest of her life. Now that she had supposedly "risen" above her "congenital effect" and the wrong belief of "life in matter" how could she justify her continuing infinities? That was done through the blaming others of using "malicious mesmerism", later called "malicious animal magnetism" (MAM). Also, it was sometimes called mental malpractice, malicious malpractice, and mental influence. Now not only any illness, pain or misfortune she suffered was accused of coming from MAM, but any person who opposed her will was also accused of being under the negative influence of MAM.
The partnership with Kennedy did not last long, one of the first of many that Mary Glover Eddy broke up blaming MAM in having taken over the new enemy of her and her teachings. With Kennedy, she had decided that in order to distance herself from Phineas Quimby and the credit she had previously given him, she wanted to promote that she exclusively had developed the ideas in Christian Science and that she was separate from mesmerism. So she decided that the laying on of hands she learned from Quimby was contrary to her teachings that there was no life in matter. When she asked Kennedy to stop that practice, he refused.
The idea formulated to separate herself and teachings from Quimby when one of her students Mr. Wright, began practicing and then started to formulate the idea that her teachings were little more than mesmerism and was not a Moral Science as Mrs. Glover said she taught. He claimed that some patients were cured of their issues, but some cases "utterly refused to yield to treatment". He came to the conclusion that he had been taught "mesmerism" instead of "Moral Science". Mr. Wright tried to get his class tuition back, but Mrs. Glover would not do so. A lot of heated public exchanges occurred between them. He wrote an article in the newspaper attacking this "Moral Science". He stated, "To live as this so-called science teaches would sever the affection between parents, and children, brothers and sisters, and forbid all mingling with society or friends. Why? Because it tells us that man is a delusion; that man, the noblest work of God, the result of His creative genius, the flowers in the fields, the mighty forests, the hidden wonders of the world, are all delusions, and the work of imagination."
Wright's words were prophetic, but it would take decades before some of the most damaging effects of "matter is not real" would appear after Christian Science children grew up into adults and had severe psychological issues from suffering pain, childhood diseases and injuries with no medical intervention and relief from pain, no birthday celebrations, no consolation when a death would occur (death is not real), and consequently, being denied loving relationships with their parents, especially their mother's and the tender care they tend to give to their children that many were denied, and later had to suffer the pains of life because Christian Scientists could not acknowledge many of the realities of living—it was all unreal.
Kennedy and Mrs. Glover officially split two years into their business relationship. The unprecedented anger Mrs. Glover felt towards Kennedy would be published in her first through third edition of Science and Health—before an editor convinced her to take it out. I have included a copy of the first edition in the Reference section, where you can read in chapter VIII, "Healing the Sick", a defense against her science where she states it is not the practice of mesmerism. There she also states that some of her students (i.e. Kennedy) are not only practicing mesmerism, they are dishonest, sensual, wicked, "commits his sins knowingly and in secret", "hides his evil, and is an erring student", "mental method of healing traduced by an erring student", "witnessing these terrible results where patients were made worse physically by his treatment", and even stating that one woman died after his treatment, etc. It is almost painful to read. But the tirade didn't end with Kennedy.
Daniel Spofford was another student who became very successful in his healing practice, and again, one of Mrs. Glover's mortal enemies accused of using MAM against her. Spofford tried to divorce his wife in anticipation of marrying Mrs. Glover, but his divorce was not granted. At the same time another man came on the scene in 1875, Asa Gilbert Eddy, who was very quiet, unassuming and slow to move. He was a patient of Spofford. Eddy married Mrs. Glover shortly after meeting. Mrs. Glover did the proposing and even appeared to go against her own teachings that marriage hindered spiritual development. This upset some of her students, and some left her teachings.
Before Eddy married Mrs. Glover, she had given Spofford's successful healing practice to Eddy because she wanted Spofford to devote all of his time to promoting her Science and Health manuscript. At the time she was tiring of Spofford and his advances and was more interested in Eddy. Eventually she wrote Spofford that he should "stop thinking about her" because his thoughts were making her very sick and she could die from his mortal mind sending her MAM.
Mr. Spofford had been treasurer for the newly formed Scientists and he had gotten on Mrs. Eddy's wrong side because he morally felt that he should take the $600 earned from the sale of Science and Health and give it to the two students who financed the printing of Eddy's manuscript, instead of giving her the money. They still lost over $1800, but Eddy never forgave Spoffard for that. In 1878 she had him expelled from the Association of Christian Scientists for immorality and he was told he was unworthy to be a member. Immorality to Eddy meant being guilty of disloyalty to Christian Science. Loyalty meant complete obedience to Eddy. A few months later Eddy brought a case against Spofford, in Salem, Massachusetts, for practicing mesmerism. More on that case below.
In 1882 Mrs. Eddy's third husband died of heart failure after five years of marriage. Although Mrs. Eddy had taught strongly against postmortem examinations in her Science and Health, she had one done on her husband. Prior to his death when he was not doing well, she sent for a physician who told her he was suffering from heart disease. She did not believe him, nor did she try and heal him, or any of her practitioners. She said former students mentally poisoned her husband. The doctor told her his aortic valve was destroyed and even showed Mrs. Eddy his heart, but she still did not believe him. She considered her husband's death absolute proof of the power of malicious mesmerism to destroy life, and his death was the result of "arsenic poisoning" even though there was no physical poison found in his body. Mrs. Eddy blamed her husband's death on MAM coming from Edward Arens (more on his involvement below).
Lawsuits by Mrs. Patterson-Grover-Eddy, and Lawsuits Against Her
In part I Mrs. Patterson's fall on the ice describes how she was lead to meet the healer, Dr. Quimby, which Christian Science holds as the beginnings of Eddy's formulation of Christian Science. It was also the beginning of many lawsuits Mrs. Glover, then Mrs. Patterson, filed against others. The following cases are a few of the more sensational lawsuits, and their squabbles, posted in the newspapers of the day, and what helped put Christian Science on the map and successful, regardless of the charges against Patterson or her teachings and the bad press they gave her.
Mrs. Patterson first initiated a lawsuit (she later rescinded) against the City of Lynn claiming that the city was responsible for her injuries on the ice due to unsafe conditions in the street. In a petition presented to the city in the summer of 1866, she stated that she was seeking damages for “serious personal injuries from which she had little prospect of recovering.“
The next suit was against Mrs. Patterson-Glover by a Mrs. Otis Vickary filed in the Lynn Police Court in 1872. Mrs. Vickary was suing after she became dissatisfied with her instruction and wanted to recover her $150 advance tuition she had paid. Mrs. Glover did not appear and the judgment was rendered to Mrs. Vickary by default.
When the then newly married Mrs. Eddy and her husband were not making much money in their teaching practice, Mrs. Eddy started going after students who violated their contracts with her. In 1878 she had one of her students, Edward Arens, sue her former students. He started with Richard Kennedy. She won that and was awarded $250. Kennedy appealed the decision against him and got that decision reversed. Another suit followed against Spofford, and then against two other students. Mrs. Eddy sued to recover tuition and a royalty on Spofford's practice. This suit was dismissed because of defects in the writ and insufficient service.
George Barry was a student who Mrs. Eddy appeared to adopt, like the son, George, she lost when she couldn't take care of him. The new George did everything for her for years. He also was one of the students who lent her money for the first publishing of her manuscript. After her marriage to Eddy, George lost all reverence for her and sued her in 1877 for $2,700, for services rendered for over five years. Spofford, who had handled the finances involved, testified on Barry’s behalf. Barry was eventually awarded $350.
Then Arens came up with another case against Spofford. Arens and Mrs. Eddy appeared in the Supreme Judicial Court in Salem on behalf of a Miss Lucretia Brown, an elderly spinster, accusing Spofford of having practiced mesmerism against her. The case came to be known as the Salem Witchcraft Trial of 1878. The last witch trial had been two centuries earlier in Salem. The judge declined to hear the case because he said the court cannot have jurisdiction over the mind of another. While they might have done so in the centuries past, accusing someone of practicing witchcraft had come to a close.
Then immediately following that case Eddy's husband and their attorney, Edward Arens, were charged with conspiring to murder Spofford. It appeared to be a hoax, but not before Eddy and Arens were arrested and jailed. The charges were dropped when a witness retracted his statement. Mrs. Eddy believed it was a plot by former students to undermine sales of her second edition of Science and Health. Her lawyer had to apply for an attachment order against Eddy's house to collect his fees. Eddy then arranged a group of followers to do two-hour shifts to pray or send energies back to Kennedy. Sometimes they met in groups where they all would agree on the thought to send out to make Kennedy unable to heal the sick, or that he be driven out of practice, or leave town and especially to leave off calling on Mrs. Glover mentally, which they all were convinced Kennedy was doing to make Mrs. Eddy ill.
Mrs. Eddy's private secretary for the last three years of her life, Adam Dickey, wrote that hour-long watches were held in Mrs. Eddy's home three times a day to protect her against MAM, and there were shifts all through the night outside her door. Although the Manual of the Mother Church forbids members from practicing the return of mental energies, and requires that Christian Science teachers instruct students "how to defend themselves against mental malpractice", but never to "return evil for evil".
In 1879 Mrs. Glover brought a suit against a Mr. Tuttle and Mr. Stanley through the Essex County Court for unpaid tuition. Judge George F. Choate, was the referee in this case, and at his death he left among his papers his book of the minutes on "Mary B. Eddy vs. G. H. Tuttle et al." Milmine's book published his handwritten minutes (pg 141). In short, Mr. Stanley was kicked out of her class because he was Baptist and would not conform to her beliefs, one being that she could walk on water and go without food, another that if someone has a broken bone just tell them there isn't anything broken, it's all just a belief. Mrs. Glover, on a ruse, took the two men's teaching manuscripts back from them claiming she needed to repair them, but then wouldn't give them back. Judge Choate's recording on Mrs. Glover's testimony:
"I never taught mesmerism. I did teach the laying on of hands not with power I did teach manipulation in 'sixty-seven, 'sixty-eight and 'sixty-nine and in 'seventy I ceased I can't tell the date. Can't tell if 'seventy, 'seventy-one." I did teach Mr. Stanley manipulation that was not my principle, it was my method My method was metaphysical I taught it I don't know for what it was because I saw a hand helped me I thought it was a good method I can't say whether it is a science, I can't say whether a part or the whole of it is a science if it is practiced right it is a science that part which is effective and heals the sick is a science I don't know as I can explain it. I do not claim it as a discovery (manipulation), I had known of it always. Can't tell if I knew of this will power before I knew Dr. Quimby It is not always necessary to know what is the belief."
In rendering a decision in favor of Tuttle and Stanley, Judge Choate said: "Upon a careful examination I do not find any instructions given by her nor any explanations of her "science" or " method of healing" which appear intelligible to ordinary comprehension, or which could in any way be of value in fitting the Defendant as a competent and successful practitioner of any intelligible art or method of healing the sick, and I am of opinion that the consideration for the agreement has wholly failed, and I so find. Eddy appealed, but then later dropped the appeal.
Milmine states: "From Judge Choate's finding it would seem that his decision was based largely on the fact that when Mrs. Eddy taught Tuttle and Stanley in 1870 she still instructed her students to "manipulate" the heads of their patients, whereas she later repudiated this method and declared before Judge Choate that it was of no efficacy in healing the sick, thus discrediting the instruction she had given the defendants.
In 1883 Mrs. Eddy brought an action against Edward J. Arens for infringement of her copyright with Science and Health, and won the suit. Arens was forbidden to circulate his books. Arens learned that the methods and ideas Eddy claimed as hers were derived from Dr. Quimby. Arens gave full credit to Quimby and claimed therefore that he had the right to publish the new ideas without giving credit to Christian Science since it was really Quimby's. Yet he could present no proof to the court because Quimby's son, George, would not release Dr. Quimby's manuscripts at that time. He did not want Mrs. Eddy to have access to his father's manuscripts. The court came to the decision that Arens had violated her copyright. No one has since challenged through the courts Eddy's plagiarism of the Quimby manuscripts, although George Quimby later shared the truth and what really happened.1
Yet, Mrs. Eddy's plagiarizing texts from others was noted even by the newspapers of the day. In 1904, the New York Times published an article comparing Quimby's text alongside Eddy's showing their similarities and "wholesale adoption of Quimby’s ideas and diction". It was known that she plagiarized from Philosophic Nuggets and two full articles in their entirety from Lindley Murray's English Reader about “the man of integrity.” Yet they still remain in the Eddy documents today with no credit to the authors. Mrs. Eddy copied from a paper on “The Metaphysical Religion of Hegel” by Francis Lieber almost exactly as he wrote. For example in her 1875 edition of Science and Health on pgs. 28, 44, 71, and 117, are paragraphs taken from his paper almost word for word, citing only a few examples. Fourteen paragraphs still remain in the current edition. In the Philosophic Nuggets, the same, almost word for word was copied into her Miscellany pgs. 14, 160, 162, 205, 229, and 268 (several places more), as well as in Message to the Mother Church 1900 pgs 14 and 15.
While Quimby is considered to be the founder of New Thought, many New Thought movements followed Christian Science after Eddy promoted his teachings. One of the dissidents who left Christian Science after having a falling-out with Eddy was Emma Hopkins, a former editor of the Christian Science Journal and member of Eddy’s inner circle. Hopkins went on to found the Christian Science Theological Seminary in Chicago. Hopkins taught Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who later founded the Unity School of Christianity in 1889. Hopkins was know as the teacher of teachers, as she also taught the founders of Religious Science (Ernest Holmes) and Divine Science (Nona Brooks and Malinda Cramer). Eddy accused Emma Hopkins of “fraud” and suggested that any form of mind science teachings were plagiarizing from her and she later wrote, "They are spreading abroad patchwork books, false compendiums of my system, crediting some ignoramus or infidel with teachings they have stolen from me. The unweaned suckling whines while spitting out the breast-milk which sustained him, ‘I was a man before I saw my mother.’ (Christian Science, No and Yes, 11)
Science and Health: Key to the Scriptures
Mrs. Glover decided in 1873 her manuscript she had been writing since meeting Phineas Quimby was ready to print. It was rejected by the printers so she revised it, but again, its was rejected the following year. Finally two students gave her the money to print her manuscript and it was printed in 1875. She called it Science and Health. In that printing she went beyond Quimby's teachings to assert that there is no matter and that we have no senses. The five senses being non-existent, and "all material life is a self-evident falsehood." Thus all mankind and the physical world are illusions and of mortality, which consists of error, evil, a belief, an illusion, discord, darkness, devil, sin, sickness, and death. The only thing real is an immortal Principle which is defined as Spirit, God, Intelligence, Mind, Soul, Truth, and Life, all the basis of things real.
The only thing that is not an illusion is the Spiritual world where the Spiritual being of man exists. Illusion was supposedly introduced by Adam and has solidified over the generations. One must ignore his physical body and the material things about him, and not depend upon the laws of nature or of man, but be governed by the spiritual law only. The vision of the physical world is an illusion created by the mortal mind.
According to Martin Gardner's book, Mrs. Eddy counted 490 typographical errors in her 1875 additional of Science and Health, as well as it had bad punctuation, grammatical errors and misplaced paragraphs. Only a few hundred copies were sold of a thousand books. The second printing in 1877 also had so many mistakes in the first volume that almost all those copies were destroyed and only the second volume was sold. In the third edition Mrs. Eddy added a chapter called Demonology.2 It was in the 6th edition in 1883 that Eddy added 'with Key to the Scriptures'.
In 1885, Mrs. Eddy hired the Rev. James Henry Wiggin, a former Unitarian clergyman, and a skilled proofreader and copy-editor, to help edit her book. He was never a Christian Scientist, but worked for four years for Eddy. He edited not only Science and Health, but Retrospection and Introspection, some of Miscellaneous Writings and some of Eddy's pamphlets. He wrote sermons for Eddy, one of which he got published in Science and Health and replaced the offending "Demonology" chapter. (In a later edition she would have that chapter removed.) Wiggin told Eddy that chapter on Demonology, and other passages, were libelous and she must remove them. The issue of how much Wiggin contributed to Science and Health is controversial. The Church gives all the credit for any changes over the years to Eddy, with no mention of Wiggin's contributions or editing that he did from the 16th edition through the 50th ending in 1891. Wiggin was ousted from Eddy's circle in 1891, accused of practicing MAM against her, as with anyone that she tired of or would not agree with her. She had liked and respected him, as she had with so many others previously who she later turned against, even in later years her own adoptive son, Ebenezer J. Foster.
Wiggin wrote a letter to a friend of his while working for Eddy, that gives a close-hand opinion of what he observed about the religious beliefs she made into Christian Science. In part, he said,
Christian Science, on its theological side, is an ignorant revival of one form of ancient gnosticism, that Jesus is to be distinguished from the Christ, and that his earthly appearance was phantasmal, not real and fleshly.
On its moral side, it involves what must follow from the doctrine that reality is a dream, and that if a thing is right in thought, why right it is, and that sin is non-existent, because God can behold no evil. Not that Christian Science believers generally see this, or practise evil, but the virus is within.
Religiously, Christian Science is a revolt from orthodoxy, but unphilosophically conducted, endeavouring to ride two horses.
Physically, it leads people to trust all to nature, the great healer, and so does some good. Great virtue in imagination!... Where there is disease which time will not reach, Christian Science is useless.
As for the High Priestess of it, . . . she is—well I could tell you, but not write. An awfully (I use the word advisedly) smart woman, acute, shrewd, but not well read, nor in any way learned. What she has, as documents clearly show, she got from P. P. Quimby of Portland, Maine, whom she eulogised after death as the great leader and her special teacher. . . She tried to answer the charge of the adoption of Quimby's ideas, and called me in to counsel her about it; but her only answer (in print!) was that if she said such things twenty years ago, she must have been under the influence of animal magnetism, which is her devil. No church can long get on without a devil, you know. Much more I could say if you were here. . . .
One of Mrs. Eddy's followers went so far as to say that if she saw Mrs. Eddy commit a crime she should believe her own sight at fault, not Mrs. Eddy's conduct. An intelligent man told me in reference to lies he knew about, that the wrong was in us. "Was not Jesus accused of wrong-doing, yet guiltless?"
Only experience can teach these fanatics, i.e., the real believers, not the charlatans who go into it for money... As for the book, if you have any edition since December, 1885, it had my supervision... As for clearness, many Christian Science people thought her early editions much better, because they sounded more like Mrs. Eddy. The truth is, she does not care to have her paragraphs clear, and delights in so expressing herself that her words may have various readings and meanings. Really, that is one of the tricks of the trade...
There is nothing really to understand in "Science and Health" except that God is all, and yet there is no God in matter! What they fail to explain is, the origin of the idea of matter, or sin. They say it comes from mortal mind, and that mortal mind is not divinely created, in fact, has no existence; in fact, that nothing comes of nothing, and that matter and disease are like dreams, having no existence. Quimby had definite ideas, but Mrs. Eddy has not understood them.
Swedenborg, and all other such writers, are sealed books to her. She cannot understand such utterances, and never could, but dollars and cents she understands thoroughly...
What Christian Scientists Believe
Eddy and a few followers were granted a charter in 1879 to found the Church of Christ, Scientist, and in 1894 the Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was built in Boston, Massachusetts. Eddy founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in 1881, the Christian Science Journal in 1883, the first Reading Room in 1888, the Christian Science Sentinel and the Christian Science Publishing Society in 1898, and the Christian Science Monitor in 1908. All of these avenues led to great success in reaching a wide audience in America with her teachings.
The main theme of Christian Science is the belief of the return of true healing that Jesus initiated, but was lost since His death. Disease is seen as a mental error rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should be treated not by medicine, but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health. This form of prayer is not praying to God or Jesus the Christ for healing, but is rather an affirmation of the unreality of matter and all connected with matter: sin, disease and death, and includes telepathy (or long-distance healing) as practiced in a Christian Science treatment. The purpose of Christian Science is not to cure disease, but rather to help deluded persons overcome the delusion that they are sick or die. There are thousands of testimonies to the effect of this method where people were able to overcome the illusion of illness and become healed.
When God divided the light from the darkness what that really means, according to Mrs. Glover, is "Truth and error were distinct in the beginning and never mingled." Yet since "error " is only a belief and illusion originated with Adam, how and why did illusion get created in the beginning by God and Principle? The creation of man in Genesis is all wrong and written by mortal mind, according to Mrs. Glover. Throughout her Science and Healing there were many holes and contradictions and facts that needed to be explained away. , The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy, she goes into greater detail of Mrs. Eddy's misinterpretation of Scripture and the creation of Adam and his propagation of illusion in her chapter XI.
Ms. Milmine states: "Although Mrs. Glover wrote many a page to prove that Spirit and matter cannot unite and must forever be separate, and was almost violently emphatic in her statement of this principle, she seemed unconscious of the fact that, in making God the spiritual father of Jesus, and Mary His personal mother, and their producing together, the child in whom was "blended" the idea of God with the belief of Life in matter, she was contradicting at all points the very thing she was so laboriously trying to prove.
Christian Science teaches a pantheistic view of the nature of God: “God is All-in-all. God is good. Good is Mind. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.” In Christian Science theology, the term “God” is merely a relative one and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Deity so clearly revealed in the Bible. Eddy interchanges the terms “Life,” “Truth,” “Love,” “Principle,” “Mind,” “Substance,” “Intelligence,” “Spirit,” “Mother,” etc. with that of “God”; thus, Christian Science contends that God is impersonal, devoid of any personality at all, and a "divine Principle". Whereas the God of the Old Testament and the New is a personal, transcendent Being, and man is created in His image, that of a personal, though finite, being. Mrs. Eddy taught that a personal God is based on finite premises, where thought begins wrongly to apprehend the infinite. Christian Science denies that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, although Jesus himself affirmed multiple times in the New Testament that He was.
Mrs. Eddy denies Christian Science has any form of pantheism by making God All-in-all, without making everything as it appears to the physical senses a part of the Allness of God. For some Western pantheists, they make God a union of both Good and evil, Spirit and matter, Immortal Mind and mortal mind, Life and death. For Eastern pantheists matter is unreal and the pantheist God is not a personal God, if there is a God at all. So while Eddy denied being a pantheistic religion, it definitely has elements of being so.
Since man is matter, man is not real—that is except for his Mind, which is God. Man is not made of the dust of the earth as in Genesis 2 because matter doesn't exist - therefore Mrs. Eddy calls Genesis 2, "a lie". Mortal mind is evil. Since God's essential essence is spirit or mind, and only that which reflects His nature is real, then matter does not really exist. "Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal" (S&H, 468). Yet the Bible teaches that God created and governs the universe, including man (Acts 17:24–27). The Bible does not teach us that we are only mind, or that Jesus was only mind. He was both God and man.
The Bible teaches that matter is not an illusion but is actual, and was created distinct from God. He pronounced it “good” (Gen. 1:31). Sin, sickness, and evil are not an illusion, but a result of man’s willful choice to rebel against a Holy God. Death (both physical, and eternal separation from God) is the result of sin (Rom. 3:10, 23; 5:12–14; "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us"1 John 1:8–10).
Christian Scientists do not subscribe to the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. Mrs. Glover-Eddy taught that the Trinity of God is an error as we know it and that the true Trinity is Life, Truth, and Love, as the triune Principle of man and the universe. Eddy said, and most decisively so, that “the theory of three persons in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Triunity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever-present I AM” (S&H, 256). In later editions "Christian Science" is said to be the Holy Comforter.
According to Christian Science Jesus occupies the highest place in human history. Jesus has furnished humanity the perfect example of what it means to be the son of God (only Christ is the Son of God). By doing that he has opened the way for all of us to find our spiritual sonship with God (we can all become Christs and sons of God). He is our Exemplar, our Way-shower and Saviour. Thus Christian Scientists draw a distinction between the human Jesus, who is no longer here on earth, and his divine nature, the eternal Christ.
The Divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the "humanity of Jesus,” implying some separation between the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ, whereas most Christians insist that both natures are united—that Jesus was “true God and true man", one divine Person with two indivisible natures, who is the only Savior and the only truth and Lord (John 1:14, Col. 2:9). Christian Science presents Jesus Christ in terms of a Gnostic duality: "The Spiritual Christ was infallible; Jesus, as material manhood, was not Christ "(Miscellaneous Writings, 84.)
Christian Science denies that Jesus died on the cross and was dead in the tomb. Mrs. Eddy said, "His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while he was hidden in the sepulcher, whereas he was alive" (S&H, 44). The crucifixion was not a divine sacrifice for the sins of humanity, the atonement (the forgiveness of sin through Jesus's suffering) is not for sin since sin is an illusion. Christian Science teaches that the only possible atonement for sin is the destruction of sin through following the example and teachings of Jesus. Through His teaching and healing work He showed mankind how to overcome evil of every kind, including not only sin but also sickness and death.
Eddy explains, "When Jesus reproduced his body after its burial, he revealed the myth or material falsity of evil; its powerlessness to destroy good and the omnipotence of the Mind that knows this: he also showed forth the error of nothingness of supposed life in matter, and the great somethingness of the good we possess, which is of Spirit, and immortal" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 201). Jesus supposedly demonstrated that sin and death are illusions and that if one wishes to rid themselves of these illusions, they only need to deny their reality.
Jesus did not resurrect in the Christian sense since he did not die, he rather proved that there is no death. Eddy taught that Jesus was never tempted by the devil, since the devil and evil are not real. She said, "He was tempted by the false beliefs in His own mind."
Mrs. Eddy could never explain where evil came from since she wrote that it existed before God created man, yet she has it there alongside good. If God is both good and everywhere, evil could not exist even in the hearts or minds of humans because neither disease nor the delusion that disease exists could exist anywhere, including in the human mind. Therefore, God is not everywhere. Either that statement is wrong or the statement that “man is not matter .. made up of brains, blood, bones, and other material elements … Man is spiritual and perfect" is wrong. If man was perfect and his disease was released by the release of imperfect thoughts, why did this perfect man keep recreating diseases? (Mrs. Eddy claimed MAM caused the recurrence of diseases and illness symptoms.)
An interesting explanation of plants and animals existence is that God or the Principle, created them in one fell swoop, everything, and that they do not propagate by seed. Grass and trees grew initially not from the ground, but "from out the infinite thought that expressed them." Those that appear to grow from seed are illusions and the unreal world. There is no matter; mind is everything. And, in proportion to the progress of the individual in this creed, all disagreeable and unpleasant things vanish.
The idea gets further distorted by such things as pregnancy. Man's sperm does not fertilize the egg and create a child, that is not perfection. It is matter, unreality. Pleasures, such as between man and wife, is also to be avoided, as it is feeding unreality, as all senses are unreal. Doctors are evil because they treat illnesses, which are unrealities of their minds. The world created by God is perfect and there is no one living in that world, even not Mrs. Eddy. Not only did she see doctors, had a complete set of false teeth at her death, had a morphine addiction on and off for most of her life, suffering from kidney stones up until her death, and other issues that she herself could not cure, nor anyone else, she died a normal human death. Many of her followers believed she would resurrect. She had palsy that affected her head and hands beginning when she was sixty-eight years old, and she was ruled by fear her entire life. She so feared mesmerism she was manic, which many of her closest followers witnessed frequently, and where morphine was often administered in the attempts to calm her down. She would become like one possessed, if not truly possessed.
Christian Science (CS) was founded at a time when medicine was in its infancy. While many diseases could be diagnosed, there were many ideas of what caused certain symptoms that medicine was not able to diagnose. Homeopathics was popular and its belief was not to diagnose a disease, but treat the symptoms. Since homeopathic remedies in certain potencies have little or no molecules left of the original plant or substance and it was harmless to use and could be quite effective through relieving diseases through belief alone, it was a popular form of healing during the 1800's. One idea to the efficacy of the remedy is that since some believe water is capable of storing information relating to substances with which it has previously been in contact with, or words said about and to it according to Masaru Emoto, then this same principle could be applied to remedies.3
Antibiotics were not developed until the 1930s and treating illness sometimes involved strange treatments and were ineffective, to say the least, and often did more harm than good. Besides the use of blood letting and purging, doctors could only recommended a change in diet, rest and more fluids. In the 1800s almost half of the children born worldwide died before their fifth birthday. It was no wonder that many people turned to Christian Science with almost as much success as doctors, as well as many deaths, although no records were kept of the deaths from only the use of CS healers. Many miraculous healings claimed by CS practitioners, after doing a few days of prayer work, would have normally healed by the body in a few days with or without their prayers.
By 1906 statistics showed that 72 percent of Christian Scientists in the United States were female, against 49 percent of the population. They could become practitioners after just twelve lessons. For both men and women, becoming a practitioner was a lucrative practice, and for women it was very attractive because it was difficult in that age for women to find work outside the home, and it offered having a professional practice in a short amount of time. Mrs. Eddy was a shrewd business woman herself. After her divorce from her second husband in 1872 she was penniless. Yet after her death in 1910 her estate was worth $2.5 million dollars, over $50 million in today's dollars.
Eddy knew how to market her teachings and how to profit on her publications. Christian Scientists were required to purchase every printing of her Science and Health, and there were 432 of them! What did she teach that brought about these miracle healings and people clamoring at her door to enter her classes? Before we can understand the fallacy of curing disease by these affirmations that matter and evil are not real, the CS understanding of God needs to be understood. While Eddy agreed with Christians, Muslims and Jews that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent – all knowing, all powerful and existing everywhere, Eddy reasoned that since God is good and God is everywhere, good must be everywhere, therefore evil could not be anywhere. If evil is not anywhere than sickness or disease does not exist, and neither does evil, all evil, sickness, disease and death is an illusion. Therefore evil only exists in the minds of humans and must be removed by right teaching and right thought, a science which only Mary Baker Eddy has received, co-authored by her and God, and her words cannot be gainsaid, she is the infallible leader, although she revised "God's" words countless times over the years. If something was proved later to not be true Mrs. Eddy was heard to say, "that must have been MAM that I heard and I did not discern the difference."
In the Christian Science Church Manual, Mrs. Eddy had said she was the only one to be called Leader. Since the Bible has been corrupted, according to Eddy, her own Science and Health is the “first book” which has been “uncontaminated by human hypotheses” (S&H 99), stating also that there were "...30,000 different readings in the Old Testament and the 300,000 in the New – these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole into the divine record, darkening, to some extent, the inspired pages with its own hue” (S&H 33). The Bible teaches differently. "Neither be ye called masters (leaders): for one is your master, even the Christ" (Matt. 23:10). Ministers of the word are called leaders, father, priests, all titles conferred by men that are not to be used to exalt themselves above others. These titles are acceptable as long as they heed to the one Master, the Christ. Jesus is giving us the order of rulership. God alone rules over us, with the power and authority of Father. Christ is subject to the Father's doctrine, and may have disciples who become leaders of men, but not with their own doctrine, but God's that we know of through the Son. Christ is the only head of the whole Church (Ephesians 1:22) because the whole body is to obey Him. The minister's business is to emphatically direct souls to Christ, not just by word, but by example, not their own dictates and inventions, thereby placing themselves above the one Lord.
A former Christian Scientist said that they were taught that Christian Science was the “Revelation,” that Mrs. Eddy was the “Revelator,” and that they cannot know the Revelation unless they know the Revelator. And, of course, they have to know the Revelation in order to know God. What this ultimately meant was that the only way they could know God was by going through Mrs. Eddy. Mrs. Eddy said, "A Christian Scientist requires my work SCIENCE AND HEALTH for his textbook, and so do all his students and patients. Why? First: Because it is the voice of Truth to this age, and contains the full statement of Christian Science, or the Science of healing through Mind. Second: Because it was the first book known, containing a thorough statement of Christian Science" (S&H, 456). Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Now Mrs. Eddy and Jesus both claimed to be the way to God.
In the last part of this series I will finish up with the end of Mary Baker Eddy's life and what effect her teaching had on her students over the ensuing years, as well as what has happened to Christian Science today.
1 The Quimby-Eddy Controversy revealed by George Quimby. Quimby's son explains in detail the truth about Mrs. Eddy's plagiarism of his father's original manuscripts which he had in his possession after his father's death and after Mrs. Eddy's death published them.
2 Science and Health, Chapter on Demonology.
3 Emoto, Masaru. “The Hidden Messages in Water,” Atria Books, 2004. Mr. Emoto has never published his work in a reputable scientific forum, where it would be scrutinized. He only presents it in self-published books, where he is free to say whatever he wants. Basic physics says the work cannot be correct, and Mr. Emoto has not convinced the scientific community that his experiments have any merit whatsoever. Those who have tried to replicate Emoto's experiments found they could not be duplicated.