# The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII
THE MATERIAL PROSPERITY OF CHURCH AND COLLEGE—MRS. EDDY GOES TO LIVE IN COMMONWEALTH AVENUE—DISCONTENT OF THE STUDENTS—A RIVAL SCHOOL OF MENTAL HEALING—THE SCHISM OF 1888
Mary B. G. Eddy has worked out before us as on a blackboard every point in the temptations and demonstrations—or so-called miracles—of Jesus, showing us how to meet and overcome the one and how to perform the other. Christian Science Journal, April, 1889.
The first five years of Mrs. Eddy's life in Boston had been years of almost uninterrupted progress. Her college had, by 1887, grown to be a source of very considerable income. Her classes now numbered from thirty to fifty students each, and a class was instructed and graduated within three weeks' time. Although some students were received at a discount and paid only two hundred dollars for their instruction, the usual tuition fee was still three hundred dollars—a husband and wife being regarded as one student and paying but one fee. The course, which was formerly the only one taught at Mrs. Eddy's college, was now called the "primary course," and she added what she termed a "normal course" (being a review of the primary), a course in "metaphysical obstetrics," and a course in "theology," in all of which she was the sole instructor. If the student took all the courses offered, his ​tuition fees amounted to eight hundred dollars. By 1887 there was such a demand for Mrs. Eddy's instruction that she could form as many classes a year as she felt able to teach, and her classes netted her from five to ten thousand dollars each. In 1883 Mrs. Eddy had founded her monthly periodical, the Christian Science Journal, of incalculable service in spreading her doctrines. In 1886 she had, with the assistance of the Rev. James Henry Wiggin, got out a new and much improved edition of Science and Health. Between 1880 and 1887 she had published four pamphlets: Christian Healing, The People's God, Defence of Christian Science, and a Historical Sketch of Metaphysical Healing. Promising church organisations were being built up in New York, Chicago, Denver, and in dozens of smaller cities.
Systematic efforts were now begun to raise money for a permanent church building in Boston. The congregation had outgrown its old quarters in Chickering Hall in Tremont Street, and was having difficulty in obtaining a place for its services, some of the larger halls refusing to rent to the Christian Scientists. In the summer of 1886 the church had purchased from Nathan Matthews a piece of land in Falmouth Street, in a tenement district of the Back Bay, which it intended to use for a building site. But the land was subject to a mortgage of $8,763.50, and it was for the purpose of paying off this mortgage that the Christian Scientists were holding fairs and ​concerts during the latter years of the '80's, and appealing to every member of the church and to every student at the college to set aside a weekly sum to be paid into the fund.
In the Christmas holidays of 1887 Mrs. Eddy moved from her dwelling in Columbus Avenue to a more pretentious house at 385 Commonwealth Avenue. The Christian Science Journal, under the head "Material Change of Base," announced her removal in the following enthusiastic language:
At Xmastide Rev. Mary B. Glover Eddy began to occupy the new house which she has purchased on Commonwealth Avenue, No. 385. The price is recorded in real estate transactions as $40,000. It is a large house in the middle of the block and contains twenty rooms. . . . The spot is very beautiful and the house has been finished and furnished under the advice of a professional decorator. The locality is excellent. For the information of friends not acquainted with Boston, it may be stated that Commonwealth Avenue is the most fashionable in the city. Through the centre of it runs a slim park with a central promenade, leaving a driveway on each side of the main thoroughfare. Within a few yards of Mrs. Eddy's mansion is the massive residence of his Excellency, Oliver Ames, the present Governor of Massachusetts. To name the dwellers on this avenue would be to name scores of Boston's wealthy and influential men. On Marlboro' Street, which is the next toward the river, are many more families of note; while everybody knows that Beacon Street, which is next in line, claims the blue blood of Boston for its inheritance, especially on the water side.
The fact that some of the members of Mrs. Eddy's own Boston church began to murmur texts about the foxes having holes and the birds of the air having nests, and that Mrs. Crosse, the editor of the Journal, felt it necessary to print an apologetic explanation of this notice, augured ill for the year that was just beginning. A great discontent had been growing in the Boston church, and for more than two years there had been two factions in the organisation: those who were absolutely ​loyal to Mrs. Eddy, and those who merely conformed—who believed in the principle she taught, but who, as she often put it, "tried with one breath to credit the Message and discredit the Messenger."
Both factions believed in the supremacy of mind over matter, and in the healing principle which Mrs. Eddy taught. But the loyal were those who believed:
In the Fall in Lynn and its subsequent revelation.
That the Bible and Science and Health are one book—the Sacred Scriptures.
That sin, disease, and death are non-existent and will finally disappear under demonstration.
That Malicious Animal Magnetism can cause sickness, sin, and death.
That Mrs. Eddy has interpreted the Motherhood, or feminine idea of God, as Jesus Christ interpreted the masculine idea.
That the feminine idea of God is essentially higher than the masculine.
The loyal disciples did not hesitate to make the claim that Christian Science was the offspring of Mrs. Eddy's direct communion with God, just as Jesus was the offspring of Mary's communion, and that the result of this second immaculate conception was a book rather than a man, because this age was "more mental" than that in which Jesus Christ lived and taught. An article entitled "Immaculate Conception," in the Journal of November, 1888, elaborates this idea at great length:
Let us come in thought to another day, a day when woman shall commune with God, the eternal Principle and only Creator, and bring forth the ​spiritual idea. And what of her child? Man is spiritual, man is mental. Woman was the first in this day to recognise this and the other facts it includes. As a result of her communion we have Christian Science.
You may ask why this child did not come in human form, as did the child of old. Because that was not necessary. . . . As this age is more mental than former ages, so the appearance of the idea of Truth is more mental.
From the first year of its establishment, the Christian Science Journal insisted, as indeed Mrs. Eddy's own writings insist, upon making for her a place among the characters of sacred history. In November, 1885, we find the following outburst:
What a triumphant career is this for a woman! Can it be anything less than the "tabernacle of God with men" the fulfilment of the vision of the lonely seer on the Isle of Patmos—the "wonder in heaven," delivering the child which shall rule all nations? How dare we say to the contrary, that she is God-sent to the world, as much as any character of Sacred Writ?
Mrs. Eddy herself wrote that the following verse from the Apocalypse "has special reference to the present age":
"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." Mrs. Eddy says that the child which this woman bore was Christian Science. In the Mother Church at Boston there is a resplendent window representing this star-crowned woman.
These comparisons did not stop with the Virgin Mary and the star-crowned woman. Throughout the first ten years of the Journal there is a running parallel between Mrs. Eddy and Jesus Christ. This comparison was continually heard from the pulpits of Christian Science churches. The Rev. George B. Day, "M.A., C.S.B.," in a sermon delivered before the ​Chicago church and afterward approvingly printed in the Journal, declared that "Christian Science is the Gospel according to Woman." He went on to say:
We are witnessing the transfer of the gospel from male to female trust. . . . Eighteen hundred years ago Paul declared that man was the head of the woman; but now, in "Science and Health," it is asserted that "woman is the highest form of man."
Mr. Day called his sermon "Sheep, Shepherd, and Shepherdess," and he considered, in turn, the disciples, Christ, and Mrs. Eddy.
The Christian Scientist held that Jesus, the man, was merely a man; that "the Christ" which dwelt within him was Divine Mind, dwelling more or less in all of us, but manifested in a superlative degree in Jesus and in Mrs. Eddy. In an unsigned editorial in the Journal of April, 1889, called "Christian Science and its Revelator," we are told that Jesus demonstrated over sickness, sin, and death, but that his disciples did not comprehend the principle of his miracles, since neither the Gospels nor the Epistles explain them. It was left for Mrs. Eddy, in Science and Health, to supplement the New Testament and to furnish this explanation. "The Christ is only the name for that state of consciousness which is the goal, the inevitable, ultimate state of every mortal," and Mrs. Eddy has shown mankind how to reach that state of consciousness. The writer continues: "To-day Truth has come through the person of a New England girl. . . . From the cradle she gave indications of a divine mission and power which caused her mother to 'ponder them in her heart.' " The writer further says of Mrs. Eddy that she has done good to them that hated her, blessed ​them that cursed her, and prayed for them that despitefully used her; that she has been led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his shearers is dumb, so she has opened not her mouth.
It is because Eve was the first to admit her fault in the garden of Eden, Mrs. Eddy says, that a woman was permitted to give birth to Jesus Christ, and that a woman was permitted to write Science and Health and to reveal the spiritual origin of man. It is because woman is more spiritual than man, the Christian Science writers in the Journal explain, that a woman perceived the nothingness of matter, though Jesus did not, and that she was able to interpret the feminine idea of God, which is essentially higher than the masculine. In answer to an inquiry concerning the edition of the Bible upon which Science and Health is based, the editor of the Journal replied:
Would it not be too material a view to speak of "Science and Health" being based upon any edition of the Bible? . . . The Chosen One, always with God in the Mount, speaks face to face. In other words, "Science and Health" is a first-hand revelation. When this statement by the editor, Mr. Bailey, was criticised, he replied that he meant no disparagement of the Bible, but that he considered 'the Bible and "Science and Health" as one book—the Sacred Scriptures.'
When Mrs. Eddy's following consisted of but a handful of students, her divine assumption passed unnoticed; but, as time went on, less credulous critics were heard from. She had created a wide and lively interest in mind-healing, and many people began to look into the subject. In 1882 Julius Dresser, her old fellow-patient and pupil under Phineas Parkhurst ​Quimby, returned from California, and began to practise Quimby's method of mental healing in Boston.
With Mr. Dresser's return the "Quimby controversy" 5 began. In a letter to the Boston Post, February 24, 1883, Mr. Dresser presented evidence which went a great way toward proving that Mrs. Eddy got her principle of mind-healing from his old teacher. He published the laudatory article upon Quimby which Mrs. Eddy had written and printed in the Portland Courier twenty-five years before. He republished Mrs. Eddy's poem, "Lines upon the Death of Dr. P. P. Quimby, who Healed with the Truth that Christ Taught," as well as the letter which Mrs. Eddy wrote him after her memorable fall in Lynn.
To these unguarded utterances of that long-forgotten woman, Mary M. Patterson, Mrs. Eddy replied by repudiating her own effusions, prose and verse, and saying that if she ever wrote them at all she was "mesmerised" when she did it; that Quimby was an ignorant mesmerist, etc.
In 1887 Mr. Dresser published his pamphlet, The True History of Mental Science, in which he repeated his statements in the Boston Post, and related his own experience with Mrs. Eddy when she was a patient and he was a student of Dr. Quimby in Portland. This pamphlet brought out comment that was unfavourable to Mrs. Eddy, and stirred up her disaffected students. Although Mrs. Eddy responded with fire and spirit to her critics, her controversy with Mr. Dresser ​set her less infatuate students to thinking. Many of them decided to investigate the Quimby claim, and bought the works of the Rev. Warren F. Evans, who had been treated by Quimby a year after Mrs. Eddy's first visit to Portland, who had practised Quimby's method of healing both in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts, and who had published two books upon mental healing before the first edition of Science and Health appeared—The Mental Cure (1869) and Mental Medicine (1872).
Dr. Evans' early works had a mildness of tone which strongly appealed to such of Mrs. Eddy's students as were interested in the principle of mental healing alone, and were somewhat repelled by the garnishings which she had added to it. Evans did not deny the existence of disease, much less of matter; he simply affirmed the power of mind. His work The Mental Cure is little more than a study of the reactions of mental states upon the organs of the body. After reading Dr. Evans, ​a number of Mrs. Eddy's strongest students quietly dropped out of her Christian Scientists' Association and began to investigate the subject of mental healing from another side, helping to form the nucleus of what was later to become the "New Thought" movement.
Mrs. Eddy at once saw the danger of liberal study and investigation on the part of her students. As a direct rebuke to those who had become interested in the writings of Dr. Evans, she issued instructions to the members of the Christian Scientists' Association that they should read no other works upon mental healing than those written by herself, and she printed in the Journal a set of rules to the effect that all teachers of Christian Science should require that their students read no literature upon the subject of mind cure but her own. To prevent liberal discussion and possible "conspiracy," she introduced a by-law that no two of the members of the Association should meet to discuss Christian Science or mental healing without inviting all other members of the Association to be present at their discussion. Her idea apparently was that one of her personal representatives should always be on hand to direct the discourse into safe channels. These restrictions cost her the allegiance of thoughtful students like Dr. J. W. Winkley and his wife.
* ↑ Primary Class, twelve lessons (afterward seven lessons)  $300 Normal Class, six lessons  200 Class in Metaphysical Obstetrics, six lessons  100 Class in Theology, six lessons  200  Total $800
* ↑ The magazine was first called The Journal of Christian Science, but the title was soon changed to The Christian Science Journal.
* ↑ Science and Health (1906), p. 560.
* ↑ Science and Health (1906), pages 533, 534.
* ↑ For a full account of this controversy see Chapters III, IV, and V.
* ↑ Mr. Dresser, she says in her Journal, "has loosed from the leash his pet poodle to alternately whine and bark at my heels," and she refers to a former student who has endorsed Mr. Dresser's book, as "that suckling litterateur, Mr. Marston, whom I taught and whose life I saved three years ago, but who now squeaks out an echo of Mr. Dresser's abuse."
* ↑ The Rev. Warren Felt Evans, M.D., was born in Rockingham, Vt., December 23, 1817. He was educated at Chester Academy, Middlebury College, and Dartmouth College. Later he was granted a diploma from a chartered board of physicians of the Eclectic School, which entitled him to the degree M.D. Mr. Evans left Dartmouth in the middle of his junior year and entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church. For about twenty years he remained in the ministry, holding charges in various towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He had been frail since his youth, and during the later years of his ministry was ill much of the time. It was in those years of broken health that he began to study the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, and came to believe in the possibility of curing physical disease through "the power of a living faith." About the year 1863 Dr. Evans went to Mr. Quimby for treatment. He was able to grasp Quimby's theories almost immediately, and became so much interested in Quimby's work that he soon returned to Portland upon a second visit. Dr. Evans then told Mr. Quimby that he felt he could himself practice Quimby's method of mind cure. Receiving cordial encouragement, he returned to his home at Claremont, New Hampshire, and at once began to practise. He later conducted a kind of mind-cure sanatorium, known as the "Evans Home," at Salisbury, Mass. The later years of his life were chiefly devoted to his literary work, and he published a number of books upon mental healing. They were The Mental Cure (1869), Mental Medicine (1872), Soul and Body (1875), The Divine Law of Cure (1881), The Primitive Mind Cure (1885), and Esoteric Christianity (1886). Dr. Evans died September 4, 1889. Personally he was devout and modest, a thinker, and a reader, rather than a propagandist. His endeavour was to prove that mind cure is one of the old rectifying forces of the world, and he made no claim to discovery or to especial enlightenment. His great desire was to arouse other people to thinking and writing upon the subject of metaphysical healing.
CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS' PICNIC
At Point of Pines, July 16, 1885. Mrs. Woodbury is shown in the top row, and Mrs. Stetson is the third figure from the left in the third row
​Mrs. Eddy was now facing the gravest problem which had confronted her since the founding of her church. How was she to keep Christian Science from having a literature? How was she to prevent all these people whom she had stirred and had interested in metaphysical healing from writing books upon it which might prove a satisfactory and become as popular ​as her own? Mrs. Ursula Gestefeld of Chicago, who had been a student in the class Mrs. Eddy taught in that city in April, 1884, and who was one of the most intelligent and able persons ever associated with the Christian Science movement, in 1888 wrote a book which she called A Statement of Christian Science, adding upon the title-page that it was "An Explanation of Science and Health," and giving Mrs. Eddy all possible credit as the originator of the basic ideas of her book. Mrs. Gestefeld's work was an intelligent and intelligible presentation of the fundamental ideas contained in Science and Health, without Mrs. Eddy's disregard of logic and order, and free from her confusing and tawdry rhetoric. Any natural scientist would have welcomed such a clear and careful statement of his ideas. But Mrs. Eddy branded Mrs. Gestefeld as a "mesmerist" of the most dangerous variety, and had her expelled from the Chicago church. The Journal declared that the "metaphysics" of Mrs. Gestefeld's book "crawled on its belly instead of soaring in the upper air," and bade her beware, as "only the pure in heart should see God." Mrs. Gestefeld then published a pamphlet, Jesuitism in Christian Science, in which she explained her position and said that if Science and Health merely contained Mrs. Eddy's personal impressions, if it were a work of the fancy or imagination, then she had a right to object to its being used as the basis of another book. But if Mrs. Eddy's work announced the discovery of a principle and a universal truth, she could no more keep other people from writing and thinking upon it than she could keep people from affirming that twice two are four. But, with Mrs. Eddy, obtaining recognition for her truth was always secondary to ​keeping it hers. Since she first began to teach her "Science," the story of her public life is simply the story of how she kept her hold on it. The very way in which she had come by her discovery made her always afraid of losing it, and she was forever detecting some student in the act of making off with it. Even in Lynn, she slept, as it were, with her hand on the cradle.
Later, when a Christian Science periodical was being printed in German, Mrs. Eddy would not permit Science and Health to be translated into that language, or into any other. She was not a linguist, and, knowing that she would be unable to pass upon the text of a translation, she feared to trust her gospel to the shadings of a foreign tongue. How she has done it let him declare who can, but she has absolutely sterilised every source that might have produced Christian Science literature, and to-day a loyal Christian Scientist would be as likely to think of dynamiting the Mother Church as of writing a book upon the theory or practice of Christian Science.
Dr. Evans' school—if it is not misleading to call his patients and sympathisers by so formal a name—was a rival which caused Mrs. Eddy a good deal of alarm. It drew from her her more thoughtful students, and, though they were seldom her most loyal and tractable followers, she realised their value in giving her sect a certain standing in Boston. The Evans following had hitherto been entirely without organisation; they were simply a group of people who were interested in the metaphysical treatment of disease, each thinking in his own way and working out his own problem. Now, however, they began to meet together more systematically, to organise in groups here and there, and to publish books and periodicals, ​encouraging liberal discussion and investigation. In their new activity they were doubtless influenced by Mrs. Eddy's stimulating example. Whatever the more conservative school of mental healers might have to say for themselves, or even for Mr. Quimby, it was Mrs. Eddy who had brought mental healing out of comparative obscurity, who had built up a strong organisation to advertise and push it, and who had sent out scores of missionaries and healers to establish it. It was as a religion, not as a way of thinking or a manner of living, that the new idea could be made to take hold, and Mrs. Eddy had seen this when the mental scientists had not. Indeed, had they realised this fact, it is doubtful whether they would have taken any earlier action, since they believed more in untrammelled individual development than in organised effort.
Although Mrs. Eddy viewed with alarm this growing body of independent writers and investigators, she had really very little to fear from an unorganised body of theorists who, however they might worst her in argument or distance her in reasoning, were certainly not her equals in generalship. Mrs. Eddy was a good fighter, and she knew it. In 1897 she wrote from her peaceful retirement at Concord: "With tender tread, thought sometimes walks in memory, through the dim corridors of years, on to old battle-grounds, there sadly to survey the fields of the slain and the enemy's losses." This from solitude and the peace of age; but there was no tender treading in the years when the battle was on. As soon as she saw signs of activity and consolidation among the people who had been influenced by Dr. Evans, Mrs. Eddy began vigorously to attack them, realising that such an organisation as theirs must ​inevitably draw recruits from the disssatisfied element in her own church. By the beginning of 1888 there was discord even in that inner circle of students who shared Mrs. Eddy's councils and who were in daily attendance upon her at her new house in Commonwealth Avenue. This growing unrest she attributed solely to the mesmeric influence of the mental scientists. In reality it arose from several causes.
Some of the students were disappointed in Mrs. Eddy personally; some, like Mrs. Sarah Crosse (for several years editor of the Journal), had lost faith in Mrs. Eddy after long service; some, like Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Troupe, were displeased with the arbitrary way in which she conducted the Christian Scientists' Association; others were dissatisfied with her instruction in the obstetrical course which she had recently introduced into her college. The first class in obstetrics was a large one, and each member had paid one hundred dollars tuition. Of the six lectures which Mrs. Eddy gave them, five were devoted almost exclusively to a discussion of Malicious Animal Magnetism, and in the sixth she merely instructed them to "deny" premature birth, abnormal presentation, hemorrhage, etc.
At the same time Mrs. Eddy fanned the fire of discontent by announcing that she would no longer receive students for the "normal" course who had not passed through her own ​primary class. As many of her normal graduates were now teaching primary classes in Christian Science, but not normal classes, this ruling would have the effect of debarring students, who wished to take more than a primary course, from any institution but Mrs. Eddy's. Mrs. Eddy's primary classes would be filled at the expense of the classes of her followers. So generally was this order criticised, that Mrs. Eddy felt obliged to modify it.
Mrs. Eddy, having faithfully taught her students how to detect malicious animal magnetism in others, was now openly charged with teaching and practising it herself. In Science and Health, and in her classes, she had taught her students how to make a vigorous defence against the black art of the malpractitioners, but she had always indignantly denied the charge of being a mesmerist herself. The very accusation, the Journal said, was due to the malicious work of Kennedy and Arens.
It seems, however, to have been Mrs. Eddy's action in the Corner case which brought all this dissatisfaction to a head. In the spring of 1888 Mrs. Abby H. Corner of West Medford, Mass., a student of Mrs. Eddy's and a member of the Christian Scientists' Association, attended her own daughter in childbirth, with the result that the mother and baby died. Mrs. Corner ​was prosecuted, but was finally acquitted on the ground that her daughter's death had occurred from a hemorrhage which might have been fatal even had a physician been present. The case was widely discussed in the newspapers, and aroused a great deal of indignation and animosity toward Christian Science. It seemed the time of all times for Christian Scientists to stand together, and for the students of Mrs. Eddy's college to meet the issue squarely. They did so—all except Mrs. Eddy and those whom she directly controlled. Hundreds of Mrs. Eddy's students were then practising who knew no more about obstetrics than the babes they helped into the world. Mrs. Eddy's obstetrical course, which was a recent innovation, consisted of instructions to "deny" everything except the child itself. Fifteen years before, students had gone out from her classes in Lynn and had taken confinement cases, in which they were said to be particularly successful. Mrs. Eddy had never hinted, until she introduced her obstetrical course, that any special preparation was needed in that branch of metaphysical treatment. Mrs. Corner had acted not only according to the custom of Mrs. Eddy's students, but according to Mrs. Eddy's instructions for fifteen years past. Nevertheless, now that there was actually a question of Christian Science and the law, Mrs. Eddy completely withdrew her support from Mrs. Corner, and had a statement denouncing her printed in the Boston Herald. This article intimated that Mrs. Corner had received no authority from the Metaphysical College to attend confinement cases.
To the Editor of the Herald: The lamentable case reported from West Medford of the death of a mother and her infant at childbirth ​should forever put a stop to quackery. There has been but one side of this case presented by the newspapers. We wait to hear from the other side, trusting that attenuating circumstances will be brought to light. Mrs. Abby H. Corner never entered the obstetrics class at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. She was not fitted at this institute for an accoucheur, had attended but one term, and four terms, including three years of successful practice by the student, are required to complete the college course.
The members of the Christian Scientists' Association, in the main, felt that Christian Science practice itself was being tried before the courts in the person of Mrs. Corner, and lent her their cordial support. Mrs. Corner had incurred an expense of two hundred dollars in defending her case, and the members of the Association wished to pay this out of the Association funds, thus distributing the burden among the flock. Mrs. Eddy objected to this, ruling that if the members wished to aid Mrs. Corner financially, they could do so by personal contribution. In the end, however, Mrs. Corner's lawyer was paid from the Association treasury.
Mrs. Eddy's action, if not just, was politic. By repudiating Mrs. Corner she averted any reproach which, as a result of the scandal, might have attached to Christian Science practice, and left Mrs. Corner to meet as best she could the consequences of the method she had been taught. But her students regarded it as traitorous, and complained bitterly. They remembered that while their teacher advocated the practice of Christian Science in all cases, and taught them to believe they were persecuted if interfered with by the law, she took ample care to protect herself, by refusing to take patients for ​treatment, or even to be consulted on diseases. "We stand the brunt and burden of Christian Science," they said, "and Mrs. Eddy gets the money and the glory."
On June 6, 1888, the Christian Scientists' Association held a stormy meeting in the old Tremont Temple. At this meeting William B. Johnson was elected secretary of the Association, Charles A. Troupe having refused to hold the office any longer—because, he said, attempts had been made to make him change the records. At this meeting Mrs. Eddy's conduct in regard to Mrs. Corner was severely criticised. Indeed, the discussion became very personal, one of the members rising to state that Mrs. Eddy had been seen in the act of pulling Mr. Frye about by the hair of his head. Mrs. Eddy, who was present, remarked: "There is Calvin Frye. He has a good head of hair; let him speak for himself." Mr. Frye, however, sitting in his usual imperturbable silence, made no reply. Five weeks later he sent out the following explanation in a stylograph letter, dated July 14:
A student and a Free Mason gives out this report of the widow of a Free Mason and his hitherto much honoured Teacher, Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy, that in a fit of temper she pulled a handful of hair out of my head.
About two years ago, I was having much to contend with from the attacks of malicious mesmerism, by which the attempt was made to demoralise me and through me to afflict Mrs. Eddy. While under one of these attacks, my mind became almost a total blank. Mrs. Eddy was alone with me at the time, and, calling to me loudly without a response, she saw the necessity for prompt action and lifted my head by the forelock, and called aloud to rouse me from the paralysed state into which I had fallen, this had the desired effect, and I wakened to a sense of where I was, my mind wandering, but I saw the danger from which she had delivered me and which can never be produced again. This malpractice, alias demonology, I have found out, and know that God is my refuge. "When ye shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel ​the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand) then let them which be in Judea, flee to the mountain," where I have found my refuge.
Fraternally yours,
C. A. Frye.
At that meeting at Tremont Temple, Mrs. Eddy saw trouble enough ahead. She caused the new secretary, Mr. Johnson, to send out a general call to the Association to meet her at the college June 14; but, meaning to have matters well arranged before that, she sent telegrams to a few of her most zealous partisans, asking them to meet at her house on June 9, five days before the day set for the general meeting. The telegram which she sent to New York read: "Come to the college Saturday, June 9th. I will be there. I have a message from God that will do you good." When Mrs. Eddy learned that word of this first meeting had got out among the members of the Association, she sent another telegram to New York, saying: "The message will be delivered in Chicago. Go there." (The annual convention of the National Association was to convene in Chicago June 13, and Mrs. Eddy went there with Mr. Johnson, Mr. Frye, and a number of her faithful students from Boston.)
What the rebellious students wanted to do was simply to leave the Christian Scientists' Association, but that was not so easy as it might seem. There were two by-laws of the Association which were very formidable obstacles to withdrawal. They read:
Resolved, That every one who wishes to withdraw without reason shall be considered to have broken his oath.
Resolved, That breaking the Christian Scientists' oath is immorality.
Our self-sacrificing Teacher, Mrs. Eddy, says: ". . . After learning a little, even, of the good I have achieved and which has been demanded and been associated with all of my movements since God commissioned me to bring Christian Science into this world of iniquity, they will learn how to estimate their [her movements] wisdom instead of traducing them. . . . At the first special meeting called in behalf of Mrs. Corner I was absent, not because unready or unwilling to help her, but that she needed no help, and I knew it. I was not at the second special meeting, because it was impossible, if I got ready for the trip to Chicago; also I wanted this conspiracy to come to the surface, and it has, and now is the only time for us to meet in Christian love and adjust this great wrong done to one [Mrs. Eddy] who has given all the best of her years to heal and bless the whole human family."
The dissenters, however, stood firm; refused to go to the Association meetings or to surrender the books. The matter dragged on for about a year, until they finally received their letters of dismissal, signed by Mrs. Eddy as president of the Association, and William B. Johnson as clerk. Thirty-six ​members withdrew at this time, at least a score of whom had been among Mrs. Eddy's most promising practitioners and efficient workers. As the entire membership of the Boston church was considerably less than two hundred even before these thirty-six withdrew, their going made a perceptible decrease in the size of Mrs. Eddy's congregation.
* ↑ This course in obstetrics, as taken down by a student of that first class from Mrs. Eddy's dictation, covers less than a page of letter-paper, and consists of the "denials" that the practitioner is to use at the bedside of his patient. The practitioner is first to take up in thought the subject of premature birth, and to deny the possibility of such an occurrence in the case he is then treating. He is to deny one by one some of the dangerous symptoms which may attend childbirth. Mrs. Eddy takes these symptoms up at random and with no consideration for their relation to each other. It was her exceedingly informal and unsystematic treatment of her subject in her obstetrical course, as well as the fact that most of the lectures were devoted to the subject of Demonology, that caused dissatisfaction among Mrs. Eddy's students.
* ↑ "They (the malpractitioners) know," she writes in Science and Health, Vol. I, page 244, 1885 edition, "as well as we, it is morally impossible for Science to produce sickness, but science makes sin punish itself. They should have fear for their own lives in their attempts to kill us. God is Supreme, and the penalties of their sins they cannot escape. Turning the attention of the sick to us for the benefit they may receive from us, is another milder species of malpractice that is not safe, for if we feel their sufferings, not knowing the individual, we shall defend ourself, and the result is dangerous to the intruder." In Science and Health, page 174, 1884 edition, this warning is given: "In warfare with error we attack with intent to kill, as the wounded or cornered beast turns on its assailant."
* ↑ "I never touched in thought personalities, though well aware that K. and A. (Kennedy and Arens) of Boston, and some of their co-adjutors do mentally attack people in this way, making them believe that she who exposes their crimes (Mrs. Eddy) is doing it." Christian Science Journal, July, 1885.
* ↑ Boston Herald, April 29, 1888. This notice was signed "Committee on Publication, Christian Scientists' Association," but it was published without the knowledge of the Association and has many of Mrs. Eddy's turns of phrase.