# The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 11

CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF "SCIENCE AND HEALTH"—CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A SYSTEM OF METAPHYSICS—AS A RELIGION—AS A CURATIVE AGENT
The book upon which Mrs. Glover had been at work for so long, was first published in 1875. For eight years she had been writing and rewriting, with unabated patience, and wherever she went she had enlisted the interest of her friends and had set them to copying her manuscripts and getting them ready for a possible printer. While she was staying with the Wentworths in Stoughton she carried her copy to Boston to look for a publisher, and when the printer to whom she showed it asked to be paid in advance, Mrs. Glover tried to persuade Mrs. Wentworth to lend her the money. Had Mrs. Glover then been successful in her search for a publisher, Christian Science in its present form would never have existed; for at that time she had not dreamed of calling the system anything but Quimby's "science."
By 1875, however, Mrs. Glover had persuaded herself that she owed very little to the old Maine philosopher, and when her book appeared she said no more of Quimby or of her promise to teach his science "to at least two persons before I die."
Neither Mrs. Glover nor the printer took any financial risk ​in the publication of the book, when it was at last brought out; but two of Mrs. Glover's students, Miss Elizabeth Newhall and George Barry, were prevailed upon to advance $1,500. Owing, however, to the many changes in the proofs which Mrs. Glover made after the plates were cast, the edition cost $2,200, which Miss Newhall and Mr. Barry paid. Mrs. Glover, in spite of her reluctance to risk money on it, believed intensely in her book, and from the first she declared that it would sell. Even when the first edition of 1,000 copies fell flat on the market and Daniel Spofford was obliged to peddle them about personally, Mrs. Glover did not lose confidence in the future of her book, but immediately set about revising the volume for a second edition.
Mrs. Glover and Mr. Spofford advertised the book by means of handbills and through the newspapers, printing testimonials of the wonderful cures made by the application of the science, and urging all to buy the book which would tell them all about it. Copies were sent to the leading New England newspapers for review, accompanied by a request to the editors to print nothing about the book if a favourable notice could not be given. This request was respected by some of the papers, but others criticised the book severely or referred to it flippantly. Copies were also sent to the University of Heidelberg, to Thomas Carlyle, and to several noted theologians and literary men. But the book made no stir, and outside of the little band of devoted Christian Scientists, its advent was unobserved. Whatever imperishable doctrine the book may have contained it was not suggested by the outward form of the volume, which was an ill-made, cheap-looking affair. It contained 456 pages ​and sold for $2.50 at first, but later, when the sales fell off, it went willingly for $1.
Mrs. Glover called her book Science and Health, an adaptation of Quimby's name for his healing system, "The Science of Health." It contained eight chapters entitled in their order: "Natural Science," "Imposition and Demonstration," "Spirit and Matter," "Creation," "Prayer and Atonement," "Marriage," "Physiology," and "Healing the Sick." In these chapters Mrs. Glover attempted to set forth the theory of her "Science" of healing and the theological and metaphysical systems upon which it was based. It was a serious undertaking, but Mrs. Glover, with no preparation but her study of the Quimby manuscripts, and no resources but an illimitable confidence in the success of her undertaking, felt equal to the task; and judged by Mrs. Glover's standard, her venture was a success.
Even after her eight years struggle with her copy, the book, as printed in 1875, is hardly more than a tangle of words and theories, faulty in grammar and construction, and singularly vague and contradictory in its statements. Although the book is divided into chapters, each having a title of its own, there is no corresponding classification of the subject, and it is only by piecing together the declarations found in the various chapters that one may make out something of the theories which Mrs. Glover had been trying for so long to express.
The basic ideas of the book and much of the terminology were, of course, borrowed from the Quimby papers which Mrs. Glover had carried reverently about with her since 1864, and ​from which she had taught his doctrines. But in the elaboration and amplification of the Quimby theory, Mrs. Glover introduced some totally new propositions and added many an ingenious ornament.
On its metaphysical side Mrs. Glover's science went a step beyond the conclusions of the idealistic philosophers—that we can have no absolute knowledge of matter, but only a sense impression of its existence; she asserted that there is no matter and that we have no senses. The five senses being non-existent, Mrs. Glover pointed out that "all evidence obtained therefrom" is non-existent also. "All material life is a self-evident falsehood." But while denying the existence of matter, Mrs. Glover gave it a sort of compulsory recognition by calling it "mortality." And as such it assumes formidable proportions. It is error, evil, a belief, an illusion, discord, a false claim, dark ness, devil, sin, sickness, and death; and all these are nonexistent. Her denials include all the physical world and mankind, and all that mankind has accomplished by means of his reason and intelligence. "Doctrines, opinions, and beliefs, the so-called laws of nature, remedies for soul and body, materia medica, etc., are error," Mrs. Glover declared; but she tempered the blow by adding: "This may seem severe, but is said with honest convictions of its Truth, with reverence for God and love for man."
In Mrs. Glover's system all that exists is an immortal Principle which is defined as Spirit, God, Intelligence, Mind, Soul, Truth, Life, etc., and is the basis of all things real. This universal Principle is altogether good. In it there is no evil, darkness, pain, sickness, or other forms of what Mrs. ​Glover called "error." Man is a Spiritual being only, and the world he inhabits is a Spiritual world. The idea that he is a physical body as well as an immortal soul, is an illusion introduced into the world by Adam and strengthened by all the succeeding generations. In this philosophy it is impossible for man to be both spiritual and material. "We are Spirit, Soul, and not body, and all is good that is Spirit." "The parent of all discord is this strange hypothesis, that Soul is in body, and Life in matter." But by one of the contradictions which abound on every page, Mrs. Glover, in accounting for what seems to be the existence of the body, said that even when man shall have attained the realisation that he is Spirit only, his body will still be here but that it will have no sensation: "How are we to escape from flesh, or mortality, except through the change called death? By understanding we never were flesh, that we are Spirit and not matter. When the belief that we inhabit a body is destroyed we shall live, but our body will have no sensation."
To live by this "science" man must clear his mind of all his previous beliefs, and must understand that all he has believed himself to be, is a falsehood, and that his conduct and the conduct of the whole human race from the beginning have been erroneous. He must ignore his physical body and the material things about him, and he must no longer depend upon the laws of nature or of man, but be governed by spiritual law only. "There is no material law that creates or governs man, or that man should obey; obedience to spiritual law is all that God requires, and this law abrogates matter," wrote Mrs. Glover.
​What seems to be the physical world, Mrs. Glover said, is a vision created by "mortal mind," that error or belief in matter which is forever at war with Immortal Mind, and which Mrs. Glover's philosophy denied yet constantly recognised. "Material man," she wrote, "and a world of matter, reverse the science of being and are utterly false; nothing is right about them; their starting point is error, illusion."
The physical forces of nature are likewise illusory. They exist, according to Mrs. Glover, not in fact, but because mortal mind at some time imagined matter and imagined it to contain certain properties. "Vertebrates, articulates, mollusks, and radiates are simply what mind makes them. They are technicalised mortality that will disappear when the radiates of Spirit illumine sense and destroy forever the belief of Life and In telligence in matter." "Repulsion, attraction, cohesion, and power supposed to belong to matter, are constituents of mind." "The so-called destructive forces of matter, and the ferocity of man and beast are animal beliefs."
All this is a part of what Mrs. Glover called the "dream of life in matter." In time, when the world shall have accepted Christian Science, Mrs. Glover believed, all this will be changed: "All this must give place to the spiritualised understanding. . . . Material substance, geological calculations, etc., will be swallowed up in the infinite Spirit that comprehends and evolves all idea, structure, form, colouring, etc., that we now suppose are produced by matter."
In Christian Science, as Mrs. Glover stated it, all human knowledge which, she held, has done so much harm in the world, will be wiped out, and as man proceeds in the Christian Science ​faith, he will gain a complete understanding of the true science of life. This understanding will come through spiritual insight which “opens to view the capabilities of being, untrammelled by personal sense, explains the so-called miracles, and brings out the infinite possibilities of Soul, controlling matter, discern ing mind, and restoring man's inalienable birthright of do minion.”
When man shall have reached this summit of understanding he will be infallible, unable to make mistakes, for “Mistakes are impossible to understanding, and understanding is all the mind there is.”
In giving a religious foundation to her science, Mrs. Glover allowed herself a free hand, for here she was not restrained by the limits of Quimbyism. Quimby had not aimed to give his system a religious tone, but he dealt with the same problems that religion has tried to solve, and he believed that the severe doctrines of the churches overlooked the real solution of man's destiny, and did incalculable damage in the world by spreading fear and the belief that man was naturally born to sin. His own theory, it will be remembered, was that man had had these beliefs of sin and fear and disease so borne in upon him and impressed upon him that he was spiritually weakened and made impotent by an overruling conviction of his own unworthiness. Quimby's gospel was the gospel of healthy-mindedness. He assumed that the vivifying principle which pervaded the universe was absolutely good and that goodness was man's natural inheritance. Quimby also taught that the mission of Jesus Christ was to restore to man his birthright of goodness and happiness and health; to point the way, as he put it, to ​Harmony; and Harmony, in Quimby's philosophy, was Heaven. He also presented the theory of the dual nature of Christ. Jesus, he said, was the human man; Christ, the man of God.
In making out her theological system, Mrs. Glover took in these modest ideas of Quimby, borrowed something from the Shaker sect (see Appendix C) and the "revelations" of Andrew Jackson Davis (see Appendix B), and introduced new and quite original ideas of her own. She made argument futile at the outset by claiming for her religion the advantage of direct inspiration and revelation. "The Bible," she wrote, "has been our only text-book. . . . The Scriptures have both a literal and spiritual import, but the latter was the especial interpretation we received, and that taught us the science of Life outside of personal sense." "We can not doubt the inspiration that opened to us the spiritual sense of the Bible."
Mrs. Glover described the process by which she arrived at the true meaning of the Bible: "The only method of reaching the Science of the Scripture, hence, the Truth of the Bible, is to rise to its spiritual interpretation, then compare its sayings, and gain its general tenor, which enables us to reach the ascending scale of being through demonstration; as did prophet and apostle." By pursuing this method she came, inevitably, to some curious conclusions concerning the beginning of the world and the origin of man. Parts of the Bible she accepted literally, other parts were declared to be allegorical, and some of its statements she rejected altogether as mistakes of the ​early translators and copyists. "From the original quotations," wrote Mrs. Glover, "it appears the Scriptures were not understood by those who re-read and re-wrote them. The true rendering was their spiritual sense." And again: "The thirty thousand different readings given the Old, and the three thousand the New Testament, account for the discrepancies that sometimes appear in the Scriptures."
In the chapter called "Creation," Mrs. Glover stated that the Trinity as commonly accepted is an error. "There is but one God. . . . That three persons are united in one body suggests a heathen deity more than Jehovah. . . . Life, Truth, and Love are the triune Principle of man and the universe; they are the great Jehovah, and these three are one, and our Father which art in heaven." In later editions Christian Science is said to be the Holy Comforter.
The creation of the universe and man had its origin in this triune Principle. The creation was the Idea of Principle; and man and the universe began to exist, not at the moment they received visible form, but before that at the very moment, in fact, that the Idea of them occurred to Principle. "Intelligence" [that is, Principle], said Mrs. Glover, "made all that was made, and every plant before it was in the ground; every mineral, vegetable, and animal were ideas of the eternal thought." Their form was only a "shadowing forth" of what Principle or Intelligence had already mentally created; for all that was made and all that grew was not developed by natural law, but was literally ordered into being by the First Principle or Creative Wisdom: "The seed yields not an herb because of a propagating principle in itself; for there is none, inasmuch ​as Intelligence made all that was made; the idea was only to shadow forth what Intelligence had made."
"Water," in Mrs. Glover's interpretation, was made to correspond to Love, out of which Wisdom produced the "dry land" which is, said Mrs. Glover, "the condensed idea of the universe." The statement in the Bible that God divided the light from the darkness is said to mean that "Truth and error were distinct in the beginning and never mingled." This statement was made without explanation of how "error" came to be co-existing with Truth in the beginning, or by whom it was created. Mrs. Glover apparently had forgotten for the moment that "error" is a belief only and that this illusion originated with Adam.
The firmament which God placed in the midst of the waters to divide them, was, according to Science and Health, the understanding that divided the waters into those "above" and those "below," into the spiritual and material, that we learn are separated forever. . . . Understanding interpreted God and was the dividing line between Truth and error; to separate the waters which were under the firmament from those above it; to hold Life and Intelligence that made all things distinct from what it made, and superior to them, controlling and preserving them, not through laws of matter, but the law of spirit."
Mrs. Glover did not mention even here why the "spiritual" should be separated from the "material" by the firmament of understanding, if, as she taught, there is and never has been any material life. But, "Unfathomable Mind," as Mrs. Glover said, "had expressed itself."
"It was in obedience to Intelligence and not matter," that ​the earth brought forth grass, and trees yielded fruit. Nature was like the setting of a stage, where scenes could be shifted at will. Intelligence brought forth landscapes "even as a picture is produced by the artist." "The grass and the trees grew," not from the ground, but "from out the infinite thought that expressed them." In the creation of the solar system Mrs. Glover saw a complete endorsement of her theory that vegetation lived by Intelligence only: "The Scripture gives no record of solar light until after time had been divided into day and night, and vegetation was formed, showing you light was the symbol of the Life-giving Creator, and not a source of life to the vegetable kingdom. . . . Matter never represented God; geology cannot explain the earth, nor one of its formations."
The animal creation, according to Mrs. Glover's idea, was originally mild and harmless. "Beast and reptile," she said, "were neither carnivorous nor poisonous." Wisdom held dominion over reptiles in those first days, and the savage traits of wild animals to-day are the result of erroneous human thinking. Mortal mind has impressed these qualities into the animal kingdom. It was because they understood this that Moses "made a staff as a serpent," and Daniel feared not the hungry lions. "When immortality is better understood," Mrs. Glover said, "there will follow an exercise of capacity unknown to mortals."
In the story of the creation of man as recorded in Genesis, ​Mrs. Glover found much that would not fit into her plan of the universe, but she explained this: "In Genesis, the spiritual record of the universe and man is lost sight of, it was so materialised by uninspired writers." And, "the scripture not being understood by its translators was misinterpreted." "The translators of that record wrote it in the error of being . . . hence their misinterpretations. . . . They spake from error, of error . . . which accounts for the contradictions in that glorious old record of Creation." "A wrong version of the Scriptures has hidden their Truth." According to Mrs. Glover's version, man was formed as follows:
When, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion . . . over all the earth," He meant by the word "us" to indicate His triune Principle of Life, Truth, and Love. The word, "them," referred to man in the plural. It "signifies plurality, for man was the generic name of mankind." Therefore, we have the conclusion that God, in his triune capacity of Life, Truth, and Love, made, not one man, but all mankind: "In contradistinction to the belief that God made one man, and man made the rest of his kind, science reveals the fact that he made all."
"So God created man in His own image, male and female created He them," means, in the Science and Health version, that mankind thus created, merely "reflected the Principle of male and female, and was the likeness of 'Us,' the compound Principle that made man." It is to be understood that God, himself, not being a person, can have no "gender," "inasmuch as He is Principle embracing the masculine, feminine, and ​neuter." Indeed, if one of these genders predominates over another in the triune Principle, it is the feminine, for "We have not," said Mrs. Glover, "as much authority in science, for calling God masculine as feminine, the latter being the last, therefore the highest idea given of him." Also: "Woman was a higher idea of God than man, insomuch as she was the final one in the scale of being; but because our beliefs reverse every position of Truth, we name supreme being masculine instead of feminine."
This creation of man, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, and explained by Science and Health, was, according to Mrs. Glover, the only real creation of man. This man is not given a name in the Bible. He was mankind, the immortal Idea of the First Principle, and he inhabited the inanimate universe, and was given dominion over it. "All blessings and power," said Science and Health, "came with the creations of Spirit and as such they were to multiply and replenish the earth on this basis of being, and subdue it, making matter subservient to spirit, and all would be harmonious and immortal." That is, that as intended in the beginning, this spiritual universe was to continue its existence, and Idea or man was to "multiply and replenish the earth" solely by the will of the Spirit. The products of the earth were to come forth when and how original man dictated. "In this science of being the herb bore seed and the tree fruit, not because of root, seed or blossom, but because their Principle sustained these ideas."
There were no laws of nature, or of man, for none was ​needed. All was Mind or Infinite Spirit. Man, the male and female Idea of God, was to bring forth his kind, through the law of Spirit only. "That matter propagates itself through seed and germination is error, a belief only."
When God had thus made mankind, according to Mrs. Glover's version, he rested, and he had nothing to do with making anything that came later. Of the Bible statement: "Thus the heavens and earth were finished and all the hosts of them," Mrs. Glover said: "Here the scripture repeats again the science of creation, namely, that all was complete and finished, therefore that nothing has since been made." Having finished creation, God rested on the seventh day, and this again supplied to Mrs. Glover proof that whatever was created there after was not of God, but a myth only. Creation was finished, and the Great Principle was at rest.
But somehow, and because of the carelessness, no doubt, of the early translators, a second creation was started, after the seventh day. But the story of this supplementary creation, related in the second chapter of Genesis, is purely mythical and imaginary, Mrs. Glover declared. It is due entirely to misinterpretation, and is wholly untrustworthy. How this belief in a further creation started is not explained, even in Science and Health, but it seemed to originate with the discovery that "God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was ​not a man to till the ground." Mrs. Glover had already pointed out that rain and light were not necessary to the growth of vegetation, and there was not a man to till the ground because, to quote Mrs. Glover, "there was no necessity of it," for "the earth brought forth spontaneously, and man lived not because of matter." "Man was the Idea of Spirit, and this Idea tilled not the ground for bread."
"But," we are told in that fatal second chapter of Genesis, "there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground." That was error, "the figurative mist of earth," and "that which started from a matter basis," in Mrs. Glover's interpretation. "And," to quote Genesis again, "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Here, then, was the beginning of a "belief of life in matter," and this belief has accompanied us throughout the ages. "The first record," says Science and Health, "was science; the second was metaphorical and mythical," and "the supposed utterances of matter."
Mrs. Glover thought it was unfortunate that whoever wrote the first reports of the creation had not, by making judicious comments, indicated which was the true and which the make-believe record: "Had the record divided the first statement of creation from the fabulous second, by saying 'after Truth's creation we will name the opposite belief of error, regarding the origin of the universe and man,' it would have separated the tares from wheat, and we should have reached sooner the spiritual significance of the Bible." But there was no clue, and the error went on.
​This man of error, who was formed after creation was finished, was named Adam. The significance of his name is not explained in the first edition of Science and Health, but in later editions, Mrs. Eddy, ignoring the Hebraic origin of the word, gives it this literal interpretation: "Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, A dam, or obstruction." Adam was to obstruct our growth in spirituality. Adam, the belief of life in matter, was the first "mortal man," and with him came sickness, sin, and death, and all the troop of error.
Adam, being a "product of belief," and Eve a product of Adam, "both were beliefs of Life in matter." At once they set about their "mortal" mischief. They ate of the tree of knowledge, which was "the symbol of error," in which originated "theology, materia medica, mesmerism, and every other 'ology and 'ism under the sun." The fruit of the tree which Eve gave to Adam was, Mrs. Glover suggested, "a medical work, perhaps."
The driving of Adam out of Eden is "a clear and distinct separation of Adam, error, from harmony and Truth, wherein Soul and Sense, person and Principle, Spirit and matter, are forever separate." The history of Adam and his descendants, then, is one of mortality and error, an evil dream that has no reality, and this is Mrs. Glover's contention. "There is no mortal man, or reality to error," she declared. We are not as we have thought, the descendants of Adam; but we are the offspring of that first nameless man who dwelt with God before Adam was. We have been so influenced, however, by the Adam belief that we have lost sight of our true inheritance.
The immediate outlook for the sons of error is not ​encouraging, for we are told that "error will continue for seven thousand years, from the time of Adam, its origin. At the expiration of this period Truth will be generally comprehended, and science roll back the darkness that now hides the eternal sunshine and lift the curtain on Paradise, where earth produces at the command of Intelligence, and Soul, instead of sense, govern man."
Mrs. Glover believed thoroughly that, in the meantime, it was her mission to restore to man his original state of spirituality. Throughout the centuries since Adam, there has been but one other who brought the message of "science" to mankind. "Jesus of Nazareth," Mrs. Glover wrote, "was the most scientific man of whom we have any record." "The Principle He demonstrated was beyond question, science," and she refers to Him as "The great Teacher of Christian Science," and the "Pioneer of the science of Life."
Mrs. Glover's explanation of the dual nature of Christ was like Quimby's. Christ she defined as God, or "the Principle and Soul of the man Jesus; constituting Christ-Jesus, that is, Principle and Idea." But Mrs. Glover went farther than Quimby and presented a new explanation of the origin and birth of Christ. She said: "Why Jesus of Nazareth stood higher in the scale of being, and rose proportionately beyond other men in demonstrating God, we impute to His spiritual origin. He was the offspring of Soul, and not sense; yea, the son of God. The science of being was revealed to the virgin mother, who in part proved the great Truth that God is the only origin of man. The conception of Jesus illustrated this Truth and finished the example of creation." The birth ​of Christ without a physical father was, in Mrs. Glover's idea, an advance toward the science of being, which dispenses not only with the physical father, but the physical mother as well, and declares that man is born of Spirit only. In support of her argument, Mrs. Glover referred to the fact that some of the lower forms of animal life propagate their kind by self-division, and she said: "the butterfly, bee, etc., propagating their species without the male element . . . corroborates science, proving plainly that the origin of the universe and man depends not on material conditions." Self-division and parthenogenesis are, apparently, held to be less material methods of reproduction, and less in accordance with natural law, than methods in which the "male element" is employed.
The idea that "God is the only author of man" came first, Mrs. Glover said, to the mother of Christ, and she demonstrated it, producing the child Jesus. "The illumination of spiritual sense had put to silence personal sense with Mary, thus mastering material law, and establishing through demonstration that God is the father of man," she wrote. Also: "The belief that life originates with the sexes is strongest in the most material natures; whereas the understanding of the spiritual origin of man cometh only to the pure in heart. . . . Jesus was the offspring of Mary's self-conscious God-being in creative Wisdom."
But the virgin mother, we are told, "proved the great Truth that God is the only origin of man," only "in part." If she had proved it completely she would have had to dispense with herself as mother; and in that case Jesus would have been a perfect demonstration of Mrs. Glover's "science of being." Being born, however, of an actual and visible mother, Jesus ​was not altogether free from the universal illusion of personal sense. He was the Idea of Principle, it is true, "but born of woman, that is, having in part a personal origin, he blended the idea of Life, that is, God, with the belief of Life in matter, and became the connecting link between science and personal sense; thus to mediate between God and man."
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. But Mrs. Glover was never afraid of contradicting herself, and her explanation accounted, in some manner, for the origin and nature of Christ, and such as it was, it was made to serve her purpose.
It was, she said, the Son of God, or Christ, who "walked the wave and stilled the tempest," healed the sick, restored the blind, and declared that "I and the Father are one"; and it was Mary's son, or Jesus, who endured temptation, suffered in Gethsemane, and died upon the cross. "Christ, understanding that Soul and body are Intelligence and its Idea, destroyed the belief that matter is something to be feared and that sickness and death are superior to harmony and Life. His kingdom was not of this world, He understood Himself Soul and not body, therefore He triumphed over the flesh, over sin and death. He came to teach and fulfil this Truth, that established ​the Kingdom of Heaven, or reign of harmony on earth." But the man Jesus was not unconscious of "matter conditions." Although, Mrs. Glover thought, He " experienced few of the so-called pleasures of personal sense; perhaps He knew its pains." This illustrated, also, that "Truth, in contact with error, produced chemicalisation." Chemicalisation, in Mrs. Glover's vocabulary, meant that when Truth and error, which cannot mingle, first come together, the contact of these two opposing forces, like the two parts of a Seidlitz powder, sets up a violent agitation and eruption. This is chemicalisation, and during its process Truth may sometimes seem to be affected by error, but when it subsides it is found that error is vanquished, and Truth has prevailed. "Hence," said Mrs. Glover, "our Master's sufferings came through contact with sinners; but Christ, the Soul of man, never suffered." She taught that "Had the Master utterly conquered the belief of Life in matter, He would not have felt their infirmities, but," she continued, "He had not yet risen to this His final demonstration."
The death on the cross is interpreted as a "demonstration" of "science." "He permitted them the opportunity to destroy His body mortal, that He might furnish the proof of His immortal body in corroboration of what He taught, that the Life of man was God, and that body and Soul are inseparable. . . . Neither spear nor cross could harm Him; let them think to kill the body, and, after this, He would convince those He had taught this science, He was not dead, and possessed the same body as before. Why His disciples saw Him after the burial, when others saw Him not, was because they better understood His explanations of the phenomenon." Christ had ​"triumphed over sense, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, having solved being on its Principle."
The atonement received a new interpretation. Atonement means "at-one-ment" with God, Mrs. Glover said. "Jesus of Nazareth explained and demonstrated his oneness with the Father, for which we owe Him endless love and homage." But that is all. There was no sacrifice on Calvary. Christ's mission was to show us how to forsake the belief of life in matter, "but not to do it for us, or to relieve us of a single responsibility in the case." " 'Work out your own salvation,' is the demand of Life and Love," said Mrs. Glover, "and to this end God worketh with you."
Prayer, as commonly practised, had no place in Mrs. Glover's religion, in which God is Principle and not Person. "To address Deity as a Person," she said, "impedes spiritual progress and hides Truth." "Prayer is sometimes employed, like a Catholic confession, to cancel sin, and this impedes Christianity. Sin is not forgiven; we cannot escape its penalty. . . . Suffering for sin is all that destroys it." "When we pray aright, we shall . . . shut the door of the lips, and in the silent sanctuary of earnest longings, deny sin and sense, and take up the cross, while we go forth with honest hearts, labouring to reach Wisdom, Love, and Truth."
Mrs. Glover gave a spiritual interpretation of the Lord's prayer, converting it from a supplication to an affirmation of the properties of the Deity as she conceived them:
* Harmonious and eternal Principle of man,
* Nameless and Adorable Intelligence,
* Spiritualise man;
* Control the discords of matter with the harmony of Spirit. ​
* Give us the understanding of God,
* And Truth will destroy sickness, sin, and death, as it destroys the belief of intelligent matter,
* And lead man into Soul, and deliver him from personal sense,
* For God is Truth, Life, and Love forever.
When Science and Health was first published, Mrs. Glover believed that church organisations, church buildings, and "creeds, rites, and doctrines," were obstructions to spiritual growth. "We have no need of creeds and church organisations." "The mistake the disciples of Jesus made to found religious organisations and church rites, if indeed they did this, was one the Master did not make." "No time was lost by our Master in organisations, rites, and ceremonies, or in proselyting for certain forms of belief." "We have no record that forms of church worship were instituted by our great spiritual teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, . . . a magnificent edifice was not the sign of Christ's church." "Church rites and ceremonies have nothing to do with Christianity . . . they draw us toward material things . . . away from spiritual Truth." "Worshipping in temples made with hands . . . is not the true worship." "The soft palm upturned to a lordly salary, and architectural power—making dome and spire tremulous with ​beauty, that turns the poor and stranger from the gate, shuts the door on Christianity." "The man of sorrows was not in danger from salaries or popularity."
Mrs. Glover's theory of the origin of disease was based upon Quimby's science of health. Her fundamental proposition was, like Quimby's, that mind is the only causation, and that disease, as well as all other disharmonies of man, is due to man's steadfast belief that his body contains certain properties over which his mind has no control. But, enlarging upon the Quimby theory, Mrs. Glover declared that the body itself is a mere supposition which mankind has imagined for itself and has come to believe in implicitly. Starting from her standpoint that man is an immortal, spiritual being, having a form, it is true, as he at present believes, but that form being a "sensationless body," an inanimate figure, which may live, breathe, and move, not in accordance with any laws of its own, but in response only to the will of its owner, who is Spirit, Mrs. Glover argued that this spiritual body of man cannot see, hear, feel, smell, or taste, except as Spirit desires. He can not think, or reason, or perform any of the physical or mental functions commonly attributed to man, only as Spirit wills. Spirit, in her idea, is the man. The body is the mere instrument of Spirit.
This Spirit, which governs the body and owns it, is not an individual spirit. There are not just so many bodies and an equal number of spirits to govern them. Spirit, as described, ​is singular, general, and pervasive; and mankind, as well as trees, animals, and all phenomena, is simply the furniture of the universe, made for the use and convenience of universal Spirit. These sensationless bodies of Spirit were not very clearly defined, but in some places in her book Mrs. Glover said that they are "immortal" and "indestructible."
It follows that this sensationless body cannot, by any possibility, know, of and by itself, either sickness or health. It can have no sensation whatever, and in Mrs. Glover's system, this spiritual man, whose body is sensationless, is the only man that exists. Man, as we know him, a combination of brain, nerves, muscle, etc., is that false, hereditary image of physical life which we inherited from Adam. Along with our belief in this physical body, we have inherited a deeply-rooted conviction that this mythical body is capable of certain sensations, such as sight, hearing, etc., and is susceptible to the influences of the mythical physical conditions about it. This belief has given rise to other beliefs, and the result is that man has invented a very intricate and complicated system of physical life, giving names and attributes to various parts of his body, and clothing it and feeding it, in the belief that it requires clothes and food for comfort and nourishment. And, most remarkable of all, he has come to believe that his body can be sick, and can suffer from a derangement of its parts. Labouring under this delusion, man has imagined that, by administering certain remedies to his body, this mythical body will be pleased, and will often consent to get well. If not, if man believes very firmly that his body is very sick, and that it cannot get well, then the remedies do not please his body and it will not consent ​to get well. Then man becomes convinced that his body ceases, of its own volition, to live, and that it is then dead and has no longer power to see, smell, hear, think, or suffer. He believes also that his spirit, which he imagined had been imprisoned within his body, is, by the death of his body, set free, and that it then goes off to a world inhabited by other spirits of other dead bodies, and there continues to dwell.
This, according to Science and Health, is the status of "material mankind" to-day. The mission of Jesus Christ was to lead man back to the way of Truth and to restore to him his rightful spiritual character and the power over his body and over all created things. But the work of Christ was incomplete. Although He gave His message, and made His demonstration, He could not finish His task because of "the materiality of the age" in which He lived. He practised and taught Christian Science, and Mrs. Glover went so far as to call Him its "pioneer"; but He left no written statement of its theory, no text-book, and no formulæ by which His disciples could permanently confound disease. That was left to Mrs. Glover, who, after centuries of ignorance, and when the world had lost sight of the real mission of its Saviour, appeared to "this age" to teach and demonstrate and write all Truth in its fulness.
In applying her principle to the present material conditions, Mrs. Glover was emphatic and radical; and it must be admitted that her discussions showed a wonderfully scant knowledge of matters that are merely temporary and mortal. This, however, in the light of her science, would have been considered a proof of her fitness for the task of demolishing mortality, for Mrs. ​Glover came, not to save, but to destroy all man-made knowledge and human institutions. In her world of Spirit, knowledge was an outcast, and the less she knew about what she called the "'ologies and 'isms" the clearer and more searching was her spiritual vision.
If man would get out of his material state and into the realm of Spirit and Intelligence, he must first, she told him, unlearn all that he had learned. All knowledge is harmful, particularly a knowledge of physiology, for it creates false beliefs, and, like obedience to "the so-called laws of health," it multiplies diseases and increases the death rate. Materia medica, physiology, hygiene, and drugs were the deadliest enemies to Mrs. Glover's science. The hardly-won knowledge of the physical scientists was, she declared, the densest and most harmful ignorance. Again and again she repeated, "there is no physical science," and taught her readers that all the laws of nature were to be defied and set at naught. In accordance with his spiritual nature and origin, man should never admit the belief that he has a physical body, or that he dwells in a world of matter which can affect his body. All things are at his command, and the beliefs of cold, heat, pain, or discomfort, should be dismissed at once; and they will disappear. "Why," Mrs. Glover demanded, "should man bow down to flesh-brush, flannel, bath, diet, exercise, air, etc.?" The belief that man requires food, clothing, and sleep, she said, is strengthened by the doctors, and it is the doctors, too, who are principally to blame for the existence and continuance of disease. Disease is a habit, and the habit grows more prevalent as education and enlightenment spread, in proof of which she pointed out that ​there is less sickness among the uncivilised races and among animals than among the highly cultivated classes. "The less mind there is manifested in matter, the better. When the unthinking lobster loses his claw, it grows again." If man would believe that matter has no sensation "then the human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw." "Epizootic is an educated finery that a natural horse has not." "The snowbird sings and soars amid the blasts; he has no catarrh from wet feet."
"Obesity," Mrs. Glover wrote, "is an adipose belief of yourself as a substance." "All the diseases on earth," said Science and Health, "never interfered for a moment with man's Life. Man is the same after, as before a bone is broken, or a head chopped off." But for the present, Mrs. Glover advised, if such accidents seem to occur one might as well seem to call a surgeon. "For a broken bone, or dislocated joint," she wrote naïvely, "'tis better to call a surgeon, until mankind are farther advanced in the treatment of mental science. To attend to the mechanical part, a surgeon is needed to-day . . . but the time approaches when mind alone will adjust joints and broken bones, if," she added, "such things were possible then."
Food is not necessary to nourish and sustain the body. "We have no evidence," said Mrs. Glover, "of food sustaining Life, except false evidence." "We learn in science food neither helps nor harms man." Yet Mrs. Glover took care to warn her readers not to be too radical on this point. "To stop utterly eating and drinking," she said, "until your belief changes in regard to these things, were error," and she ​admonished them to "get rid of your beliefs as fast as possible."
In treating a patient, who is under the delusion of sickness, there is a stated method. It must first be thoroughly understood that his disease has its origin in the mind. His body may seem to suffer because it is at the mercy of his mind, and as long as his mind retains "a mental image" of toothache, cancer, tuberculosis, fever, dyspepsia, or any form of bodily discomfort, his body will respond and will seem to develop the particular belief of sickness that is in his mind. The object, then, is to abolish the mental picture of disease. The Christian Science healer "in case of decaying lungs, destroys in the mind of his patient this belief, and the Truth of being and immortality of man assert themselves . . . and the lungs become sound and regain their original proportions." The belief in the mind of the patient is not always easily destroyed, but the healer must be patient. "When healing the sick," said Mrs. Glover, "make your mental plea, or better, take your spiritual position that heals, silently at first, until you begin to win the case, and Truth is getting the better of error." That is, while the patient is lying before you, convulsed with pain, you must retreat within yourself and fight out the disease in a mental argument with error, contending that there is no pain and that the patient is deluded. This course, faithfully pursued, according to Science and Health, will result in an overwhelming conviction that the patient is not held in the throes of error, and the disease will begin to subside. "Then your patient is fit to listen," said Mrs. Glover, "and you can say to him, 'Thou art whole,' without his scorn." She advised the healer to "explain to him audibly, sometimes, the power mind has ​over body, and give him a foundation . . . to lean upon, that he may brace himself against old opinions." "The battle lies wholly between minds, and not bodies, to break down the beliefs of personal sense, or pain in matter, and stop its supposed utterances, so that the voice of Soul, the immortality of man, is heard."
As a preventative of disease, Christian Science is equally effective. "You can prevent or cure scrofula, hereditary disease, etc., in just the ratio you expel from mind a belief in the transmission of disease, and destroy its mental images; this will forestall the disease before it takes tangible shape in mind, that forms its corresponding image on the body." "When the first symptoms of disease appear, knowing they gain their ground in mind before they can in body, dismiss the first mental admission that you are sick; dispute sense with science, and if you can annul the false process of law, alias your belief in the case, you will not be cast into prison or confinement." "Speak to disease as one having authority over it." "Not to admit disease, is to conquer it."
One of the signs that the healer's efforts are successful, and that Truth is working against error in the patient is "chemicalisation," which has been previously referred to in this chapter. In healing, chemicalisation first shows itself in a violent aggravation of all the patient's symptoms of disease, but neither the patient nor the healer should be alarmed at this. It is a beneficial process, and during it the error or poisonous thought in the patient's system will be thrown off, and when it is over the patient will be well.
The patient can be treated just as effectively without the ​bodily presence of his healer, for the healer's mind can work upon the mind of his patient equally well, be he absent or present. Absent treatment is, therefore, regularly practised in Christian Science.
Despite Mrs. Glover's protest against all "knowledge," she seemed to admit that her healers should know something of physiology and materia medica, sufficient, at least, to recognise symptoms and to understand the names of both symptoms and diseases. "When healing mentally," she wrote, "call each symptom by name, and contradict its claims, as you would a falsehood uttered to your injury," for "if you call not the disease by name, when you address it mentally, the body will no more respond by recovery than a person will reply whose name is not spoken; and you can not heal the sick by argument, unless you get the name of the disease." That is, if a patient happened to be labouring under the belief that he was afflicted with yellow fever, and the lay healer, whose knowledge of medical science is, by the terms of his religion, as limited as he can possibly make it, did not recognise the disease, and was ignorant of its name, then the healer could not heal, and Truth would stand powerless while the patient died of this rare and unfamiliar belief.
In the contemplation of death, Mrs. Glover did not weaken in theory. Death is the great and final test of Christian Science. It is, she said, "the last enemy to be overcome," and "much is to be understood before we gain this great point in science." Healers must "never consent to the death of man, but rise to the supremacy of spirit." But whether or not they consent to it, Mrs. Glover recognised that death, although false, ​is, for the present, an incontrovertible fact. "Contemplating a corpse," she wrote, "we behold the going out of a belief." One might conclude, from Mrs. Glover's reasoning, that a "corpse" might be exactly that "immortal" and "sensationless" body which belongs to Spirit. The belief of Life in matter has "gone out." It is as "sensationless" as it is possible to be. Yet the all-powerful and all-pervading Principle, of which she said so many things, never quickens a "corpse" nor works its wonders through the dead.
But in spite of her statement that death is "the going out of a belief," Mrs. Glover said in another passage: "If the change called death dispossessed man of the belief of pleasure and pain in the body, universal happiness were secure at the moment of dissolution; but this is not so; every sin and every error we possess at the moment of death remains after it the same as before, and our only redemption is in God, the Principle of man, that destroys the belief of intelligent bodies."
The system seems altogether hopeless if one attempts to follow Mrs. Glover's reasoning. If a mortal man's belief in material life continues even after his mortal and material life is dissolved, it being all the time understood that "belief," "material life," and "mortal man" are one and the same, then what chance has man to become separated from his belief in himself? Mrs. Glover had a suspicion that all this was confusing and tried to help it out. "From the sudden surprise," she wrote, "of finding all that is mortal unreal, . . . the question arises, who or what is it that believes?"
"God is the only Intelligence, and can not believe because He understands. . . . Intelligence is Soul and not sense, Spirit ​and not matter, and God is the only Intelligence, and there is but one God, hence there are no believers!” That is the answer. “So far as this statement is understood, it will be admitted,” said Mrs. Glover; and who shall say that she is not right?
Among the many incidental ideas which Mrs. Glover added to Quimbyism is her qualified disapproval of marriage. Quimby had a large family and saw nothing unspiritual in marriage; and although Mrs. Glover had twice been married, and became a wife for the third time a year later, she believed that marriage had not a very firm spiritual basis. In defining the real purpose of marriage she said nothing about children. “To happify existence by constant intercourse with those adapted to elevate it, is the true purpose of marriage.” “The scientific morale of marriage is spiritual unity. . . . Proportionately as human generation ceases, the unbroken links of eternal harmonious being will be spiritually discerned.”
In addition to the development of her “science,” Mrs. Glover described a later discovery in regard to it. Some of her “false students,” she said, were substituting mesmerism for “science” when healing the sick. The chapters called “Imposition and Demonstration,” and “Healing the Sick,” are largely taken up with an account of how this false doctrine, which is a perversion of Christian Science, originated, and a warning of its evil effects. This practice of mesmerism was the forerunner of what she later called “Malicious Animal Magnetism.” The ​story of its origin and development will be told in the next chapter.
The book, Science and Health, has, since 1875, been through nearly five hundred editions. It has been revised and edited many times since the original version appeared, and there have been important additions to the doctrine from time to time; but the first edition contained, in the main, the body of the Christian Science faith as it is to-day. The first three editions of Science and Health were marred by bitter personal references to those whom Mrs. Glover considered her enemies. These denunciations were summed up in a chapter called "Demonology," which was published in the third edition (see chapter xii). Mrs. Glover was persuaded by Rev. James H. Wiggin, her literary adviser, to omit this chapter from later editions, on the ground that it was libellous. The "Key to the Scriptures" was added to the book in 1884. It consisted originally of a "Glossary," in which certain words in the Bible were given new meanings through Mrs. Glover's spiritual interpretation. For example, "death" is said to mean "an illusion"; "Mother," should read "God"; evening is "mistiness of mortal thought"; "bridegroom" is "spiritual understanding," etc. This glossary was for the use of her students in reading the Bible. The most conspicuous addition to the doctrine is contained in the chapter called "Apocalypse," which was first printed in 1886. In this chapter Mrs. Eddy adopts a belief similar to the belief the Shakers entertain of their founder, Ann Lee, namely, that she is the woman referred to in the Apocalypse, and represents the "feminine principle of Deity."
​From the study of Quimby's theory, as given in chapter iii, and the foregoing statement of Mrs. Glover's more elaborate system, as contained in Science and Health, it will be seen that Quimby's “science of man,” as he tried to teach and practise it, was simply a new way of applying an old truth; and that Mrs. Glover, in the process of making Quimby's idea her own, merely added to it certain abnormalities, which, if universally believed and practised, would make of Christian Science the revolt of a species against its own physical structure; against its relation to its natural physical environment; against the needs of its own physical organism, and against the perpetuation of its kind. But in spite of the radical doctrines laid down in Science and Health, neither Mrs. Glover nor her followers attempted to practise them in their daily lives; nor do they do so now. In relation to their physical existence and surroundings, Mrs. Eddy and all Christian Scientists live exactly as other people do; and while they write and teach that physical conditions should be ignored, and the seeming life of the material world denied, they daily recognise their own mortality, and have a very lively sense of worldly thrift and prosperity. Mrs. Eddy's philosophy makes a double appeal to human nature, offering food both to our inherent craving for the mystical and to our desire to do well in a worldly way, and teaching that these extremes are not incompatible in “science.” Indeed, as one of the inducements offered to purchasers of the first edition of Science and Health, Mrs. Glover advertised it as a book that “affords opportunity to acquire a profession by which you can accumulate a fortune,” and in the book itself she said that “Men of business have said this science ​was of great advantage from a secular point of view." And in later and more prosperous days Mrs. Eddy has written in satisfied retrospect: "In the early history of Christian Science among my thousands of students few were wealthy. Now, Christian Scientists are not indigent; and their comfortable fortunes are acquired by healing mankind morally, physically, and spiritually." Whatever may be the Christian Science theories regarding the nothingness of other forms of matter, the various forms of currency continue to appear very real to the spiritualised vision of its followers. Mrs. Eddy insists that her healers shall be well paid. The matter of payment has, she thinks, an effect upon the patient who pays. She says: "Christian Science demonstrates that the patient who pays what he is able to pay is more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equivalent for health." Worldly prosperity, indeed, plays an important part in the Christian Science religion to-day. It is, singularly enough, considered a sign of spirituality in a Christian Scientist. Poverty is believed to be an error, like sin, sickness, and death; and Christian Scientists aim to make what they call their "financial demonstration" early in their experience. A poor Christian Scientist is as much of an anomaly as a sick Christian Scientist.
* ↑ The story of Mrs. Glover's absorption of Quimby is told in Chapter X.
* ↑ The Key to the Scriptures, which now forms a part of the title, was not yet written.
* ↑ An exposition of Quimby's doctrine is contained in Chapter III of this volume.
* ↑ In later editions of Science and Health the idea of revelation is greatly enlarged upon and emphasised.
* ↑ Mrs. Glover also taught that the natural law which produces flowers and fruit can be changed at will, even now, if one has a grasp of her science. In a personal letter written in 1896 she stated that she had caused an apple tree to blossom in January, and had frequently performed "some such trifles in the floral line," while living in Lynn.
* ↑ In more recent years Christian Scientists have declared their belief that Mrs. Eddy is the "feminine principle of Deity," and much has been written by her followers in defence of this position.
* ↑ This theory is the basis of the Christian Science belief that children born of the flesh are not born according to the "science of being." Christian Science discourages the birth of children in the usual way, but permits it as "expedient" for the present. In the future when, as they believe, the world shall be more spiritual, children will appear as products of Spirit only, and they will come by whatever means they are desired. "Should universal mind or belief adopt the appearing of a star as its formula of creation, the advent of mortal man would commence as a star." "Belief may adopt any condition whatever, and that will become its imperative mode of cause and effect." "Knowledge will . . . diminish and lose estimate in the sight of man; and Spirit instead of matter be made the basis of generation."
* ↑ This prayer has been re-interpreted in the successive editions of Science and Health, and in the last edition (1909) it reads as follows, the lines alternating with the Lord's Prayer as given in the New Testament: Our Father which art in heaven, Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, Hallowed be Thy name, Adorable One, Thy kingdom come, Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Enable us to know,—as in Heaven, so on earth,—God is omnipotent, supreme. Give us this day our daily bread; Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections; And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors; And Love is reflected in love; And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death. For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
* ↑ Since 1875 Mrs. Eddy's ideas of church buildings and church organisations have been considerably broadened. Her organised churches are now more than six hundred in number, and her congregations worship in costly temples, and have a very complete ecclesiastical system; and the founder of the church and the head of the entire church system is Mrs. Eddy herself.
* ↑ In a chapter called “Wedlock,” in Miscellaneous Writings (1897), Mrs. Eddy, after an evasive discussion of the subject, squarely puts the question: “Is marriage nearer right than celibacy? Human knowledge inculcates that it is, while Science indicates that it is not.” Also: “Human nature has bestowed on a wife the right to become a mother; but if the wife esteems not this privilege, by mutual consent, exalted and increased affections, she may win a higher.”
* ↑ For other similarities to be found between the religious beliefs of the Shakers and Christian Science, see Appendix C.
* ↑ We were demonstrating over a lack of means, which we had learned was just as much a claim of error to be overcome with Truth as ever sickness or sin was.—Contributor to the Christian Science Journal, September, 1898. The lack of means is a lupine ghost sired by the same spectre as the lack of health, and both must be met and put to flight by the same mighty means of our spiritual warfare.—Contributor to the Christian Science Journal, October, 1904.