Chapter OneMARY BAKER EDDY AND HER WRITINGSOf all the persons destined for religious prominence and success in the nineteenth century, none has eclipsed Mary Ann Morse Baker, better known among the band of the faithful as Mary Baker Eddy, "Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science." Mary Baker was born in Bow, New Hampshire, in the year 1821 in the humble surroundings of a New Hampshire farm house, and was reared a strict Congregationalist by her parents, Mark and Abigail Baker. The life of young Mary Baker until her twenty-second year was marked with frequent illnesses of both emotional and physical nature, (1) and the then infant "science" of Mesmerism was not infrequently applied to her case with some success. In December of 1843, at the age of 22, the future Mrs. Eddy was married to George W. Glover, a neighboring business man, whose untimely death of yellow fever in Wilmington, South Carolina, some seven months later, reduced his pregnant wife to an emotional and highly unstable invalid, who, throughout the remaining years of her life, relied from time to time upon the drug morphine as a medicant. (2) To be sure, no informed person believes that Mrs. Eddy was an addict in the context of today's usage, but sound evidence from incontrovertible sources is available to show beyond doubt that throughout her life Mrs. Eddy made repeated use of this drug. (3) A decade passed in the life of Mrs. Glover during which she had many trying experiences, and then on June 21st, 1853 she married Dr. Daniel M. Patterson, a dentist, who, contrary to the advice of Mrs. Glover's own father, Mark Baker, took the emotionally unstable Mary Glover for his bride. 1. E.F.Dakin.Mrs. Eddy pg. 19 The advice of Mark Baker was indeed ominously accurate, for some years later Mrs. Eddy divorced Dr. Patterson, who had abandoned her for another woman and thus her second attempt at matrimony met with crushing disaster. The third and last marriage of Mary Baker Glover Patterson was to one Asa G. Eddy when Mrs. Eddy was fifty-six years of age, although claiming, the time honored prerogative of womankind, she demurely permitted the figure forty years to appear on her third marriage form. She thus proved once again that far from being the saint of current Christian Science mythology, she was indeed a very human if not vain member of the female sex. The real history of Christian Science, however, cannot be told unless one P. P. Quimby of Portland, Maine, be considered, for history tells us that as Mrs. Eddy was the mother of Christian Science, so Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was undoubtedly its father. "Dr." Quimby in the late 1850's entitled his system of mental healing "The Science of Man," and had used the terms "The Science of Christ," and "Christian Science" for some time before Mrs. Eddy gratuitously appropriated the terminology as her own, something she dared not do while the old gentleman was alive and her relationship to him known to one and all. Mrs. Eddy's relationship to Dr. Quimby began when she arrived in Portland, Maine, in 1862 and committed herself to his care for treatment of "spinal inflammation." In November of that same year Mrs. Eddy testified that P. P. Quimby had healed her of her infirmity. Wrote the then adoring disciple of Quimby: "I visited P. P. Quimby and in less than one week from that time I ascended by a stairway of 182 steps to the dome of the City Hall and am improving ad infinitum." (4) 4. Portland Evening Courier, November 7, 1862. In later years Mrs. Eddy's recollection of Quimby was somewhat different than her earlier echoes of praise, and she did not hesitate to describe him as a very "unlearned man." Dr. Quimby termed his ideas "Science of Health." Mrs. Eddy entitled her book Science and Health, and published it in 1875, filled with numerous plagiarisms from the manuscripts of P. P. Quimby and from the writings of Francis Lieber, distinguished German-American publisher and authority on the philosophy of Hegel. For full documentation on Mrs. Eddy's plagiarism from Quimby and others the reader is referred to first four chapters of my book The Christian Science Myth,(5) which documents exhaustively the entire controversy and proves conclusively that Mrs. Eddy plagiarized a great part of her work from other sources, and then had it all copiously edited by the Rev. J. H. Wiggin, a retired Unitarian minister, who revealed his part in her deceptive plan via the post-humus publication of an interview he gave to one Livingstone Wright, later published as a pamphlet, entitled "How Reverend Wiggin Rewrote Mrs. Eddy's Book." Returning to Mrs. Eddy and the writings of Dr. Lieber for a moment, it is a simple matter to document her plagiarisms where this gentleman's writings were concerned. It is demonstrably true that Mrs. Eddy copied thirty-three pages verbatim and one hundred pages in substance into Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures, Edition 1875, from Dr. Lieber's manuscript on the writings of Hegel, a manuscript antedating Science and Health and now in the possession of the Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, and certified as accurate by Arthur E. Overberry, authority on Dr. Lieber's writings, and a special research committee of Johns Hopkins University who in 1940 pronounced the Lieber-Hegel document "unimpeachably authentic." 5. Zondervan Publishing House, 1955. For the benefit of the interested reader the Lieber Document is above challenge by any Christian Scientist, it is a proven fact. Our authority for exposing this plagiarism on the part of "Mother" Eddy is none other than Mrs. Eddy herself, who wrote: "When needed tell the truth concerning a lie. The evasion of truth cripples integrity, and casts thee down from the pinnacle.... A dishonest position is far from Christianly scientific" (Science and Health, p. 448). In addition to this statement on the subject of plagiarism, Mrs. Eddy wrote in her book Retrospection and Introspection the following: "There is no warranted common law, and no permission in the Gospel for plagiarizing an author's ideas and their works... " So it appears that out of her own mouth Mrs. Eddy has condemned the nefarious practice of plagiarism, a practice she seemed to have extreme difficulty abstaining from herself.
The interested reader can observe for himself that Mrs. Eddy plagiarized from the Lieber manuscript almost at will, and it is a historical fact that she had access to this manuscript at the home of Hiram S. Crafts where she lived for at least a year, during which time Crafts was admittedly her disciple avidly propagating the face-lifted teachings of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. Lest any should doubt the historical validity of these facts, the reader is referred to Sybil Wilbur's authorized Life of Mrs. Eddy, wherein the said Hiram Crafts is referred to as a "Kantian Transcendentalist," and further as "Mrs. Eddy's First Student." Dr. Lieber originally forwarded his manuscript "Metaphysical Religion of Hegel" to Hiram Crafts, a friend of his, with the express intent that it should be read before the "Kantian Society" in Boston. History does not tell us whether or not this ever took place, but one thing history has beyond doubt revealed for all to see and that is the fact that Mary Baker Eddy both saw and plagiarized from this manuscript, and therefore her claim to originality where "Science and Health" is concerned is shown to be fraudulent and baseless. The reader may wonder why we have gone to such great lengths to discuss Mary Baker Eddy and her plagiarisms, and the answer is really quite simple. Christian Science has historically from its very inception depended wholly and solely upon the authority conferred upon it by its now extinct high priestess, and in order to expose the claims of Christian Scientists relative to the inspiration of Mrs. Eddy and for that matter Mrs. Eddy's own claims it is virtually essential that her writings be shown in their true light, a light clouded and studded with plagiarisms, not only from Hegel, Dr. Lieber, and the Rev. Hugh Blair, (6) but from many sources, which unfortunately space does not allow us to discuss at this time.* All in all the history of Christian Science affords a fascinating study in contemporary cultism, for through the medium of this religion, Mary Baker Eddy made for herself a vast fortune, monies accumulated by every device conceivable, from contributions for "Tea jackets" to revisions of her books which the faithful were persuaded to purchase in the belief that new truths were to be revealed, whereas only one sentence had been added, and for which the gullible Scientists paid the full price for a "new" volume. Mrs. Eddy's attitude toward money was well known and she once said to the Rev. J. H. Wiggin, her "literary adviser," "Christian Science is a good thing, Mr. Wiggin. I make $10,000 a year at it." (7) The Quimby-Eddy dispute with parallel columns showing her plagiarism from his manuscript, "The Science of Man," all appeared in the New York Times of July 10, 1904, and is available, so further comment upon it is unnecessary at this time, except to note that when Mary Baker Eddy died in 1910 at the age of 89, there ended a life of the most remarkable character, for this woman had succeeded in building a massive organization which today virtually deifies her memory and bows in reverence before her voluminous writings so that "she being dead yet speaketh," to paraphrase a Biblical expression.
Relative to Mrs. Eddy's vaunted power to heal, she was openly challenged to demonstrate it on numerous occasions, but carefully avoided any such challenges (8) and it was no less an authority than Mr. Alfred Farlow, Chairman of the Publication Committee of the Christian Science Church, and President of the Mother Church in Boston, who under oath testified that he did not know of any healing ever having been made by Mrs. Eddy of any organic disease in her entire life, except stiff leg! (9) We close our historical resume on the hopeful note: that the reader may be led to peruse further the source literature as it appears in our great public libraries, material which beyond a doubt reveals the falsity and shallowness of the Christian Science myth. This myth, built upon the foundation of plagiarism with a super- structure of antichristian theology, is calculated if possible to deceive the elect and is paraded to one and all through every medium possible by the zealous disciples of Mrs. Eddy as another gospel designed to meet the needs of modern man. This gospel, however, denies categorically every cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith, and "tramples under foot the Son of God and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith they are sanctified an unholy thing" (Heb. 10:29). These are strong words, but an objective study of the facts will quickly confirm the necessity of recognizing Christian Science for what it is, a dangerous and rapidly growing non-Christian cult. * Note: So damaging to Christian Science claims for Mrs. Eddy is the Lieber Document that in 1955 Baptist historian Conrad H. Mohleman obliged the Christian Science church by authorizing with its full blessing and cooperation a volume entitled Ordeal by Concordance (Longmans' Green Co. N. Y.) in which he attempted to refute its authenticity. 8. The Rise of the Cults by Walter R. Martin, pp. 62, 63. Dr. Mohleman enlisted the aid of two "handwriting experts" (Osborn and Stein) both of whom were chastised severely for their testimony and opinions in a previous case before Justice Owen Roberts and neither of whom ever studied the original Lieber Document. Dr. Mohleman himself never did this either and so in the light of unimpeachable experts who did study the actual document and did pronounce it to be in Lieber's handwriting, their findings are to be rejected as irrelevant and misleading. Quotations from the Commission and Justice Owen J. Roberts are quite clear: "The evidence of Osborn as investigator and sleuth was twisted and warped from its original form so as to meet the needed proof. Such evidence must be altogether rejected as unworthy of consideration in a juridical proceeding" (p. 263). "Examination of Stein by the Umpire (Justice Owen J. Roberts) shows clearly that he was evasive, given to subterfuge and self-contradiction" (p. 257). These quotations are taken from a report by Arthur P. Myers, Documentary Authority and for thirty-five years Associate with the celebrated Samuel C. Malone, Dean of American Handwriting and Documentary Experts. |