To return to the Claim. I find myself greatly
embarrassed by Mrs. Eddy’s remark: “I
regard self-deification as blasphemous.”
If she is right about that, I have written a half-ream
of manuscript this past week which I must not print,
either in the book which I am writing, or elsewhere:
for it goes into that very matter with extensive elaboration,
citing, in detail, words and acts of Mrs. Eddy’s
which seem to me to prove that she is a faithful and
untiring worshipper of herself, and has carried self-deification
to a length which has not been before ventured in ages.
If ever. There is not room enough in this chapter
for that Survey, but I can epitomize a portion of
it here.
With her own untaught and untrained mind, and without
outside help, she has erected upon a firm and lasting
foundation the most minutely perfect, and wonderful,
and smoothly and exactly working, and best safe-guarded
system of government that has yet been devised in the
world, as I believe, and as I am sure I could prove
if I had room for my documentary evidences here.
It is a despotism (on this democratic soil); a sovereignty
more absolute than the Roman Papacy, more absolute
than the Russian Czarship; it has not a single power,
not a shred of authority, legislative or executive,
which is not lodged solely in the sovereign; all its
dreams, its functions, its energies, have a single
object, a single reason for existing, and only the
one—to build to the sky the glory of the
sovereign, and keep it bright to the end of time.
Mrs. Eddy is the sovereign; she devised that great
place for herself, she occupies that throne.
In 1895, she wrote a little primer, a little body
of autocratic laws, called the Manual of The First
Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those laws in
force, in permanence. Her government is all there;
all in that deceptively innocent-looking little book,
that cunning little devilish book, that slumbering
little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels.
In that book she has planned out her system, and
classified and defined its purposes and powers.
MAIN PARTS OF THE MACHINE
A Supreme Church. At Boston.
Branch Churches. All over the world
One Pastor for the whole of them: to wit, her
book, Science and Health.
Term of the book’s office—forever.
In every C.S. pulpit, two “Readers,” a
man and a woman. No talkers, no preachers, in
any Church-readers only. Readers of the Bible
and her books—no others. No commentators
allowed to write or print.
A Church Service. She has framed it—for
all the C.S. Churches —selected its
readings, its prayers, and the hymns to be used, and
has appointed the order of procedure. No changes
permitted.
A Creed. She wrote it. All C.S. Churches
must subscribe to it. No other permitted.
A Treasury. At Boston. She carries the
key.
Copyrights
Christian Science from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
