The Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have mixed it up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or five hundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows how many million pamphlets and books.  I once invested three of my hard-earned dollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, and let myself be stunned and blinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings.  It is unadulterated moonshine—­as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and Hegelian and other orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can prove to you in one minute.  What interests me about the phenomenon is not the slinging of tremendous words, but the strictly Yankee use which is made of them.  There is no nonsense about saving your soul in Christian Science; what it is for is to remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney, and to enable you to hustle and make money.  We saw in our politics the growth of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith, and corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the development of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.

It is a strict religion—­strictly cash.  The heads of the cult do not issue cheap editions of “Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures”, to relieve the suffering of the proletariat; no—­the work is copyrighted, in all its varying and contradictory editions, and the price is from three to seven-fifty, according to binding.  Treatments cost from three dollars to ten, whether you come and get them or take them over the telephone.  And we have no nonsense about charity, we don’t worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to get rich right off the bat.  You may; come to our marble churches and hear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind they were enabled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market.  If you don’t avail yourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also the punishment.

As to the management of the Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a Bolshevik democracy in comparison.  The Church is controlled by an absolutely irresponsible self-perpetuating body of five men, who alone dictate its policy.  I have in my hand a letter from a Christian Science healer who was listed as an “authorized practitioner”, and who withdrew from the Church because of its attitude on public questions.  He sends me a copy of his correspondence with the editors of the “Christian Science Monitor”, containing a detailed analysis of the position of that paper on such issues as the Ballinger land-frauds.  He writes: 

I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church is consciously plutocratic.  The only recommendation I have heard of the latest appointee to the Board of Directors is that he is one of the richest men in the movement.

After the Titanic disaster, Senator La Follette brought in a carefully drawn bill to compel steamship companies to provide life-boats and trained crews.  The “Christian Science Monitor” opposed this bill; and when my correspondent cited the fact, he brought out a quaint bit of metaphysical logic, as follows: