By Rev. Maurice E. Wilson, D.D., Dayton, Ohio.
One of the keenest observers of America has made the remark that “the reason so many new isms are constantly springing up is because the old Gospel is so hard to live.” People are looking for a comfortable life here, and an easy way to heaven. They are scanning earth and sky for a royal road. The fight with sin which the Gospel demands is a fierce and bitter fight; and many men and women are anxiously searching for a way of escape, desiring to be “carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.”
This desire lies at the basis of Eddyism. Its fundamental principle is that sin and sickness have no real existence. They may be banished by a process of thought. There is no matter; mind is everything. And, in proportion to the progress of the individual in this creed, all disagreeable and unpleasant things vanish.
Mrs. Eddy’s basic propositions are four in number, and are thus expressed in her own words: “First, God is all in all. Second, God is good, good is mind. Third, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. Fourth, Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease. Disease, sin, evil, death, deny good, omnipotent God, Life” (p. 113, “Science and Health”). (Note: All quotations from “Science and Health” in this article are from the Edition of 1903.) Unconscious of the absurdity of the thing, she placidly tells us that since these statements may be read backward as well as forward, this is a proof that they are true! “The Divine metaphysics proves the rule by inversion.” So far as their value goes, these four propositions might just as well be read perpendicularly, or obliquely. And by the same method of argument, it would be easy to prove that angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim, are butterflies, lizards, guinea pigs and horses.
It is not necessary in this article to review Mrs. Eddy’s life or discuss her personality. It is interesting as the study of an eccentric character, but the personal aspect of this subject is a minor aspect.
In seeking for the exact teachings of this ism, we naturally turn to the fountain and source of it all, the text-book, ”Science and Health.” This book is to Eddyism all that Blackstone is to the lawyer, or the pharmacopoeia to the physician- and a good deal more, - for never did a body of people accept the utterances and decrees of a superior more slavishly than do the disciples of this cult accept those of its founder.
It is out of the question, of course, to consider all the teachings or positions of “Science and Health”, and other writings of Mrs. Eddy. That would require more space than “The Fundamentals” can give to the subject. To examine only a few of its underlying principles will be sufficient. If these claims can be shown to be contrary to the Word of God and to the experience and common sense of mankind, the whole thing must be rejected as unworthy of confidence. Not only this, but it should be opposed and aggressively combatted as a pestiferous error.
Now, “Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures” treats of such subjects as Prayer, Marriage, Atonement and Eucharist, Animal Magnetism, Science, Theology, Medicine, Physiology, Creation, and Spiritualism. And these chapters are as utterly destitute of logical arrangement, or natural sequence, as if they had been shaken up in a bag and drawn out by a blind man.
Rather than offend the logical sense of the reader, I shall offend the book itself, and selecting a few of these topics consider them in their proper order.
”GOD”
What does Mrs. Eddy teach concerning God? Well, for one thing, that God is not a person. He is “Principle”; and of the same impersonal character as the “principle of mathematics.” That is her own analogy - “the principle of mathematics.” This statement is iterated and re-iterated with intense positiveness. God, moreover, is the only Principle.
Mrs. Eddy denies that she is a pantheist. This at first is most astounding; but when we turn to her definition of pantheism we understand her denial. Pantheism, she tells us, is “a belief in the intelligence of matter” (p. 129, “Science and Health”). Since waters began to run, the world never heard so wonderful a definition of pantheism. Even Spinoza himself was not a pantheist according to this interpretation of the word. But inasmuch as in Eddyism “there is no matter”, and “mind is everything”, and “there is no mind but God”, sensible people can reach only one conclusion. We have here out and out pantheism.
The author tells us, “There is but one I or Us.” “But one I or Us”! Mrs. Eddy declares that Christian Science completely cleansed her mind of all such trivial things as grammar. It certainly looks so. Again, we are told that “God is the only Ego.”
Perhaps the adherents of this cult believe Its founder when she denies that she is a pantheist, but nobody else believes her. The God of Eddyism is hopelessly entangled in the meshes of His own creation. He is imprisoned as the sap is imprisoned in the tree.