of said defendants pay a fine of $50 and costs, or in lieu thereof stand committed to the House of Correction of the City of Milwaukee for the term of thirty days." Sixteen hours or more this little victim of Christian Science lingered, nature fighting to retain its lease of life, but fighting alone and all in vain. Under such circumstances mortal existence could not be prolonged, and the spirit of the child martyr fled to God. Christian Science talks about its charity, sympathy, and good deeds, but doctrines that make the heart ice and the ears mute to the appeal of an innocent, helpless child are in truth a peril to society. William A. Purrington, a lawyer, after according to Christian Science, its doctrines and practice, a most exhaustive investigation, has given as his testimony: "We devoutly believe that Mrs. Eddy is an instrument in the hand of God, not for the healing of the nations, but to humble us intellectually by showing that, at the end of the nineteenth century, professedly intelligent persons can be as easily duped by her as their forebears were by Cagliostro at the close of the eighteenth century." Amid the laudations of the march of intellectual progress witnessed by the twentieth century, the men of giant brains that contribute to the mighty movements of modern thought, what words of burning eloquence are heard in praise of Christian Science? Not one. Why? It is the one "Science" that proclaims an empty head-illusion-and puts a premium on ignorance and fantastic inconsistencies. CHAPTER XI. THE MASK OF DELUSION. Delusion The most charitable view of Christian Science is Founded on to regard it as wearing the mask of delusion on the face of experience and actuality. Mrs. Eddy is under the hallucination that she is led by divine inspiration and is a peculiar favorite of Heaven. In December, 1900, she wrote to the Boston Herald: "I should blush to write of 'Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures' as I have, were it of human origin, and I, apart from God, its author. But as I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of heaven in divine Metaphysics, I cannot be supermodest in my estimate of the Christian Science Text-Book," and she is not! Here this self-appointed prophet puts herself in the closest possible relationship to Deity. She is the speIcial vehicle of a divine revelation. She is under the delusion that God has exalted her to complete the mission of Jesus Christ. In "Pulpit and Press" she has written: "What I am it is for God to declare in his infinite mercy." Again she says: Again she says: "Whoever in any age expresses most of the spirit of Truth and Love, the principle of God's idea, has most of the spirit of Christ, of that mind which was in Christ Jesus. If Christian Scientists find in my writings, Mrs. Eddy's teaching, and example a greater degree of this spirit than in others, they can justly declare it." In her new bible she defines God to be this Truth, Love, and Principle about which she discourses in the above. What is it that she really says to her followers and the world, if her statements on this subject are not avowals of her connection with Deity? Those who have formerly listened to her personal oral teachings declare that she hesitated not to make herself equal with Christ and possessed of all the powers that Jesus had. In her own person and to this age, she wants to be considered as having a similar mission as Jesus had to his age, as being the feminine manifestation of all the powers, attributes, and characteristics of Deity. There are indications that this delusion sometimes leads her to the idea that she is a somebody or something halfway between the Virgin Mary and her exalted Son. Mrs. Eddy's writings on "Science" make it clear that she feels that her place is to fulfil the incompleted mission of our Lord. Ask for an explanation of these positions from any leader of the cult, and you are met with a volley of quotations from the "Mother's" books and sayings indicative of the profound respect that the followers of this prophet of delusions entertain for morality, human law, religion, love, compassion, and every Christian virtue. It is the doctrines that are subversive of all the good she teaches that arouse the gravest apprehension on the part of the intelligent Christian investigator who would get at the heart of Christian Science opinions and beliefs. Very serious is the danger to society from the attitude of a woman whose followers almost deify her, who is said to have reached a state where she is immune from all poisons, can heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, and cast out devils. Is not the woman under a terrible deception who makes the assertions that she repeatedly makes? When brought to bay on some of her fantastic utterances, such as her actually having once raised the dead, she hides. behind the spiritual interpretation of the phrase, declaring, "I mean the dead in trespasses and sins." Tear off the mask. It is only a delusion! There is no other conclusion to be reached by the sane. Has her ambition made wreck of her imagination? Has she the daring of irresponsible and conscienceless insanity? On the other hand, can we laugh at these things as the offshoot of a metaphysical and esoteric philosophy that in no way can have a lasting influence on our ordinary life? Mrs. Eddy claims that pain is simply a "mortal belief," that sin, sickness, and death "belong, with all that is material and temporal, to the nothingness of error, which imitate the creations of Deity." What a horrible mockery of the sublime doctrines of the Gospel and the tragedy of Calvary does Mrs. Eddy make in her so-called revelation! Was it not of such teachers that the divine Master lifted up the warning which has sounded down the ages: "Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." Under the mask of this marvellous phantasm Mrs. Eddy weaves for herself a Gethsemane in "Retrospection and Introspection": "It is often asked why Christian Science was revealed to me as one annihilating the false testimony of the physical senses No one else can drain the cup which I have drunk to the dregs, as the discoverer and teacher of Christian Science; neither can its inspiration be gained without tasting the cup No mortal could have first informed the human mind of what the mortal and carnal cannot discern." This prophet of the unreal and the fantastic in both religion and philosophy does not shrink from wearing the mask of an imaginative sorrow and, if not in so many words claiming equality with Christ, the anointed One, yet using such language as to immediately suggest such an alternative. She wears the mask of great sanctity on the delusions of mortal weakness, sinfulness and vanity. According to the statements of those who have known personally her life, if there was ever a woman who exhibited in her personality and character great human frailty, it is she. She is said to have been filled with vanity and frivolity in her youth, fond of dress and the affectations of the toilet, with a raging temper and exceedingly exacting, demanding great self-sacrifices on the part of friends, stooping to acts of littleness |