SEPTEMBER 1, 1908 citations from Mrs, Eddy’s famous book, ‘‘Science and Health,’’ and connects these by comment of her own. ‘‘ Mrs. Eddy says that her theory of the universe is founded not upon human wisdom, but upon the Bible,’’ reports the writer, adding, ‘‘that so it is, but she uses both addition and subtraction very liberally to get her Biblical corroboration.’’? The account given of Mrs. Eddy’s point of view is: ‘‘The Bible may be interpreted in two ways, Mrs. Eddy says, literally and spiritually, and what she sets out to do is to give us the spiritual interpretation. Her method is simple. She starts with the propositions that all is God and that there is no matter, and then reconstructs the Bible to accommodate these statements. Such portions of the Bible as can be made, by judicious treatment, to corroborate her theory, she takes and ‘spiritually interprets’; that is, tells us once and for all what the passages really mean; and such portions as cannot possibly be converted into affirmative evidence she rejects as errors of the early copyists. Mrs. Eddy insists that the Bible is the record of truth, but a study of her exegesis shows that only such portions of it as meet with Mrs. Eddy’s approval and lend themselves—under very rough handling—to the support of her theory are accepted as the record of truth; the rest is thrown out as a mass of erroneous transcription. Mrs. Eddy’s keen eye at once detects those meaningless passages which have for so long beguiled the world, just as it readily sees in familiar texts an entirely new meaning. She explains the creation of the world from the account in the first chapter of Genesis, but the unknown author of this disputed book would never recognize his narrative when Mrs, Eddy gets through with it.’’ Beginning with the account of the creation, the writer takes her citations from the first edition of ‘‘Science and Health,’’ which ‘‘remains practically the same in later editions under the chapter called ‘Genesis.’ ’’ We read: “‘To begin with, Mrs. Eddy says, there was God, ‘All and in all, the eternal Principle.’ This Principle is both masculine and feminine; ‘Gender is embraced in Spirit, else God could never have shadowed forth, from out himself, the idea of male and female.’ But, Mrs. Eddy adds, ‘We have not as much authority for calling God masculine as feminine, the latter being the last, therefore highest idea given of him.’ ‘“Mrs. Eddy next sets about the creation. The ‘waters’ out of which God brought the dry land, she says, were ‘Love’; the dry land itself was ‘the condensed idea of creation.’ When God divided the light from the darkness, it means, says Mrs. Eddy, that ‘Truth and error were distinct from the beginning, and never mingled.’ But Mrs. Eddy has always insisted on the idea that ‘error’ is a delusion which arose first in the mind of mortal man; what is error doing away back here before man was created, and why was God himself compelled to take measures against it? Certainly the account of the Creation which came from Lynn is even more perplexing than that which is related in the Pentateuch. ‘With regard to the creation ¢* grass and herbs, Mrs. Eddy eagerly points out that ‘God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.’ And that, she says, proves that ‘creations of Wisdom are not dependent on laws of matter, but on Intelligence alone.’’? She admits here that the Universe is the ‘idea of Creative Wisdom,’ which is getting dangerously near the very old idea that matter is but a manifestation of spirit. Call the universe ‘matter,’ and Mrs. Eddy flies into a rage; call it ‘an idea of God,’ and she is serenely complaisant. There was certainly never any one so put about and tricked by mere words; on the whole, it may be said that the English language has avenged itself on Mrs. Eddy. ‘¢ Arriving at the creation of the beasts of the field, Mrs. Eddy says that ‘The beast and reptile made by Love and Wisdom were neither carnivorous nor poisonous.’ Ferocious tendencies in animals are entirely the product of man’s imagination. Daniel understood this, we are told, and that is why the lions did not hurt him.’’ The treatment of the story of Adam is thus examined: ‘«¢The history of Adam is allegorical throughout, a description of error and its results,’ etc. Man was created in God’s likeness, free from sin, sickness and death; but this Adam, who crept in (Mrs. Eddy does not explain how), was the origin of our belief that there is life in matter and was to obstruct our growth in spirituality. Mrs. Eddy says, ‘Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, a dam, or obstruction.’ This original method of word-analysis she seems to regard as final evidence concerning Adam, About the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy changes her mind. In the later editions of her book she says it is absurd to believe that God ZION’S WATCH TOWER (261-262) ever put Adam into a hypnotic sleep and performed a surgical operation upon him. In the first edition she says it is a mere chance that the human race is not still propagated by the removal of man’s ribs. ‘The belief regarding the origin of mortal man has changed since Adam produced Eve, and the only reason a rib is not the present mode of evolution is because of this change,’ ete. “*Not to be warned by the footprints of time, Mrs. Eddy pauses in her revision of Genesis to wonder ‘whence came the wife of Cain?’ But on the whole she profits by the story of Cain, for here she finds one of those little etymological clues which never escape her penetration. The fact that Adam and all his raee were but a dream of mortal mind is proved, she says, by the fact that Cain went ‘to dwell in the land of Nod, the land of dreams and illusions.’ Mrs. Eddy offers this seriously as ‘scientific’ exegesis. ‘¢*Mrs, Eddy’s conclusion about the Creation seems to be that we are all in reality the offspring of the first creation recounted in Genesis, in which man is not named, but is simply said to be in the image of God; but we think we are the children of the creation described in the second chapter; of the race that imagined sickness, sin, and death for itself. The tree of knowledge which caused Adam’s fall, Mrs. Eddy says, was the belief of life in matter, and she suggests that the forbidden fruit which Eve gave to Adam may have been ‘a medical work, perhaps.’ ’’ Mrs. Eddy, continues this writer, ‘‘says that Christ did not come to save mankind from sin, but to show us that sin is a thing imagined by mortal mind, that it is an illusion which ean be overcome, like sickness and death. The Trinity, as commonly accepted, Mrs. Eddy denies, though she seems to admit a kind of triune nature in God by saying over and over again that he is ‘Love, Truth and Life.’ The holy Ghost she defines as Christian Science; ‘The Comforter I understand to be Divine Science.’ ’’ Mrs. Eddy is said to have revised the Lord’s Prayer ‘‘a great many times.’’ The form printed in the edition of 1902 is given and commented on thus: *¢ ‘Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, adorable One. Thy kingdom is within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know—as in heaven, so on earth—God is supreme. Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections. And infinite Love is reflected in love, And Love leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth from sin, disease and death. For God is now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love.’ ‘In this interpretation the petitions have been converted into affirmations, and Mrs. Eddy’s prayer seems a somewhat dry enumeration of the properties of the Deity rather than a supplication. ‘¢This method of ‘spiritual interpretation’ has given Mrs. Eddy the habit of a highly empirical use of English. At the back of her book, ‘Science and Health,’ there is a glossary in which a long list of serviceable old English words are said to mean very especial things. The word ‘bridegroom’ means ‘spiritual understanding’; ‘death’ means ‘an illusion’; ‘evening’ means ‘mistiness of mortal thought’; ‘mother’ means God, ete. The seventh commandment, Mrs. Eddy insists, is an injunetion against adulterating Christian Science, although she also admits the meaning ordinarily attached to it. In The Journal of November, 1889, there is a long discussion of the Ten Commandments by the editor, in which he takes up both personal chastity and the pure-food laws under the command, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ ’’—Literary Digest. AMERICA NEEDS PIETY MORE THAN VAST ENTERPRISES WILL BEAT TARIFF, RAILWAYS OR BUMPER WHEAT CROPS IN RESULTS Brother Russell: What think you of this for a characterization of present society and for a prophecy that seems certain of fulfillment—and from a Wall Street Trade Journal at that? Very cordially yours, Junius M. Martin. * * * ‘¢What America needs more than railway extension and Western irrigation and low tariff and a bigger wheat crop and a merchant marine and a new navy is a revival of piety, the kind mother and father used to have—piety that counted it good business to stop for daily family prayers before breakfast, right in the middle of harvest; that quit field work a half-hour Thursday night, so as to get the chores done and go to prayermeecting; that borrowed money to pay the preacher’s salary, and prayed fervently in secret for the salvation of the rich man who looked with scorn on such unbusiness-like behavior. That’s what we need now to clean this country of the filth of graft, and of greed, petty and [4231]
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