"The Bible and the Christian Science text-book," writes Irving C. Tomlinson, in the Christian Science Bible Quar- terly Lessons, "are our only preachers. As the discourses are made up wholly of passages from the Bible and the Christian Science text-book, they contain nothing of human opinion ; they are devoid of man-made theories. They voice the eternal fact, concerning the everlasting Truth. They set forth the realities of being; they inform, instruct, and enlighten concerning the verities of God and man." When Tomlinson says that the Bible and Science and Health are the only preachers which the Christian Scientists have, he is declaring the literal fact. There are no sermons delivered in Christian Science churches. Whenever and wherever Christian Scientists meet together for worship the service is the same. A passage is read from the Bible and a pas- sage is read from Science and Health. Some hymns are sung. The only prayer used is the Lord's Prayer, followed line by line by Mrs. Eddy's adaptation of it to her system of teaching. That is all.33 The passage from the Bible, it should be noted, is read by the official called the Second Reader, and that from Science and Health by the First Reader.34 The place given to Science and Health in the private life of Christian Scientists is comparable to that given it in the public services. Every one is expected to purchase and read it; and not only to read it but to pore over it. It is intended that it shall dominate the whole life.35
When we open the book thus sent out into the world as divine in origin and contents, we receive a painful shock. It is hopelessly confused and obscure whether in matter or in style. Even Mrs. Eddy's disciples sometimes are frank enough to admit that "the first reading of her chief work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, leaves the impression, in spite of much that is strikingly beautiful and true, that there is a prevailing tone of in- coherence, contradiction, illogicality, and arbitrary, die-
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tatorial assertion, with no regard for evident fact either in the realm of objective nature or history." 36 To go to the opposite extreme, a high dignitary of the Roman Catholic church, Robert Hugh Benson, declares37 that "it is impos- sible to describe the confusion of mind that falls upon the student of Science and Health" "The quasi-philosophical phraseology of the book, the abuse of terms, the employ- ment of ambiguous words at crucial points, the character of the exegesis, the broken-backed paradoxes, the aston- ishing language, the egotism— all these things and many more end by producing in the mind a symptom resembling that which neuritis produces in the body, namely the sense that an agonizing abnormality is somewhere about, whether in the writings or in the reader is uncertain." He is al- most inclined to look upon the fact that Christian Science has been actually propagated by such a book as a proof of its divine origin. This phenomenon is far more remarka- ble, he intimates, than any miracle of healing Mrs. Eddy claims to have performed: "for she has done more than mend broken tissues by the application of mind, she has mended minds by the application of nonsense." Another writer slyly suggests that it is by the very fact that the book is sheer nonsense that its effect is produced.38 If we would only say with the King in Alice in Wonderland, "If there's no meaning in it, that saves a world of trouble, as we needn't try to find any "—it would be all up with it. The mischief comes from trying to find a meaning in it. "Given the will to believe by, say, the cure of a friend, the perusal of the book, by its general unintelligibility, produces a kind of mental coma, such as is induced by staring fixedly at a single bright spot." It hypnotizes us, in short.39 It is barely possible, of course, that some of the obscurity of the book is intentional, designed to produce just this effect. The Unitarian clergyman, James Henry Wiggin, who served for some years as Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser, and in that capacity revised the text of the book (from 1885 on), sug-
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gests as much.40 "As for clearness," he writes, "many Christian Science people thought her earlier editions much better, because they sounded more like Mrs. Eddy. The truth is that she does not care to have her paragraphs clear, and delights in so expressing herself that her words may have various readings and meanings. Really, that is one of the tricks of the trade. You know, Sibyls have always been thus oracular, to 'keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope.' " Allow this theory, however, the fullest application, and the book nevertheless remains hopelessly incompetent. Wiggin puts his finger on the true cause when he adds: "Quimby had definite ideas but Mrs. Eddy has not understood them." Her ability lay in other spheres than in that of philosophic thought and lit- erary expression.