MRS. EDDY AND DR. QUIMBY

"God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." If this is a fair and faithful definition of God, and virtually all Christians throughout Christendom will admit that it is, then this God never gave, nor ever could have given, the woman, whose life is sketched and character portrayed in the last chapter, a special revelation on any subject, except, forsooth, the subject of sin, from the point of view of personal guilt and the personal, as well as the universal need of cleansing through the blood of the Everlasting Covenant!

One day, several years ago, when I went home to the noon meal, I found a young man patiently waiting for an interview. He was fairly well dressed, a young man of engaging, but rather embarrassed manners. After formal greetings the first thing he said was, "I have come to you to get you to give me a prayer." After a few questions I turned to the table. took up a Bible and opened it, referring him to the Lord's Prayer recorded in the sixth chapter of the gospel of Matthew. He was delighted and assured me this was exactly what he wanted. Then, drawing his chair very close to mine he said in a most impressive whisper, "You don't know who I am, do you?" I admitted to him confidentially that I did not. By this time I was expecting almost anything from him, so was not surprised when he drew his chair closer still and most solemnly announced, "I am Elijah!" "You are,” I said, “well, what makes you think that?" "T

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don't think it," was the quick reply, "I know it!" I came back at him again and said, "Well, then, how do you know it?" His answer was simple and most convincing-to himself, "God has revealed it to me," and in his derangement he believed it.

The Rev. Solomon Spaulding was born in the year 1761. He was an author, a Revolutionary soldier, a Congregational minister, and later on in his somewhat kaleidoscopic career, an iron manufacturer. In the year 1812 he published a book, a work of the purest fiction, entitled "The Manuscript Found."

The finding of this manuscript in an ancient mound was an essential part of the fiction. Now comes Joseph Smith, born in Sharon, Vermont, in the year 1805, just seven years before the publication of the Spaulding romance. "The Manuscript Found" is found by him, and about the year 1820 he begins to dream dreams and see most wonderful things! Then in 1828, after his own work of preparation as forerunner has been completed, and everything is ready, some very foolish and credulous people included, he receives a most marvelously convenient revelation from God. This revelation, so he says, and beyond his own unsupported ipse dixit we have nothing, was presented to him by an angel, and consisted of curiously wrought and mysterious characters or hieroglyphics inscribed upon golden plates. Furthermore, he pretended that the Book of Mormon, published first by him in 1830, the Golden Bible, as it has been called, was a translation of these hieroglyphics, and surely he ought to know, for did he not sit composedly, in company with mysterious heavenly visitors, behind a conveniently arranged curtain and, with a handy grip

upon the aforesaid golden plates, proclaim the translation thereof, and it was literal, too,-from the Spaulding manuscript, to the amanuensis sitting on the outside? Joseph Smith knew that his alleged revelation stamped in hieroglyphics upon the plates of gold was a lie, and that he himself was a fraud! He was bound to know it, and from this conclusion there is no escape. We find here no derangement of the mental faculties, as in the case previously cited, of the demented young man, but rather, altogether of the moral faculties, and yet this loathesome imitation of religion, this bastard Christianity, founded upon a palpable fraud, and fattening upon immorality, has led astray hundreds of thousands of, in many cases, innocent and unsuspecting victims, in all parts of Christendom.

It is my purpose in this chapter to show that, as the Rev. Solomon Spaulding was related to Joseph Smith, exactly so was Doctor Phineas P. Quimby related to Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. And as the Spaulding romance is related to the Book of Mormon, even so again are the Quimby manuscripts related to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Referring to these two promoters of so-called religions, as the one was a plagiarist and impostor, the other was as like thereunto as the one pea in a pod is like unto its twin partner in the same pod, that is, as Joseph Smith relieved the Rev. Solomon Spaulding of his romantic belongings, even so Mrs. Eddy held up Dr. Quimby and robbed him of his ideas, both spoken and written. And this is easy to prove. "Doctor" Quimby, who was not a doctor except by courtesy, began his practice as a mesmerist, but when he discovered his science, mesmerism, as a healing

agency, was abandoned. As the result of many experiments Quimby's philosophy or science began to assume something like definite shape, and may be compressed into a single sentence, viz.: The patient will recover if you succeed in implanting within his mind. the unalterable conviction that he will get well. And any doctor or drug or suggestion that reaches this goal will heal the sick. This was his theory, and it was the application of this theory that healed Mrs. Eddy, or Mrs. Patterson, as she was at this time. And this is the whole of the theory concerning the curative power in Christian Science. As early as the year 1859 Dr. Quimby began writing manuscripts, thus putting his ideas into permanent form. In these manuscripts he speaks of his new discovery as the "Science of Health," and a great many times as the "Science of Christ," and once or twice as "Christian Science." It was not until three years after this, October 1862, that Mrs. Patterson, a broken down and emaciated invalid, presented herself before Dr. Quimby in Portland and told him that he was her only hope, that if he could not help her then she must die. From the time of the first treatment she felt the thrill of a new life and consequently the throb of a new hope. For a number of years she had been most grievously afflicted with a severe spinal affection. After three weeks of the Quimby treatment this was entirely relieved, or at least was quiescent, and she walked out of the doctor's office, as she herself said, a well woman.

Now, if the theory expounded and practised by Dr. Quimby at least several years prior to the time of his first meeting with Mrs. Patterson, is identically the same with that afterwards developed by Mrs. Eddy in

Science and Health, exactly the same thoughts being unfolded and exactly the same technical terms being employed, can there be any sort of a doubt as to the whence and the how of her alleged and much boasted revelation? But if it came from the manuscripts and the oral instructions of the mental healer, and not from heaven, then most assuredly and by reason of a logical necessity are the claims made by Mrs. Eddy clearly and absolutely fraudulent, and if so, what becomes of Christian Science, and incidentally, the Christian Scientist? With the records of both cases before us, has Mrs. Eddy any rights secured by letters patent on inspiration, with reference to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, that Joseph Smith does not hold with reference to the Book of Mormon? Absolutely and most emphatically she has not.

A gentleman of color was once haled into court charged with the crime of chicken-theft. The judge, wheeling around suddenly in his chair, turned upon him with the abrupt question, "Are you the defendant?" "Now, Boss," was the reply, "I hasn't done nuthin' to make you call me names like dat. I has a lawyer and you can talk to him." "Then who are you?" the judge asked. The answer was most astonishing, "I'se de gemmun what stole de chickens.”

By an unconscious plea of guilty our colored knight of the chicken-roost convicted himself. Unless our minds are hopelessly prejudiced in favor of a mere theory, and our eyes have been stubbornly shut against the plainest possible facts, the irresistible logic of common-sense compels the conviction that Mrs. Eddy's entire theory of so-called divine healing is nothing more nor less than an absorption from Dr. Quimby. Nor