Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/28

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The Origin of Christian Science.

disprove the second point of her claim. Mrs. Eddy's language suggests her mental process and a plan of procedure for us in our investigation. She says that “in the latter part of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind and every effect a mental phenomenon.” This she claims was a great discovery, but it is no new doctrine. Armed with this theory and the many views logically connected with it in a philosophic system which Christian Science is little more than a reproduction of, Mrs. Eddy turned to the Bible and studied it three years. For what? To read this philosophy into it.

The prudence of Mrs. Eddy kept her from claiming that she found in the Bible the “scientific certainty that all causation was Mind and every effect a mental phenomenon”. This is that “definite rule” that was “discovered in Christian Science”. But what one may not get out of the Bible she may put into it. As a result we have “Key to the Scriptures”. If any one doubts Mrs. Eddy's genius let him study this specimen of verbal and mental gynmastics. If she had been equally gifted for physical feats, the moon would have been a plaything for her. It is amazing that any number of persons can take this performance, this caricature, seriously. But necessity is the mother of invention. Mrs. Eddy had to get her system into the Bible or fail. It would not do to tell sick people that she could cure them by the metaphysics of a pagan philosophy. So she worked her ideas into the Bible and very natural-