The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
LITERARY ACTIVITIES—MRS. EDDY AS AN EDITOR—THE REV. MR. WIGGIN BECOMES HER LITERARY ASSISTANT—HIS PRIVATE ESTIMATE OF MRS. EDDY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
When Mrs. Eddy reopened the Massachusetts Metaphysical College after her husband's death in 1882 and, with half a dozen of her students, settled down to her old routine of teaching, she soon began to plan for a monthly publication which should be devoted to the interests of Christian Science. Quite as willing to contribute to the Boston dailies as she had been to enliven with prose and verse the columns of the more modest weeklies of Lynn, Mrs. Eddy wrote a great many press notices regarding her church and college, and it was Arthur Buswell's business to take these about to the various newspaper offices and attempt to place them. Editors, however, were often prejudiced by Mrs. Eddy's involved style and extravagant claims, and their unwillingness to print many of her contributions suggested to Mr. Buswell and Mrs. Eddy the convenience of having a periodical of their own.
On April 14, 1883, the Journal of Christian Science, a small eight-page monthly, made its appearance, bearing the name of Mary B. Glover Eddy as editor. The new magazine opened with a "prospectus" which began as follows: "The ancient Greek looked longingly for the Olympiad. The Chaldee watched for the appearing of a star; to him, no higher destiny dawned upon the dome of being than that foreshadowed by the signs in the heavens." Whether Mrs. Eddy meant to imply that so the modern world waited for Christian Science, the reader must conjecture, for she does not say so, nor does she say anything about the purpose or policy of her journal. The only sentence in the prospectus which could be construed as having anything to do with her magazine is the following, which would seem to indicate her intended policy as editor, though this is not very clear:
While we entertain decided views as to the best method for elevating the race physically, morally, and spiritually, and shall express these views as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gifts from our divine origin, or any supernatural power, etc.
The founding of the Journal was perhaps the most important step Mrs. Eddy had taken since she came to Boston, as it afterward proved one of the most effective means of extending her influence and widening the boundaries of Christian Science. In the beginning the magazine had but a handful of subscribers, and the cost of printing it was not more than thirty or forty dollars an issue. This sum was raised by voluntary subscription, nearly all the Christian Scientists contributing money except Mrs. Eddy.
Although her subscription-list was small, Mrs. Eddy knew what to do with her Journal. Copies found their way to remote villages in Missouri and Arkansas, to lonely places in Nebraska and Colorado, where people had much time for reflection, little excitement, and a great need to believe in miracles. The metaphor of the bread cast upon the waters is no adequate suggestion of the result. Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science began to be talked of far away in the mountains and in the prairie villages. Lonely and discouraged people brooded over these editorials which promised happiness to sorrow and success to failure. The desperately ill had no quarrel with the artificial rhetoric of these testimonials in which people declared that they had been snatched from the brink of the grave.
Soon after the Journal was started, Mrs. Emma Hopkins, an intelligent and sincere young woman, came to Boston to assume the assistant editorship of the magazine. Mrs. Hopkins had first met Mrs. Eddy at the house of one of her friends, where Mrs. Eddy had been engaged to give a parlour lecture on Christian Science. Mrs. Hopkins became deeply interested in this new doctrine, and, although after her first meeting with Mrs. Eddy she carried away an unfavourable impression, she soon fell completely under the spell of that remarkable personality; thought her handsome, stimulating, inspiring, and very different from any woman she had ever known. She entered one of Mrs. Eddy's classes and went through the same experience that sensitive students of an earlier date describe; during the lectures she felt uplifted and carried beyond herself; and in describing the effect of Mrs. Eddy's words upon her hearers, Mrs. Hopkins uses the same figure that we have heard before in Lynn—that of the wind stirring the wheat-field. When Mrs. Hopkins became assistant editor of the Journal, she went to live in Mrs. Eddy's house in Columbus Avenue, where the editorial work was done. She remained there for two years, until, worn out by Mrs. Eddy's tyranny and selfishness, and saddened by her own disillusionment, Mrs. Hopkins left the house and never communicated with Mrs. Eddy again. Mrs. Eddy afterward attacked her savagely in the Journal, and applied to her the old terms of opprobrium.
In the fall of 1885 Mrs. Sarah H. Crosse succeeded Mrs. Hopkins as assistant editor of the Journal, and she, in turn, was succeeded by Frank Mason, who became both editor and publisher about the end of 1888.
In its early years the Journal of Christian Science was almost as much Mrs. Eddy as was the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. At sixty-two Mrs. Eddy fell to playing editor with the same zest with which she had entered upon the activities of her church and college. She wrote much of the Journal herself, and what she did not originate she selected and largely rewrote, keeping a sharp eye on the articles and editorials written by her assistants and revising them very thoroughly. She was especially solicitous about the articles which dealt with herself, and she was almost equally anxious that the articles should deal with little else. The Journal of Christian Science was then scarcely more than the monthly gazette of Mrs. Eddy's doings—the diary which chronicled her thoughts and activities, and which minutely recorded the tributes of her courtiers. She no longer had to get out a new edition of Science and Health to give vent to her feelings about a newly discovered mesmerist. Once a month she audited her accounts, and the Journal was her clearing-house. Through its columns the new favourite was exalted and the old relegated to his place among the mesmerised. In one column we find, in large type, a card of thanks for a twenty-one-pound turkey which some one had sent for Mrs. Eddy's New Year's dinner; in another a tirade upon animal magnetism; and in still another the following acknowledgment of Christmas gifts:
From Bradford Sherman, C. S., and his wife Mrs. Mattie Sherman, C. S., of Chicago,—Wild Flowers of Colorado, a large elegantly bound and embellished book, containing twenty-two paintings of the gorgeous flowers of the Occident.
From Mrs. Hannah A. Larminie, C. S., of Chicago,—a book with a sweet, illustrated poem, and a very elegant pocket-handkerchief.
From Mrs. Mattie Williams, C. S.,—a large, fine photograph of her beautiful home in Columbus, Wisconsin. On the piazaa are herself and husband; on the grounds in front, her children with their bicycles.
This annual acknowledgment of Mrs. Eddy's Christmas gifts in the Journal grew more formidable as the years went by. In 1889 Mrs. Eddy listed her presents as follows:
LIST OF INDIVIDUAL OFFERINGS
Eider-down pillow, white satin with gold embroidery. Eider-down pillow, blue silk, hand-painted, and fringed with lace. Pastel painting of Minnehaha Falls, with silvered easel. Silver nut-pick set. Painted Sèvres China tea-set. Book, Beautiful Story, 576 pages, with steel engravings and lithographs. The Doré Bible Gallery, embellished. Brussels-lace tie. Silken sofa-scarf, inwrought with gold. Pansy bed, in water-colours, with bronze frame. Stand for lemonade-set. Silver combination-set. Silk and lace mat. Embroidered linen handkerchief, in silken sachet-holder. Chinese jar. Silk-embroidered plush table-scarf. Connected reclining-pillows. Work of art, White and Franconia Mountains. Transparent painting of Jacqueminots. Satin and lace pin-cushion. Barometer. Cabinet photograph-holder. Perfumery. Large variety of books and poems. Face of the Madonna, framed in oak and ivory. Moon-mirror, with silver setting, and "the Man in the Moon." Hand-painted blotter. Embroidered linen handkerchiefs. Blue silk-embroidered shawl. Plush portemonnaie. Openwork linen handkerchief. Charm slumber-robe. Bible Pearls of Promise. Large white silk banner with silver fringe. Sachet bags. Two velvet table mats. Silver holder for stereoscopic views. Two fat Kentucky turkeys. Hosts of bouquets and Christmas cards.
The following year, 1890, her publisher, Mr. William G. Nixon, tried to persuade Mrs. Eddy to omit a detailed list of her Christmas offerings, and she wrote him:
I requested you through Mr. Frye to reinstate my notice of my Christmas gifts, for the reasons I herein name.
Students are constantly telling me how they felt the mental impression this year to make me no present, and when they overcame it were strengthened and blessed. For this reason—viz., to discourage mental malpractice and to encourage those who beat it—I want that notice published.
Many of Mrs. Eddy's contributions to the Journal have been collected and reprinted in the volume known as Miscellaneous Writings. While even in the very latest edition of Science and Health the flavour of Mrs. Eddy lingers on every page, like a dominating strain of blood that cannot be bred out, the book has been rearranged and retouched by so many hands that the personal element has been greatly moderated. In the old files of the Journal, however, we seem to get Mrs. Eddy with singular directness and to come into very intimate contact with her. When she is angry one can fairly hear the voice behind the type, and when she bestows royal favours one can see the smile at the other end of the copy. These contributions were usually written in precipitate haste, and reached the despairing printer at the last possible moment, almost unintelligible, full of inaccuracies and errors, and, except for an occasional period, innocent of all punctuation. The copy-reader or assistant editor did what he could at editing it as he fed it to the compositors—and the point is that he did not do too much. In the columns of the Journal one gets Mrs. Eddy's pages hot from her hand, as if they had not been touched since the copyboy dashed with them out of the door of 571 Columbus Avenue. In her editorial function she is more at ease than in her more strictly sacerdotal one, and in her contributions to her paper she sounds all the stops of her instrument. As she says, she "commands and countermands" and "thunders to the sinner," but for happier occasions she has a lighter tone, and she is by turns peppery and playful. A student in Chicago offends, and Mrs. Eddy calls her a "suckling" and a "petty western editress." Her students send her a watch at Christmastide, and she thanks, them for their "timely" gift. They give her a fish-pond, and she asks them to pond-er.
During the early years Mrs. Eddy opened each number of the Journal with a crashing editorial, and, in addition to this, she conducted, under her own name, a "Questions and Answers" column, in which she met and settled queries like the following:
Has Mrs. Eddy lost her power to heal?
Has the sun forgotten to shine and the planets to revolve around it? Who was it discovered, demonstrated and teaches Christian Science? etc.
Mrs. Eddy did not hesitate to answer personal criticism and to reply to gossip in the columns of her paper. On one occasion she replies to the old story, which was forever cropping up in Lynn, that she was addicted to the use of morphine. She says that when a mesmerist was attempting to poison her, she did take large doses of morphine to see whether she were still susceptible to poison. "Years ago, when the mental malpractice of poison was undertaken by a mesmerist, to thwart that design, I experimented by taking some large doses of morphine to watch the effect, and I say it with tearful thanks, the drug had no effect upon me whatever,—the hour had struck, 'if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.' "[2]
Several years later the Journal takes up some petty criticism which had been made regarding Mrs. Eddy's dress:
Such views of Christian Science are well illustrated in a little incident that happened to the author of Science and Health a year or two ago, when she was the active pastor of the Scientist church in Boston. She had a custom of answering from the platform, questions that were passed up in writing. On one occasion she found this inquiry, "How can a Christian Scientist afford to wear diamonds and be clad in purple velvet?" She stepped forward and answered, "This ring that I wear was given me several years ago as a thank-offering from one I had brought from death back to life; for a long time I could not wear it, but my husband induced me to accustom myself by putting it on in the night, and finally I came to see it only as a sign of recognition and gratitude of my master, and to love it as such; this purple velvet is 'purple,' but it is velveteen that I paid one dollar and fifty cents for, and I have worn it for several years, but it seems to be perpetually renewed, like the widow's cruse."[3]
But the discussion of Mrs. Eddy and her affairs did not end with her signed contributions. During the first five years of the magazine's existence Mrs. Eddy was the theme of almost every article, testimonial, and letter. There are poems to the "bold innovator in the realms of thought," and scattered here and there are miscellaneous extracts of which the following, signed "Lily of Israel," will illustrate the drift and character:
PROPHECY
She existed from the beginning before all ages, and will not cease to exist throughout all ages; it is she who shall create in Heaven a light which shall never be extinguished; she shall rise in the midst of her people, and she shall be blessed over all those who are blessed by God, for she shall open the doors of the East, and the Desired of Nations shall appear.[4]
The "Healing Department" of the Journal, which held a prominent place and was perhaps the strongest element in its success, reports at length the alleged cures made by the practising healers and, in many instances, by the mere reading of Science and Health. While this department was of great value in giving publicity to the claims of Christian Science its recital of the details of illness and suffering make painful reading and seem rather too intimately personal for quotation. A few of the headings will indicate the nature of these communications: "Liver Complaint of Long Standing Cured by Half an Hour's Talk"; "Cancer on the Face, Badly Broken Out, Cured in One Week"; "Heart Trouble and Dropsy, with Great Swelling of the Limbs, of Thirty Years' Standing, Cured in Two Treatments"; "Bright's Disease and also Scrofulous Bunches on the Neck Cured in Three Weeks"; "Woman Had Twenty-nine Surgical Operations"; "Had Seventeen Physicians"; "Cancer and Lockjaw"; "Cured of Both Paralysis and Mormonism."
One amusing report states that "a girl nineteen years old who was dumb and had never spoken, commenced talking after her third treatment as if she was thinking aloud, and has talked ever since." Among these notes on healing, the following, from the Journal of October, 1887, deserves mention:
DOG AND RATTLESNAKE
Dear Journal: Our dog was bitten by a rattlesnake on the tongue a short time ago, and the verdict, as is usual in such cases, was death; but through the understanding of God's promise that we shall handle serpents and not be harmed, if we but believe, I was able to demonstrate over the belief in four days. The dog is now as well as ever.
In the Journal of April, 1885, occurs an interesting paragraph regarding General Grant (then in his last illness), which asserts that his physicians "are hastening him toward the manifestations of the death symptoms they hold so definitely in mind, with all the formulating speed they are capable of."
From 1883 to 1887 the Journal devotes considerable space to mesmerism, although some of Mrs. Eddy's students besought her to place less emphasis upon this doctrine. In the Journal of October, 1885, she rebukes such conservative followers sharply:
In my public works I lay bare the capacity, in belief, of animal magnetism, to break the Decalogue, to murder, steal, commit adultery, etc.
Those who deny my right or wisdom to expose its crimes, are either participants in this evil, afraid of its supposed power or ignorant of it. Those accusing me of covering this iniquity, are zealous, who, like Peter, sleep when the Teacher bids them watch; and when the hour of trial comes would cut off somebody's ears.
In 1887 a department devoted to Malicious Animal Magnetism becomes one of the regular features of the Journal, and continues for some years. At the head of this department regularly occurs the following quotation from Nehemiah: "Also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress." In this department persons who believe that they have been injured in their business or tormented in body and soul by mesmerists recount their symptoms and struggles. One woman is tortured by a hatred and distrust of Mrs. Eddy (it was by producing a distrust of Mrs. Eddy that the mesmerists most frequently harried their victims), and she suffers under this "belief" until she is treated for it and cured by a fellow-Scientist. Another is tormented by a desire to write, and the tempter whispers to her that she "can write as good a book as Mrs. Eddy's." Mrs. Carrie Snider, a prominent worker in the New York church, writes at a length of five pages to describe how malicious mesmerism killed her husband, Fremont Snider. He was, she says, under the treatment of two healers whose minds were not in accord, and the thought from one confused the thought from the other, leaving him to die in the cross-fire. She was confident that if he had left the treatment of his case with her, he would have recovered. Even after a physician had pronounced him dead and had sent for the coroner, Mrs. Snider treated her husband, with some success, she says, adding that if she had had help she could even then have saved him.[5]
The history of the growth of the belief in malicious mesmerism, as one may follow it in the early files of the Journal, is interesting and illuminating. Here one sees how this doctrine, which was so singularly a temperamental product, born of a personal hatred and developed to meet personal needs and to explain personal caprices, begins to control the conduct and affections of people whose natures and obligations were very different from Mrs. Eddy's. So long as the belief in demonology was a mere personal vagary of Mrs. Eddy's, explaining her quarrels, affecting her spoons and pillows and telegrams, it was as harmless as it was amusing. But as one reads the letters from persons who ascribe the estrangement of friends and even the death of children to the ill-will of their neighbours and fellow-townsmen, one begins to feel the serious side of this doctrine. The reader must possess very great hardihood indeed if he can follow without sympathy one letter from Pierre, Dak., which recounts the story of the death of two young children under the treatment of their zealous mother.
The mother was the wife of a banker in Pierre, a woman of unusual force of character, who had been liberally educated in Germany. Her husband was a young man of energy and promise, and they were both extravagantly fond of their children. The wife took a course of lessons under a Christian Science practitioner in Des Moines, Ia., and returned to her home in Dakota a devout convert. One of her children, a little boy four years old, fell ill; she treated him without the aid of a physician, and he died. Some months later a second child, a baby eleven months old, began to pine. She believed that he was the victim of malicious animal magnetism, exercised by the members of the Methodist Church which she had left after becoming a Christian Scientist. She even believed that the Methodists were praying for the child's death, and fled to Des Moines with the baby, where he grew better; but when she returned home he became worse again. The father was then in New York on business, and the mother, on her own responsibility, undertook the case, telegraphing to E. J. Foster Eddy, Mrs. Eddy's adopted son, for absent treatment for the child. For ten days the misguided woman watched over her baby and treated him against malicious mesmerism, which she believed brought on the spasms and convulsions. She did not notify her husband that the baby was dangerously ill until she telegraphed word of its death, nine hours after death occurred; and for those nine hours after the child had ceased to breathe she treated and prayed over him, not permitting herself to shed a tear or to "entertain the thought of death," confidently expecting that his eyes would open again. This experience and the subsequent indignation of the townspeople seem to have been too much for a friend and fellow-citizen who was there visiting at the house, and who assisted in treating the child, for she writes Mrs. Eddy an imploring letter, asking, "Why this termination?" and declaring: "We recognised no disease, and as first symptoms would appear—beliefs of paralysis, spasms, fever, etc.—we would realise the allness of God, and they would disappear." But the letter itself must be given in full. Its account of the sufferings of the baby and the terrible fortitude of the mother sound like a passage from the earlier and harsher chapters of religious history, which so often make us wonder whether there is anything else in the world that can be quite so cruel as the service of an ideal.
Last September Mrs. N——[6] took a course of lectures in Science in Des Moines, and returned to her home here, and was the instrument of great good. Many were healed physically who sought also the spiritual benefits.
Instead of working for the church, of which she had been a consistent and active member, she gave all her time to Science. This stirred up the error in the minds of the brothers and sisters,—and caused the fiery darts to be mentally hurled at her and they seemingly penetrated her weakest point, her darling baby, eleven months old, who seemed in December to be sinking under the blows. As Herod was seeking the young child's life they thought it best to flee for a time from this mental atmosphere, and went to Des Moines where he grew better. Mr. N—— being obliged to go to New York, and Mrs. N—— hearing that mortal mind had got hold of some of her patients determined to return to Pierre to look after their spiritual welfare.
I returned with her, and almost all our time has been spent in reading the Bible and "Science and Health" to those who were interested. Ministers called upon us and denounced Science in the strongest terms; and one Sunday every minister in the place preached against it, not knowing they could "do nothing against the Truth." We continued working quietly and speaking only to those who came to see us.
Finally little Edward seemingly succumbed to an attack, while we were holding a meeting in the parlour. To all appearance he was gone, but we knew it was animal magnetism, and treating him for it he revived. We wrestled till daybreak and though there was little seeming improvement, we realised that "God's will is done" and felt that the baby was healed.
During the ten days that followed, the wiles of the evil one appeared, but they were overcome. Mrs. N—— telegraphed Dr. Foster Eddy for help, and felt that help came. The telegraph operator here, not knowing the influence of mortal mind, divulged the telegram, and this made the battle harder. Again we telegraphed for help and again the cry went out "They've sent for help." At least six times little Edward seemed to have passed. We recognised it as another temptation, took up animal magnetism and each time he rallied. Finally about 5:30 A.M. of Friday, Jan. 25th, he passed on. I took him on my lap. Mrs. N—— and I realised it must be the last temptation, hence the greatest. We had no fear and did not admit he had passed on for several hours. We kept reading the promises "according to thy faith," etc., and did not call an undertaker until evening. When Mrs. N——'s little Philip passed on a few months ago her faith alone should have raised him. But this time her faith was coupled with understanding and did not waver for a moment. Why this termination? I wish we could have some light on the subject.
We recognised no disease, and as first symptoms would appear beliefs of paralysis, spasms, fever, etc.—we would realise the allness of God, and they would disappear. It was a clear case of ignorant and malicious magnetism. Why was it not mastered?
We are told that some church members have been praying that "God would take the child" in order that the parents might see the error of their way, and return—not to God, but—to the M. E. followers. Now comes an unprecedented history. Saturday morning a great tumult arose. The M. E. minister gathered a crowd around him on the street and denounced this pernicious doctrine, till the people were infuriated, and threatened mob law. A meeting was called at the public hall. The conservative element succeeded, notwithstanding the excitement, in getting a respectful committee appointed, and an order was served on myself and another Scientist to meet this committee at the Court House at 4 P.M. Mrs. N—— accompanied us and on the way we met the coroner, sheriff, jury and two "Medicine men" who came to demand an inquest. All returned with us to the house. The questions and the manner of the M.D.'s were insulting in the extreme. Our answers were mostly from the Bible.
All admitted the unblemished reputation of Mr. and Mrs. N——, that Mrs. N—— was a faithful, loving mother; but they could not tolerate such a religious conviction. Then we all went to the Court House and a committee told us that the sentiment of the community was (as in Acts xiii. 50) that we leave town.
I said to the committee that I came to visit Mrs. N—— and not professionally; that she was in trouble and there was no power to drive me out.
In the same number of the Journal is printed an extract from a letter written by the mother herself, in which she maintains that the baby's illness was not of a bodily nature, but was clearly the effect of animal magnetism working directly upon the brain:
Little Edward slept and ate well as a rule. He had no bowel affection, as the papers have stated. All the attacks were in belief, in form of brain trouble, and plainly from animal magnetism; the prayers of church members and the whole thought of the place being expressed in the hope that "God would remove the N——s' child, so that they might come back into the church." At two o'clock on the day that he passed, I sent for Mr. N—— [the father], and in the evening of the same day I called the undertaker. We buried the little boy ourselves, quietly, without any minister present, being accompanied by a number who believe in Christian Science because it has healed them.
Our trials have been severe, but we work to stand fast. We are determined to demonstrate the nothingness of this seeming power.
This case is chosen for illustration for the reason that the parents of these children were not ignorant or colourless people; they were not mystics or dreamers or in any way "different." They were young, ambitious, warm-hearted, and affectionate; they loved each other and their children, and their home was full of cordiality and kindliness. Their children were fine children; one, now grown, has become a young scholar of promise. The woman was not a religious fanatic, but a young mother. She could combat "the last temptation" over her dead baby simply because she believed with all her heart and soul that it lay with her, as a test of her faith, whether her child lived or died. Logically there was nothing extravagant about her conduct. The martyrdoms of a thousand years have proved what men and women can do and endure under the tyranny of an idea.
Whoever studies the old files of the Journal from 1883 to 1887 must note the rapid growth of Mrs. Eddy's sect during those years. In the first number of the Journal, April, 1883, appear the professional cards of fourteen authorised healers; in April, 1885, forty-three professional healers advertise in this way; and in the Journal of April, 1887, are the cards of one hundred and ten Christian Science practitioners. In 1887 nineteen Christian Science "institutes" and "academies" are advertised. The graduates of these schools usually went at once into practice, although sometimes they first went to Boston to take the normal course in Mrs. Eddy's college. These preparatory schools were located in various cities in California, Nebraska, Colorado, Wisconsin, Ohio, Massachusetts, and New York. In 1886 the National Christian Scientists' Association was formed with representatives from almost every State in the Union, which will be discussed in a later chapter.
In the Journal of 1887 and 1888 one notices certain articles and editorials signed J. H. W., or Phare Pleigh, the initials and pen-name of the Rev. James Henry Wiggin, who, in 1885, became Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser. Mr. Wiggin was graduated from the Meadville Theological Seminary in 1861, and became a Unitarian minister. In 1875 he retired from the active ministry and devoted himself to writing and editing. An old friend of John Wilson, of the University Press, Mr. Wiggin found plenty to do in proof-reading, revising, and editing manuscripts, in annotating and making indices to theological and scholarly works.
One day in August, 1885, Calvin Frye called at Mr. Wiggin's office in the old Boston Music Hall, and introduced himself as the secretary of a lady who had written a book, the manuscript of which she wished Mr. Wiggin to revise, adding that she also wished him to prepare an index for her work. A few days later Mrs. Eddy herself came to see Mr. Wiggin,[7] bringing with her a bulky package of manuscript which proved to be a fresh version of that much-written book, Science and Health, which she had just rewritten from the fourth edition, 1884. She gave Mr. Wiggin to understand that, while the manuscript was practically ready for the printer, it needed the touch of a literary man. She agreed to his terms and withdrew. Mr. Wiggin, who was just about to start away on his summer vacation, put the package into his bag and took it up to the mountains with him. When he examined the manuscript later, he found that a revision of it was no holiday task. The faulty spelling and punctuation could have been corrected readily enough, as well as the incorrect historical references and the misuse of words; but the whole work was so involved, formless, and contradictory that Mr. Wiggin put the manuscript away and thought no more about it until he returned to Boston. Then he saw Mrs. Eddy and told her that he could do nothing by merely correcting her manuscript; that to improve it he would have largely to rewrite it. To his surprise, she willingly consented to this. During the autumn of 1885 Mr. Wiggin occupied himself with this task, which Mrs. Eddy carefully supervised to see that he did not in the least modify her views and that her favourite phrases were allowed to stand.
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| Photograph by A. V. Brown |
THE REVEREND JAMES HENRY WIGGIN
Who was for four years Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser
Beginning with the first edition of the book (1875), and going through the successive editions up to 1886, one sees that what Mr. Wiggin did for Science and Health was to put into intelligible English the ideas which Mrs. Eddy had so befogged in the stating of them. Any one who reads a chapter, a page, or even a paragraph of the 1884 edition, and compares it with the same portion in the edition of 1886, will see the more obvious part of Mr. Wiggin's work. Take, for example, the following paragraph (1884 edition):
What is man? Brains, heart, blood, or the entire human structure? If he is one or all of the component parts of the body, when you amputate a limb, you have taken away a portion of man, and the surgeon destroys manhood, and worms are the annihilators of man. But losing a limb, or injuring structure, is sometimes the quickener of manliness; and the unfortunate cripple presents more nobility than the statuesque outline, whereby we find “a man's a man, for a' that.”
Mr. Wiggin's revision of this passage reads:
What is man? Brains, heart, blood, the material structure? If he is but a material body, when you amputate a limb, you must take away a portion of the man; the surgeon can destroy manhood, and the worms annihilate it. But the loss of a limb or injury to a tissue, is sometimes the quickener of manliness, and the unfortunate cripple may present more of it than the statuesque athlete,—teaching us, by his very deprivations, that “a man's a man, for a' that.”
In the above example Mr. Wiggin's changes are only with regard to composition, such as any theme-reader might suggest in the work of an untrained student. But in many instances he was able to be of even greater assistance to Mrs. Eddy by helping her to give some sort of clearness and consistency to her theology. In her chapter on the Atonement (1884) Mrs. Eddy says:
The glorious spiritual signification of the life and not death of our Master—for he never died—was laying down all of earth to instruct his enemies the way to Heaven, showing in the most sublime and unequivocal sense how Heaven is obtained. The blood of Jesus was not as much offered on the cross as before those closing scenes of his earth mission. The spiritual meaning of blood is offering sacrifice, and the efficacy of his life offering was greater than that of his blood spilled upon the cross. It was the consecration of his whole being upon the altar of Love, a deathless offering to Spirit. O, highest sense of human affections and higher spiritual conceptions of our Infinite Father and Mother, show us what is Love!
Mr. Wiggin's revision of this passage reads:
The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin, when it was shed upon the "accursed tree," than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father's business. His spiritual flesh and blood were his Life; and they truly eat his flesh and drink his blood, who partake of that Life. The spiritual meaning of blood is sacrifice. The efficacy of Jesus' spirit-offering was infinitely greater than can be expressed by our mortal sense of human life. His mission was fulfilled. It reunited God and man by his career. His offering was Love's deathless sacrifice; for in Jesus' experience the human element was gloriously expanded and absorbed into the divine.
Besides granting subjects to participles, antecedents to pronouns, introducing the subjunctive mode in conditions contrary to fact, and giving consistency to the tenses of the verbs, Mr. Wiggin largely rearranged the matter in each chapter and gave the book its first comprehensible paragraphing. Out of his wide reading he introduced many illustrative quotations into the text (not always to its advantage), and used many more as chapter-headings. He prevailed upon Mrs. Eddy to omit a very libellous chapter on "mesmerists," and here and there throughout the book expurgated some amusing absurdities. Where Mrs. Eddy represents Huxley, Tyndall, and Agassiz as Goliath, and Woman as David going forth to do battle with them, Mr. Wiggin permits Woman to go on with her sling, but suppresses the worthy professors, leaving her to encounter Goliath in the shape of Materialism. It must be remembered that Mr. Wiggin's edition was not made directly from the 1884 edition, but from a manuscript revision of it made by Mrs. Eddy herself. However, when one recalls that the 1884 edition was the result of at least a fourth rewriting, it seems improbable that Mrs. Eddy could have made much headway as to English in her fifth rewriting, the manuscript from which Mr. Wiggin worked.
This collaboration with Mr. Wiggin has sometimes been referred to as discreditable to Mrs. Eddy—chiefly from the fact, doubtless, that, even in her business letters to her publishers, she has persistently referred to Science and Health as "God's book." There could have been no wish on Mrs. Eddy's part to avoid labour, for she has worked at the book almost continuously for half a lifetime. Excluding the chapter called "Wayside Hints," which he wrote, Mr. Wiggin would have been the last man in the world to claim any part in the real authorship of Science and Health. The book has been rewritten again and again since Mr. Wiggin's work upon it stopped, and the editions which bear his revisions have been considerably improved upon, especially in the arrangement of the subject-matter. But the successive editions never began to improve at all over the first one—indeed, it may be said that they grew worse rather than better—until Mr. Wiggin took hold of the book, and many passages of the work to-day remain practically in the form into which he put them.
For four years Mr. Wiggin was employed in the capacity of literary aid to Mrs. Eddy, doing editorial work upon the Journal, and assisting her in the composition and proof-reading of three successive editions of Science and Health. Mrs. Eddy paid him well, and, in addition to his salary, he got a deal of entertainment out of his connection with Christian Science. He even wrote an amusing pamphlet[8] defending the new sect upon Biblical grounds. For Mr. Wiggin combined the qualities of a humourist and a theologian. He was a man of enormous bulk and stature and immense geniality. A slight hesitation in his gait, resulting from near-sightedness, sometimes caused his friends to liken him to Dr. Johnson. Extremely courtly and polished in manner, Mr. Wiggin was not only a scholar, but a man of fine tastes and of considerable critical ability. He was a musical critic of no mean order and an indefatigable concert-goer. He united a love of theology and theological disputations with an incongruous passion for the theatre. But, as it never occurred to Mr. Wiggin that there was anything unusual in delightedly pursuing the study of the drama and church history at the same time, so it seldom perplexed his friends or his fellow-clergymen.
For years after he had given up active pastorate duties, he often supplied the pulpit of some other minister, and occasionally went back to one of his old parishes to preach, lecture, or deliver a funeral sermon. His friendships with many of his old parishioners continued until his death, and the most cordial relations always existed between him and the members of the Unitarian Association. He usually attended the Monday Ministers' meeting at the Unitarian headquarters on Beacon Hill, and would often go out with one or two fellow-preachers and sit down to a lunch and a lengthy theological argument. Perhaps the same evening he would gather up several young newspaper men and go to an opening night at the theatre, pouring forth between the acts such a stream of anecdote, discriminating criticism, and reminiscence, that the young critics felt the morning's "notice" of the performance growing beneath their hands. After the last curtain Mr. Wiggin frequently went back to the dressing-rooms to exchange stories and recollections with the older performers and to give encouragement and suggestions to the younger ones. Mr. Wiggin's love of the theatre came about very naturally: his uncle had been from boyhood a friend of Charlotte Cushman's, whom the nephew himself knew and concerning whom he once wrote a delightful paper for The Coming Age.
Mr. Wiggin, with Edward Everett Hale, Professor William J. Rolfe, and a score more, was one of the organisers of the Playgoers' Club of Boston, before which he used often to lecture upon the old days of the Boston Museum and the remarkable stock work done there. Horace Lewis, William Warren, Mrs. John Drew, Adelaide Phillips, and Sol Smith Russell were among his many warm professional friends, and esteemed his suggestions and criticisms. He was becomingly fond of the comforts of the table, and delighted to gather a party of young writers and actors about him at supper and entertain them with stories of the great artists whom he had heard in his youth. His conversation was rich in anecdote and humour, and he belonged to the day when literary quotations were introduced unblushingly into friendly talk. Indeed, Mr. Wiggin had his Shakespeare so well upon his tongue that he could illuminate almost any question with a Shakespearean quotation. He once wrote an account of how he heard Liszt, then a newly made abbé, play at a sacred concert in Rome, and managed—quite unconsciously, it would seem—to describe pretty much the whole affair in language from Macbeth. An extraordinary man, certainly, to be concerned in the shaping of Science and Health. Mr. Wiggin himself never got over the humour of it.
It must not be supposed that he took his task lightly enough to slight it. He was accustomed to do his hack work well, and it became with him a genuine concern, as he often said, "to keep Mrs. Eddy from making herself ridiculous." He was glad to talk theology to any one, and he doubtless enjoyed teaching a little to Mrs. Eddy. He used to tell, with enormous glee, how Mrs. Eddy would sometimes receive his suggestions by slyly remarking, "Mr. Wiggin, do you know, I sometimes believe God speaks to me through you." It was when his venerable patroness laughed that he liked her best, and with him she sometimes enjoyed a joke in a pleasant and human fashion. Among other services which he rendered her, Mr. Wiggin once drew up for Mrs. Eddy the outline of a sermon upon the "city that lieth foursquare," described in Revelation. She delivered the sermon before her congregation January 24, 1886, with great success, though the Journal, in reporting the occasion, says that the Rev. Mrs. Eddy laboured under some disadvantage, as she had left her manuscript at home. Mr. Wiggin was present in the audience, and after the service the huge man made his way up to the rostrum, where Mrs. Eddy was surrounded by a crowd of delighted women. When Mrs. Eddy saw him, her eyes began to twinkle, and, putting her hand to her lips, she shot him a stage whisper: "How did it go?"
When Mr. Wiggin persuaded her to omit the libellous portion of the chapter on Mesmerism from the 1886 edition of Science and Health after the plates for the edition had been made, Mrs. Eddy, at Mr. Wiggin's suggestion, cut this sermon to the required length and, by inserting it, was able to send the book to press without renumbering the remaining pages. The chapter was called "Wayside Hints (Supplementary)," and Mrs. Eddy put her seal upon it by inserting, under the subject of "squareness," a tribute to her deceased husband: "We need good square men everywhere. Such a man was my late husband, Dr. Asa G. Eddy."
By the year 1890 Mrs. Eddy had begun to lose patience with Mr. Wiggin and to charge him with not taking his work seriously enough. In a letter to her publisher, Mr. William G. Nixon, she complains that Mr. Wiggin's proof corrections have a "most shocking flippancy," and the exasperation of her letter seems to indicate that the worthy gentleman had grown tired of assisting revelation:
My dear Student:
The proofs which I received Aug. 27th, and returned to printer Aug. 28th, are somewhere. I had not changed the marginal references in the copy because I had before written to Mr. Wiggin to make fewer notations and more appropriate ones. When he returned the first proofs a belief[9] (but don't name this to any one) prevented my examining them as I should otherwise have done, and, to prevent delay, the proof was sent to the printer.
The second proofs have the most shocking flippancy in notations. I have corrected them, also made fewer of them, which will involve another delay caused by Mr. Wiggin. He has before changed his own marginal references which delayed the printing. Also he took back the word "cannot" throughout the entire proofs which he had before insisted upon using thereby causing another delay. I write this to let you know how things stand.
Yours truly,
In a letter dated three months later Mrs. Eddy again complains that Mr. Wiggin is slow about getting in his proofs, and says: "This is M.A.M. [Malicious Animal Magnetism] and it governs Wiggin as it has done once before to prevent the publishing of my work. . . . I will take the proof-reading out of Wiggin's hands."
On the whole, Mrs. Eddy seems to have got along amicably with Mr. Wiggin. She liked him, greatly respected his scholarship, and was pleased to make use of his versatile talents. He, on the other hand, assisted her with good nature, advised her, and defended her with a sort of playful gallantry that went with his generous make of mind and body. He was often aghast at her makeshifts and amused by her persistence, while he delighted in her ingenuity and admired her shrewdness. He could find lines in his favourite Macbeth applicable even to Mrs. Eddy, and he seems always heartily to have wished her well. In a letter to an old college friend, dated December 14, 1889, Mr. Wiggin made an interesting criticism of Christian Science and gave probably the most trenchant and suggestive sketch of Mrs. Eddy that will ever be written. We have no other picture of her done by so capable a hand, for no one else among those closely associated with her ever studied her with such an unprejudiced and tempered mind, or judged her from a long and rich experience of books and men, enlightened by a humour as irrepressible as it was kindly. Mr. Wiggin's criticism follows:
Christian Science, on its theological side, is an ignorant revival of one form of ancient gnosticism, that Jesus is to be distinguished from the Christ, and that his earthly appearance was phantasmal, not real and fleshly.
On its moral side, it involves what must follow from the doctrine that reality is a dream, and that if a thing is right in thought, why right it is, and that sin is non-existent, because God can behold no evil. Not that Christian Science believers generally see this, or practise evil, but the virus is within.
Religiously, Christian Science is a revolt from orthodoxy, but unphilosophically conducted, endeavouring to ride two horses.
Physically, it leads people to trust all to nature, the great healer, and so does some good. Great virtue in imagination! . . . Where there is disease which time will not reach, Christian Science is useless.
As for the High Priestess of it, . . . she is—well I could tell you, but not write. An awfully (I use the word advisedly) smart woman, acute, shrewd, but not well read, nor in any way learned. What she has, as documents clearly show, she got from P. P. Quimby of Portland, Maine, whom she eulogised after death as the great leader and her special teacher. . . . She tried to answer the charge of the adoption of Quimby's ideas, and called me in to counsel her about it; but her only answer (in print!) was that if she said such things twenty years ago, she must have been under the influence of animal magnetism, which is her devil. No church can long get on without a devil, you know. Much more I could say if you were here. . . .
People beset with this delusion are thoroughly irrational. Take an instance. Dr. R—— of Roxbury is not a believer. His wife is. One evening I met her at a friendly house. Knowing her belief, I ventured only a mild and wary dissent, saying that I saw too much of it to feel satisfied, etc. In fact, the Doctor said the same and told me more in private. Yet, later, I learned that this slight discussion made her ill, nervous, and had a bad effect.
One of Mrs. Eddy's followers went so far as to say that if she saw Mrs. Eddy commit a crime she should believe her own sight at fault, not Mrs. Eddy's conduct. An intelligent man told me in reference to lies he knew about, that the wrong was in us. "Was not Jesus accused of wrong-doing, yet guiltless?"
Only experience can teach these fanatics, i.e., the real believers, not the charlatans who go into it for money. . . . As for the book, if you have any edition since December, 1885, it had my supervision. Though now she is getting out an entirely new edition, with which I had nothing to do, and occasionally she has made changes whereof I did not know. The chapter B—— told you of is rather fanciful, though, to use Mrs. Eddy's language in her last note, her "friends think it a gem." It is the one called "Wayside Hints," and was added after the work was not only in type, but cast, because she wished to take out some twenty pages of diatribe on her dissenters. . . . I do not think it will greatly edify you, the chapter. As for clearness, many Christian Science people thought her early editions much better, because they sounded more like Mrs. Eddy. The truth is, 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."
There is nothing really to understand in "Science and Health" except that God is all, and yet there is no God in matter! What they fail to explain is, the origin of the idea of matter, or sin. They say it comes from mortal mind, and that mortal mind is not divinely created, in fact, has no existence; in fact, that nothing comes of nothing, and that matter and disease are like dreams, having no existence. Quimby had definite ideas, but Mrs. Eddy has not understood them.
When I first knew Christian Science, I wrote a defensive pamphlet called "Christian Science and the Bible" (though I did not believe the doctrine). . . . I found fair game in the assaults of orthodoxy upon Mrs. Eddy, and support in the supernaturalism of the Bible; but I did not pretend to give an exposition of Christian Science, and I did not know the old lady as well as I do now.
No, Swedenborg, and all other such writers, are sealed books to her. She cannot understand such utterances, and never could, but dollars and cents she understands thoroughly.
Her influence is wonderful. Mrs. R——'s husband is anxious not to have her undeceived, though her tenth cancer is forming, lest she sink under the change of faith, and I can quite see that the loss of such a faith, like loss of faith in a physician, might be injurious. . . . In the summer of 1888, some thirty of her best people left Mrs. Eddy, including her leading people, too, her association and church officers. . . . They still believe nominally in Christian Science, yet several of them . . . are studying medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Boston; and she gave consent for at least one of them to study at this allopathic school. These students I often see, and they say the professors are coming over to their way of belief, which means simply that they hear the trustworthiness of the laws of nature proclaimed. As in her book, and in her class (which I went through), she says, "Call a surgeon in surgical cases."
"What if I find a breech presentation in childbirth?" asked a pupil.
"You will not, if you are in Christian Science," replied Mrs. Eddy.
"But if I do?"
"Then send for the nearest regular practitioner!"
You see, Mrs. Eddy is nobody's fool.
- ↑ Christian Science Journal, January, 1886.
- ↑ Christian Science Journal, April, 1885.
- ↑ Christian Science Journal, February, 1889.
- ↑ Christian Science Journal, May, 1885.
- ↑ Fremont D. Snider died of heart-disease, December 17, 1888.
- ↑ The name is withheld in consideration for the family most intimately concerned in this case. The interested reader, however, may refer to the f
liles of the Christian Science Journal, March, 1889, pages 637-639, where this letter was originally printed and where the full name is used. - ↑ For a graphic account of this first interview between Mrs. Eddy and Mr. Wiggin, the reader is referred to a pamphlet, How Reverend Wiggin Rewrote Mrs. Eddy's Book, by Livingston Wright.
- ↑ Christian Science and the Bible, by Phare Pleigh.
- ↑ An illness.