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Mrs. Eddy was beautifully lacking in the literary conscience, just as much so as was Gladstone when he attempted to reply to Ingersoll in “The North American Review,” and resorted to sophistry and evasion in lieu of logic. Absolute truth to Gladstone was a matter of indifference–expediency was his shibboleth. Truth to Mrs. Eddy was also a secondary matter; the only things that really mattered were Health and Success. Health and Success are undoubtedly great things and well worthy of possession, but I wish to secure them only through the expression of truth. If you gag my tongue, chain my pen and cry, “Believe and you will have Health,” I would say, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Christian Scientists ask you to buy Mrs. Eddy’s book, “Science and Health.”

When the volume is handed you, you are promised health and success if you believe its every word; and if you don’t, you are threatened with “moral idiocy.”

It is the old promise of Paradise and the threat of Hell in a new guise. As for me, I decline the book.

* * * * *

Stephen Girard was a great merchant who had a great love of truth; but if he had been in a retail business, his zeal for truth might have been slightly modified.

As a rule, the world of humanity can be divided into two parts: the practical men and the searchers for truth. Usually the latter have nothing to lose but their head. Spinoza, Galileo, Bruno, Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, are the pure type. Then come Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson, crowded out of their pulpits, scorned by their Alma Mater, pitied by the public–yet holding true to their course.

And lo! they grew rich; whereas, if they had stuck close to the shore and safety, they would have been drowned in the shallows of oblivion.

On the other hand, we find in, say, the directorate of the Standard Oil Company, many men who are zealous members of the orthodox churches, giving large sums in support of the “gospel,” and taking an active interest in its promulgation. All of them say, with the late Mr. Morgan, “My mother’s religion is good enough for me.” So here we get practical shrewdness combined with minds that, so far as abstract truth is concerned, are simply prairie-dog towns.

These men belong to a type that will cling to error as long as it is soft, easy and popular. Most certainly these men are not fools–they are highly competent and useful in their way. But as for superstition, they find it soothing; it saves the trouble of thinking, and all their energies are needed in business.

Religion, to them, is a social diversion, with a chance of salvation on the side. Inertia does not grip them when it comes to commerce–but in religion it does. Lincoln once said that there was just one thing, and only one thing, that God Almighty could not understand: and that was the workings of the mind of an intelligent American juror.

Herbert Spencer says that Sir Isaac Newton was one of the six best educated men the world has seen. He was the first man to resolve light into its constituent elements. Voltaire says that when Newton discovered the Law of Gravitation he excited the envy of the scientific world.

“But,” adds Voltaire, “when he wrote a book on the Bible prophecies, the men of science got even with him.” Sir Isaac Newton defended the literal inspiration of the Scriptures and was a consistent member of the Church of England. Doctor Johnson was unhappy all day if he didn’t touch every tenth picket of the fence with his cane as he walked downtown.

Blackstone, the great legal commentator, believed in witchcraft, and bolstered his belief by citing the Scriptural text, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”–thus proving Moses a party to the superstition. Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice of England, did the same.