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This explains, in great degree, the popularity of Christian Science. People cling to the religious superstitions into which they were born. Mrs. Eddy’s recruits were not from theosophy, spiritualism, agnosticism, unitarianism, universalism or infidelity. You can’t give a freethinker a book with a statement of what he must find in it.

He has acquired the habit of thinking for himself.

Mrs. Eddy had no faith in Darwin, Spencer or Haeckel. She quoted Moses, Jesus and Paul to disprove the evolutionists, sat back and smiled content, innocently unaware that citations from Scriptures are in no sense proof to free minds. All of the Bible she wished to waive, she did. The cruelty and bestiality of Jehovah were nothing to her. Her “Key” does not unlock the secrets of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, nor does it shed light on the doctrines of eternal punishment, the vicarious atonement, or the efficacy of baptism as a saving ordinance.

Explanations about mortal mind, divine mind and human mind, citing specific errors of the human mind, with a calm codicil to the effect that the human mind has no existence, are not what you might call illuminating literature. The stuff is simply “inspired.” Mrs. Eddy was very wise in not allowing her “readers” or followers to sermonize or explain her writings. These writings are simply to be read. And so the hearers sit steeped in mist and wrapped in placidity, returning to their work rested and refreshed, without being influenced in any way, save by the soothing calm of forceful fog and mental vacuity.

The rest and relief from all thought is good. The related experiences of Christian Scientists are the things that convince and carry weight, not “Science and Health.” “Science and Health” was made to sell. It was not given to you to be understood: it was to be bought and believed. If you doubt any portion of it, at once you are told that this is the work of your mortal mind, which is filled with error. Good Christian Scientists do not try to understand “Science and Health”–they just accept and believe it. “It is inspired,” they say, “so it must be true–you will know when you are worthy to know.”

And so we see our old friend Intellectual Tyranny come back in another form, not with cowl and cape, but tricked out with feminine finery and jewelry and gems that lure and dazzle. There is one thing quite as valuable as health, and that is intellectual integrity. To say, “Oh, ‘Science and Health’ is certainly inspired–just see how old Mrs. Johnson was cured of the rheumatism!” is not reasoning.

And it has given the scoffers excuse for calling it woman’s logic. Such reasoning is on the plane of, “Why, Jesus must have been the only begotten son of God, born of a virgin, for if you don’t believe it, just see the hospitals, orphan asylums and homes for the aged that Christianity has built!” Mrs. Johnson was surely cured of the rheumatism all right, but that does not prove that Mrs. Eddy is correct in her claim that Eve was made from Adam’s rib; that agamogenesis is a fact in Nature; that to till the soil will not always be necessary; that human life in these bodies will have no end; and that an absent person can poison your health and happiness through malicious animal magnetism; or that a good person can give you absent treatment and cure your indigestion.

I agree with Mrs. Eddy as to the necessity of eliminating a medical fetish, but I disagree with her about religiously preserving a theological one. I have read “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” for twenty years, and I have also read the Scriptures for a much longer period. Also, I have lived in the same house for many months with very intelligent Christian Scientists.

And after mature consideration I regard both the Scriptures and “Science and Health” as largely made up of the errors of mortal mind. My intuitions are just as valuable to me as Mrs. Eddy’s were to her.