Christian Science Part 15

BOARD OF LECTUREs.h.i.+P

The lecturers are exceedingly important servants of Mrs. Eddy, and she chooses them with great care. Each of them has an appointed territory in which to perform his duties--in the North, the South, the East, the West, in Canada, in Great Britain, and so on--and each must stick to his own territory and not forage beyond its boundaries. I think it goes without saying--from what we have seen of Mrs. Eddy--that no lecture is delivered until she has examined and approved it, and that the lecturer is not allowed to change it afterwards.

The members of the Board of Lectures.h.i.+p are elected annually--

"Subject to the approval of Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy."

MISSIONARIES

There are but four. They are elected--like the rest of the domestics--annually. So far as I can discover, not a single servant of the Sacred Household has a steady job except Mrs. Eddy. It is plain that she trusts no human being but herself.

THE BY-LAWS

The branch Churches are strictly forbidden to use them.

So far as I can see, they could not do it if they wanted to. The By-laws are merely the voice of the master issuing commands to the servants.

There is nothing and n.o.body for the servants to re-utter them to.

That useless edict is repeated in the little book, a few pages farther on. There are several other repet.i.tions of prohibitions in the book that could be spared-they only take up room for nothing.

THE CREED It is copyrighted. I do not know why, but I suppose it is to keep adventurers from some day claiming that they invented it, and not Mrs. Eddy and that "strange Providence" that has suggested so many clever things to her.

No Change. It is forbidden to change the Creed. That is important, at any rate.

COPYRIGHT

I can understand why Mrs. Eddy copyrighted the early editions and revisions of Science and Health, and why she had a mania for copyrighting every sc.r.a.p of every sort that came from her pen in those jejune days when to be in print probably seemed a wonderful distinction to her in her provincial obscurity, but why she should continue this delirium in these days of her G.o.ds.h.i.+p and her far-spread fame, I cannot explain to myself. And particularly as regards Science and Health. She knows, now, that that Annex is going to live for many centuries; and so, what good is a fleeting forty-two-year copyright going to do it?

Now a perpetual copyright would be quite another matter. I would like to give her a hint. Let her strike for a perpetual copyright on that book.

There is precedent for it. There is one book in the world which bears the charmed life of perpetual copyright (a fact not known to twenty people in the world). By a hardy perversion of privilege on the part of the lawmaking power the Bible has perpetual copyright in Great Britain.

There is no justification for it in fairness, and no explanation of it except that the Church is strong enough there to have its way, right or wrong. The recent Revised Version enjoys perpetual copyright, too--a stronger precedent, even, than the other one.

Now, then, what is the Annex but a Revised Version itself? Which of course it is--Lord's Prayer and all. With that pair of formidable British precedents to proceed upon, what Congress of ours--

But how short-sighted I am. Mrs. Eddy has thought of it long ago. She thinks of everything. She knows she has only to keep her copyright of 1902 alive through its first stage of twenty-eight years, and perpetuity is a.s.sured. A Christian Science Congress will reign in the Capitol then.

She probably attaches small value to the first edition (1875). Although it was a Revelation from on high, it was slim, lank, incomplete, padded with bales of refuse rags, and puffs from la.s.soed celebrities to fill it out, an uncreditable book, a book easily sparable, a book not to be mentioned in the same year with the sleek, fat, concise, compact, compressed, and competent Annex of to-day, in its dainty flexible covers, gilt--edges, rounded corners, twin screw, spiral twist, compensation balance, Testament-counterfeit, and all that; a book just born to curl up on the hymn-book-shelf in church and look just too sweet and holy for anything. Yes, I see now what she was copyrighting that child for.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLIs.h.i.+NG a.s.sOCIATION

It is true in matters of business Mrs. Eddy thinks of everything. She thought of an organ, to disseminate the Truth as it was in Mrs. Eddy.

Straightway she started one--the Christian Science Journal.

It is true--in matters of business Mrs. Eddy thinks of everything. As soon as she had got the Christian Science Journal sufficiently in debt to make its presence on the premises disagreeable to her, it occurred to her to make somebody a present of it. Which she did, along with its debts. It was in the summer of 1889. The victim selected was her Church--called, in those days, The National Christian Scientist a.s.sociation.

She delivered this sorrow to those lambs as a "gift" in consideration of their "loyalty to our great cause."

Also--still thinking of everything--she told them to retain Mr. Bailey in the editors.h.i.+p and make Mr. Nixon publisher. We do not know what it was she had against those men; neither do we know whether she scored on Bailey or not, we only know that G.o.d protected Nixon, and for that I am sincerely glad, although I do not know Nixon and have never even seen him.

Nixon took the Journal and the rest of the Publis.h.i.+ng Society's liabilities, and demonstrated over them during three years, then brought in his report:

"On a.s.suming my duties as publisher, there was not a dollar in the treasury; but on the contrary the Society owed unpaid printing and paper bills to the amount of several hundred dollars, not to mention a contingent liability of many more hundreds"--represented by advance--subscriptions paid for the Journal and the "Series," the which goods Mrs. Eddy had not delivered. And couldn't, very well, perhaps, on a Metaphysical College income of but a few thousand dollars a day, or a week, or whatever it was in those magnificently flouris.h.i.+ng times. The struggling Journal had swallowed up those advance-payments, but its "claim" was a severe one and they had failed to cure it. But Nixon cured it in his diligent three years, and joyously reported the news that he had cleared off all the debts and now had a fat six thousand dollars in the bank.

It made Mrs. Eddy's mouth water.

At the time that Mrs. Eddy had unloaded that dismal gift on to her National a.s.sociation, she had followed her inveterate custom: she had tied a string to its hind leg, and kept one end of it hitched to her belt. We have seen her do that in the case of the Boston Mosque. When she deeds property, she puts in that string-clause. It provides that under certain conditions she can pull the string and land the property in the cherished home of its happy youth. In the present case she believed that she had made provision that if at any time the National Christian Science a.s.sociation should dissolve itself by a formal vote, she could pull.

A year after Nixon's handsome report, she writes the a.s.sociation that she has a "unique request to lay before it." It has dissolved, and she is not quite sure that the Christian Science Journal has "already fallen into her hands" by that act, though it "seems" to her to have met with that accident; so she would like to have the matter decided by a formal vote. But whether there is a doubt or not, "I see the wisdom," she says, "of again owning this Christian Science waif."

I think that that is una.s.sailable evidence that the waif was making money, hands down.

She pulled her gift in. A few years later she donated the Publis.h.i.+ng Society, along with its real estate, its buildings, its plant, its publications, and its money--the whole worth twenty--two thousand dollars, and free of debt--to--Well, to the Mother-Church!

That is to say, to herself. There is an account of it in the Christian Science Journal, and of how she had already made some other handsome gifts--to her Church--and others to--to her Cause besides "an almost countless number of private charities" of cloudy amount and otherwise indefinite. This landslide of generosities overwhelmed one of her literary domestics. While he was in that condition he tried to express what he felt:

"Let us endeavor to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to... our Mother in Israel for these evidences of generosity and self-sacrifice that appeal to our deepest sense of grat.i.tude, even while surpa.s.sing our comprehension."

A year or two later, Mrs. Eddy promulgated some By-laws of a self-sacrificing sort which a.s.suaged him, perhaps, and perhaps enabled his surpa.s.sed comprehension to make a sprint and catch up. These are to be found in Art. XII., ent.i.tled.

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLIs.h.i.+NG SOCIETY

This Article puts the whole publis.h.i.+ng business into the hands of a publis.h.i.+ng Board--special. Mrs. Eddy appoints to its vacancies.

The profits go semi-annually to the Treasurer of the Mother-Church. Mrs.

Eddy owns the Treasurer.

Editors and publishers of the Christian Science Journal cannot be elected or removed without Mrs. Eddy's knowledge and consent.

Every candidate for employment in a high capacity or a low one, on the other periodicals or in the publis.h.i.+ng house, must first be "accepted by Mrs. Eddy as suitable." And "by the Board of Directors"--which is surplusage, since Mrs. Eddy owns the Board.