The Profits of Religion Part 19

The truth is that the brand of Mammon was on our Yankee religion from the day of its birth. In the first edition of her new Bible "Mother"

Eddy dropped the hint to her readers: "Men of business have said this science was of great advantage from a secular point of view." And in her advertis.e.m.e.nts she threw aside all pretense, declaring that her work "Affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which one can acc.u.mulate a fortune." When her pupils did acc.u.mulate, she boasted of their success; nor did she neglect her own acc.u.mulating.

It has been a dozen years since I looked into this cult; in order to be sure that it has not been purified in the interim, I proceed to a street corner in my home city, where is a stand with a sign: "Christian Science Literature." I take four sample copies of a magazine, the "Christian Science Sentinel", published by the Mother Church in Boston, and turn to the "Testimonials of Healing". In the issue of August 11, 1917, Mary C. Richards of St. Margarets-on-Thames, England, testifies: "Through a number of circ.u.mstances unnecessary to relate, but proving conclusively that the result came not from man but from G.o.d, employment was found." In the issue of December 2, 1916, Frances Tuttle of Jersey City, N.J., testifies how her sister was successfully treated for unemployment by a scientist pract.i.tioner.

"Every condition was beautifully met." In the same issue Fred D.

Miller of Los Angeles, Cal., testifies: "Soon after this wonderful truth came to me, Divine Love led me to a new position with a responsible firm. The work was new to me, but I have given entire satisfaction, and my salary has been advanced twice in less than a year." In the issue of January 27, 1917, Eliza Fryant of Agricola, Miss., testifies how she cured her little dog of snake-bite and removed two painful corns from her own foot. In the issue of August 4, 1917, Marcia E. Gaier, of Everett, Wash., testifies how it suddenly occurred to her that because G.o.d is All, she would drop her planning and outlining in regard to real estate properties, "upon which for nine months all available material methods were tried to no effect."

The result was a triumph of "Principle".

While working in the yard one morning and gratefully communing with G.o.d, the only power, I suddenly felt that I should stop working and prepare for visitors on their way to look at the property. I obeyed this very distinct command, and in about an hour I greeted two people who had searched almost the entire city for just what we had to offer. They had been directed to our place by what to material sense would seem an accident, but we know it was the divine law of harmony in its universal operation.

After this no one will wonder that John M. Tutt, in a Christian Science lecture at Kansas City, Mo., should proclaim:

My friends, do you know that since the world began Christian Science is the only system which has intelligently related religion to business? Christian Science shows that since all ideas belong to Mind, G.o.d, therefore all real business belongs to Him.

As I said, these people have the new-old power of mental healing. They blunder along with it blindly, absurdly, sometimes with tragic consequences; but meantime the rank and file of the pill-doctors know nothing about this power, and regard it with contempt mingled with fear; so of course the hosts of sufferers whom the pill-doctors cannot help flock to the healers of the "Church of Christ, Scientist".

According to the custom of those who are healed by "faith", they swallow line, hook, and sinker, creed, ritual, metaphysic and divinity. So we see in twentieth-century America precisely what we saw in B.C. twentieth-century a.s.syria--a host of wors.h.i.+ppers; giving their worldly goods without stint, and a priesthood, made partly of fanatics and partly of charlatans, conducting a vast enterprise of graft, and harvesting that thing desired of all men, power over the lives and destinies of others.

And of course among themselves they quarrel; they murder one another's Mortal Minds, they drive one another out, they snarl over the spoils like a pack of hungry animals. Listen to the Mother, denouncing one of her students--a perfectly amiable and harmless youth whose only offense was that he had gone his own way and was healing the sick for the benefit of his own pocket-book:

Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out the suns.h.i.+ne of earth, that would sever friends, destroy virtue, put out Truth, and murder in secret the innocent, befouling thy track with the trophies of thy guilt--I say, Behold the "cloud" no bigger than a man's hand already rising on the horizon of Truth, to pour down upon thy guilty head the hailstones of doom.

And again:

The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method with the torture of individuals, is repeating history, and will fall upon his own sword, and it shall pierce him through. Let him remember this when, in the dark recesses of thought, he is robbing, committing adultery and killing.

When he is attempting to turn friend away from friend, ruthlessly stabbing the quivering heart; when he is clipping the thread of life and giving to the grave youth and its rainbow hues; when he is turning back the reviving sufferer to his bed of pain, clouding his first morning after years of night; and the Nemesis of that hour shall point to the tyrant's fate, who falls at length upon the sword of justice.

New Nonsense

In a certain city of America is a large building given up entirely to the whims of pretty ladies. Its floors are not floors but "Promenades", and have walls of gla.s.s, behind which, as you stroll, you see bonnets from Paris and opera cloaks from London, furs from Alaska and blankets from Arizona, diamonds from South Africa and beads from the Philippines, grapes from Spain and cherries from j.a.pan, fortune-tellers from Arabia and dancing-masters from Petrograd and "naturopaths" from Vienna. There are seventy-three shops, by actual count, containing everything that could be imagined or desired by a pretty lady, whether for her body, or for that vague stream of emotion she calls her "soul". One of the seventy-three shops is a "Metaphysical Library", having broad windows, and walls in pastel tints, and pretty vases with pink flowers, and pretty gray wicker chairs in which the reader will please to be seated, while we probe the mysteries of an activity widely spread throughout America, called "New Thought."

We begin with a shelf of magazines having mystical t.i.tles: Azoth; Master Mind; Aletheian; Words of Power; Qabalah; Comforter; Adept; Nautilus; True Word; Astrological Bulletin; Unity; Uplift; Now. And then come shelves of pretty pamphlets, alluring to the eye and the purse; also shelves of imposing-looking volumes containing the lore and magic of a score of races and two score of centuries--together with the very newest manifestations of Yankee hustle and graft.

As in the case of Christian Science, these New Thoughters have a fundamental truth, which I would by no means wish to depreciate. It is a fact that the mysterious Source of our being is infinite, and that we are only at the beginning of our thinking about it. It is a fact that by appeal to it we can perform seeming miracles of mental and moral regeneration; we can stimulate the flow of nervous energy and of the blood, thus furthering the processes of bodily healing. But the fact that G.o.d is Infinite and Omnipotent does not bar the fact that He has certain ways of working, which He does not vary; and that it is our business to explore and understand these ways, instead of setting our fancies to work imagining other ways more agreeable to our sentimentality.

Thus, for example, if we want bread, it is G.o.d's decree that we shall plant wheat and harvest it, and grind and bake and distribute it.

Under conditions prevailing at the moment, it appears to be His decree that we shall store the wheat in elevators, and s.h.i.+p it in freight cars, and buy it through a grain exchange, with capital borrowed from a national bank; in other words, that our daily bread shall be the plaything of exploiters and speculators, until such a time as we have the intelligence to form an effective political party and establish Industrial Democracy. But when you come to study the ways of G.o.d in the literature of the New Thought, do you find anything about the Millers' Trust and the Bakers' Trust and how to expropriate these agencies of starvation? You do not!

What you find is Bootstrap-lifting; you find gentlemen and lady pract.i.tioners shutting their eyes and lifting their hands and p.r.o.nouncing Incantations in awe-inspiring voices--or in Capital Letters and LARGE TYPE: "G.o.d is infinite, G.o.d is All-Loving, G.o.d WILL PROVIDE. Bread is coming to you! Bread is coming to you!! BREAD IS COMING TO YOU!!!"

You think this is exaggeration? If so, it is because you have never entered the building of the pretty ladies, and sat in the gray wicker chairs of the metaphysical library. One of the highest high-priestesses of the cults of New Nonsense is a lady named Elizabeth Towne, editor of "The Nautilus"; and Priestess Elizabeth tells you:

I believe the idea that money wants you will help you to the right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and let it come.

I look over this Priestess' magazine, and find it full of testimonials and advertis.e.m.e.nts for the conjuring of prosperity. "Are you in the success sphere?" asks one exhorter; the next tells you "How to enter the silence. How to manifest what you desire. The secret of advancement." Another tells: "How a Failure at Sixty Won Sudden Success; From Poverty to $40,000 a year--a Lesson for Old and Young Alike." The lesson, it appears, is to pay $3.00 for a book called "Power of Will." And here is another book:

Master Key: Which can unlock the Secret Chamber of Success, can throw wide the doors which seem to bar men from the Treasure House of Nature, and bids those enter and partake who are Wise enough to Understand and broad enough to Weigh the Evidence, firm enough to Follow their Own Judgment and Strong enough to Make the Sacrifice Exacted.

"Dollars Want Me"

I turn to the shelves of pamphlets. Here is a pretty one called "All Sufficiency in All Things," published by the "Unity School of Christianity", in Kansas City; it explains that G.o.d is G.o.d, not merely of the Soul, but also of the Kansas City stockyards.

This divine Substance is ever abiding within us, and stands ready to manifest itself in whatever form you and I need or wish, just as it did in Elisha's time. It is the same yesterday, today and forever. Abundant Supply by the manifestation of the Father within us, from within outward, is as much a legitimate outcome of the Christ life or spiritual understanding as is bodily healing.... "Know that I am G.o.d--all of G.o.d, Good, all of Good. I am Life. I am Health. I am Supply. I am the Substance."

And here is W.W. Atkinson of Chicago, author of a work called "Mind Power". Would you like to be an Impressive Personality? Mr. Atkinson will tell you exactly how to do it; he will give you the secret of the Magnetic Handclasp, of the Intense, Straight-in-the-eye Look; he will tell you what to say, he will write out for you Incantations which you may p.r.o.nounce to yourself, to convince yourself that you have Power, that the INDWELLING PRESENCE with all its MIGHT is yours. Mr.

Atkinson rebukes mildly the tendency of some of his fellow Bootstrap-lifters to employ these arts for money-making; but you notice that his magazine, "Advanced Thought", does not decline the advertis.e.m.e.nts of such too-practical pract.i.tioners.

Next comes a gentleman with the musical name of Wallace Wattles, who tells in one pamphlet "How to Be a Genius", and in another pamphlet "How to Get What you Want". The thing for you to do is--

Saturate your mentality through and through with the knowledge that YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.... Look upon the peanut-stand merely as the beginning of the department store, and make it grow; you can.

And Mr. Wattles wattles on, in an ecstasy of acquisitiveness:

Hold this consciousness and say with deep, earnest feeling: I CAN succeed! All that is possible to any one is possible to me. I AM success. I do succeed, for I am full of the Power of Success.

Imagine, if you please, a poor devil chained in the treadmill of the capitalist system--a "soda-jerker", a "counter-jumper", a book-keeper for the Steel Trust. His chances of rising in life are one in ten thousand; but he comes to the Metaphysical Library, and pays the price of his dinner for a pamphlet by Henry Harrison Brown, who was first a Unitarian clergyman, and then an extra-high Bootstrap-lifter in San Francisco, an Honorary Vice-President of the International New Nonsense Alliance. Mr. Brown will tell our soda-jerker or counter-jumper exactly how to elevate himself by mental machinery. All calculations of probabilities are delusions of the senses; if you have faith, you can move, not merely mountains, but Riker-Hegeman's, Macy's, or the Steel Trust. "How to Promote Yourself" is the t.i.tle of one of Mr. Brown's pamphlets, in which he explains that--

Your wants are impressed on the Divine Mind only by your faith. A doubt cuts the connection.

A second pamphlet, which we are told is now in its thirtieth edition, bears the thrilling t.i.tle of "Dollars Want Me!" In it Mr. Brown lays claim to being a pioneer:

I believe that this little monograph is the first utterance of the thought that each individual has the ability so to radiate his mental forces that he can cause the Dollars to feel him, love him, seek him, and thus draw at will all things needed for his unfoldment from the universal supply.

"What are Dollars?" asks our author; and answers:

Dollars are manifestations of the One Infinite Substance as you are, but, unlike you, they are not Self-Conscious. They have no power till you give them power. Make them feel this through your thought-vibrations as you feel the importance of your work. They will then come to you to be used.

"What is Poverty?" Mr. Brown asks, and answers himself:

Poverty is a mental condition. It can be cured only by the Affirmation of Power to cure: I am a part of the One, and, in the One, I possess all! Affirm this and patiently wait for the manifestation. You have sown the thought seed.

And our author goes on to hand out packages of these thought-seeds--"Affirmations" as they are called, in the jargon of the New Conjuring:

I desire a deep consciousness of financial freedom.

I desire that the flow of prosperity become equalized.

I desire a greater consciousness of my power to attract the dollar.

The Indwelling Power cares for my purse.

I own whatever I desire.

I can afford to use dollars for my happiness.

I always have a good bank account. I actually see it.

My one idea of the law is to use, use, USE.

Spiritual Financiering

If the symbolism of the Episcopal Church is of the palace, and that of the non-conformist sects of the counting-house, that of the International New Nonsense Alliance is of Wall Street and the "ticker". "What is your rating in the Spiritual Bradstreet?" asks William Morris Nichols in the publication of the "'Now' Folk", San Francisco:

Is it low or high? Is your credit with the Bank of the Universe good or poor? If you draw a spiritual draft are you sure of its being honored?

If you can answer that last question affirmatively, you are on the road to become a Master in Spiritual Financiering.