he Eddy Bible, and let myself be stunned and
blinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings. It is unadulterated
moonshine--as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and Hegelian and other
orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can prove to you in one minute.
What interests me about the phenomenon is not the slinging of
tremendous words, but the strictly Yankee use which is made of them.
There is no nonsense about saving your soul in Christian Science; what
it is for is to remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney,
and to enable you to hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the
growth of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith,
and corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the
development of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.

It is a strict religion--strictly cash. The heads of the cult do not
issue cheap editions of "Science and Health, With Key to the
Scriptures", to relieve the suffering of the proletariat; no--the work
is copyrighted, in all its varying and contradictory editions, and the
price is from three to seven-fifty, according to binding. Treatments
cost from three dollars to ten, whether you come and get them or take
them over the telephone. And we have no nonsense about charity, we
don't worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because
poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to
get rich right off the bat. You may; come to our marble churches and
hear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind they were
enabled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you don't avail
yourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also the
punishment.

As to the management of the Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a
Bolshevik democracy in comparison. The Church is controlled by an
absolutely irresponsible self-perpetuating body of five men, who alone
dictate its policy. I have in my hand a letter from a Christian
Science healer who was listed as an "authorized practitioner", and who
withdrew from the Church because of its attitude on public questions.
He sends me a copy of his correspondence with the editors of the
"Christian Science Monitor", containing a detailed analysis of the
position of that paper on such issues as the Ballinger land-frauds. He
writes:

I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church
is consciously plutocratic. The only recommendation I have
heard of the latest appointee to