that of –the committee who revised the Bible…. Thus we have
additional evidence of the herculean efforts our beloved Leader has made
and is constantly making for the promulgation of Truth and the
furtherance of her divinely bestowed mission,” etc.
It is a steady job. I could help inspire if desired; I am not doing much
now, and would work for half-price, and should not object to the country.
PRICE OF THE PASTOR-UNIVERSAL
The price of the Pastor-Universal, Science and Health, called in Science
literature the Comforter–and by that other sacred Name –is three
dollars in cloth, as heretofore, six when it is finely bound, and shaped
to imitate the Testament, and is broken into verses. Margin of profit
above cost of manufacture, from five hundred to seven hundred per cent.,
as already noted In the profane subscription-trade, it costs the
publisher heavily to canvass a three-dollar book; he must pay the general
agent sixty per cent. commission–that is to say, one dollar and eighty-
cents. Mrs. Eddy escapes this blistering tax, because she owns the
Christian Science canvasser, and can compel him to work for nothing.
Read the following command–not request –fulminated by Mrs. Eddy, over
her signature, in the Christian Science Journal for March, 1897, and
quoted by Mr. Peabody in his book. The book referred to is Science and
Health:
“It shall be the duty of all Christian Scientists to circulate and to
sell as many of these books as they can.”
That is flung at all the elect, everywhere that the sun shines, but no
penalty is shaken over their heads to scare them. The same command was
issued to the members (numbering to-day twenty-five thousand) of The
Mother-Church, also, but with it went a threat, of the infliction, in
case of disobedience, of the most dreaded punishment that has a place in
the Church’s list of penalties for transgressions of Mrs. Eddy’s edicts
–excommunication:
“If a member of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, shall fail to obey
this injunction, it will render him liable to lose his membership in this
Church. MARY BAKER EDDY.”
It is the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition.
None but accepted and well established gods can venture an affront like
that and do it with confidence. But the human race will take anything
from that class. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race; knows it better than
any mere human being has known it in a thousand centuries. My confidence
in her human-beingship is getting shaken, my confidence in her godship is
stiffening.
SEVEN HUNDRED PER CENT.
A Scientist out West has visited a bookseller–with intent to find fault
with me–and has brought away the information that the price at which
Mrs. Eddy sells Science and Health is not an unusually high one for the
size and make of the book. That is true. But in the book-trade–that
profit-devourer unknown to Mrs. Eddy’s book–a three-dollar book that is
made for thirty-five or forty cents in large editions is put at three
dollars because the publisher has to pay author, middleman, and
advertising, and if the price were much below three the profit accruing
would not pay him fairly for his time and labor. At the same time, if he
could get ten dollars for the book he would take it, and his morals would
not fall under criticism.
But if he were an inspired person commissioned by the Deity to receive
and print and spread broadcast among sorrowing and suffering and poor men
a precious message of healing and cheer and salvation, he would have to
do as Bible Societies do–sell the book at a pinched margin above cost to
such as could pay, and give it free to all that couldn’t; and his name
would be praised. But if he sold it at seven hundred per cent. profit
and put the money in his pocket, his name would be mocked and derided.
Just as Mrs. Eddy’s is. And most justifiably, as it seems to me.
The complete Bible contains one million words. The New Testament by
itself contains two hundred and forty thousand words.
My ’84 edition of Science and Health contains one hundred and twenty
thousand words –just half as many as the New Testament.