commands it; that is sufficient; the obedience rendered is not reluctant,
but prompt and whole-hearted. Admiration for a Napoleon, confidence in
him, pride in him, affection for him, can lift him high and carry him
far; and these are forms of worship, and are strong forces, but they are
worship of a mere human being, after all, and are infinitely feeble, as
compared with those that are generated by that other worship, the worship
of a divine personage. Mrs. Eddy has this efficient worship, this massed
and centralized force, this force which is indifferent to opposition,
untroubled by fear, and goes to battle singing, like Cromwell’s soldiers;
and while she has it she can command and it will obey, and maintain her
on her throne, and extend her empire.
She will have it until she dies; and then we shall see a curious and
interesting further development of her revolutionary work begin.
CHAPTER XIV
The President and Board of Directors wil1 succeed her, and the government
will go on without a hitch. The By-laws will bear that interpretation.
All the Mother-Church’s vast powers are concentrated in that Board. Mrs.
Eddy’s unlimited personal reservations make the Board’s ostensible
supremacy, during her life, a sham, and the Board itself a shadow. But
Mrs. Eddy has not made those reservations for any one but herself–they
are distinctly personal, they bear her name, they are not usable by
another individual. When she dies her reservations die, and the Board’s
shadow-powers become real powers, without the change of any important By-
law, and the Board sits in her place as absolute and irresponsible a
sovereign as she was.
It consists of but five persons, a much more manageable Cardinalate than
the Roman Pope’s. I think it will elect its Pope from its own body, and
that it will fill its own vacancies. An elective Papacy is a safe and
wise system, and a long-liver.
CHAPTER XV
We may take that up now.
It is not a single if, but a several-jointed one; not an oyster, but a
vertebrate.
1. Did Mrs. Eddy borrow from Quimby the Great Idea, or only the little
one, the old-timer, the ordinary mental-healing-healing by “mortal” mind?
2. If she borrowed the Great Idea, did she carry it away in her head, or
in manuscript?
3. Did she hit upon the Great Idea herself? By the Great Idea I mean,
of course, the conviction that the Force involved was still existent, and
could be applied now just as it was applied by Christ’s Disciples and
their converts, and as successfully.
4. Did she philosophize it, systematize it, and write it down in a book?
5. Was it she, and not another, that built a new Religion upon the book
and organized it?
I think No. 5 can be answered with a Yes, and dismissed from the
controversy. And I think that the Great Idea, great as it was, would
have enjoyed but a brief activity, and would then have gone to sleep
again for some more centuries, but for the perpetuating impulse it got
from that organized and tremendous force.
As for Nos. 1, 2, and 4, the hostiles contend that Mrs. Eddy got the
Great Idea from Quimby and carried it off in manuscript. But their
testimony, while of consequence, lacks the most important detail; so far
as my information goes, the Quimby manuscript has not been produced. I
think we cannot discuss No. 1 and No. 2 profitably. Let them go.
For me, No. 3 has a mild interest, and No. 4 a violent one.
As regards No. 3, Mrs. Eddy was brought up, from the cradle, an old-
time, boiler-iron, Westminster-Catechism Christian, and knew her Bible as
well as Captain Kydd knew his, “when he sailed, when he sailed,” and
perhaps as sympathetically. The Great Idea had struck a million Bible-
readers before her as being possible of resurrection and application–it
must have struck as many as that, and been cogitated, indolently,
doubtingly, then dropped and forgotten–and it could have struck her, in
due course. But how it could interest her, how it could appeal to her–
with her make this a thing that is difficult to understand.
For the thing back of it is wholly gracious and beautiful: the power,