Article November 12, 1927 Issue

The attack on the Christian Science Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist,...

Judge Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts,

Boston Herald

The attack on the Christian Science Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, by certain former members of this church, published as an advertisement in the Boston Herald recently, was an artful mixture of exaggeration and fiction, together with what was evidently intended as a frightful curse pronounced upon the members of this church. Such an advertisement proves beyond question that the persons responsible for it are not simply engaged in carrying on a church of their own, but are chiefly engaged in a resentful attempt to hinder and even to destroy the church founded by Mary Baker Eddy, of which they have ceased to be members. From such an advertisement, also, intelligent readers may rightly conclude that our church is to be congratulated upon the absence of the advertisers from its membership.

The "appalling mortality" alleged in the advertisement had for its basis or pretext two facts which are easily explained. One of these facts is that the mortality rate among Christian Scientists is greater in old age than in middle age or youth. Nearly all of Mrs. Eddy's pupils were middle-aged persons when she taught them, and her personal teaching was done between 1867 and 1898; that is, between sixty and twenty-nine years ago. The reason why an extraordinary number of persons interested in Christian Science (perhaps two hundred) have passed away in Brookline, Massachusetts, during a five-year period is that, since the sanatorium of The Christian Science Benevolent Association was opened in Brookline in 1919, a large number of persons seeking Christian Science healing have come to this suburb of Boston from all parts of the world and a fraction of them have not been healed. Considering the nature of the cases, the rate of healing at this sanatorium has been high, but it has not been one hundred per cent.

The assertion in the advertisement in question that the members and officers of Mrs. Eddy's church have broken the provisions of her Church Manual is an utter fiction. The only pretext for this assertion is that the members and officers of The Mother Church have carried on its work in full accord with the Church Manual, but without being able to get Mrs. Eddy's approval of administrative acts as the Manual required when her approval could be obtained. Mrs. Eddy's intention that her followers should carry on in this way when she could not be consulted is proved beyond question by the Church Manual itself and by other deliberate expressions of her intention. Even Mrs. Eddy's last will, legally her last word, consisted mainly of a bequest to The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, to be administered permanently by the officers of this church.

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