By faking a revelation from God? By stealing the ideas of another and ascribing them to God’s voice in her private ear? By putting on the cloak of religion in order to pick the pockets of those whose hands are clasped in prayer? By copyrighting a “religion,” and suing those who infringe her copyright? By fixing, under the pretended guidance of God, upon the extortionate sum of three hundred dollars for twelve lessons in “the divine power that heals”? By invoking the aid of the courts to compel poor creatures to pay her, at the rate of twenty-five dollars per hour, for telling them of God, and His Christ? By organizing a church in which membership is made dependent upon activity in the sale of her puerile and profitable wares? By denouncing as vile debauchery the sweetest and purest and noblest relation of men and women? By declaring the children, in whom our souls delight, to be the offspring of “legalized lust”? By refusing to put forth her professed Godlike power to soothe any pain, even that of the sister she loved, to save any life, even that of her own grandchild? By constituting herself the veritable autocrat of the Bedlamites and reigning with despotic sway over the multitudes of her self-abased dupes? By never telling the truth, unless there was money in it, and never hesitating at a lie that would add one simple soul to the number of her victims or one soiled dollar to her bulging exchequer? By living a life of unvarying deception and uncleanness, and professing, with eyes rolled heavenward, to be “as pure as the angels”? By seeking, with Satanic zeal and hatred, the destruction of her fancied enemies, through the attempted mental infliction of disease and suffering and death? As Mrs. Eddy follows the Saviour? Not thus, not thus, O Saviour of mankind! not _thus_ have followed in the royal road which thou hast trod _ages of worshipers!_ End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religio-Medical Masquerade, by Frederick William Peabody