The Religio-Medical Masquerade: A Complete Exposure of Christian SciencePeabody, Frederick William
Religion
The Religio-Medical Masquerade: A Complete Exposure of Christian Science
Peabody, Frederick William
Christian Science -- Controversial literature
Mrs. Woodbury had been a Christian Scientist for many years,
during a long portion of which time she enjoyed Mrs. Eddy’s
confidence as one of her leading lieutenants. She had accumulated
many letters from Mrs. Eddy, and all her published utterances,
whether in book or pamphlet form, from the beginning of the
movement down to that time. Mrs. Woodbury was a woman of
forceful, dominating personality, of much greater culture than
Mrs. Eddy and the rank and file of her following, and in course
of time she attracted to herself a personal popularity and
influence that so threatened Mrs. Eddy’s, that it became
important, if her ascendency was to be maintained unimpaired,
that Mrs. Woodbury be cast into outer darkness and her influence
wholly destroyed. Occasion was readily found for this and, in due
time, without warning, without a notice of the charges made
against her, and without an opportunity to be heard, Mrs.
Woodbury was excommunicated from the Boston Christian Science
Church and cut off from fellowship with the faithful. This placed
her in a position where rational reflection was forced upon her,
and she speedily came to the necessary conclusion that she had
been duped.
Arriving at this conclusion, with a courage much to be admired
Mrs. Woodbury wrote and published in the _Arena_ magazine the
article to which I have referred, and in unmeasured terms laid
open the sinister and sordid quality of the whole movement, and
exposed the consummate selfishness and greed in the heart of its
“founder.” The article went forth in the _Arena_, and
Christian-Sciencedom was up in arms. Mr. Septimus J. Hanna, then
editor of the _Christian Science Journal_, Mrs. Eddy’s organ,
hastened to Concord, New Hampshire, to confer with Mrs. Eddy
regarding ways and means of meeting it, and the method of
squaring the account with Mrs. Woodbury was considered and
determined.
Let it be remembered that the article in the _Arena_ was
published in the May, 1899, number. Almost immediately after the
appearance of the article, Mrs. Woodbury’s husband, to whom she
had been much devoted, died and pæans of rejoicing went up from
the Christian Scientists that the Judge of all the world had thus
righteously punished one who had dared to assail the sanctified
personality of “God’s voice to this age.”
Mrs. Eddy’s personal opportunity came in the month of June, 1899,
when, in her annual message to the “Mother Church” in Boston, she
undertook to dispose once and for all of Mrs. Woodbury. In
language, seldom or never before equaled for cruelty and
brutality, Mrs. Eddy assailed Mrs. Woodbury. Pretending, herself,
to be the woman “clothed with the sun,” spoken of in the Book of
Revelation, Mrs. Eddy denounced Mrs. Woodbury as the Babylonish
woman there referred to. She said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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