Is there any possible doubt of the basic motive of this woman? Did any one ever hear of anything approaching the audacity of this brazen creature? Is it now clear, beyond possibility of cavil, that all of Mrs. Eddy’s absurd and irreverent pretensions have been merely unique business methods utilized to the utmost to give a fictitious value to her foolish and harmful teachings, and to extend the sale of her foolish and harmful writings? Is the founder of Christian Science in very truth anything more than a peddler of “revelations;” a huxter, who makes a commodity of “religion”; as Mark Twain says, a shameless old swindler who reaches out her irreligious hand and grabs the sacred name of Jesus the more easily to cheat and rob poor confiding creatures while looking to her for health to their aching bodies and peace to their troubled souls? Is there a blasphemy, a mendacity, a cruelty, beyond that of Mary Baker G. Eddy? Is there a greed that _approaches_ hers? Chapter IX The Eddy Autocracy. Money and power are the explanations of Mrs. Eddy’s life. We have seen how greedily she has accumulated wealth. Let us, for a moment, consider the way in which she has extended her power. Nearly twenty years ago, Mrs. Eddy established the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, which is called the “Mother Church” and stands in the relation to the other churches, as she says, of the vine to the branches. It has been Mrs. Eddy’s repeatedly expressed wish that all Christian Scientists everywhere should belong to the Mother Church, and Mr. Hanna, then her chief representative in the organization, argued at length that this expressed wish of Mrs. Eddy’s was the revealed will of God; and no real Christian Scientist hesitates to do God’s will, as revealed through Mrs. Eddy. Of course, membership in anything or connection with anything in Christian Science costs money, and every member, resident or non-resident, of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, is required to pay an annual tax of at least one dollar. The present total membership of this church, resident and non-resident, in which Mrs. Eddy’s arbitrary will is absolute law, is upwards of fifty thousand, and embraces all of the really devout and loyal Eddyites everywhere in the world. Here is, in itself, an income of some fifty thousand dollars annually of the First Church in Boston. If to this be added pew rents, church collections, the voluntary offerings of the faithful and the profits on the official periodicals, the aggregate will doubtless reach a total of considerably over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum. Can any other church in the country show such revenues? Truly, the Church of St. Bunco, as Mr. Gordon Clark has happily named it, is a paying institution!