However, Myrtle continued to plead with him to look into this
new interpretation of the Scriptures, claiming that it was true,
that it would bring him into an understanding of spirit which would
drive away all these mortal ills, that it was above all mortal
conception—spiritual over all, and so he thought about that. She
told him that if it was right that he should cease to live with
Angela, it would come to pass, and that if it was not, it would
not; but anyhow and in any event in this truth there would be peace
and happiness to him. He should do what was right ("seek ye first
the Kingdom of God"), and then all these things would be added unto
him.
And it seemed terribly silly at first to Eugene for him to be
listening at all to any such talk, but later it was not so much so.
There were long arguments and appeals, breakfast and dinner, or
Sunday dinners at Myrtle's apartment, arguments with Bangs and
Myrtle concerning every phase of the Science teaching, some visits
to the Wednesday experience and testimony meetings of their church,
at which Eugene heard statements concerning marvelous cures which
he could scarcely believe, and so on. So long as the testimonies
confined themselves to complaints which might be due to nervous
imagination, he was satisfied that their cures were possibly due to
religious enthusiasm, which dispelled their belief in something
which they did not have, but when they were cured of cancer,
consumption, locomotor-ataxia, goitres, shortened limbs, hernia—he
did not wish to say they were liars, they seemed too sincere to do
that, but he fancied they were simply mistaken. How could they, or
this belief, or whatever it was, cure cancer? Good Lord! He went on
disbelieving in this way, and refusing also to read the book until
one Wednesday evening when he happened to be at the Fourth Church
of Christ Scientist in New York that a man stood up beside him in
his own pew and said:
"I wish to testify to the love and mercy of God in my case, for
I was hopelessly afflicted not so very long ago and one of the
vilest men I think it is possible to be. I was raised in a family
where the Bible was read night and morning—my father was a
hidebound Presbyterian—and I was so sickened by the manner in which
it was forced down my throat and the inconsistencies which I
thought I saw existing between Christian principle and practice,
even in my own home, that I said to myself I would conform as long
as I was in my father's house and eating his bread, but when I got
out I would do as I pleased. I was in my father's house after that
a number of years, until I was seventeen, and then I went to a
large city, Cincinnati, but the moment I was away and free I threw
aside all my so-called religious training and set out to do what I
thought was the most pleasant and gratifying thing for me to do. I
wanted to drink, and I did, though I was really never a very
successful drinker." Eugene smiled. "I wanted to gamble, and I did,
but I was never a very clever gambler. Still I did gamble a bit. My
great weakness was women, and here I hope none will be offended, I
know they will not be, for there may be others who need my
testimony badly. I pursued women as I would any other lure. They
were really all that I desired—their bodies. My lust was terrible.
It was such a dominant thought with me that I could not look at any
good-looking woman except, as the Bible says, to lust after her. I
was vile. I became diseased. I was carried into the First Church of
Christ Scientist in Chicago, after I had spent all my money and
five years of my time on physicians and specialists, suffering from
locomotor ataxia, dropsy and kidney disease. I had previously been
healed of some other things by ordinary medicine.
"If there is anyone within the sound of my voice who is
afflicted as I was, I want him to listen to me.
"I want to say to you tonight that I am a well man—not well
physically only, but well mentally, and, what is better yet, in so
far as I can see the truth, spiritually. I was healed after six
months' treatment by a Christian Science practitioner in Chicago,
who took my case on my appealing to her, and I stand before you
absolutely sound and whole. God is good."
He sat down.
While he had been talking Eugene had been studying him closely,
observing every line of his features. He was tall, lean,
sandy-haired and sandy-bearded. He was not bad-looking, with long
straight nose, clear blue eyes, a light pinkish color to his
complexion, and a sense of vigor and health about him. The thing
that Eugene noted most was that he was calm, cool, serene, vital.
He said exactly what he wanted to say, and he said it vigorously.
His voice was clear and with good carrying power. His clothes were
shapely, new, well made. He was no beggar or tramp, but a man of
some profession—an engineer, very likely. Eugene wished that he
might talk to him, and yet he felt ashamed. Somehow this man's case
paralleled his own; not exactly, but closely. He personally was
never diseased, but how often he had looked after a perfectly
charming woman to lust after her! Was the thing that this man was
saying really true? Could he be lying? How ridiculous! Could he be
mistaken?
This man?
Impossible! He was too strong, too
keen, too sincere, too earnest, to be either of these things.
Still—But this testimony might have been given for his benefit,
some strange helpful power—that kindly fate that had always pursued
him might be trying to reach him here. Could it be? He felt a
little strange about it, as he had when he saw the black-bearded
man entering the train that took him to Three Rivers, the time he
went at the call of Suzanne, as he did when horseshoes were laid
before him by supernatural forces to warn him of coming prosperity.
He went home thinking, and that night he seriously tried to read
"Science and Health" for the first time.
Those who have ever tried to read that very peculiar and, to
many, very significant document know what an apparent jumble of
contradictions and metaphysical balderdash it appears to be. The
statement concerning the rapid multiplication and increased
violence of diseases since the flood, which appears in the
introduction is enough to shock any believer in definite, material,
established natural science, and when Eugene came upon this in the
outset, it irritated him, of course, greatly. Why should anybody
make such a silly statement as this? Everybody knew that there had
never been a flood. Why quote a myth as a fact? It irritated and
from a critical point of view amused him. Then he came upon what he
deemed to be a jumble of confusion in regard to matter and spirit.
The author talked of the evidences of the five physical senses as
being worthless, and yet was constantly referring to and using
similes based upon those evidences to illustrate her spiritual
meanings. He threw the book down a number of times, for the
Biblical references irritated him. He did not believe in the Bible.
The very word Christianity was a sickening jest, as sickening as it
had been to the man in the church. To say that the miracles of
Christ could be repeated today could not be serious. Still the man
had testified. Wasn't that so? A certain vein of sincerity running
through it all—that profound evidence of faith and sympathy which
are the characteristics of all sincere reformers—appealed to him.
Some little thoughts here and there—a profound acceptance of the
spiritual understanding of Jesus, which he himself accepted, stayed
with him. One sentence or paragraph somehow stuck in his mind,
because he himself was of a metaphysical turn——
"Become conscious for a single moment that life and intelligence
are purely spiritual, neither in nor of matter, and the body will
then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness,
you will find yourself suddenly well. Sorrow is turned into joy
when the body is controlled by spiritual life and love."
"God is a spirit," he recalled Jesus as saying. "They that
worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth."
"You will find yourself suddenly well," thought Eugene. "Sorrow
is turned into joy."
"Sorrow. What kind of sorrow? Love sorrow? This probably meant
the end of earthly love; that that too was mortal."
He read on, discovering that Scientists believed in the
immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, which struck him as
silly; also that they believed in the ultimate abolition of
marriage as representing a mortal illusion of self-creation and
perpetuation, and of course the having of children through the
agency of the sexes, also the dematerialization of the body—its
chemicalization into its native spirituality, wherein there can be
neither sin, sickness, disease, decay nor death, were a part of
their belief or understanding. It seemed to him to be a wild claim,
and yet at the time, because of his natural metaphysical turn, it
accorded with his sense of the mystery of life.
It should be remembered as a factor in this reading that Eugene
was particularly fitted by temperament—introspective, imaginative,
psychical—and by a momentarily despairing attitude, in which any
straw was worth grasping at which promised relief from sorrow,
despair and defeat, to make a study of this apparently radical
theory of human existence. He had heard a great deal of Christian
Science, seeing its churches built, its adherents multiplying,
particularly in New York, and enthusiastically claiming freedom
from every human ill. Idle, without entertainment or diversion and
intensely introspective, it was natural that these curious
statements should arrest him.
He was not unaware, also, from past reading and scientific
speculation, that Carlyle had once said that "matter itself—the
outer world of matter, was either nothing, or else a product due to
man's mind" (Carlyle's Journal, from Froude's Life of Carlyle), and
that Kant had held the whole universe to be something in the eye or
mind—neither more nor less than a thought. Marcus Aurelius, he
recalled, had said somewhere in his meditations that the soul of
the universe was kind and merciful; that it had no evil in it, and
was not harmed by evil. This latter thought stuck in his mind as
peculiar because it was so diametrically opposed to his own
feelings that the universe, the spirit of it that is, was subtle,
cruel, crafty, and malicious. He wondered how a man who could come
to be Emperor of Rome could have thought otherwise. Christ's Sermon
on the Mount had always appealed to him as the lovely speculations
of an idealist who had no real knowledge of life. Yet he had always
wondered why "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where
moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and
steal" had thrilled him as something so beautiful that it must be
true "For where your treasure is there will your heart be also."
Keats had said "beauty is truth—truth beauty," and still another
"truth is what is."
"And what is?" he had asked himself in answer to that.
"Beauty," was his reply to himself, for life at bottom, in spite
of all its teeming terrors, was beautiful.
Only those of a metaphysical or natural religious turn of mind
would care to follow the slow process of attempted alteration,
which took place during the series of months which followed
Angela's departure for Racine, her return to New York at Myrtle's
solicitation, the time she spent in the maternity hospital, whither
she was escorted on her arrival by Eugene and after. These are the
deeps of being which only the more able intellectually essay, but
Eugene wandered in them far and wide. There were long talks with
Myrtle and Bangs—arguments upon all phases of mortal thought, real
and unreal, with which Angela's situation had nothing to do. Eugene
frankly confessed that he did not love her—that he did not want to
live with her. He insisted that he could scarcely live without
Suzanne. There was the taking up and reading or re-reading of odd
philosophic and religious volumes, for he had nothing else to do.
He did not care at first to go and sit with Angela, sorry as he was
for her. He read or re-read Kent's "History of the Hebrews";
Weiniger's "Sex and Character"; Carl Snyder's "The World Machine";
Muzzey's "Spiritual Heroes"; Johnston's translation of "Bhagavad
Ghita"; Emerson's essay on the Oversoul, and Huxley's "Science and
Hebrew Tradition" and "Science and Christian Tradition." He learned
from these things some curious facts which relate to religion,
which he had either not known before or forgotten, i.e., that the
Jews were almost the only race or nation which developed a
consecutive line of religious thinkers or prophets; that their
ideal was first and last a single God or Divinity, tribal at first,
but later on universal, whose scope and significance were widened
until He embraced the whole universe—was, in fact, the Universe—a
governing principle—one God, however, belief in whom, His power to
heal, to build up and overthrow had never been relinquished.
The Old Testament was full of that. Was that. The old prophets,
he learned to his astonishment, were little more than whirling
dervishes when they are first encountered historically, working
themselves up into wild transports and frenzies, lying on the
ground and writhing, cutting themselves as the Persian zealots do
to this day in their feast of the tenth month and resorting to the
most curious devices for nurturing their fanatic spirit, but always
setting forth something that was astonishingly spiritual and great.
They usually frequented the holy places and were to be
distinguished by their wild looks and queer clothing. Isaiah
eschewed clothing for three years (Is. 22, 21); Jeremiah appeared
in the streets of the capital (according to Muzzey) with a wooden
yoke on his neck, saying, "Thus shalt Juda's neck be bent under
bondage to the Babylonian" (Jer. 27; 2 ff); Zedekiah came to King
Ahab, wearing horns of iron like a steer, and saying, "Thus shalt
thou push the Syrians" (1 Kings 22, 11). The prophet was called mad
because he acted like a madman. Elisha dashed in on the gruff
captain, Jehu, in his camp and broke a vial of oil on his head,
saying, "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I have made thee king
over the people of the Lord"; then he opened the door and fled.
Somehow, though these things seemed wild, yet they accorded with
Eugene's sense of prophecy. They were not cheap but great—wildly
dramatic, like the word of a Lord God might be. Another thing that
fascinated him was to find that the evolutionary hypothesis did not
after all shut out a conception of a ruling, ordaining Divinity, as
he had supposed, for he came across several things in the papers
which, now that he was thinking about this so keenly, held him
spellbound. One was quoted from a biological work by a man named
George M. Gould, and read:
"Life reaches control of physical forces by the cell-mechanism,
and, so far as we know, by it solely." From reading Mrs. Eddy and
arguing with Bangs, Eugene was not prepared to admit this, but he
was fascinated to see how it led ultimately to an acknowledgment of
an active Divinity which shapes our ends. "No organic molecule
shows any evidence of intellect, design or purpose. It is the
product solely of mathematically determinate and invariable
physical forces. Life becomes conscious of itself through
specialized cellular activity, and human personality, therefore,
can only be a unity of greater differentiations of function, a
higher and fuller incarnation than the single cell incarnation.
Life, or God, is in the cell… . (And everywhere outside of it,
quite as active and more so, perhaps, Eugene reserved mentally.)
The cell's intelligence is His. (From reading Mrs. Eddy, Eugene
could not quite agree with this. According to her, it was an
illusion.) The human personality is also at last Himself and only
Himself… . If you wish to say 'Biologos' or God instead of Life, I
heartily agree, and we are face to face with the sublime fact of
biology. The cell is God's instrument and mediator in materiality;
it is the mechanism of incarnation, the word made flesh and
dwelling among us."
The other was a quotation in a Sunday newspaper from some man
who appeared to be a working physicist of the time—Edgar Lucien
Larkin:
"With the discovery and recent perfection of the new
ultra-violet light microscope and the companion apparatus, the
microphotographic camera, with rapidly moving, sensitive films, it
seems that the extreme limit of vision of the human eye has been
reached. Inorganic and organic particles have been seen, and these
so minute that (the smallest) objects visible in the most powerful
old-style instruments are as huge chunks in comparison. An active
microscopic universe as wonderful as the sidereal universe, the
stellar structure, has been revealed. This complexity actually
exists; but exploration has scarcely commenced. Within a hundred
years, devoted to this research, the micro-universe may be
partially understood. Laws of micro-movements may be detected and
published in textbooks like those of the gigantic universe suns and
their concentric planets and moons. I cannot look into these minute
moving and living deeps without instantly believing that they are
mental—every motion is controlled by mind. The longer I look at the
amazing things, the deeper is this conviction. This micro-universe
is rooted and grounded in a mental base. Positively and without
hope of overthrow, this assertion is made—the flying particles know
where to go. Coarse particles, those visible in old-time
microscopes, when suspended in liquids, were observed to be in
rapid motion, darting to all geometrical directions with high
speed. But the ultra-violet microscope reveals moving trillions of
far smaller bodies, and these rush on geometric lines and cutout
angles with the most incredible speed, specific for each kind and
type."
What were the angles? Eugene asked himself. Who made them? Who
or what arranged the geometric lines? The "Divine Mind" of Mrs.
Eddy? Had this woman really found the truth? He pondered this,
reading on, and then one day in a paper he came upon this
reflection in regard to the universe and its government by Alfred
Russel Wallace, which interested him as a proof that there might
be, as Jesus said and as Mrs. Eddy contended, a Divine Mind or
central thought in which there was no evil intent, but only good.
The quotation was: "Life is that power which, from air and water
and the substances dissolved therein, builds up organized and
highly complex structures possessing definite forms and functions;
these are presented in a continuous state of decay and repair by
internal circulation of fluids and gases; they reproduce their
like, go through various phases of youth, maturity and age, die and
quickly decompose into their constituent elements. They thus form
continuous series of similar individuals and so long as external
conditions render their existence possible seem to possess a
potential immortality.
"It is very necessary to presuppose some vast intelligence, some
pervading spirit, to explain the guidance of the lower forces in
accordance with the preordained system of evolution we see
prevailing. Nothing less will do… .
"If, however, we go as far as this, we must go further… . We
have a perfect right, on logical and scientific grounds, to see in
all the infinitely varied products of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms, which we alone can make use of, a preparation for
ourselves, to assist in our mental development, and to fit us for a
progressively higher state of existence as spiritual beings.
"… It seems only logical to assume that the vast, the infinite
chasm between ourselves and the Deity, is to some extent occupied
by an almost infinite series of grades of beings, each successive
grade having higher and higher powers in regard to the origination,
the development and the control of the universe.