ke fifteen. And by it we recognize that we are all insane,
as concerns those matters. If we were sane, we should all see a
political or religious doctrine alike; there would be no dispute: it
would be a case of eight and seven--just as it is in heaven, where all
are sane and none insane. There there is but one religion, one belief;
the harmony is perfect; there is never a discordant note.

Under protection of these preliminaries, I suppose I may now repeat
without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane. I mean him
no discourtesy, and I am not charging--nor even imagining--that he
is insaner than the rest of the human race. I think he is more
picturesquely insane than some of us. At the same time, I am quite sure
that in one important and splendid particular he is much saner than is
the vast bulk of the race.

Why is he insane? I told you before: it is because his opinions are not
ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the
only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It
is merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more
interesting than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his "little
book"; the "little book" exposed in the sky eighteen centuries ago by
the flaming angel of the Apocalypse, and handed down in our day to Mrs.
Mary Baker G. Eddy, of New Hampshire, and translated by her, word for
word, into English (with help of a polisher), and now published and
distributed in hundreds of editions by her at a clear profit per volume,
above cost, of seven hundred per cent.!--a profit which distinctly
belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it if he
can; a "little book" which the C.S. very frequently calls by just that
name, and always enclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin
exultantly in mind; a "little book" which "explains" and reconstructs
and new-paints and decorates the Bible, and puts a mansard roof on it
and a lightning-rod and all the other modern improvements; a "little
book" which for the present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and
be friendly to it, and within half a century will hitch the Bible in the
rear and thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming
great march of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of
the planet.

CHAPTER VI

"Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection with the
text-book of Christian Science, Science and Health, with Key