No charities to support.  No, nor even to contribute to.  One searches in vain the Trust’s advertisements and the utterances of its organs for any suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged prisoners, hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions, libraries, old people’s homes, or any other object that appeals to a human being’s purse through his heart.

I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and otherwise, and have not yet got upon the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent upon any worthy object.  Nothing makes a Scientist so uncomfortable as to ask him if he knows of a case where Christian Science has spent money on a benevolence, either among its own adherents or elsewhere.  He is obliged to say “No” And then one discovers that the person questioned has been asked the question many times before, and that it is getting to be a sore subject with him.  Why a sore subject?  Because he has written his chiefs and asked with high confidence for an answer that will confound these questioners—­and the chiefs did not reply.  He has written again, and then again—­not with confidence, but humbly, now—­and has begged for defensive ammunition in the voice of supplication.  A reply does at last come to this effect:  “We must have faith in Our Mother, and rest content in the conviction that whatever She does with the money it is in accordance with orders from Heaven, for She does no act of any kind without first ‘demonstrating over’ it.”

That settles it—­as far as the disciple is concerned.  His mind is satisfied with that answer; he gets down his Annex and does an incantation or two, and that mesmerizes his spirit and puts that to sleep—­brings it peace.  Peace and comfort and joy, until some inquirer punctures the old sore again.

Through friends in America I asked some questions, and in some cases got definite and informing answers; in other cases the answers were not definite and not valuable.  To the question, “Does any of the money go to charities?” the answer from an authoritative source was:  “No, not in the sense usually conveyed by this word.” (The italics are mine.) That answer is cautious.  But definite, I think—­utterly and unassailably definite—­although quite Christian-Scientifically foggy in its phrasing.  Christian-Science testimony is generally foggy, generally diffuse, generally garrulous.  The writer was aware that the first word in his phrase answered the question which I was asking, but he could not help adding nine dark words.  Meaningless ones, unless explained by him.  It is quite likely, as intimated by him, that Christian Science has invented a new class of objects to apply the word “charity” to, but without an explanation we cannot know what they are.  We quite easily and naturally and confidently guess that they are in all cases objects which will return five hundred per cent. on the Trust’s investment in them, but guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this case, a sort of nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we know of the Trust’s trade principles and its sly and furtive and shifty ways.