The Trust does love the Dollar when it isn’t a spiritual one.

In order to force the sale of Mrs. Eddy’s Bible-Annex, no healer, Metaphysical College-bred or other, is allowed to practise the game unless he possess a copy of that holy nightmare.  That means a large and constantly augmenting income for the Trust.  No C.S. family would consider itself loyal or pious or pain-proof without an Annex or two in the house.  That means an income for the Trust—­in the near future—­of millions:  not thousands—­millions a year.

No member, young or old, of a Christian-Scientist church can retain that membership unless he pay ‘capitation tax’ to the Boston Trust every year.  That means an income for the Trust—­in the near future—­of millions more per year.

It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in 1910 there will be 10,000,000 Christian Scientists, and 3,000,000 in Great Britain; that these figures will be trebled by 1920; that in America in 1910 the Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1920 politically formidable—­to remain that, permanently.  And I think it a reasonable guess that the Trust (which is already in our day pretty brusque in its ways) will then be the most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical politico-religious master that has dominated a people since the palmy days of the Inquisition.  And a stronger master than the strongest of bygone times, because this one will have a financial strength not dreamed of by any predecessor; as effective a concentration of irresponsible power as any predecessor had; in the railway, the telegraph, and the subsidised newspaper, better facilities for watching and managing his empire than any predecessor has had; and after a generation or two he will probably divide Christendom with the Catholic Church.

The Roman Church has a perfect organisation, and it has an effective centralisation of power—­but not of its cash.  Its multitude of Bishops are rich, but their riches remain in large measure in their own hands.  They collect from 200,000,000 of people, but they keep the bulk of the result at home.  The Boston Pope of by-and-by will draw his dollar-a-head capitation-tax from 300,000,000 of the human race, and the Annex and the rest of his book-shop will fetch in double as much more; and his Metaphysical Colleges, the annual pilgrimage to Mrs. Eddy’s tomb, from all over the world—­admission, the Christian-Science Dollar (payable in advance)—­purchases of consecrated glass beads, candles, memorial spoons, aureoled chromo-portraits and bogus autographs of Mrs. Eddy, cash offerings at her shrine—­no crutches of cured cripples received, and no imitations of miraculously restored broken legs and necks allowed to be hung up except when made out of the Holy Metal and proved by fire-assay; cash for miracles worked at the tomb:  these money-sources, with a thousand to be yet invented and ambushed upon the devotee, will bring the annual increment well up above a billion.  And nobody