60 years of christian science

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CORNELLUNIVERSITY

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SIXTY YEARS OFCHRISTIAN SCIENCEAN APPRECIATION

AND A CRITIQUE

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By

ALFRED W. MARTIN


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BOOKS AND BOOKLETSBY THE SAME AUTHORBOOKS

The Life of Jesus in the Light o( the Higher Criticism. $2.00.The Dawn of Christianity. (30 A. D. to 1 50 A. D.) $2.00.Faith in a Future Life. (Spiritualism, Theosophy, Psychical

Research.) $1.50.

The Modem Ideal of Marriage. (A book for young peo-ple.) $1.00.

Psychic Tendencies of To-day. (Sir Oliver Lodge, NewThought, Materialism, etc.) $1.50.

Ideals of Life. (Selections from the Bibles of the GreatReligions.) $1.00.

The Great Semitic Religions. (Judaism, Christianity, Mo-hammedanism.) $2.00.

BOOKLETSWhat Ethical Culturists Believe. 10c.World-Unity in Religion. 20c.The Community Church and the Ethical Movement. 15c.Distinctive Features of the Ethical Movement. 20c.Cardinal Points on which Ethical Societies Are Agreed. 15c.The Symphony of Religions. 25c.The Spiritu2d Greatness of the Real Jesus. 15c.The Ethical Message of Robert Browning. 20c.Distinctive Elements of a Non-Sectarian Sunday School. 15c.Dante's Divine Comedy and Its Message for Our Time. 25c.

Any of the above may be had by addressing Sec'y S. E. C,2 W. 64th St., N. Y. City.

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CONTENTS

PAGE

The Ethical Attitude to Christian Sci-ence 5

Christian Science and Jesus the Healer 12

Sixty Years of Christian Science; ItsPrinciples, Achievements and Claims 34


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Cornell University

Library

The original of tliis book is in

tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in

the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029453747


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SIXTY YEARS OFCHRISTIAN SCIENCE

THE ETHICAL ATTITUDETOWAEDCHEISTIAN SCIENCE

We live at a time when hosts of thoughtfulpeople have felt themselves obliged to discard

the religious chart by which they were wont todirect their spiritual life. Drifting helplessly

on the tides of doubt and hope, they watch with

eager heart for some trustworthy guide to anabiding faith, one that will guarantee peace

unto their troubled souls.

At such a time, characterized at once by relig-ious unrest and the passionate longing for an

enduring and vitalizing faith, it would be un-

gracious in the extreme to speak with ridicule

or contempt of a movement that has not onlysought to meet this deepest spiritual need, but

also ministered most helpfully to unnumberedthousands of dis-eased souls.

I am well aware of the fact that some of myreaders expect me to make it hot for the ad-

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herents of Christian Science; others there are

who would be delighted to a degree to find inthe following pages unqualified denunciation

of its foundress and her doctrines, whilestill

others consider it my duty to tear away the veilfrom what a caustic critic called the religio-medieal masquerade. But I have long sincelearned the utter futility of all such procedure

as a means of exposing and supplanting beliefsthat

seemto

be botherroneous and vicious.

Indeed, the only positive good that cancome from these practices is the getting rid ofthat irritation and superfluous nervous energywhich have been steadily increasing in the an-

tagonist's mind and heart. By giving vent tohis pent-up bitterness of thought and feelinghe achieves personal relief indeed, but not anatom of constructive helpful thought does heconvey to his readers. Far from inducing thoseidentified with the movement to desert it, hisvituperation and ridicule have the opposite ef-fect

the devotees cling to it with a firmer ten-

acity and consecration; neither conviction norconversion is carried to any one.

The temptation to indulge in vituperativeepithets is certainly very strong and subtle, butit is always a positive detriment to the pro-gress of truth and to the moral development ofhim who yields to it. For, not only does thisindulgence develop in him the evil qualities

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conveyed in his invectives, but it also reduces

his capacity for dispassionate judgment, be-

sides making htm increasingly unsympathetic,uncharitable and unlovely. Vituperation islike the boomerang which returns upon its pro-jector.

Let it be thoroughly understood that nomovement ever acquired and maintained a holdupon people without having in it somewhere avital truth, and the task of the intelligent in-vestigator should be to search for that vitaliz-

ing truth and extricate it from what is thoughtto be superstition, exaggeration and error.Wherever you find a religion producing a benefi-cent effect upon the conduct of its devotees,you will find that it contains an element of truth.

Christian Science and the Ethical Movement

Let the reader beware of confusing the ethicalattitude with the attitude of the Ethical Move-ment. For, by the latter is meant strict neu-trality toward all religious movements, even astoward all open or debatable questions. Ee-spectful, receptive, friendly toward them all, theEthical Movement certainly is, but it dependsfor its very life on maintaining a wholly non-

committal position. It cannot be for or against

any other movement because the priceless free-dom of the Ethical Fellowship forbids. Everyleader of an Ethical Society is free to discuss

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from the platform any issue whatsoever, but hisindividual views commit no one but himself.

Were he to attempt to commit the Society to hisposition

thecardinal characteristic of freedom

would disappear from the Ethical Movement.When, therefore, we speak of the ethical atti-tude toward Christian Science we have in mindsomething other than the complete neutrality

to which the Ethical Movement is pledged. Wemean the spirit in which one who would under-stand and estimate it should approach it.

That spirit can be described by the singleword appreciation a composite of justice andlove. It is the spirit which blushes at perse-cution, disdains mere forbearance and is dis-satisfied with the tolerance which to manyseems the very acme of spiritual attainment.But no, tolerance always implies a certainmeasure of concession. It has an air of patron-izing condescension about it. We tolerate whatwe can't help, but would put out of the way ifwe could. Tolerance is the willing consentto let other people hold opinions different fromone's own. Appreciation is eagerness to dofull justice to those opinions. It is the spiritwhich grants to Christian Science a respectfulhearing, persuaded that its thesis contains somemeasure of truth and the more unpromisingits appearance the more diligent the search forit must be. Instead of rudely relegating this

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movement to the limbo of the ridiculous andirrational, the spirit of appreciation will en-

deavor patiently to determine what life-givingelement it contains, what needs it satisfies, whatwants it supplies, all the while rememberingwith modesty the vast firmament of thoughtunder which we move and watchful for each newstar the guiding heavens may reveal. Nay,more, the ethical attitude requires that in criti-

cizing Christian Science, not only logic, but also

love, enter into the criticism. Again and againhas it happened that critics, armed with logicand the facts, with rhetoric and a rich vocabu-lary, yet carried no conviction in their argu-

ment because they lacked the one thing need-ful. The experience of centuries has provedthat it is to sincerity and love, quite as muchas to reason and the facts, the world owes what-

ever conversions have been made from errorto truth. A raw rationalism, that speaks withflippant and insolent tongue never yet won itsway to human hearts, whereas a ripe rational-ism born of scholarship and infused with kind-

liness and consideration, never fails to produce

a wholesome effect and to promote the cause

of truth. Every successful reformer has had

sincerity and love at the heart of his reform.These are the two angels that must ever guide.

Eefuse their company, repudiate their leader-

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ship, abjure their inspiration and we enlighten

no souls, establish no reforms.

Consequently I would deal temperately, dis-

passionately, respectfully with Christian

Science.

I would obey the injunction given by the

Apostle Paul to the people of Ephesus : speak

the truth in love, so that while showing forth

what appear to be errors, exaggerations, pre-

tensions and unwarranted claims, incident to

a new Movement, I shall not be blind to thetruth-germ that keeps it alive despite its de-

fects. And if in the course of the discussionI make any comment that is construed by thereader as manifesting a contemptuous or un-

kind attitude toward this Movement, it will be

misconstrued ; and it will be in regretted contra-

diction of my purpose if I set down a singleword that shall wound the sensibilities of anysensitive soul.

'Tis true that the foundress of this move-ment, Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, has been chargedwith vanity, egotism, duplicity, plagiarism,

mercenariness and thirst for power. But Ihave neither the time nor the inclination todiscuss these charges. Happily we are notwithout sources of information to aid us in

adjudging them. Two biographies of Mrs.Eddy have been published one written byMiss Sibyl Wilbur and acknowledged by Chris-

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tian Scientists as the sole authorized biography,

sanctioned by Mrs. Eddy herself; the other,the work of Miss Milmine, originally publishedserially in McClure's Magazine, and subse-quently presented in a volume bearing the title The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy. LikeCabot's Life of Emerson, Miss Milmine 's biog-raphy has the advantage of being in large meas-ure an autobiography, i. e., a goodly portion ofher pages is given to letters and pronouncementsof Mrs. Eddy, attested by her own signature.Miss Wilbur's book, on the other hand, has the

charm of literary grace and beauty of spiritbesides many memorabilia and incidents notfound in the other volume. Both biographiesshould be read by anyone seeking to form a justjudgment of Mrs. Eddy's character. But ourconcern is not with the person of Mrs. Eddy,rather is it with her system its ultimatesource in the works of Jesus, its fundamentalprinciples, its claims, its fruits after sixty

years of existence.

Let us turn to these, beginning with the re-lation of Christian Science to Jesus as healer.

He being the ultimate fountain-source fromwhich the movement derives.

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II.

Christian Science and Jesus the Healeb

No one can read Science and Health, thetext-book of Christian Science, without perceiv-

ing that its relation to Jesus as Healer is ofparamount and fundamental importance. Theprimary claim of the movement is that it fol-lows ia the footsteps of Jesus, reproducing his

mode of healing as reported in the Gospels ofthe New Testament. Hence the necessity ofdealing with this relation of the movement toJesus before coming to an examination of whatChristian Science itself stands for. On page126 of the latest edition of Science andHealth, Mrs. Eddy says:

'' I have found nothing in ancient or in modem

systems on which to found my own, except theteachings and demonstrations of our great Mas-ter and the lives of prophets and apostles. TheBible has been my only authority. I have hadno other guide in the straight and narrow wayof truth.

Elsewhere, in support of this contention, she

quotes the familiar passage from the LucanGospel

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'

' The spirit of the Lord is upon me, becausehe hath anointed me to preach the gospel to thepoor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at lib-erty them that are bruised, And, closing thebook, he declared to the congregation, Thisday is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.(Luke rV, 18-21.)

To justify the existence of Christian Scienceand of propaganda, Mrs. Eddy appeals to thesaying recorded in the closing chapter of theMarkan Gospel

Go ye unto all the world and preach the gos-pel to every creature. . . . And these signsshall follow them that believe : in my name shallthey cast out devils ; they shall speak with newtongues; they shall take up serpents; and ifthey drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurtthem ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and theyshall recover. * . . .

But while Christian Science thus rests upona Biblical basis, this of itself does not suffice,

for no less essential, according to Mrs. Eddy,is the interpretation put upon the Scriptures.Asked How shall truth be gained from theBible, she answered:

The fact that this passage is no part of the original Gos-pel, but was interpolated at a later day (the oldest extantmanuscript of the New Testament showing a blank spacewhere verses 9-16 of the chapter appear), is a matter of novital concern to Mrs. Eddy. Of the higher criticism she hadno knowledge, nor bad she the desire to acquaint herselfwith its aims and results.

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The scriptures are very sacred. Our aimmust be to have them understood spiritually,for only by this understanding can truth begained. It is this spiritual perception of scrip-ture which lifts humanity out of disease anddeath, and inspires faith. Christian Sciencebreathes through the sacred pages the spiritualsense of Life, Substance and Intelligence.(Science & Health, 547-8.)

To illustrate this spiritual perception of

scripture, let the following examples takenfrom the text-book, suffice:

Jesus urged the Commandment, 'Thoushalt have no other gods before me,' which maybe rendered, 'Thou shalt have no belief of lifeas mortal. Thou shalt not know evil, for thereis

onelife.' (Ibid,

p. 19.)

This meaning, we admit, may be read mtothe words, but how can it be extracted fromthem? What the Jewish author whom Jesusquoted meant is clear enough: He was a zeal-ous believer in the sole supremacy of Yahweh

among the gods of the world, and he believed,further, that Israel's well-being depended uponacknowledgment of Yahweh alone. Hence thecoromandment. To make it convey a doctrineof life and of evil is, of course, anybody'sprivilege, and not to be denied, but surely the

ethics of interpretation requires of one whotakes such liberty with a text that the author'smeaning be clearly and distinctly acknowledged.

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Another illustration is the following passagefrom the epistle to the Hebrews

Let us lay aside every weight and the sinthat doth so easily beset us, and let us run withpatience the race that is set before us. Thatis, says Mrs. Eddy, let us put aside materialself and sense and seek the divine principle inScience of all healing. (Ibid, p. 20.)

What a startling revelation this constructionof his words would be to the original writer 1Bead the context of the verse, and it becomescrystal-clear that nothing was further from hismind than a theory of healing. Again, we say,the right to put a peculiar interpretation uponthe passage is not to be withheld from anyone,only the one who ventures thus to deviate fromthe plain intention of the writer ought to sig-

nify the liberty that has been taken with his

words.

Eecall the reason Paul gave the sceptical Co-rinthians for believing in immortality, viz:

the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Allthe preaching of the Apostle was in his eyes foolishness if Christ had not tisen fromSheol and ascended to the Father. Mrs. Eddycites this portion of Paul's first letter to the

Corinthians and interprets it as follows: Paul writes, 'If Christ [and here Mrs. Eddy

puts next to 'Christ' the word 'Truth' in brack-ets] 'If Christ be not risen, then is our preach-ing vain. ' That is, ' if the idea of the supremacy

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of spirit, which is the true conception of being,come not to your thought, you cannot be bene-fited by what I say.' (Ibid, p. 324.)

More egregious perhaps than any of the

above interpretati9ns is the following from the

fourteenth chapter of the Fourth Gospel:

He shall give you a Comforter, that he mayabide with you forever. This Comforter Iunderstand to be Divine Science. (Ibid, p.55.)

But did the author understand it to be that?And, if not, then surely some word of explana-tion to that effect would be in order, so that

the reader may see just how the scriptures arebeing used, making them serve as a vehicle ofChristian Science teaching, utterly regardless

of the original message of the authors.

Mrs. Eddy would fain persuade her readersthat Jesus entertained her view of the origin

of mortal-mind. Accordingly, we find thefollowing paragraph in Science and Health

(p. 292)

Explaining the origin of material mind andmortal mind, Jesus said, 'Why do ye not under-stand my speech? Because ye cannot hear myword. Ye are of your father, the devil.'

But was Jesus explaining the origin of'mortal mind' when he uttered those words?Is there anywhere in the gospels anything cor-responding to this idea? Can any unbiased,unprejudiced reader who has no other motive

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than to determine just what Jesus taught, ac-cept Mrs. Eddy's interpretation, making Jesussponsor for her own peculiar doctrine?

In the Glossary at the end of Science andHealth we read: The substitution of thespiritual for the material divination of scrip-

tural words often elucidates their meaning.Their spiritual sense, which is also their orig-

inal meaning . . . (Ibid, p. 579).* Here wehave an explicit identification of Mrs. Eddy'steaching with the Gospel record of Jesus' say-ings A further illustration of the spiritualsense, which is also the original, we find in thefollowing from the Glossary: ADAM terror,a falsity; the belief in original sin, sickness anddeath. D^iV^ = animal magnetism; GAD =Science, spiritual being understood. GIHON =the rights of woman, acknowledged, morally,civilly and socially. But let the reader con-sult a Hebrew lexicon for the original meaning

of each of these terms, and in no instance willhe find that it corresponds to what Mrs. Eddysets forth. The original meaning of Adam,for example, is Man ; of Gad, a Raid ; of Gihon,gushing forth (the spring near Jerusalem).

Concerning this process of spiritual inter-

pretation of Biblical sentences and terms, wehave to note four important points: (a) it is a

* The italics are mine.

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very ancient practice. It obtained among theGreeks in Plato's time with, reference to the

Homeric accounts of the Gods. When enlight-

ened Greeks (about 500 B. C.) found it impos-sible to believe any longer in the ancient dei-ties and their doings, they proceeded to putspiritual interpretations upon the records inorder to save the sense of reverence attaching

to them. Within seventy years this process

had gone so far that Plato ridiculed it. Fourcenturies later, Philo, the Greek Jew, taught aspiritualizing method of interpreting the Pen-tateuch, to make its teachings tally with whatPlato had taught. From Philo the practicepassed over into the Christian world, and has

never since left it. Even Socialists have beenattracted by it, putting interpretation on cer-tain utterances of Jesus that would make himthe Proto-Socialist of Christendom, (b) Othercults akia to Christian Science have alsoadopted the practice of elucidating the mean-ing of scriptural

words by setting forth theirspiritual sense. Waite, Gestefeld, Patterson,Wilmans, Colville, and many other representa-tives of various sects of Mental Healing,have given the spiritual meaning of Biblicalsentences, phrases, terms, yet very rarely dothe interpreters agree

a phenomenon all themore distressing when it is claimed that their spiritual is also their original meaning.

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(e) While all are at liberty to interpret the con-tents of the Bible in any way they choose, noone has a right to make the author responsiblefor the given interpretation. The spiritualmeaning and the original meaning are notto be confused. Good doctrinal material, evena science of health, may be extracted from thescriptures, but this is not to be ascribed to the

original intention of the author, (d) There arewell established rules governing the interpre-

tation of scripture. According to these a

spiritual interpretation is justified under-

one or another of three conditions. First,

when such an interpretation is involved in theliterary form, as in the parables of Jesus. Thegospels abound in examples of metaphoricalspeech. Jesus in accordance with the custom

of his time and place often used physical termsto convey moral ideas ; witness, for example, the

parable of the sower. Second, when it is indi-cated in the context that the passage is to be

interpreted spiritually as when Paul, refer-ring to the two covenants, says (Gal. IV:21)

which things are an allegory, yet all thewhile recognizing the historical reality of the

handmaid and the f reewoman. Third, when theauthor expressly states that what he says is not

to be taken literally.

Judged by these standards of interpretation

(and they are acknowledged by all schools of

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Biblical criticism) what warrant is there for

the renderings found in Science and Health ?

Miss Sibyl Wilbur, in the biography already

referred to, tells us that during the four yearsof undergraduate study of Mrs. Eddy's brother,

she read with him philosophy, and mastered

Latin, Greek and Hebrew G-rammar. * Howshall we reconcile this mastery with the far-fetched meanings Mrs. Eddy has given to

Bible passages and terms and with the claimthat these meanings are also the original

meanings? No one who comes to the Biblepages with an open, unbiased mind, seeking

only to get at what its authors intended to

convey, having no thesis to establish, no system

of thought or of practice to be Biblically sup-ported, can approve the interpretative workthat Mrs. Eddy has revealed in her book. Noteven the most conservative commentator would

dare to say that the original meaning of Adamis error, or of Gihon, Woman's Suffrage, orthat when Jesus said, Why do ye not under-stand my speech, he was explaining theorigin of mortal mind. '

Let there be liberty for all to interpret the

Bible in any fashion they choose, but let there

be also conscience and reason to see things as

they are, and not attribute to Bible authors

* p. 27.

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ideas which are foreign to their thought, their

purpose and to the age in which they lived.Coming now to Mrs. Eddy's views concerning

Jesus as healer, let me cite the following: Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific

man that ever trod the globe. He plunged be-neath the material surface of things and foundthe spiritual cause. The lonely precincts of thetomb gave Jesus a place in which to solve thegreat problem of Being. His three days' workin the sepulchre set the seal of eternity on time.

He met and mastered on the basis of ChristianScience all the claims of medicine, surgery andhygiene. Our Master healed the sick, practisedChristian healing and taught the generalitiesof the divine principle to His students. Few,however, except His students, understood in theleast His teaching that Life, Truth and Lovedestroy all error, evil, disease and death. (OpCit, pp. 313, 44, 473-4.)

But where, I ask, shall we find a single sen-tence in the Gospel record to substantiate the

view that Jesus was scientific ? Scientificmedicine, as we understand it, was not known inJesus' time. Medicine, in Palestine, was whatit still is to-day throughout the Orient. Hippoc-

rates, it is true, had made a beginning in thedirection of scientific medicine, but this was notknown to the Jews of Jesus' day and place.Nor, indeed, had Jesus any more idea of a ra-

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tional medical science than had his contempo-raries. Like all other Jews of that time, Jesusthought of disease as the work of demons, and

as punishment for sin, rather than as the resultof physical or mental causes. Pathology andpsychotherapy, etiology and the other branchesof medical science were utterly unknown to him.Nowhere is he reported as curing the sick byany method peculiarly his own. Bather did he

adopt the self-same processes that had beenknown to his fellow-countrymen for centuries.

Who can point to even the shadow of evidencethat during his three days in the tomb, he hadworked out a complete system of healing, orthat he taught the generalities of the divine

principle to his students ? Small wonder thatMrs. Eddy should speak of Jesus' disciples as students, but the record gives no warrant forthe belief that they had any intellectual capac-ity, or even intuitional capacity whatever. Onthe contrary, the Gospels assure us again and

again that these men were quite deficient incapacity to understand their Master. There isnot a particle of evidence to indicate that theygrasped the principles of Divine Science, basedas they are on metaphysical concepts of mindand matter.

On page 147 of Science and Health weread: Jesus left no definite rule for administering

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this principle of healing and preventing disease.This rule remained to be discovered by Chris-tian Science. Jesus foresaw the reception thatChristian Science would have before it was un-derstood, but this did not hinder Him. Hetaught His disciples the principle of healing.

But not once is Jesus reported either as hav-ing given his disciples instruction on how toheal, or as having foreseen the reception thatwould be tendered to Christian Science beforeit was understood. Teaching and healing, more-over, were two separate functions in the min-istry of Jesus, and whereas Mark makes men-tion of the latter to the almost total exclusion

of the teaching, Matthew and Luke stress theteaching ministry and report comparativelylittle of Jesus as healer.

We are told in Science and Health that Christian Science heals according to the

method of Jesus. But Jesus employed severalmethods, and two of them are frowned upon by

Christian Science. Eecall the different modesof curing disease which the Gospels tell us wereadopted by Jesus

(1) Thelayimg on of hands. In Matt. IX :27,and again in XX :24 we read of two blind menbeing restored to sight after Jesus had come

into physical contact with their eyes. Later onin his ministry he achieved the same result bythe same method for two other men. Further-

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more, one who had suffered from deafness was

cured after Jesus had placed his fingers in the

man's ears. But in the authorized life of Mrs.

Eddy, by Sibyl Wilbur, we read (p. 207) since

X872 physical contact of any sort has had no

place in Christian Science. '

(2) Material means. It is in the Gospel of

Mark VIII :22 that the first instance of thismode of healing is recorded. Jesus, we aretold, spat upon the eyes of a blind man, and he

was healed. Again, in John IX :6 we read thatJesus mixed spittle with clay to form a sort of

saliva, and with this he successfully anointed

a blind man's eyes. Incidentally, it may benoted that these cures were wrought in the

presence of other people, not privately, and that

the cure followed irmnediately upon the applica-tion of the remedy, no subsequent treatments

being required, excepting in the case reported

in Mark VIII :25, where a second treatment wasnecessary to make the healing effective.

(3) Auto-suggestion, exemplified in the case

of the woman who complained that for manyyears she had suffered many things from manydoctors, and now that all her savings had beenspent in fees she was rather worse than whenthe treatments began. But, declared she, if only

I could touch the hem of Jesus' robe, I know Iwould be healed. And the story concludes withthe statement, she touched the hem of his gar-

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ment and instantly her ailment left her (MarkV.25), Jesus, commenting on this cure, re-marked it was the woman's own faith (ratherthan his intervention) which healed her. Inpassing, it may be noted that modem medicineis marked by reliance on such psychical cure byfaith on the part of the patient. It is the aurumpotabile, the touchstone of success, as Galen

long ago declared. In one pan of the balanceput the pharmacopoeias of the world, all theeditions from Dioscorides to the last issue ofthe United States Dispensatory; heap them onthe scales as did Euripides his books in the cel-

ebrated contest in the Frogs, and in the otherpan put the simple faith with which, from thedays of the woman in the Gospel story untilnow the children of men have swallowed themixtures these works describe, and the bulkytomes will kick the beam. *

In all ages and in all climes auto-suggestionin one or another of its many forms has curedthe sick. Faith in the Gods has cured one, faithin little bread pills another, faith in a plain

common doctor still another; in each case themental attitude of the patient counting for morethan the power or agency on which the faithwas centred. In the same class with the self-wrought cure of the woman to whose reliance

* From an address by Dr. Gay, published in the BostonTranscript, 1905.

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upon her own faith Jesus attested, belong thecures in the temples of Aesculapius, the miracles

of the saints, the remarkable cures wrought by

those noble men, the Jesuit missionaries in thiscountry; the modern miracles at Lourdes andat St, Anne de Beaupre near Quebec, and manyof the wonder-workings of Christian Scientists.

Moreover, as a noted Boston physician* re-marked in discussing the efficacy of this third

method employed by Jesus: We physiciansuse the same power every day. If a poor lass,paralyzed apparently, helpless, bed-ridden for

years, comes to me, having worn out in mind,body and estate a devoted family, if she in a fewweeks or less by faith in nie, and faith alone,

takes up her bed and walks, the saints of oldcould not have done more, St. Anne and manyothers can scarcely to-day do less. The faithwith which we work has, indeed, its limitations.It will not raise the dead; it will not put in anew eye in place of a bad one (as it did to anIroquois Indian boy

for one of the Jesuitfathers), nor will it cure cancer or pneumonia,or knit a bone, but in spite of these nineteenthcentury restrictions, such as we find it, faith isa most precious commodity, without which weshould be very badly off.

(4)Exorcism, the

method which, accordingto the records, Jesus employed more frequently* Richard Cabot.

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than any other, i. e., driving out the evil spiritfrom the patient's body. For, Jesus, in com-mon with all his Jewish contemporaries, be-lieved that all diseases of whatever kind werecaused by the entrance of evil spirits into thebody of the afflicted person, and that the curewas effected by commanding the evil spirit tocome out from the patient. Prof. J. Estlin Car-penter, one of the leading authorities on beliefs

and customs current in Judea at the time ofJesus' has told us that all kinds of nervous

diseases prevalent in those days were attributedto the agency of evil spirits. It was supposedthat what we call palsy, paralysis, insanity, tem-porary blindness, deafness, lameness, were allcaused by demons who had entered the body ofthe patient and taken possession of it. Per-haps the evil spirit prevented him from speak-ing, and he was dumb; perhaps it preventedhim from seeing, and he was blind; perhaps itprevented him from hearing, and he was deaf;or, perhaps it frenzied him and drove him outof town. Given the theory of disease ascaused by evil spirits and it follows that not thebest educated man, but the most saintly, themost spiritually-minded, will be the best doctor.If obsession be the cause and exorcism the cure,then, the most deeply religious man will, by anincisive word from the deeps of his spiritualnature, drive the demon out. Such was the

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theory held not only by the Jews, but also amongthe Egyptians, Babylonians, Zoroastrians. In

the Avesta, the Zoroastrian Bible, is recorded

the saying of Zarathushtra, the founder of thefaith, of all remedies, that which is the mosthealing is the holy Word, for it will best drive

away sickness from the body of the faithful; onhearing the uttered holy Word evil will flee, dis-cord will flee, the evil spirits will flee ; the Word

is the best healing of all remedies. (SacredBooks of the East, vol. XXIII, p. 44.) Andnearly all the cures ascribed to Jesus in the

Gospels were effected by his Word addressed tothe patient.

Just here it may be remarked that all four ofthe

methods used by Jesusin his

healing min-istry had been in vogue among his fellow Jewsin Palestine long before he appeared as a healer.The Old Testament, the Apocrypha, the Tal-mud, all bear witness to the fact that Jesus didbut adopt healing methods already well estab-lished among his people.

Christian Scientists are wont to urge that Jesus used no drugs. But why should hehave used any? Not one of the diseases he issaid to have cured required a drug. Modemmedicine testifies to the effiicacy of druglessremedies for every one of the ailments

whichJesus treated. Even epilepsy, we are told, doesnot, in all cases, call for bromide, and many a

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type of fever is self -limiting, and, as sucli,

grouped in the class of spontaneous cures.Mrs. Eddy, in her Science and Health (p. 44)says, Jesus used no drugs to allay inflanuna-tion. ' ' But where is there a case of inflammationrecorded? If it be said in reply that Mrs.

Eddy's affirmation refers to Jesus' own expe-rience after the crucifixion, his hands and feetinflamed in consequence of it, we ask what righthad she to assume that they were inflamed, see-ing that a miracle was in progress, nay the moststupendous of all recorded miracles 1

Ex-Senator Works, of California, in a speechbefore the U. S. Senate, cited twelve diseases

leprosy, palsy, fever, insanity, issue of blood for

12 years, blindness, dumbness, withered heand,

paralysis, both blindness and dumbness in thesame person, impediment of the speech, epilepsyall healed by Jesus without the aid of drugs,and he inferred from this that Jesus was op-posed to their use, whereas the only legitimate

inference to be drawn is that drugs were notessential to effecting a cure. Why should theSenator assume that Jesus was opposed to theuse of drugs and scorned them? Did not Jesusadvise a certain sick man to wash in the pool ofSiloam, which, like that of Bethesda, was famousfor its sulphur and saline properties, and for aresinous substance the medical value of which

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Jesus was familiar with the Law and the Pro-phets, and therefore knew the medical methodsemployed by Elisha and Isaiah, The latter, we

are told, prepared a poultice to cure a boil fromwhich King Hezekiah suffered (howbeit Mrs.Eddy declared it is impossible for a boil to bepainful ; Op Cit, p. 213). While Elisha gavetreatment to Naaman, and medicated bad waterat Jericho to make it wholesome (II Kings

V.3.20 ).

How then could Jesus have'

'

scorned'

or been hostile to the use of such medical agen-

cies? Had he been definitely opposed to the useof drugs, had he intended to set himself in op-position to their use, he would surely have madehis position clear, seeing that for centuries the

useof drugs had been

wellestablished in

Israel.

Nay more, had Jesus entertained the theory ofdrugs which Mrs. Eddy ascribed to him, therecan be no doubt that he would have made hisposition clear to the people accustomed to theuse of drags and familiar with their efficacy.So far did Mrs.

Eddy goin her

attemptediden-

tification of Jesus ' healing method with her ownas to declare (on pages 26 and 473 of Scienceand Health) that Jesus proved it is ChristianScience that destroys sickness, sin and death.But where shall we find even a single verse orclause to substantiate this

astounding claim?

Nor is Mrs. Eddy alone in seeking the endorse-ment of Jesus for her views. Many of her com-

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petitors in the field of drugless healing havesought the self-same warrant for their respec-

tive modes of healing. All alike have pointedto Jesus as furnishing the proof that their

method and not any other cures disease.Let it be clearly understood that there is no

reason for doubting a single one of the healings

wrought by Jesus. Not one of them involvesany violation of known laws. Both regular andirregular practitioners are familiar with themin their own fields. Mental healers, Di-vine Scientists, the clinics of Charcot, Coueand Baird, all alike testify to reproduction ofthe miracles of healing reported in the Gospels.

And though we are not able to tell how manypeople Jesus healed, nor, in every case, what theprecise disease was from which the patient suf-fered, nor, yet again, the permanency of thecure, still, we do know why it was that in Jesus'day so many people suffered from blindness,lameness, deafness, incipient and advanced in-

sanity, epilepsy and other kindred disorders.

The key to an understanding of this conditionis the revival of the Messianic hope. With theadvent of John the Baptist the great expecta-tion took on a new lease of life. The New Tes-tament is fairly saturated with it. John beganhis ministry with the cry, Repent, for the

Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Jesus' firstpublic utterance was to the same effect (Mt.

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IV.17). The Apostle Paul is persuaded beyonda doubt that ' ' at any hour, in the twinkling of

an eye the age-long hope of Israel will be ful-

filled. In his letter to the Thessalonians and inthat to the Corinthians, he vividly portrays the

speedy advent of Messiah. The first disciples ofJesus on returning to Jerusalem after the cru-

cifixion lived in momentary expectation of thecoming of the Lord, and from the book of Acts

we learn that they walked the streets with theireyes turned heavenward that they might catchthe first sight of Messiah.* The fires of Mes-sianic expectation which had been smoulderingsince the days of the Maccabees were once morefanned into a flame. The Jewish people were

on tip-toe of expectation and excitement. Smallwonder, then, that in many a locality just suchdisorders should have occurred as are describedin the Gospels. Given a revival of the mightyage-long hope that the Deliverer, the Son ofMan, the Messiah would descend from heaven

to restore the prosperity and freedom of David'sday and the consequent excitement would gen-erate in many a mind and heart one or anotherform of nervous disorder as is described in theGospel record.

The genuineness of these narratives has been

questioned in certain quarters on the ground* See my World's Great Religions, (Semitic) Chap. IV.

for a fuller description of Messianism.

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that when the same act of healing is reported byall three Evangelists the accounts differ. Butthe explanation is to be found in the fact that

narratives of this type grow with the telling.A comparison of the Markan version with thatof Matthew and then with Luke's exemplifiesthe process of literary growth. Thus we readin Mark's gospel (earliest of the Synoptics) thestory of the daughter of Jairus, ruler of the

synagogue. Compare verses 23 and 39 and boththese with the later version in Matthew's gospel.But even though the genuineness of all thehealing narratives be discredited, and theybe branded mere inventions, yet would theyhave priceless value as testifying to the spir-

itual greatness of Jesus ? For such stories arenever told of commonplace people. The veryexistence of such legends is proof of an essen-

tially great personality to generate them. In

other words, the historicity of Jesus and theexceptional grandeur of his character are evi-

denced by the legends that have gathered abouthis person. Far, then, from disproving a realJesus and an essentially sublime personality,these narratives, were they treated as legend-ary, bear witness to both, and on that accountare of inestimable worth.

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III.

Sixty Yeaes of Cheistian Science; Its Prin-

ciples, Achievements and Claims

Its Direct Origin

In the preface to Science and Health, Mrs.

Eddy writes of herself (using the third person)as follows

As early as 1862 she began to write downand give to friends the results of her scriptural

study, for the Bible was her sole teache:^. Butthese compositions were crude the first stepsof a

child in the newly-discovered world of

Spirit. In other words, these compositions

were not expositions of Christian Science, but,

as Mrs. Eddy herself stated on the ninth pageof the preface to her book, these jottings wereonly infantile lispings of Truth ; they werethe germ out of which Christian Science, fouryears later, was evolved. Not until February,1866, was the principle of Christian Sciencediscovered (following directly upon whatthreatened to be a fatal fall on the ice in oneof the streets of Lynn, Mass. Referring to thisepoch-making incident, Mrs. Eddy,

whofor

years had been a diligent student of the Bible,but never could understand why God's healing

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and consoling gospel gave her no help, said:

The answer came in 1866 at Lynn, In com-pany with her husband, she was returning froman errand of mercy, when she fell upon the ice,and was carried helpless to her home. Theskilled physicians declared that there was abso-lutely no hope for her, and pronounced the ver-dict that she had but three days to live. Find-ing no hope and no help on earth, she lifted herheart to God. On the third day, calling for herBible, she asked the family to leave the room.

Her Bible opened to the healing of the palsiedman (Matt, ix, 2). The. Truth which set himfree, she saw; the Power which gave himstrength, she felt ; the Life Divine which healed

the sick of the palsy, restored her and she rose

from the bed of pain, healed and free. When shewalked into the midst of the family, they cried

out in alarm, thinking that she had died, andthat they beheld her ghost ; this miraculous re-

storation dates the birth of Christian Science.

In the sixth chapter of Science and Health(writing in the first person) Mrs, Eddy explic-itly announced her discovery, in the following

terms

In the year 1866 I discovered the ChristScience, or Divine Law of Life, Truth and Love,and named my discovery Christian Science, Godhad been graciously preparing me, during manyyears, for the reception of this final revelation

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of the absolute divine principle of scientific men-

tal healing. When apparently near the confinesof mortal existence, standing already within

the shadow of the death-valley, I learned thesetruths of Divine Science; that all real being is

in God, the divine Mind, and that Life, Truth

and Love are all-powerful and ever present;

that the opposite of Truth, called Error, Sin,

Sickness, Disease, Death, is the false testimony

of false, material sense; that this false senseevolves in belief a subjective state of mortal

mind which this same so-called mind namesMatter, thereby shutting out the true sense of

spirit.

From these quotations the following three

conclusions are to be drawn : First, to this falland the subsequent revelation the origin ofChristian Science is to be directly traced. Sec-

ond, from Mrs. Eddy's own description of herdiscovery ' ' she did not claim to have discovered

anything which did not already exist, much less

to have invented anything, but only after longyears of research into mental causation, persist-

ent study of the Scriptures, and as the result of

personal experience, to have reached a spiritual

conviction which was in truth a discovery. *Third, the charge of plagiarism from themanuscripts of P. P. Quimby, who had given

* Wm. J. McCracken, lecture on Christian Science.

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her treatment and loaned her some of his writ-ings, is without adequate warrant because it is

a far cry from what we read in the preface to Science and Health, to what we read in theworks of Dr. Quimby. The truth is that Mrs.Eddy had found her healing from Quimby 'streatment to be only temporary, and concludedthat his method was not spiritual, but mesmericor hypnotic. And while Quimby himself hadprogressed from mesmerism to mental healing,Mrs. Eddy had also moved forward from apurely mental system of healing to what shecalled Divine Science, albeit she used words andterms that were to be found in the writings ofQuimby and others.*

The great truth which Quimby discoveredhimself was the reality of the mental element inhealth and the cure of disease, whereas, Mrs.Eddy stressed, by contrast, what she called thespiritual element, implying that not man, nor

the human mind, but God, Divine Mind, wasthe sole sustainer of health and Healer of dis-

ease. Hence the contention of Prof. J. Jas-trald cannot be upheld that the central idea of

Christian Science is Quimby 's the termino-logy, mode of statement, etc., all are to be foundunmistakably in the Quimby manuscripts.The truth is, that precisely that which is dis-

* For an analysis of the difference between Quimbyism andChristian Science, see my Psychic Tendencies of To-day,Chap. II.

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tinctive in Christian Science is not to be found

in those manuscripts.

Its Indirect Origin

But no discussion of the origin of ChristianScience can approximate completeness if it fail

to take account of the remote and indirect causethat brought the movement into being, viz.:the reaction experienced by Mrs. Eddy from the

agnosticism and materialism that were rampantin the second half of the nineteenth century.

Turn again to the preface of Science andHealth. There it is written:

The time for thinkers has come. Truthknocks on the portal of humanity. Contentment

with the past and with the cold conventionalityof materialism are crumbling away. Ignoranceof God is no longer the stepping stone to faith.Though empires fall, the Lord shall reign for-ever.

While she was still in her twenties, New Eng-

land towns were visited with a variety of occult-isms: to wit. Animal Magnetism, Mesmerism,Clairvoyance, Mental Healing each, in itsown way, representing a reaction against theprevailing agnosticism and materialism. Then,too, the sect called Shakers was coming intoprominence.

Its characteristics were known toMrs. Eddy. The leading figure among theShakers was Ann Lee, the female Christ, the

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Woman of the twelfth chapter of Revelation. A woman clothed with the sim; at her feet themoon, and crowned with twelve stars, the

woman of whom, on a window in the ChristianScience Mother Church at Boston, a portrai-ture is to be seen, surmounted by a representa-

tion of the book Science and Health. AnnLee and the Shakers called their church TheChurch of Christ. It was located within tenmiles of the town of Bow, New Hampshire,where Mrs. Eddy was bom.

Just prior to this invasion of New Englandwith occultisms Emerson had published his es-say on Nature, with its clean-cut idealism

and uncompromising opposition to materialisticinterpretations of Nature. But Mrs. Eddywent further than Emerson in her oppositionto materialism. She went to the opposite ex-

treme from that of the ultra materialists. Theyhad said that only matter exists, that mind isunreal. Mrs. Eddy held that mind is the onlyreality, matter being non-existent. Here, then,

in this extreme reaction against the prevailing

materialism lies the ultimate cause for the origi-

nation of Christian Science. It represented the

cry of an outraged soul, rebellious against the

autocracy of matter. It carried its protest into

the domain of medicine, repudiating materiamedica, medical science, and all practices iden-tified with it. Nay more, it carried the war

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into Africa, rebelling against materialism in so-

cial life no less than in phUosophy, against that

practical materialism whose gospel is sen-

sualism, creature-comforts, starvation of thespirit ; life self -centered and unconsecrated, lifevictimized by this practical materialism, life asit was then being lived by thousands.

Mrs. Eddy met both philosophical material-ism and practical materialism with a discov-

ery of Christian Science, or the Divine Law ofLife, Truth and- Love, ' ' and named the discov-ery Christian Science.

Mrs. Eddy's Monument

Think and say what we will of the discovery,

we have to admit that its results compel atten-tion and, in large measure, admiration, no lessthan the extraordinary genius of the discovererherself. Not hers the magnificence of Sheba'sQueen, or the charm of Amaryllis, or the splen-dour of Semiramis; not hers the prowess of

Balaustion or of Deborah ; not hers the cultureof Mrs. Browning or the wit of Madame deStael ; hers was the persuasive power of a spir-itual conviction through which she founded aspiritual empire whose liberated subjects willever cherish and revere her memory. In St.

Paul's Cathedral, London, the epitaph of SirChristopher Wren bids the reader look abouthim if he would see a monument to the architect.

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So of Mrs. Eddy it might be said: would yousee her monument, look about you; behold thethousand or more Christian Science Churches,the millions of members, the millions of non-

members healed of various disorders by practis-ing members, and who, when confronted by thesceptical remark, It was not Christian Sciencethat healed you, can only reply in the wordsof the man bom blind one thing I know, thatwhereas I was blind, now I see ;* behold, too,the number and variety of publications circu-lated throughout the civilized globe; behold adaily newspaper, launched in 1908, after twenty-seven years of planning by Mrs. Eddy ; a news-paper in the columns of which there is no sen-sationalism, no paragraph that could not be

read by any one in the families of its subscrib-ers, no mention by name of any disease, noadvertisements of tea or coffee or tobacco, nor

again, of anything suggestive of accidents, such

as tire-chains; nor of death, such as under-taker's supplies.

I am not a Christian Scientist, but I have nohesitation in saying that in the perspective of

the ages, the founding of this movement will oc-cupy an importance very different from that

assigned to it by the prejudices and biases ofcontemporaries. The movement has survived

* John ix :25.

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fifty years of misappreciation and abuse at the

hands of conventional religion, organized medi-

cine and an nnethicized press. After every at-

tack from one after another of the most power-ful guns in the literary artillery of the country,

it has come forth like an unscarred veteran.The deadly ammunition has borne such signifi-cant titles as the following:

The Menace of Eddyism.Christian Science unmasked.The delusions of Christian Science.The absurd paradox of Christian Science.The essential falsehood of Christian

Science,A complete expose of Eddyism.The antidote to Christian Science.

But no shot as yet has proved fatal.

Legislation and Christian Science

As early as 1880 an attempt was made to leg-islate Christian Science out of existence, andseveral times since the effort has been revived.

Just how far legislation is needed appears whenwe ask, what is the object of law? It is to pro-tect society, and hitherto society has not stoodin need of protection from Christian Scienceany more than from quackery. We do needa law requiring all practitioners of whatever

school to give satisfactory evidence that theyknow the sciences of chemistry, physiology, an-atomy. In January, 1901, there was enacted a

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law requiring vaccination and the reporting ofcases of contagious disease to the medical au-

thorities. The foes of Christian Science feltthat this requirement would put an effectiveend to the movement. But Mrs. Eddy, withstatesmanlike wisdom, on the 17th February,ordered her disciples to conform to the law, to

accept vaccination when required, and to reportcases of contagious disease. However muchwe may be disposed to regret that this actionmeant the loss of a fair chance to test the ques-tion at issue between medical science and Chris-tian Science (for experience is the final test of

every theory), yet must we admit it was a strokeof genius on Mrs. Eddy's part to require com-pliance with the law. Here is the text of herpronouncement

''Rather than quarrel over vaccination, I rec-ommend that if the law demand an individual tosubmit to this process, he obey the law and thenappeal to the gospel to save him from any bad

results. Whatever changes belong to this cen-tury, or any epoch, we may safely submit to tlieprovidence of God, to common justice, indi-vidual rights and governmental usages.

When statistics shall have been produced prov-ing that people in great numbers are sufferingand dying from treatment by irregulars, it willbe time enough to enact a law forbidding them topractice, and every sensible man will then raisehis voice and hand against them. Till then we

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must regard every attempt to legislate irregu-

lars out of existence as an un-American proced-ure, an unwarranted attack on the personal

liberty of the people who have a right to chooseany kind of practice they desire provided theydo not imperil other lives. It is fairly well

settled that rats carry the infection of the bu-

bonic plague from house to house, and that mos-quitoes carry the germs of malaria and yellow

fever and deposit them where they will do posi-tive and perhaps fatal harm to human bodies.The acquired knowledge in these fields hasalready resulted in reducing to a great degreethe death-rate in affected regions. The con-tagious character of certain diseases is also well

settled, and while every one should be allowedto risk or guard his life as he likes, no man orwoman has a right to play in human society thepart of the rats and the mosquitoes in spreadingdisease.

There may be differences of opinion concern-ing vaccination and the germ-theory of disease,but we have reached a point where it is the clearduty of all citizens to play the game of lifeaccording to the rules of health and safety.When Doctors try to crush out ChristianScience in toto we should protest. When Chris-tian Scientists and other types of healers try toobstruct the progress of public health measures,and especially of preventive medicine, we should

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protest. There need be no conflict, for each has

its appropriate field. Medicine, it must be re-

membered, is not an exact science throughout. Itis still in large measure experimental, and doc-tors sometimes err as egregiously as do Chris-

tian Scientists. Just as religious orthodoxy,

through bitter experience, learned the lesson ofexterminating heresy by absorbing and assimi-lating whatever truth it contains, so medical

orthodoxy must learn the same lesson. Whenthe regular practitioner recognizes the forces

which the irregular uses with such gratifyingresults, he will acquire all the practice. The wayto suppress quackery in theology and in medi-cine is not by punishing the quacks, but by doingin a scientific manner what they try to accom-plish after the manner of the charlatan. Whendoctors shall have assimilated the truth-germ inChristian Science, the latter will automatically

disappear, and without calling in the aid of

the law.

So far, then, as legislation to stamp out irreg-ulars is concerned, it can be justified only asthere is a clear case of public need. If the legis-

lature has a right to interfere with me as towhom I shall employ as my family physician,why would it not also have the right to inter-fere on the question as to which grocer orbutcher I shall trade with? True, there are

laws saying who shall practice law ; but laws are45


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facts, and many of the data of medicine are notfacts, but guesses, or hypotheses. If there

existed in America an infallible school of diag-

nosis and cure we should then have a law for-bidding any one to practice unless he attended

that school. But there is none such, and until

there is we must oppose everything that standsin the way of the people choosing any practicethey wish, provided society is not jeopardized.

And this applies with equal truth to the beliefwhich Mrs. Eddy entertained that one can emita certain occult influence, a malicious animal

magnetism to the detriment of others near byor at a distance. If it were true that any one hadsuch power, it would be the duty of the commu-nity to punish

himto

thefull extent

ofthe law.

But, of course, there is not a shadow of a basisfor supposing any one was ever injured by anysuch occult agency. The end sought by the lawshould be, not the protection or the enrichment

of any class of practitioners, medical, legal, orministerial, but rather the protection of society.If, in an epidemic of small-pox, scarlet fever,diphtheria, the bubonic plague, or any other pes-tilence, it could be proved that any individualor any company of men and women were be-coming infected and were causing these diseasesto spread in a community, they should be re-strained by law. But no laws should be passedsimply to make it more profitable for the medi-

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cal profession to practice at such a time. Lawsconcerning the marriage ceremony are not madein the interest of ministers and justices of the

peace, but for the good of the community. Solaws against the spread of disease are not madein the interests of doctors, but of the commu-nity.

At the End of Sixty Years

In 1910 rash and short-sighted American

prophets predicted, on the day after Mrs.Eddy's death, that the Christian Science move-ment would disintegrate and disappear withoutthe cohesive influence of her captaincy. Butsee with what long and rapid strides the Churchhas moved forward of its own momentum since1910. Official records show that the numberof Churches has increased from 1218 in 1910 to1951 in 1922. In other words, 733 new churcheshave been organized in 12 years, an average of61 per annum.

In 1918 there were those who hoped that as aresult of the now famous law-suit then begun,the imposing structure of Christian Science

would be undermined and fall in ruins. Whywas this stupid and unkindly expectation notfulfilled? Because the controversy that led tothe law-suit had none of the elements of schism

in it. There was not a trace of doctrinal disputein any of the issues presented to the court ; notan instance of weakened faith on the part of any

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of those engaged in the law-suit ; no lessening of

loyalty to the cause in any member of theChurch. Happily, Mrs. Eddy had provided with

singular success forunanimity of belief and

loyalty. There are no shades of Christian

Science opinion. Nor, again, in this controversy

was there any dispute as to form of govern-ment, though at some future time that issue is

likely to arise. Church unity is as much in evi-dence as doctrinal uniformity. The controversybrought neither disruption nor cleavage, and

the participants the Trustees and the Direc-tors came forth from the conflict with theirfmth as firm as ever, with their church-polityunimperilled and with the conviction that whilethe controversy was deeply disturbing it wasnot at all deeply significant. Even the alleged ex-communication of Mrs. Stetson of NewYork, from the Mother-Church was avow-edly grounded upon beliefs that in no way af-fected her own acceptance of the essentials ofChristian Science or her loyalty to the foun-

dress. Sibyl M. Huse, Secretary to Mrs. Stet-son, in her little book, Christ's Offspring,represents Mrs. Stetson as the first offspringof the spiritual union of the male and femalein Christ a claim not in conformity with theteaching of Christian Science, yet along withthis strange doctrine she held, and still holds, to Science and Health as the text book of Chris-

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tian Science, and to Mrs. Eddy as lier spiritualteacher and inspirer. As for the secession ofMrs. Helena Barwis, of

NewYork, this

wasoccasioned neither by any abrogation of Chris-tian Science teaching nor by any surrender ofdevotion to the memory of Mrs. Eddy, but onlyby reason of her conviction that ChristianScience churches should be ' ' self -governed, free

andindependent.

Such are some of the outstanding facts andfeatures that face us after sixty years of Chris-

tian Science. Contemplating this record, let mefrankly confess that while I have profound re-spect for the medical profession and for its rep-resentatives as a class, I

deprecate the dog-matic doctors who deny that there is any goodwhatever in Christian Science. What the hum-blest man affirms on the basis of experience isalways worth hearing, but what the cleverestman denies, on the basis of prejudice, is notworth a moment's attention.

Dogmatism hasno head, and therefore cannot think logically;dogmatism has no heart, and therefore cannotfeel tenderly, while prejudice precludes all pos-

sibility of equity in the formation of judgments,whether upon movements or upon men.

Physical and Spiritual Healings

In popular thought Christian Science is iden-tified exclusively with the healing of disease.

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This is due, in part, to the frequent reference

Mrs. Eddy has made to disease and mortalmind (the cause of disease) in her text book,

Science and Health. Consult the concord-ance, prepared by Joseph Armstrong, and youfind that the terms disease and mortalmind occur oftener than almost any of thepositive terms which Mrs. Eddy employed. Afurther explanation for the popular identifica-

tion of Christian Science with healing alone is

to be found in the fact that nearly all the con-verts to Christian Science were attracted to itat the start because of some physical ailmentfrom which they suffered, and of which theyexpected to be cured, having tried medical prac-

tice in vain. Yet it would be a deplorable mis-take to measure the significance of this move-ment by its physical achievements only, for ithas fulfilled, and continues to fulfil, both a moraland a religious mission, and its attainments inthese realms are every whit as remarkable as

the successes scored on the physical plane.Glance with me at what Christian Science has

done in all three of these domains. ThroughChristian Science treatment thousands who suf-fered from one or another form of sickness, realor imaginary, became conscious of good health,

of relief from pain which they had vainly soughtelsewhere. Explain it in any way you will,enough has been accomplished to forbid our

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branding Christian Science treatment as a

humbug or a fad.The medical man who dismisses it with a

sneer is untrue to his own profession and un-worthy of the confidence he expects fromothers. Many failures have been reported, butthese only add to the strength of the argument,because there must have been a considerablenumber of striking successes to counterbalancethe failures, else the latter would have broughtthe movement to an inglorious finish longago. Inasmuch, then, as Christian Science hasbrought health to thousands who had triedother agencies in vain, we are forced to admitthat it has been, and still is, an incalculableboon.

But healing the sick is not the whole of Chris-tian Science. On p. 9 of Mrs. Eddy's Rudimen-tal Divine Science we read

Healing physical sickness is the smallestpart of Christian Science. It is only the buglecall to thought and action in the higher rangeof infinite goodness. The emphatic purpose ofChristian Science is healing of sin, and thistask is a million times harder than the cure ofdisease, because, while mortals love to sin, theydo not love to be sick. '

The good of Christian Science on its moralside is evidenced in thousands of homes wherethe conversation never turns on bad weather, orbad health; homes in which it is bad form to

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talk about disagreeable sensations or personal

ailments ; homes from which all dreads, worries,

morbidities and pessimisms have been banished.

Nay more, bad habits, left unconquered by othermeans, have by this system been overcome ; sour

dispositions have been sweetened and hot tem-

pers cooled. So, too, snobbishness has given

place to graciousness, the garbage of gossip has

been exchanged for the fruits of the spirit ; and

foolish, fashionable dissipations have given wayto sensible, serious interest in things eminently

worth while.

No less impressive is the showing of ChristianScience on its religiov>s side. For, it has made

the idea of God a practical reality to people forwhom formerly it was held merely as an intel-lectual belief, unrelated to daily life. ThroughChristian Science teaching a serenity and poise

have been infused into the lives of thousands

who were sadly deficient in these graces of char-acter.

Other thousands there are who have been ledaway from mere formalism and ecclesiasticismto a vital and vitalizing religion, to real spiri-tual living, and I am bound to say that Chris-tian Science has done this more effectively andsucessfuUy than any other religious movementof our time.

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The Basic Propositions

The fundamental propositions of DivineMetaphysics,

says Mrs. Eddy, are summar-ized in the four following (to me) self-evidentpropositions

1. God is all in all. 2. God is good. Good ismind. 3. God, Spirit being all, nothing is mat-ter. 4. Life, God omnipotent, deny Death, Evil,Sin, Disease. Disease, Sin, Evil, Death denyGood omnipotent, God, Life. * (Science andHealth, p. 113.)

Clearly, then, at the base of this religious sys-

tem there lies what may be called a neo-panthe-ism, summed up in the interchangeable self-evident propositions which may be read back-ward or forward with equal signification.

Already in her little book, Eudimental Di-vine Science, Mrs. Eddy had written:

'

' To heal, in Christian Science, is to base yourpractice on Immortal Mind, the Divine Principleof man's being; you must feel and know that

God alone governs man. Mortal ills are buterrors of thought diseases of mortal mind, andnot of matter ; for matter cannot feel, see or re-port pain or disease. Disease is a thing ofthought manifested on the body ; fear is the pro-curator of the thought, which causes sicknessand suffering. Eemove this fear, by the truesense that God is Love

and that Love pun-

ishes nothing but sin and the patient canthen look up to the loving God, and know that* Science and Health, p. 113.

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He afflicteth not willingly the children of men,who are punished because of disobedience to Hismoral law. His law of Truth, when obeyed, re-moves every erroneous physical and mentalstate.

From the fundamental premise that God isGood, Mind, Spirit, Life, All, a number of log-

ical deductions may be drawn, and from not oneof these do Christian Scientists flinch.

First Deduction

The first of these deductions is that matter

does not exist, is not real. But, if matter be not

real, what is it? The answer given is, a falseappearance. But even a false appearanceexists. How came matter, false appearance,

into the world if only Divine Mind exists?Surely Mrs. Eddy's neo-pantheism betokens aperversion of what Berkley stood for hers is apseudo-idealism, an over-reaching of the mark,

certain to be normalized by deeper thinking andwider experience. Byron said, if Bishop

Berkley says there is no matter, 'tis no matterwhat Bishop Berkley says. But Berkley neverdenied the existence of matter. He denied onlythe existence of an actual substance underlyingthe group of phenomena of which we are con-scious in our relation to the external world.

Every particle of matter has color, form, re-sistance, cohesiveness. If now by an intellectualprocess you divest it of these elements, what re-

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mains'? Berkley said nothing remains, while

admitting that whatever the basis of matter be

the laws and forms in which we are related toit do not change. Just what matter is has notnot yet been settled. It may be a precipitate ofmind, or mind a sublimation of matter. Yetthough we be ignorant of its essential nature,we cannot abolish matter by merely denying itsexistence. Grant, if you will, that we deal only

with ideas and the relation of ideas, that theworld is nothing more than a picture-book. But,even so, it does not follow that the pictures do

not tell the truth. Grant that they are only pic-tures ; nevertheless, the relations of the pictures

to each other are permanent ; they do not belong

in one mind only, and can't be thought away asthe individual may choose ; they belong to all ofus, and to think them away is to think oneselfout of the world of order and laws into chaosand irrationality. Eelation is reality. Mrs.Eddy might explain away mortal mind asnon-real, but she could not explain away the re-lation between mortal mind and matter. Forthat relation is absolute reality, having nothing

to do with time and space. Similarly, the lawsare permanent. Fire always bums. Steel al-ways cuts. Water always drowns. Yet so far

did Mrs. Eddy go in her denial of matter andits laws as to say to a Unitarian clergyman thathe could cut his jugular vein and she would show

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Mm her power to lieal the wound, so unreal ismatter and what are called the laws of matter.Of course, he did not test her ability, and rightlynot, because, while in a transcendental world,

where only discarnate spirits exist, matter is anillusion, in the realm of physical experience,

matter is a reality.

Second Deduction

A second deduction from the original prem-ise, God is all in all, is stated by Mrs. Eddyin the following propositions

The human mind has no healing power, theonly healing agent is Divine Mind, operating inresponse to man's prayer a humble, stead-fast, trustful, deep desire for wholeness of be-

ing. I am never mistaken in my scientific diag-nosis of disease. Outside of Christian Scienceall is vague and hypothetical, the opposite ofTruth. Outside Christian Science all is error.

Yet how can one subscribe to these statementswhen one sees what has been, and is still beingdone by the power of suggestion, either in theform of hypnotism or in the waking stateby the various methods of psychotherapy,with its triple process of education, explana-

tion and persuasion, so that in three conver-sations Dubois could successfully cure avariety of cases without any appeal whateverto Divine Mind? In the same categorycome mental healing, cures by all forms of

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fantastic suggestions, such as the use of

relics, rings, etc. Mrs. Eddy, to be sure, isquite entitled to hold her particular theory of

healing, but there are other good people whothink that all inside Christian Science is error,

and that the human mind has great healingpower, witness the cures wrought by it. Jv^t

what it is that heals cannot as yet be decided,because all the various schools of healing get

the same results, despite diiferences of method.Christian Scientists may refuse to see them, butonce having seen them, it is sheer nonsense to

refuse to acknowledge them. One thing, how-ever, is certain, viz. : that a belief does not need

to be true to achieve desired results. WhetherMrs. Eddy's principle be true or not, it can-

not be proved true by the results, since the same

results are attained by wholly different prin-ciples. This crucial fact was brought to lightsome years ago by Professor H. H. Goddard, ofClark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, in

a report on an extended study of various heal-

ing methods and published in the Journal of

Philosophy & Psychology. ' ' The report showedthat (a) Schlatterism, Dowieism, Quimbyism,Hypnotism, Christian Science, and other formsof drugless healing, successfully cure disease

and sint; (b) they all alike have failures; (c)they all claim to cure the same kinds of disease(d) patients have gone from one school to an-

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other; (e) some failed with Christian Science,

but succeeded with hypnotism; (f) some failed

with both Christian Science and hypnotism, but

succeeded with mental healing ; (g) some failedafter trying all the schools. What warrant,then, is there for Mrs. Eddy's denunciation of

systems of healing other than her own? Andshe was especially severe on those who oncewere Christian Scientists, but went over to Men-

tal Healing with the hope of becoming healed.Before leaving the results of Dr. Goddard's in-

valuable research we must take note of his ulti-mate conclusion, viz: that suggestion is thefactor common to ail these drugless modes ofhealing. To be sure, suggestion like telepathy

is only a name for a process of which as yet weknow very little, but a useful term none the less,to point the human factor present in all formsof Divine Science. Nor, indeed, is ChristianScience to be shut out as an exception, for onpages 410-11 of Science and Health Mrs.

Eddy says (in discussing the practical problemof method) : Always begin your treatment byallaying the fear of patients. Silently reassure

the patient as to his exemption from disease anddanger, . . . Argue with the patient (men-tally, not audibly) that he has no disease, and

conform the argument to the evidence. Men-tally insist that health is the everlasting fact,

and sickness the temporal falsity. Again, on58


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pages 422-423, we read: If the case to betreated is consumption, take up the leadingpoints included (according to belief) in this

disease. Show that it is not inherited ; that in-flammation, tubercles, hemorrhage and decom-position are beliefs, images of mortal thoughts,

superimposed upon the body; that they are notthe Truth of man ; that they should be treatedas error, and put out of thought. Then theseills will disappear. If the lungs are disappear-

ing, this is but one of the beliefs of mortal mind.

Mortal man will be less mortal when he learnsthat lungs never sustained existence, and cannever destroy God, who is our life. When thisis understood, mankind will be more Godlike.What if the lungs are ulcerated? God is moreto a man than his lungs; and the less weacknowledge matter or its laws, the more im-mortality we possess.

What we have to note in these quotations isthe succession of terms that are allied to sugges-

tion, and which I have italicized to make clearerthe point now under consideration, viz., thatsuggestion enters into Christian Science as a

factor in the healing process, just as in other

systems * allay, reas sure, argue, ' mentally insist, show

such are the im-

peratives of practical healing in Christian

* See Stephen Paget, Op Cit., pp. 202-5 for Christian Sci-ence testimony pointing to suggestion as the healing agent.

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Science albeit, that Divine Mind is held tobe the only healing agent.

Third Deduction

A third deduction from Mrs. Eddy's funda-mental thesis, Grod is all in all, relates to

poisons and drugs. The only power a poisonor drug can have is that which human belief ormortal mind confers on it. t Such is the ex-

plicit language in which she presents her doc-trine that poisons are not inherently such, but

have been made such by man's ignorance, by mortal mind. And if we ask, What is this mortal mind which confers upon poisonstheir power, the answer is given on page 114

Mortal mindis

a solecismin

language, andinvolves an improper use of the word 'mind;'as mind is mortal, the phrase 'mortal mind' im-plies something untrue, and, as the phrase is

used in Christian Science, mortal mind is meantto designate that which has no real existence. '

Elsewhere mortal mind is definedas

the sub-jective side of matter. But, how can thatwhich does not exist have either an objectiveor a subjective side ? Again, we read : ' ' Mortalmind is the belief that matter exists. But inthat case, where did this belief come from ifthere is nothing real corresponding to it?

Onthat point, alas, Mrs. Eddy is silent. Explain

t Science and Health, p. 18.

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mortal mind, if you will, by any sort of second-ary cause you choose, yet that secondary causehas to be explained, so that, sooner or later, youare driven back to the Divine Mind, which is

all in all.

But, to return to the effect of poisons, Mrs.

Eddy contends that prussic acid, arsenic, strych-nine, would never have been poisons had nothuman belief (mortal mind) made them so. Onpage 177 of Science and Health she writes: If a dose of poison is swallowed through mis-take, and the patient dies, does human beliefcause this death? Even so, and as directly as ifthe poison had been intentionally taken, Insuch cases, Mrs. Eddy goes on to say, a fewpersons believe the poison swallowed to be

harmless, but the majority believe the arsenic,

strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to bepoisonous ; consequently, the result is controlled

by the majority of opinions; not by the infini-tesimal minority of opinions in the sick cham-ber. But the fact is that the effect of severalpoisons, far from having being conferred onthem, was accidentally discovered. The instantdeath of a dog after licking up a few drops ofprussic acid from the floor of a laboratory dem-onstrated the hitherto unknown poisonous na-ture of this drug. Similarly, a group of inno-cent children on a Sunday afternoon strollthrough the country, eating bella donna fruit

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and dying the same day, led to the discovery of

the deadly property of this plant. In all seri-

ousness we ask: Would an original majority

belief have made lemonade as deadly as prus-sic acid? If the majority of people believed

beet-greens to be poisonous would the result be

controlled by that majority opinion and be iden-

tical in effect with a reckless indulgence in bella

donna? Would oxygen have proved as effica-

cious as chloroform had the majority of men conferred upon it the effect we see producedby the anaesthetic? One has only to raise suchquestions to lay bare the fallacy lurking in Mrs.

Eddy's doctrine of poisons. With a perfervidsense of indignation she asks: Would God

create drugs intrinsically bad? But there areno such drugs. It is a matter of dosage. Aright dose is intrinsically good, a wrong dose isintrinsically bad. A right dose of prussic acidserves as a sedative even as a right dose of bella

donna will work wonders in certain cases of

gastric disorder. Instead of asking, WouldGod create drugs intrinsically bad? Mrs. Eddymight well have pointed to some results of man'sco-operation with God. God created the belladonna plant, and man co-operating made it aneffective medicine. God created poppies and

cinchona trees; man co-operating extractedfrom the former morphia and from the bark ofthe latter quinine, to be turned to beneficent use

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in the healing of disease. God created the im-sightly prickly cactus of the California desert,

and Luther Burbank co-operating converted itinto a beautiful and nutritious fruit.

Fourth Deduction

A fourth deduction from Mrs. Eddy's originalpremise (and from which she did not flinch) isthat ablutions, exercise and fresh air, stand inno necessary relation to health. On page 413we read the passage iu which the deduction isstated

Ablutions, fresh air and exercise stand in nonecessary relation to good health. The daily ab-lutions of an infant are no more necessary thanwould be the process of taking a fish out of waterevery day and covering it with dirt in order tomake it thrive more vigorously in its own ele-ment. Cleanliness is next to godliness, but

washing should be only for the purpose of keep-

ing the body clean, and this can be done withoutscrubbing the whole surface every day. Wateris not the natural habitat of humanity. In car-

ing for an infant one need not wash the little

body all over every day in order to keep it sweet

as the new blown flower. When there are fewerdoctors and less thought is given to sanitary

subjects there will be better constitutions and

less disease. Elsewhere in this book it is

written: Bathing and rubbing to alter the

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secretions or remove unhealthy exhalations

from the cuticle receive a rebuke from ChristianHealing. The Christian Scientist takes the most

care of his body when he leaves it most out ofhis thought.

Thus, if Christian Scientists could have their

way they would abolish factory and tenement-house inspectors, fresh-air enterprises, quaran-

tine, the public health commission and kindred

agencies affecting the sanitary well-being of thecommunity. For, these good people in all earn-estness have come to believe that health is notdependent upon sunshine or diet, or exercise;that children with headaches and muscular mis-movements of the eyes have no need of proper

spectacles and that those with diseased tonsilsor decaying teeth have no need to get them re-moved. Tonsils are necessary, when healthy, inpreventing the entrance of germs from themouth further into the system, but when dis-eased they lose that function, often become a

menace to health, and should be removed. Uoyou not see that only a minority of the peoplein any community can be Christian Scientists?How else shall this minority indulge in theirtheory of health, save as the majority who areunconverted look after public health, maintain

the purity of the water and the milk supply, in-spect the food, vaccinate children, establish

quarantine, isolate hospitals for contagious dis-

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eases and do away with the danger of malariaand yellow fever. If Christian Scientists hadthe power they would abolish these life-saving

activities, for that is the logic of their position.Happily, however, they are in the minority in

every community, and so its sanitary welfare isnot jeopardized. Yes, Christian Scientists, if

they could have their way, would close up theRockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the

Pasteur laboratories and all those other scien-tific institutions in which trained, consecratedmen are giving their lives to learning the realnature of those diseases that still bafl3e the wis-

dom and tax the patience of the researchers.With all such scientific, consecrated work

Christian Scientists are necessarily out of sym-pathy. Given the premise that God is all in all,that matter does not exist

60 years of christian science

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