We have heard much of the effects of this practice, and the extraordinary interest which it has excited; and it has become clear that whatever results it may effect in healing the body, as affecting the heart it has given grounds for the suspicion that it is a system of spiritual malpractice, leading its subjects away from the simple faith of the gospel into a vague and transcendental misbelief. It is, then, as a theologian and defender of the gospel that I now write upon this question.
A desire to learn the true teaching of the system led me to look into the two volumes, “Science and Health,” by Mrs. Mary B. C. Eddy, of this city, who is understood to be the originator of this movement, and principal expounder of its doctrines. While examining this work, I chanced to meet also the very interesting observations of Mr. G. P. Pember, of England, on modern Spiritualism and theosophy. At once I was struck with the remarkable points of similarity between this so-called “Christian science,” and that “theosophy” which has lately bewitched the people of India, both Brahmins and Christians.
Christian science calls itself “the understanding of God,” which is simply the translation of the Greek word “theosophy.” One of the fundamental axioms of theosophy is set forth in the following sentences: “There is no personal devil. That which is mystically called the devil is the negative and opposite of God. And whereas God is I Am, or a positive Being, the devil is not.” Here is a danger-signal that should at once warn one off from the system which displays it. Any “wisdom of God” which throws Satan into eclipse, bears the clear imprimatur of the prince of darkness; for we believe that Satan is more eager to establish his nonentity than the most miscalled man ever was to establish his identity. Turning now to “Christian Science,” we read the following deliverances: “To admit aught but the good intelligence, lays the foundation of evil, and goes to support two powers; namely, God and devil, truth and error, and concludes that error is an intelligence, when it is the absence of it. . . . A lie is all the Satan there is.”—Vol. II, 84, 85.
This sentence gives the key-note of the entire system. Evil is not; sin, sickness, and death are unreal; matter and the mortal body are nothing but a belief and illusion. Dispel the belief of sickness and cast out the illusion of matter, and you heal the disease. This, briefly stated, is the philosophy of “Christian science.”
We do not question that the practitioners of this science are in some way effecting some marked cures, nor do we charge them with practicing any willful imposture. But we believe that their science, so called, is infecting souls with the subtle poison of pantheism and theosophy. The delusion is most insidious. The large use of the Bible, the strenuous demand for holiness and self-abnegation in the disciples, the results apparently effected in the ministry to the sick,— these are very powerful considerations for attracting converts. And so scores of young ladies (the practitioners seem to be mostly women), are drawn into the system, under the impression that they are getting some finer quality of Christianity, only in the end to be lured into fatal misbelief. And this, we predict, is not the final issue. Some things come to a logical end, which do not have a very logical beginning.
If the body is only a phantom and the flesh only a shadow, it is logically certain that by and by some very practical sinners will take refuge under this system, and insist that the sins of the body and the transgressions of the flesh are harmless, since they are only the phantom of a phantom, and the shadow of a shadow.
In proof of our charge against this system of bad religious teaching, let us give some illustrations from its principal text-book, “Science and Health.” Its platform opens with the astounding declaration “that there is neither a personal deity, a personal devil, nor a personal man,” a denial too great to grapple with in a brief paper like this. We only quote it, and then call attention to the following contradictions of Scripture gathered from this book:—
Christian Science.
There is no personal devil. Platform.—A lie is all the Satan there is.—Vol. II, 85.
Jesus never ransomed man by paying the debt that sin incurs; whosoever sins must suffer.—II, 189.
Sin is not forgiven; we can not escape its penalty.—II, 165.
Petitioning a personal Deity is a misapprehension of the source and means of all good and blessedness; therefore it can not be beneficial.—II, 170.
Asking God to pardon sin, is a vain repetition, such as the heathen use. Habitual goodness, is praying without ceasing.—II, 173.
The belief that man has a separate life or soul from God is the error that Jesus came to destroy.—II, 90.
Science decides matter or the mortal body to be nothing but a belief and an illusion.—II, 193.
Man is coeternal and coexistent with God, and they are inseparable in divine science.—I, 173.
Holy Scripture.
“Then saith Jesus unto HIM, Get THEE hence, Satan.” Matt. 4:10.
“Your adversary the devil, . . . walketh about, seeking whom HE may devour.” 1 Peter 5:8, 9.
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” Rom. 6:12.
“He shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Rom. 8:11.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” Gen. 1:27.
Beyond these palpable contradictions of the word of God, we must confess also the shock which it gives to our reverence to hear Jesus constantly spoken of as a metaphysician and demonstrator of Christian science—“the most scientific Man that ever trod the globe;” to be told that the cause of his agony in the garden was that he was touched with “the utter error of a belief of life in matter;” that on the cross he was giving the world “an example and proof of divine science;” that his Christianity “destroyed sin, sickness, and death, because it was metaphysics and denied personal sense, bore the cross and reached the right hand of a perfect principle.”
If it be asked, How do these practitioners effect the cures ascribed to them? It is enough to give their own theory, that it is the result of mind acting on mind to dispel the illusion of sickness. If this be so, and there are those who can heal diseases by mind cure, we know not who should object. Indeed, the principle of such treatment is beginning to be recognized as of great value by eminent physicians; and a writer of so high authority as Prof. Austin Flint has published an article in the Medical News on Non-medicinal Therapeutics, declaring that the influence of mind on mind in curing disease is so important as to constitute a distinct branch of therapeutics. So, then, if there are mind healers, pure and simple, who are not entangled, and do not propose to entangle others, in the false doctrines of which we have given specimens above, we have no criticism to make on them.
But the ominous thing is that every text-book we have examined on the subject brings the art into acknowledged connection with pantheistic and Buddhistic principles. The mind which acts on mind is irreverently confounded with the Eternal Mind; as, for example, in the “Primitive Mind-Cure,” by W. F. Evans, a Christian scientist, the author, after quoting one who declares that an idea directed upon the seat of a supposed ailment causes a stream of nervous energy to flow toward the secreting organ, says: “This nervous energy I prefer to call the universal, divine life-principle in nature, the akasa of the Hindu metaphysics, an all-pervading, omnipresent, vivific principle of life and motion, identical in its higher aspects with the Holy Spirit of the Gospels.” This we call pantheism of the most revolting type—a confounding of the third person of the blessed Trinity with a secretion of the nerves.
In this book, too, is evolutionism of a very profane sort. “As the Cabala expresses it, the mineral becomes a plant, the plant an animal, the animal a man, and man becomes divine. Thus is the divine Man, the Christ of Paul, at the same time a divine personage, and a universal humanized principle of life and light.” After telling us that the Christ is “the universal spirit,” the “all-pervading divine presence,” it is declared that “owing to the unexampled spiritual evolution of the Man Jesus, his individual life became merged and blended into unity with the Only Begotten of the Father, the universal Christ.” All this and much more of the same quality there is, which we would not quote except to warn Christians who are swallowing this book and others of the same family, without suspicion. It is a sort of witch’s caldron, in which every conceivable heathen and Christian heresy is seething and simmering to produce the subtle essence called “mental medicine.”
Now, reading a work of lies like this, and seeing on almost every page its connection revealed with theosophy, esoteric Buddhism, cabalism, and pantheism, and yet the roots of these doctrines so artlessly entwined with devout and reverent exposition of Scripture as to deceive the very elect; and then turning to the metaphysical healers who are going to their patients, some of them, at least, filled with the evil philosophy of this manual, and winning such reputed success as to have caused a rare stir in our country; what shall we say?628
We say two things; namely, that there may be some psychic force here, mind-contagion or what not, which experts can show to account for the whole matter, or there may be something deeper. We have the strongest conviction of the existence of a personal devil, not omnipotent, but endowed with an infernal ingenuity. It has been his steady policy either to parody Christianity by inventing spurious imitations or to adulterate it with such heathen mixtures as to “turn the truth of God into a lie.” The literature of Christian science presents clearly enough such a pagan adulteration of the religion of Christ; and we greatly fear that “the prince of the power of the air” may be appropriating and re-enforcing whatever occult principle of healing there may be in this system, and using it to accredit his own gospel.
It will be hardly necessary after what has been said, to distinguish “Christian science” from the “prayer of faith,” which is said in Scripture to “save the sick.” No one who believes this promise or makes use of it, has ever, so far as we know, considered that its fulfilment depends on the action of mind upon mind. All who credit “faith cures,” as they are sometimes called, hold that they are the result of God’s direct and supernatural action upon the body of the sufferer. “Christian science” pointedly denies the efficacy of prayer for the recovery of the sick. It says:—
“Asking God to heal the sick has no effect to gain the ear of love, beyond its ever presence. The only beneficial effect it has is mind acting on the body through a stronger faith to heal it; but this is one belief casting out another—a belief in a personal God casting out a belief in sickness, and not giving the understanding of the principle that heals.”—“Science and Health,” II, 171.
James says: “Let them pray. . . . The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the LORD shall raise him up.” James 5:14, 15.
Here the antagonism between two things that differ is so marked that we need only to call attention to it.
All this we have written from no love of controversy, and from no personal ill-will toward those whom we criticise; but for the warning of Christians, lest they be beguiled away from the simplicity that is in Christ. Let such as would abide in the truth give heed to the clear denials of Scripture indicated in the quotations already given, in contrast with the word of God; and then remember the warnings of the apostle Paul, to avoid “the oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith.”
And when this science talks about Jesus Christ’s “supposed life in matter,” let them remember that some in the days of John spoke precisely thus,—“gnostics” or “scientists” they were called,—and that of them the gentle apostle is supposed to have written when he said, “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” And, finally, remembering the saying of Calvin, which accords with Scripture and the universal testimony of the early church, that “Satan perverts the things which otherwise are truly works of God, and misemploys miracles to obscure the glory of God,” let us watch soberly and pray without ceasing, that we enter not into temptation.