WE have said that faith is belief founded on satisfactory evidence. From this it by no means follows that everything must be understood before it can be accepted as true. One may believe that the sun shines, tho he knows nothing of how it does so. We may believe that in the humanity of Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” tho we can not understand how it could be.
Now, if there is anything relied upon as the grand reason for accepting Christian Science, it is the claim it makes of healing disease.
Judged by the Scriptures.
It has been our purpose in these studies to deal not so much with the scientific as with the moral aspects of the various systems we have been examining. As regards the scientific standing of Christian Science, there is nothing to discuss—it has none. Science depends on experience and reason. Transcendentalism, of which Christian Science is a branch, scorns both. Mysticism has nothing in common with Science. The actual method of Christian Science healing must, therefore, be judged by the Scriptures. It would be as impossible from its mere results, so far as treating disease is concerned, to decide whether its principle is scientific or not as it is to tell whether clairvoyant diagnosis, the use of Hypnotism in therapeutics, and mind-healing generally, can be justified as relying on any rational basis.
As regards the number of cures which Christian Science boasts, we may state that we have lived during the whole career of Christian Science, have traveled some, read a great deal, made a number of inquiries into the actual results in Christian Science healing, have talked with others who have done likewise, and have concluded that Christian Science can show no advantage, whatever, in proportion to those practising, over mind-healers of almost every description. There are many interesting records of the power of bread-pills, magnetized water, holy relics, placebos, and incantations of various sorts, over the imagination. We recently met an official of one of the largest counties in California who was just on the point of turning Christian Scientist because the abracadabra of an adherent of that faith had apparently caused the disappearance of a “seed” wart from his hand. We have known several cases where this same piece of mental surgery was performed by Gypsies, ignorant old Hibernian women from the Emerald Isle who could speak their native tongue better than English, and others who had never heard of Christian Science. We remember reading somewhere in English history of a recipe owned by an old lady who, by its means, had wrought wonderful cures. Parliament thought it might be well for the government to own so precious a piece of information. A commission was appointed to investigate and report on the cures. The finding of this commission was equal to the previous reputation of the old lady’s medicine. Parliament purchased it. It ran something like this:—
Snails calcined;
Wild burdock seed,
Wild turnip seed,
Hips and haws,
All burnt to blackness with soap and honey.
We know more about the personal cures wrought by Schlatter, Weltmer, Dowie, and others, than about Mrs. Eddy’s success, except from her own writings. It would seem from public notoriety that several of these mind-healers and faith-healers can personally show better results than the founder of Christian Science.
Alleged Cures.
Dr. J. B. Huber, of New York, investigated twenty of the most remarkable alleged Christian Science cures; in not one case could the genuineness of the cure be established. He made a mistake; he should have investigated the less remarkable. We are confident that in this way his success would have been ample. In fact, we have great confidence in Christian Science in some lines. For when we remember that structural or organic diseases constitute perhaps less than one-tenth of the ills of mankind, and that hysteria—various phenomena of disturbed nervous force—can simulate every known disease, it is not difficult to account for the success of any system of treatment that affects the imagination and will.
A few years ago one of the most eminent physicians of New York City engaged in a series of experiments at the great Demilt Dispensatory to test the value of mental therapeutics. No medicine was given, but by various devices he appealed as powerfully as possible to the imagination of the patients. His testimony is that the results were as good as under any system of treatment he ever used. We have no objection to Christian Science disabusing the minds of sufferers, but we object to a matter of imagination being made to nullify the Gospel. As regards the published reports of healing, those found in religious periodicals and newspapers, and those that pass from lip to lip, any one who has studied the psychology of self-deception and the practical impossibility of unscientific persons, especially those of a particular religious bias, reproducing the exact truth,—such a one knows that these reports are to be taken with a great deal of allowance.
But the scientific status of Christian Science is secondary in our present purpose, tho when Christian Scientists claim that diseases can not be contagious or infectious, that poison does not kill; when its teachings lead to the disregard of reporting to the Department of Public Health cases of smallpox, diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis, as sworn testimony in our hands proves they do, it becomes a live question whether it would not be wise for the author of “Science and Health” to inform her disciples that some other things besides going without food and clothes are “not legitimate.”
In concluding this limited review of Christian Science, let us compare its method of healing with the Biblical one. What are the instructions of true inspiration in this particular? They are found in James 5:14, 15:—
“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.”
This is very brief, clear, and specific. It requires just two verses to tell it. “Science and Health” takes seventy-nine pages to explain how Scientists should do it. Does this book give the directions laid down by the inspired author of the Scriptural method?—Not a breath of it.
That these instructions given by James are in accord with those given to the apostles, we find in Mark 6:13. Here the Master gives them their commission, in pursuing which the record says they “anointed many invalids with oil, and cured them.” 20th C. V. A quotation or two from the seventy-nine pages mentioned above will show the drift of Scientist procedure:—
In proportion as matter, to human sense, loses all entity as substance, in that proportion does man become its master. He enters into a diviner sense of the facts, and comprehends the theology of Jesus, as demonstrated in healing the sick, raising the dead, and walking over the waves. Page 368.
Realize that the evidence of the senses is not to be accepted in the case of sickness. Page 384.
When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the testimony of the senses by Divine Science. . . . Suffer no claim of sin or sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it, etc. . . . Agree to disagree with approaching symptoms of chronic or acute disease, whether cancer, consumption, or smallpox. Meet the incipient stages of disease with such powerful eloquence as a legislator would employ to defeat the passage of an inhuman law. Rise, in the conscious strength of the Spirit of Truth, to overthrow the plea of matter, or mortal mind, arrayed against the supremacy of the Spirit. Blot out the images of mortal thought, and its beliefs in sickness and sin. Page 389.
Mentally contradict every complaint from the body. Page 390.
The physical affirmation of disease should always be met with the mental negation. Whatever mortal mind desires to produce on the body, it should express mentally, and hold fast to this ideal. Page 391.
When an accident happens, you think, or exclaim, “I am hurt!” Your thought is more powerful than your words, more powerful than the accident itself, to make the injury real. Now, reverse the process. Declare you are not hurt, and understand the reason why; and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact proportion to your disbelief in physics. Page 396.
If you mentally and silently call the disease by name, as you argue against it, as a general rule the body will respond more quickly. Page 409.
Argue with the patient (mentally, not audibly) that he has no disease. . . . Mentally insist that health is the everlasting fact, and sickness the temporal falsity. Page 410.
It is true that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit, using the disciples as instruments, often performed miracles of healing in a more direct manner. But those instances depend on the arbitrary good pleasure of God, who “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.” If the exigencies of the case demand, He can and does heal in other ways. But the general religious method has been given, and none but God Himself has any right to say when this method may be departed from. The general method of Christian Science is a total departure from this rule; there is neither prayer, in any proper sense, nor anointing with oil in the name of the Lord.
Likeness with Other Isms.
All is Maya, illusion, says the ancient heathen philosophy of India; all is illusion, echoes Christian Science. God is all, says Pantheism; God is all, echoes Christian Science. God and man are inseparable, claims the New Thought; God and man are inseparable, echoes Christian Science. Page 472. Man has pre-existed5from eternity, says Plato; even so, is the echo of Christian Science. Page 473. Re-incarnation and death will occur on the next plane of existence, and continue till man becomes more spiritual, claims Theosophy.
Death will occur on the next plane of existence as on this, until the understanding of Life is reached. . . . The period required for this dream of material life [compare Kama loca and Devachan of Theosophy] . . . will be of longer or shorter duration, according to the tenacity of its error” (Page 243).
assents Christian Science.
The Gnostics, who were distinguished by the epithet of Docetes, . . . betrayed the human, while they asserted the divine, nature of Christ. Educated in the school of Plato, accustomed to the sublime idea of the Logos, they readily conceived that the brightest Aeon, or emanation of the Deity, might assume the outward shape and visible appearance of a mortal [Jesus]; but they vainly pretended that the imperfections of matter are incompatible with the purity of celestial substance [Christ]. . . . He imposed on the senses of his enemies and of his disciples; and the ministers of Pilate had wasted their impotent rage on an airy phantom, who seemed to expire on the cross, and after three days to rise from the dead.—Gibbon, vol. II., pages 307, 308.
In other words, Jesus was one thing, Christ another—the identical distinction made by Christian Science. Page 229. That heresy arose “while the blood of Christ yet smoked on Mount Calvary.”
So we might go on showing the kinship of this monstrous travesty on the name of Christianity and science to the reeking superstitions of the ages. Half-concealed in its transcendental and mystical phraseology lies hid the hoary deceptions by which the enemy of righteousness has set aside the plain Gospel. It is as if, in his last grand effort to delude the world, he had raked from the pit of darkness the dregs of his most subtle errors. God forbid that our souls should be entangled thereby.
