“Christian Science is based on teachings of Scripture which it interprets, giving the Christ principle in divine metaphysics which heals the sick and sinner. It explains all cause and effect as mental, and shows the scientific relation of man to God.” — Mrs. Eddy’s “Science and Health.”
The Truth About It. — What is called “Christian Science” is in reality neither Christian nor scientific. The adoption of the name is indeed a tribute to two great factors of modem civilization and an acknowledgment of their power, but is nevertheless an affront offered both to Science and to Christianity.
“Christian Science” is a form of worship and a system of healing founded by Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy. Mary Baker, known latterly as Mrs. Eddy, was born at Bow, near Concord, N. H., in 1821. She was clever as a child, but she received little instruction within the walls of the classroom; never, in fact, getting beyond the three R’s. She gravely but naively tells us, however, that a brother of hers, a student at Dartmouth, taught her a great deal of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and that at the age of ten natural philosophy, logic, and ethics were her favorite studies. Her progress in these more abstract branches must have come to a halt early in her career. Logic, certainly, was not her forte in later years.
Though a farmer’s daughter and living in a house in which everyone else worked, she was permitted to grow up in idleness; but this was partly due to her physical ailments. An exceedingly sensitive nervous system showed itself in frequent fits of hysteria; and even in the intervals between her hysterical fits she was troubled with a morbid restlessness, which could only be appeased by some form of bodily motion, as walking or rocking. As late as her married life she had to be rocked in a huge cradle made for her special accommodation.
But apart from her physical ills there was always about her an air of superiority that secured her the privilege of playing the lady. She was possessed of an extraordinary amount of quiet self-assertion and a certain masterfulness of will which stuck to her throughout her life, carrying her through all manner of vicissitudes, through the experience of three marriages and one divorce, and through a host of difficulties incident to the propagation of her new system, till finally, before her demise, it landed her safely on the Olympus which is the abode of the venerated founders and foundresses of new religions.
At the period of Mary Baker’s youth New England was the great rallying-place of most of the strange isms that have lighted on this globe of ours. Mesmerism and Spiritism were particularly rampant. Mary Baker went with the current, dabbling in Mesmerism and practicing Spiritism and clairvoyance as an amateur. The great turning-point of her life was her visit as a patient to Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, at Portland, Maine. Quimby was “Doctor” only by courtesy, for he had received no medical training. The son of a blacksmith at Lebanon, N. H., and a dock-maker by profession, he is nevertheless described as an original thinker and a questioner of received opinions — in fact, something of a village philosopher.
Quimby was caught by the prevalent mesmeric fever and practiced Mesmerism and mind-reading in connection with healing. He finally got an inspiration. He discovered, or thought he discovered, that the secret of his cures lay, not in Mesmerism, but in the implanting in the minds of his patients a belief in their future recovery. He was at last convinced that no disease has any real existence except in the mind, and that, therefore, the most direct and effectual means of curing diseases of all sorts would be to operate exclusively on the mind. So, henceforth, it was physic and Mesmerism to the dogs!
Dr. Quimby ’s method of healing was apparently a species of suggestion, in its present technical sense. It was a purely natural means of restoring health in the ease of certain diseases. Any gentle and unobtrusive means of getting the patient into the right frame of mind was employed. The healer would first gain the confidence of the sufferer and would use some insinuating method of producing in his mind the proper state of “receptivity.’’ Then by repeating a word or a sentence several times, or by a look or an attitude, or even by a spell of silence, he would gradually influence the patient’s thoughts so as to bring them into perfect unison with his own; and the disease disappeared with the thought of it and the belief in it.
Besides the practical part of his system there was a set of abstract doctrines that gradually developed in Quimby’s mind. These, with the aid of his friends, he managed to set forth in a series of essays, which he sometimes communicated to his patients. Mingled with his practical precepts were a number of very Quimbyish conceptions of Christian truths; and these, according to one of Mrs. Eddy’s biographers, were much the same in substance as Mrs. Eddy’s theorizing in later years. The terminology, we are also assured by the same authority, was often identical with that used afterward by the foundress, and Quimby in one or two places even called his system “Christian Science.”
Attracted by the Doctor’s reputation, Mary Baker, who by that time had become Mrs. Patterson, came to Portland in 1862. After a course of “scientific” treatment she was partially cured. She felt she had a new lease of life, and was loud in her praise of the great physician. She remained a while in Portland and had access to Quimby’s papers. Was it from Quimby that she learned the theory and practice of “Christian Science”? That is a question upon which we shall not enter. At a later period, she certainly repudiated all indebtedness to Quimby and claimed that the system she taught originated with herself. Whether she was justified in so doing is a question on which others have taken sides, but which does not concern us here.
It is needless to follow Mrs. Eddy through her checkered career after her dealings with Dr. Quimby. Suffice it to say that during a long struggle for existence she clung to her healing system and gradually succeeded in gaining many adherents to it, chiefly among Spiritualists. Meanwhile the new religion was taking shape in her mind — a religion that was to be the basis and the interpretation of the new method of curing. In this new religious system, every distinctive doctrine of Christianity is set aside; the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Creation, the Fall of Man, the idea of sin in general, the Redemption, and the Last Judgment. And yet the foundress professes to base it on the Gospels. Taxed with inconsistency, she would tell you that Christian Science is indeed opposed to the literal meaning of the Gospels, but that there is a hidden or esoteric meaning known to Christ and a chosen few! It is the old Gnostic vagary over again.
According to this new revelation there is no such thing as either disease or Disease is but an error of the mind, of “mortal mind” as distinguished from the “Divine Mind,” or the “Divine Principle.” “Mind is the only reality; matter has no being; our bodies are only phantasms of the imagination. It is fear that produces disease, or seems to produce it, for it has no reality. It is fear that produces colics and fevers. It is belief in the possibility of broken bones that actually breaks them, or seems to break them, for in reality there are no bones to be broken. There is no such thing as sin, for we and God are one; or, better, man is the thought of God. But enough of this. No sensible man can read such a farrago without making an apology to himself for doing so.
It may seem surprising that the deliramenta of this misguided woman should have made conquest of so many minds; but no one who reflects on what has been occurring here in America these hundred plus years past can be surprised at the success of any religious movement, no matter how strange its antics. A country that has seen the rise of Mormons, Spiritists, Theosophists, Economites, Sun Worshipers, Dowieites, Angel Dancers, and Holy Ghost and Us societies, will not be surprised at the reception given to the extravagances of “Christian Science.” There is a certain amount of vague religiosity pervading American society which is ready to be caught up by any chance wind of doctrine.
But, after all, it is hardly likely that “Christian Science” has been adopted by so many for the sake of its abstract teachings. It is not Mrs. Eddy’s unfounded belief on the subject of life, death, and immortality that have attracted the multitude. It is the other phase of the system that draws — the healing phase. Its theological setting adds to it the dignity and the sanction of a religious cult; but we can easily imagine what small notice would be taken of Mrs. Eddy’s theological dreams if they were not associated with the wonderful, or the seemingly wonderful, in another sphere. This much-needed element of the system is supplied by the cure of disease.
What are we to think of the cures attributed to “Christian Science”?
We must make a distinction: 1. Some of them are, or may easily be, genuine. 2. Others are complete and acknowledge failures. 3. In the case of numberless forms of diseases not even an attempt is made to apply the remedies of “Christian Science.”
As regards the first of these categories, it is not by any means a matter of surprise that “Christian Scientists” should work a certain number of cures. There are diseases which are most effectually healed by the methods of the new religionists (we mean, of course, the methods minus the admixture of attractive articles theology); but then the methods are not new; they are known to specialists of the medical profession who are certainly innocent of “Christian Science.” There was no need of Mrs. Eddy’s producing a travesty of Christianity to prove that there are diseases of the body that have their root in the mind, and that the beet way of curing such diseases is by influencing the thoughts and feeling of the sufferers. It is this conviction that guides the specialist in his treatment of certain nervous disorders. As regards the more special features (if there are such) of “Christian Science” treatment, they do not seem to be essentially different from the various forms of suggestion employed by proficients in psycho-physics.
Now if Mrs. Eddy has brought into more general notice a method of healing which is genuine and has taught others how to use it successfully, she has rendered a service to humanity; but beyond that point she ceases to be a public benefactress. When in connection with her cures she practically (we shall not say culpably) foisted upon the unthinking and the credulous a nonsensical set of religious beliefs, she proved herself anything but a benefactress. But this is not all. Many of the attempts at healing made by her followers have egregiously failed, and in many cases the failure has involved the sacrifice of human life. The ordinary means of saving life have been deliberately neglected; and yet it is one of the plainest dictates of common sense and of ordinary charity that when any such methods of healing as those of Christian Science” are seen to fail the ordinary methods should be resorted to. Accordingly, society has justly regarded such transactions as criminal.
There is one large class of human ailments which “Christian Science” can do absolutely nothing with. Bruises, sprains, abscesses, cancers, fractured or amputated limbs, are quite beyond the range of Mrs. Eddy’s therapeutics. And yet they, too, are supposed to be diseases — or errors — of mortal mind. Why can not the errors be eradicated! Mrs. Eddy would answer that it is because our faith in the Divine Principle is imperfect — we can net entirely rid ourselves of the perverse impression that we have broken an arm or a leg, and hence the apparent fracture remains.
But let us remind her of a very notable contrast. She has presumed to associate her name in a special manner with that of the Divine Savior of the world; but how did it come to pass that Christ was a more perfect healer than Mrs. Eddy? There was no form of disease which He did not cure instantaneously. Lepers, lifelong cripples, men blind from their birth, were cured by the simple touch of His hand, often by a sole word of command. Even the dead rose from their graves at His bidding. The seal of divine power was upon all His works. When God vouchsafes a revelation to the world, He connects it with indubitable manifestations of supernatural power. Mrs. Eddy had a revelation to communicate to the world, and she could appeal only to what was purely natural and human — to methods of curing which were not beyond the limits of unaided human power and are plainly restricted in their range.
But a word to the wise is sufficient. We fear we have exceeded this measure in the case of ‘‘Christian Science.” Adapted from, Rev. M. P. Hill, S.J., The Catholic’s Ready Answer: A Popular Vindication of Christian Beliefs and Practices Against the Attacks of Modern Criticism, (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1915, pp. 68-74.