Christian Science is one of the many eccentric religions which have sprung up in Protestant countries. It has no relation to what we understand by “science” nor to what we know of Christ; it is neither Christian nor scientific. It draws its followers chiefly from the well-to-do classes, and has ample funds at its disposal to propagate its teaching. Numerically it can be regarded as an insignificant body, but because of its deceptive title, which may be a snare to the unwary, and because its error that Christ was a mere faith-healer is shared by all Broad-Church Protestants, a rather full notice of it has been thought advisable.
Its founder, Mrs, Baker Eddy (1821 – 1910 ) of U.S.A., set forth the new gospel in her book, Science and Health, published in 1875; four years later, in Boston, she established the First Church of Christian Science; at the present time, there are more than 2,000 Branch Churches ; of these, three-fourths are m North America, and, of the remainder, there are many in England and Australia, twenty-five in Germany, and two in Ireland.
Its doctrines:
(1) Christian Science believes in pantheism. Its god is not a person but a spiritual power manifesting itself in the world. Sin is a false view of the relation of the world and man to this god ; sin is a mere fiction of the mind ; it leads people to believe in other fictions, viz., that there are such things as matter, sickness, and death. Avoidance of sin is necessary to secure our ultimate absorption in the deity.
(2) Christ was the first Christian Scientist, He taught the existence of an impersonal god. He redeemed us by helping us to believe that sin, sickness, and death are all part of a bad dream; He was a faith-healer, that is, He healed people by getting them to believe that there was nothing the matter with them. He founded a healing church: He said to His Apostles, “You shall lay your hands upon the sick, and they shall recover, ’ and He promised that many other signs would follow those who believe as Christian Scientists believe.
(3) Christ’s teaching, which soon became obscured, has been restored to the world by Mrs. Baker Eddy, and has been accompanied by the miraculous cures which He foretold.
Remarks:
(1) Pantheism is opposed to the sound judgment of normal mankind. It is only eccentrics who say that nothing exists but God, that all forms of matter (the earth, sun, moon, and stars and our own bodies) are mere illusions, and that there is no such thing as sickness, suffering, or death. Absorption in an impersonal deity really means annihilation. On such a prospect, no workable system of morals can be based. The mass of mankind will not do good and avoid evil except through love of a Personal God and fear of His judgment.
(2) Christ did not teach the existence of an impersonal god; He taught men-to believe in God the Father who so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son for its Redemption. When He pleaded with His Father for mankind, He spoke to a living, personal Being, not to something impersonal, like electricity or a stone-wall. He did not teach the annihilation of the soul: recall His words on the General Judgment. —His sufferings, foretold by the Prophets and Himself, and preached by the Apostles, were real sufferings; they were not illusions, else He would not have been afraid of them in the Garden. His real death on the Cross for the sins of men is of the very essence of the Apostles’ teaching. —He did not found a healing Church; He gave the Apostles the power to work miracles, including miracles of healing, as signs of the truth of their doctrine; miracles still continue in His Church, but they are less frequent today than in Apostolic times, because they are less needed, now that the great miracle of the Church’s strength and vitality testifies to her divine authority. He did not heal people by getting them to say, “Sickness is an error. There is no sickness. I am not sick.” Nor did He relieve the hungry by saying, “Hunger is an illusion. You are not hungry.” Nor did He raise the dead to life by making them say (somehow or other), “There is no death. We are not dead.”—Further evidence in abundance can be found in the New Testament to refute the crude absurdity that Christ, the Son of the Living God, was a pantheist and faith-healer, and that He did not truly suffer and die.
(3) Mrs. Eddy, or Mother Eddy as she is called by Christian Scientists, got her pantheism from a German, Ur. Francis Lieber, a follower of Hegel and a skillful writer. Her idea of Christ as the first faith-healer came to her from a Mr. Quimby, a hypnotist, with whom she was long associated. Her book, Science and Health, a curious mixture of feeble and forceful writing, was long a riddle to critics. But the riddle has been solved. It has been proved that the feeble matter is her own composition and that he borrowed the rest (but without acknowledgment) from the Hegelian, Dr. Lieber. 38 This point, however, is not of great 38 See Walter M. Haushalter: Mrs. Eddy purloins from Hegel.
London: Watts & Co.; 1936. The god of Hegel is simply the development that is going on in the world. It is a finite thing; it is not a substance but a process or change. importance, because her book, being a material thing, has no existence. The same may be said of her followers’ teaching, which is conveyed by sound-waves; the sound-waves are material things and therefore are mere illusions: the hearers are really listening to nothing. The cures claimed for Christian Science, so far as they are genuine, are not at all miraculous; they are merely cures by auto-suggestion. It is well known that nervous diseases can be cured in this way, i.e., by getting the patient to take his mind off his complaint and imagine himself well.
Christian Scientists do not believe in doctors, and do not seek their aid for the sick. They thus expose themselves to the danger of prosecution for criminal negligence; and they are not of one mind with Christ whom they profess to follow. Christ recognized the medical profession: He said that the sick have need of the physician, not those who are well.
Note on the Schism of Phoiius: see p. 160.
Recently, two competent historians, Father Francis Dvornik, a Czechoslovak scholar, and Father Grumel, a French Assumptionist, working independently of one another, have come to the conclusion that the Council ( 869 – 870 ) which condemned Photms was not a true General Council, because the Pope, John ” 111 m refused to sign its decrees, and that Photius made his peace with Rome, and died in communion with her. Hence, they maintain that there was but one Greek Schism, the Schism of 1064. See The Tablet, Nov. 29, 1941, p. 343 .