Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/christianitychriOOsturrich 
 
THE 
 
 PEOPLE'S 
 
 BOOKS 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 A CONTRAST 
 
 BY 
 
 M. CARTA STURGE 
 
 la 
 
 (MORAL SCIENCES TRIPOS, CAMBRIDGE) 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE TRUTH AND ERROR OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ' 
 "THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY," "THOUGHTS TRAN- 
 SCENDENTAL AND PRACTICAL," AND " SOME 
 LITTLE QUAKERS IN THEIR NURSERY " 
 
 ICottbtftt ani) ©binburgh : 
 
 T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD. | T. NELSON & SONS, LTD. 
 1919 
 
$7 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In this little volume large subjects are treated 
 of necessity very inadequately for want of 
 space. To do justice to such problems as 
 Matter, Reality, the Constitution of Man, the 
 Subconscious Self, Suggestion, and the relation 
 of the Physical and the Spiritual, all of which 
 are touched upon here, would need volumes. 
 Of these, I have already treated Matter and 
 Reality at some length in my earlier book, 
 "The Truth and Error of Christian Science," 
 and the Constitution of Man somewhat more 
 fully in " Theosophy and Christianity." Slight 
 as the treatment here of these great subjects 
 must be, it is hoped it may prove helpful to 
 such as have no time for studying them more 
 thoroughly for themselves. 
 
 M. C. S. 
 
 401822 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. What is Christian Science ? . 9 
 
 II. Mrs. Eddy's First Principle, and 
 
 her Deductions from it . 17 
 
 III. The Christian Science Teaching 
 
 about Matter . . .21 
 
 IV. Christian Treatment of the Phy- 
 
 sical World contrasted with 
 that of Christian Science . 30 
 
 V. The Practical Side of Chris- 
 tian Science. . . .53 
 
 VI. Different Kinds of Mind-Heal- 
 ing 63 
 
 VII. Spiritual-Healing . . .79 
 
 VIII. Intercession . . . .101 
 
 IX. Spiritual Health and Bodily 
 
 Health . . . .108 
 
 X. Conclusion . . . .114 
 
CHRISTIANITY 
 AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE? 
 
 In the early sixties of the last century a 
 Dr. Quimby in America discovered that he had 
 the power of healing sick persons without the 
 use of drugs or other physical means. Whether 
 he was very often successful or not it is im- 
 possible to say, since we do not know upon 
 how many he tried this method of healing, nor 
 how many failures he had. But he was suc- 
 cessful frequently enough to set him thinking 
 much upon the subject. It was clear that he 
 used some mental or spiritual means, but he 
 was puzzled to account for it. Very naturally 
 he was anxious to explain it to himself as well 
 as to others. He found that, at least in some 
 instances, if he assured his patient that he or 
 
 9 
 
10 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 she 1-ad aothing whatever the matter, the patient 
 recovered. We should now explain this prob- 
 ably as due to " suggestion," of which we shall 
 speak by and by, but at that time very little 
 was known by people generally about the power 
 of mental suggestion and of its effects upon the 
 body. At any rate, Dr. Quimby would seem to 
 have known little about it. Consequently, 
 when he was successful with a cure of this 
 kind, he arrived at the conclusion that the 
 patient had in reality had nothing the matter 
 with him, and that he had only thought him- 
 self ill or imagined it. He then came to the 
 further conclusion that in all cases of disease 
 it was simply a matter of our thinking our- 
 selves ill, and that could we cease so to think, 
 we should find ourselves in perfect health. He 
 therefore carefully taught to his few followers 
 that disease has in fact no existence, and is 
 merely a creation of our own mind, due to false 
 thinking or somehow to a mistake in our way 
 of looking at things. 
 
 One of his patients was a Mrs. Eddy, who, 
 having had an accident, went to him for help, 
 and appears to have been considerably relieved. 
 She took up his idea about the non-reality of 
 
AND CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 11 
 
 disease very strongly, and worked the subject 
 out in her own mind, with the result that, being 
 a forcible woman, she produced a sort of sys- 
 tematized teaching about it which she called 
 u Christian Science." 
 
 Having adopted Dr. Quimby's idea that there 
 is in reality no such thing as disease, she carried 
 the notion of non-existence a good deal further, 
 and asserted that not only is there no such 
 thing as a diseased body or one that has suf- 
 fered injury, but that there is no such thing as 
 a body at all, affirming that we only think we 
 have a body, and that this thinking is entirely 
 false. She finally enunciated her doctrines in 
 a book of considerable bulk, which she called 
 w Science and Health, with Key to the Scrip- 
 tures/' and her system, as already said, she 
 called " Christian Science." She was a woman 
 of little education, with a singularly illogical 
 mind; in fact, she had little power of con- 
 secutive reasoning at all. Consequently, the 
 book was at first a mere jumble of almost dis- 
 connected thoughts, if we may trust the account 
 given of it as at first written. She gave it, 
 however, to a man with a good deal more 
 reasoning power than herself, and he attempted 
 
12 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 to put the contents of her book into some kind 
 of order. But, even so, the confused way in 
 which its doctrine is expounded, the want of 
 ordinary logic, the strange inconsistency of one 
 part of the book with another, even sometimes 
 of one sentence with another on the same page, 
 are such as often to render it unintelligible, 
 and in many cases to hinder people altogether 
 from continuing to read it. 
 
 Nevertheless, "Science and Health" has 
 passed through very many editions, and is un- 
 doubtedly very widely read ; the number of 
 editions is, however, somewhat deceptive and 
 *©Hyeys an exaggerated idea of the demand for 
 the book, since it appears that a law laid down 
 by the writer for her adherents — and she is 
 obeyed as if she were a Pope — was that each 
 one of them should buy a new copy every time 
 a new edition came out, which must have had 
 as a result that many of them possess some 
 three hundred or more. 
 
 We have said that Mrs. Eddy denied not 
 only disease as a reality, but also the existence 
 of any body at all, healthy or otherwise. But 
 she carried her theory of non-existence further 
 still; for one of the main contentions of her 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 13 
 
 book is that there is no material world, that 
 what we consider to be a Universe outside our- 
 selves and consisting of what we call Matter is 
 entirely an illusion, and due, like our belief in 
 disease and in the body, merely to our false 
 thinking. We will go into Mrs. Eddy's theory 
 of Matter later on. 
 
 Meanwhile, we would inquire into the reason 
 for the name she gave to her system and to her 
 book. There is a half-humorous statement 
 frequently made that her teaching is neither 
 scientific nor Christian, and, as we ordinarily 
 understand these words, there is much truth 
 in it. However, we must be fair and try to 
 understand the sense in which she uses these 
 terms. It is certainly startling that she lays 
 claim to her system of thought as being scien- 
 tific. For as we generally understand the word 
 "Science," it applies to the facts and natural 
 laws of the physical universe, the very universe 
 which she so emphatically denies to have any 
 existence. When she uses the word " Science," 
 she applies it to that which lies beyond the 
 physical world, to Being, to God, to ultimate 
 Reality, to just those objects of thought which 
 lie beyond the ken of the physical sciences, to 
 
14 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 those spiritual things which scientists them- 
 selves more and more acknowledge cannot be 
 handled by their scientific methods — to those 
 assumptions, in fact, which lie at the root of 
 all our reasoned knowledge, but which cannot 
 themselves be proved by our logical methods. 
 Mrs. Eddy herself recognized this. For in one 
 passage she speaks of the " true Science of God, 
 though," she continues, "departing from the 
 realm of the physical, as it must, some may 
 deny its right to the name of Science ; " l but 
 she defends it on the ground that her teaching 
 is based on " Divine Principle demonstrated 
 according to a given rule, and subjected to 
 proper tests." 2 Here she truly gives a definition 
 of scientific knowledge as based on deductions 
 from a given law, thus reducing our confused 
 and natural apprehension of things to the 
 ordered knowledge, the regular sequence of 
 cause and effect which science, so far as it is 
 able to go, gives us with such exactitude. But 
 
 1 "Science and Health," p. 5. All references here given 
 to " Science and Health" apply to the eightieth edition, and 
 are correct for many others ; but in later editions the pages 
 have often been transposed, by the placing of chapters in a 
 different order, rendering the references given incorrect as 
 to the number of the page given. 
 
 3 " Science and Health," p. 287. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 15 
 
 where we are inclined to differ from her is as 
 to whether her apprehension of Divine Prin- 
 ciple (which is infinite and not to be truly 
 apprehended by any human mind) can be 
 regarded as adequate, whether she has demon- 
 strated at all exactly any "given rule," and 
 whether she has been able to subject it to the 
 "proper tests," which will be enquired into 
 later on. 
 
 The use of the name "Christian" and its 
 applicability to her system is open to a great 
 deal of controversy, and we shall be in a better 
 position for discussing it presently. But her 
 teaching relating to God as the Supreme Life 
 and on the essentially spiritual nature of man 
 is based without question upon Christianity. 
 She also, at least in theory, accepts the Christian 
 system of Ethics. On these grounds she con- 
 sidered her teaching to be Christian, although, 
 as a matter of fact, it is in many and important 
 respects much more in accord with certain 
 Eastern religions than with Christianity. Ac- 
 cepting Christianity, however, as she does, in 
 the sense mentioned above, she lays great stress 
 on the Scriptures and on their importance, but 
 considers that she gives a new and illuminating 
 
16 CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 re-interpretation to them, which accounts for 
 the second part of the title of her book " with 
 Key to the Scriptures." An important part of 
 the service which she has founded for Christian 
 Science worship is the reading of passages from 
 the Bible side by side with passages from 
 " Science and Health " which are supposed to 
 be either parallel with the selections from the 
 Bible or interpretative of them. 
 
 "Science and Health" is still the standard 
 work on Christian Science and the main 
 authority appealed to by its stricter adherents. 
 It will, therefore, be the book mainly referred 
 to here. 
 
 (2,037) 
 
CHAPTER II. 1 
 
 MRS. EDDY'S FIRST PRINCIPLE, AND HER 
 DEDUCTIONS FROM IT. 
 
 1. The first principle is that All is One; the 
 One is Supreme Being — is God. 
 
 With this we shall find ourselves in entire 
 agreement, our only puzzle being that it should 
 seem to have been regarded as a new announce- 
 ment, and our only regret that it is not more 
 adequately treated. 
 
 2. From the principle that All is God, Mrs. 
 Eddy deduces that All is Mind. 
 
 How far we are in agreement with this must 
 depend upon what she means, and we mean, by 
 Mind. 
 
 3. Since All is Mind, Mind alone is real. 
 
 4. Hence Matter is not real, has absolutely 
 no existence whatever. 
 
 1 This chapter is taken nearly as it stands from my book, 
 11 The Truth and Error of Christian Science." 
 
 (2,037) 17 2 
 
18 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 We shall have carefully to examine what i3 
 meant by Matter, and what is meant by Real. 
 
 5. Since there is no Matter, there is no 
 Material or Physical world ; we only think 
 there is. Our experience is entirely false when 
 it tells us there are objects about us which we 
 call things. 
 
 6. Equally there is no such thing as a 
 physical body. So entirely non-existent are 
 these things which we call our bodies, that we 
 do not really need food ; l nor can our bodies 
 die, since there is nothing to die ; nor can they 
 be in any way affected by the so-called world, 
 since, firstly, there is no body to be affected, 
 and, secondly, there is no world to affect them. 
 It is all nothingness. 
 
 7. It follows as a matter of course that there 
 can be no bodily disease — we only think there 
 is ; alter the thought, and it will disappear. 
 
 Curiously enough, it would seem that there 
 
 is such a thing as bodily health (although there 
 
 is no body), since the entire book is written in 
 
 order to teach us how to attain it. 
 
 1 See, for instance, u Science and Health," p. 386 : " The 
 fact is, food does not affect the existence of man, and this 
 becomes self-evident when we learn that God is our only 
 Life." 
 
AND CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 19 
 
 As we have so powerful an impression that 
 there is a material world, and that we have 
 bodies which also are often out of health, Mrs. 
 Eddy has to try to account for this. And 
 here we get one of the greatest inconsistencies 
 of her system, for the entire material world 
 with all it contains, including our bodies, is, 
 she maintains, the creation of a part of our 
 being which she calls Mortal Mind ; and yet we 
 are emphatically told over and over again that 
 Mortal Mind is nothing, although it somehow 
 is able to create the complex and wonderful 
 thing we call the world. If we could, she 
 teaches, but destroy the creations of this false 
 non-entity, Mortal Mind, by disbelieving in 
 them, the world would disappear, and with it 
 all its evil in the forms both of sin and disease. 
 Would that the disappearance of these last 
 were so easy ! 
 
 Having given this short epitome of the main 
 doctrines of Christian Science, it will be neces- 
 sary to go into them in some detail, and it will 
 also be interesting to try to discover, if we can, 
 why it has spread with such rapidity that it 
 now has countless thousands of adherents, with 
 
20 CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 many large buildings where its members meet 
 together for worship and mutual edification all 
 over America and England, and that it has also 
 spread on the continent of Europe as well as in 
 India. 
 
 As we have now touched upon the theory on 
 which Christian Science is based, we will finish 
 our discussion of that, as far as we have room 
 for it, before we take up the more interesting 
 part of the subject, namely, its practical bearing 
 upon the healing of disease. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE TEACHING ABOUT 
 MATTER. 
 
 With the extreme emphasis which Christian 
 Science lays upon the fact that Spirit is the 
 supreme Reality, and that Life in its essence is 
 spiritual and not material, we shall none of us 
 be inclined to quarrel. The very great stress 
 which it lays upon this truth is doubtless one 
 of its attractions; for it is asserted over and 
 over again with such force that it has had the 
 very desirable result of enabling countless 
 persons to realize that they are essentially 
 spiritual beings who never had believed it or 
 much thought about it before. Nevertheless, it 
 seems strange that this should be announced as 
 if it were something new. For here, certainly, 
 Christian Science can lay claim to nothing 
 original. The same teaching has prevailed in 
 the East for countless ages, and Christianity, as 
 
22 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 given in the Gospels and by St. Paul, is behind 
 no religion in the emphasis it lays upon the 
 Spiritual Life. But Christianity does so with 
 a difference, and a very important one ; for 
 whilst asserting the Spiritual as the supreme 
 Reality, it neither ignores the physical world, 
 nor states it to be non-existent, nor mere illu- 
 sion — a point to be taken up later when we 
 more fully compare Christian Science with 
 Christianity. 
 
 However, when Christian Science in the 
 latter part of the last century first originated, 
 much of the spiritual teaching of Christianity 
 had been forgotten, or even denied, and a very 
 materialistic mode of thought prevailed which 
 denied the existence of God, the spiritual nature 
 of man, and the existence of anything but the 
 outer world and its laws. This had become so 
 prevalent in all classes, and especially among 
 the young, that the forcible reassertion made 
 by the Christian Scientists of the Spiritual as 
 the great Fact of Life did come to many as 
 something almost new, and, being worded in a 
 different and somewhat startling manner, it 
 broke upon the mind with a fresh force and 
 attracted much attention. It did really a very 
 
AND CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 23 
 
 considerable work in counteracting the pre- 
 vailing materialism, and especially amongst 
 those, and there were many, who had become 
 materialists, not through scientific thought, but 
 merely because it was the prevailing fashion 
 of which the careless and unthinking easily 
 availed themselves. 
 
 It is necessary, and only fair, to do Christian 
 Science full justice in this, and one can but 
 realize how very inadequately Christianity 
 must have been taught, where taught at all (for 
 many repudiated it), that the great spiritual 
 truth thus emphasized by Mrs. Eddy should 
 have seemed to so many something really new ; 
 and with it her much-emphasized assertion that 
 we are, or can be, largely independent of the 
 limitations of Matter and, in fact, rise above 
 them in a very considerable degree. She taught, 
 indeed, that we can overcome these limitations 
 entirely, because she held that material things 
 do not exist at all. It is this point that we 
 need to consider carefully. 
 
 At the time that Christian Science sprang 
 up, the ordinary idea of Matter in the minds of 
 people generally was that it consisted, so to 
 speak, of " hard lumps," of something quite solid 
 
24 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 and impenetrable; so much so that we were 
 held, by physical bonds we could not break, in 
 total, or almost total, subjection to them. It 
 was, therefore, believed that much of what 
 happens to us could not be helped, but must be 
 accepted with fatalistic resignation ; especially so 
 was it regarded in the matter of ill-health where 
 physical means failed. There are still very many 
 who think about material things in this manner. 
 Although Mrs. Eddy went much too far in 
 the opposite direction, we really have to thank 
 her for making popular what Natural Science 
 has long taught — namely, that Matter does not 
 consist of hard and solid impenetrable lumps, 
 which are rigid and stiff and unmanageable. 
 Mrs. Eddy had, it is true, the greatest con- 
 tempt for Natural Science, 1 although, had she 
 
 1 Take, for instance, such statements as "Physical Science 
 is human knowledge — a law of mortal mind, a blind belief." 
 — "Science and Health," p. 17. "There is no physical 
 Science." "Human thought never projected the least 
 portion of true Science." — "Science and Health," p. 19. 
 " The definitions of law, material law, as given by Natural 
 Science, represent a kingdom divided against itself ; because 
 these definitions portray law as physical." — "Science and 
 Health," p. 12. This statement completely misunderstands 
 Natural Science, which particularly emphasizes that its laws 
 are not physical, can only be inferred by the mind as some- 
 thing hidden and non-physical ; in fact, that they are mental 
 conceptions. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 25 
 
 known how to make use of it, or even known 
 anything about it, which she did not, she would 
 have found in its teaching some things that 
 have a decided kinship with her own. 
 
 For Natural Science entirely repudiates the 
 " hard lump" idea of the ordinary man, teaching 
 that Matter really consists of immeasurably 
 minute particles called atoms, 1 and that these 
 atoms are not close together, but separated 
 from each other by a distance which is larger 
 than the size of the atoms themselves. Two or 
 more atoms are held together by a powerful 
 mutual attraction in minute groups called mole- 
 cules. The relation in which these minute 
 particles are held to each other by attraction 
 may be stronger or weaker according to circum- 
 stances, being acted upon by such energies as 
 heat or cold, and so on. In the case of a gas, 
 the particles are held together so slightly as to 
 cause a gas to appear a very ethereal thing; 
 whilst in a liquid the mutual attraction is 
 stronger, but still not so strong as to produce 
 anything that seems rigid, but, on the contrary, 
 
 1 To go into the further analysis of atoms as constituted 
 of electrons, or, as some think, of " idea vortices," would be 
 far too technical for our purpose, but it would demonstrate 
 a still more ethereal idea of Matter. 
 
26 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 fluid; whilst in what we call a solid, the 
 attraction is extremely powerful, so that to all 
 appearance the thing is impenetrable and hard, 
 but hard only because we can by any ordinary 
 means make very little impression upon it. 
 Nevertheless, the particles are still not in actual 
 contact, but only very forcibly attracted to each 
 other. In the chemical laboratory there are 
 various means of overcoming the attraction or 
 of changing it, causing re-combinations of par- 
 ticles so as to produce different substances, or 
 the conversion of a liquid into a gas, or a solid 
 into a liquid, and so on. The passing of so 
 powerful an energy as electricity through an 
 apparent solid has very remarkable results in 
 disintegrating the constituent parts. 
 
 Thus it is taught by Natural Science that 
 Matter is a much less hard-and-fast thing than 
 it seems to us, and a much more changeable 
 thing if a sufficiently powerful force can be 
 brought to bear upon it. In the light of this 
 Emerson's famous lines— 
 
 " And seeming-solid walls of use 
 Open and flow," 
 
 appear to express more than the mere dreams 
 
AND CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 27 
 
 of a poet where spiritual or psychic energies 
 can be brought into play. At any rate here, 
 in the Natural Science so much despised by 
 Mrs. Eddy, there is at least room, as it were, 
 for her teaching that Thought may be an 
 energy which can act upon material things, 
 although Natural Science would be very cau- 
 tious in allowing this. 
 
 We have, then, found that Mrs. Eddy, along 
 with the Easterns, expressed half a truth when 
 she spoke of material things as illusions, since 
 the idea of solidity which we attach to them is 
 not a fact. But she goes much too far when, 
 in her desire to prove that everything is Spirit 
 or Mind, she asserts that there is nothing what- 
 ever which gives us the experience of what we 
 call an outward and physical world. For if 
 there is nothing actually solid in existence of 
 the kind supposed by the ordinary man, yet 
 undoubtedly something exists which gives us 
 the impression of something solid — the energies, 
 the attractions, exist with their peculiar action 
 upon our impressions or feelings. It is of no 
 use to say that they are mere creations of our 
 own mind, since, if they were, we should not be 
 subject to their limitations, but very speedily 
 
28 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 have found out that they could be "thought 
 away," especially as, where our experiences are 
 disagreeable, it would be so greatly to our 
 advantage to do so. With our ready powers 
 of invention we should have very soon dis- 
 covered so easy a way. 
 
 But with all our desire to escape from tire- 
 some limitations, so real are these outward 
 things, that the strongest believer in Christian 
 Science has still to remain upon the surface of 
 the earth, has still to climb over a wall, or 
 knock it down, or go round it, or in some way 
 to overcome it by physical means, the very 
 means which, in Mrs. Eddy's teaching, have no 
 existence, and are entirely unnecessary. 
 
 It is the fact that Mrs. Eddy so often ex- 
 presses a half-truth which as far as it goes is 
 so true that we must all admit it, as if it were 
 a whole truth, which makes it so difficult to 
 disentangle the true from the false in her asser- 
 tions, and makes them so often misleading ; for 
 because one part of what she says is so ob- 
 viously true, people who are not careful to 
 study the matter take it for granted that all 
 that she states must be true. It is therefore 
 easy, especially when we find it even scienti- 
 
 \ 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 29 
 
 fically correct to deny that Matter has the 
 solidity it appears to have, to conclude at once 
 that there is then no such thing as Matter at 
 all in any form. 
 
 This difficulty regarding half-truths occurs 
 over and over again. Take, for instance, her 
 assertion that "food does not affect the exist- 
 ence of man, and this becomes self-evident 
 when we learn that God is our only Life." 
 True it is that He is our only Life, but He has 
 given us a phase, a temporary one, of life which 
 also needs nourishment in its own kind, one 
 suited to this temporary phase, which would 
 come to an end speedily but for the God- 
 ordained suitable means for providing for its 
 needs which we call food. 
 
 We could quote instances of this sort from 
 every page of her book, where the taking half- 
 truths for whole truths, or drawing quite 
 illogical conclusions from them, leads to a con- 
 fusion about truth which cannot fail in the 
 long run to be very mischievous. 
 
 But let us take the next chapter for con- 
 trasting the Christian way of regarding the 
 physical world and the Christian Science 
 manner of doing so. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHRISTIAN TREATMENT OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD 
 CONTRASTED WITH THAT OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 We have seen that Christian Science starts 
 with the fundamental principle that "All is 
 One." Christianity affirms this no less, and 
 that all Life is in God. The Eastern religions 
 also affirm this Oneness as the essential principle 
 of Being. But in realizing this great truth, a 
 difficulty always springs up for the thinker, and 
 that is that the spiritual world and the physical 
 seem so much opposed to each other, so ex- 
 tremely different, that it is difficult not to think 
 of them as two quite separate orders of things ; 
 and this inclines us to think of the Universe, 
 not as a manifestation of Oneness, but as if it 
 were a dual system, one that in its fundamental 
 basis consists of two separate systems or orders 
 of being. In such case, to believe that All is 
 One seems to necessitate that one order of being 
 
 30 
 
L 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 31 
 
 or the other must be declared to have no ex- 
 istence. Either the physical world must be 
 thrown away, so to speak — that is, declared to 
 be totally without reality — or the spiritual must 
 be discarded from our thought as having any 
 reality. Materialists disbelieve in the latter, 
 and, at the time that Christian Science sprang 
 up, in the Western world that was the pre- 
 vailing idea with many of the thoughtful — 
 namely, that the spiritual, with all that it 
 claimed in regard to the existence of God and 
 of man's spiritual being, was mere illusion and 
 an invention of man's own mind. The one 
 real existence was the physical world, that 
 world which is presented so forcibly through 
 our senses. 
 
 The alternative way of escaping from the 
 difficulty is that to be found in the East, and 
 which was adopted by Mrs. Eddy — namely, to 
 deny any reality to the physical world, and to 
 pronounce its seeming reality as due entirely to 
 illusion, to a mistaken way of apprehending 
 things — in fact, to false thinking. And so the 
 intuition that All is One is attained by pro- 
 nouncing either the physical or the spiritual to 
 be unreal and merely due to illusion. 
 
32 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 This dilemma is not, however, a necessary one. 
 For there is a third way of solving this diffi- 
 culty which does less violence to our intuitions 
 of the spiritual on the one hand, and to our 
 common sense in regard to the physical world 
 on the other, which is to regard the material 
 world as a manifestation of Spirit, as a way in 
 which things present themselves to us when 
 apprehended by means of our bodily senses. 
 Much of our Western philosophy, as opposed to 
 Eastern, treats Matter as at bottom, so to speak, 
 spiritual and as not really totally different nor 
 separate from the mental or spiritual. Chris- 
 tianity does not, as a rule, present the matter in 
 its philosophical aspect, but constantly asserts 
 that the world was made by God. In " Science 
 and Health " it is very definitely asserted that 
 it was not made by Him, that it has no con- 
 nection with Him whatever. "God, Spirit, 
 being all," Mrs. Eddy writes, "nothing is 
 Matter." 1 "The opposite of Spirit is Matter, 
 and the opposite of the real is the unreal, or 
 material. Matter is an error of statement. . . . 
 Nothing we can say or believe regarding Matter 
 is true, except that Matter is unreal and is 
 
 1 "Science and Health," p. 7. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 33 
 
 therefore a belief." * " Matter will be finally 
 
 proven to be nothing but a mortal illusion, 
 
 wholly inadequate to affect man through its 
 
 supposed organic action or existence." 2 "Matter 
 
 has no life to lose." 3 " Matter," again she says, 
 
 "is unknown in the Universe of Mind." 
 
 " Spirit and Matter no more commingle than 
 
 light and darkness. When one appears the 
 
 other disappears." 4 " Is Spirit," she asks, " the 
 
 source or creator of Matter ? " " Science," she 
 
 answers, " reveals nothing in Spirit out of 
 
 which to create Matter ? " 5 " Spirit destroys 
 
 Matter," 6 she continues. "Spirit is the only 
 
 substance and consciousness recognized by 
 
 Science. The senses oppose this ; but there are 
 
 no senses, for Matter has no sensation. To 
 
 Spirit there is no Matter. ... It is a false 
 
 assumption. Spirit and Matter cannot co-exist 
 
 or co-operate ; and one can no more create the 
 
 other than Truth can create Error." Again she 
 
 writes : " Not a glimpse or manifestation of 
 
 Spirit is obtainable through Matter. Spirit is 
 
 positive, Matter is its supposed opposite, the 
 
 absence of Spirit." 
 
 1 "Science and Health," p. 173. 2 Ibid., p. 19. 
 
 » Ibid., p. 171. 4 Ibid.,?. 176. 
 
 5 Ibid., p. 174. 6 Ibid., p. 175. 
 
 (2,037) 3 
 
34 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Here it is evident that Mrs. Eddy will not 
 allow that there is the slightest relation between 
 Matter and Mind (we use Mind here, as she 
 does, as the equivalent of Spirit x ) ; and Matter, 
 so far from being a manifestation of Spirit, is in 
 no sense created by it. The two form altogether 
 different worlds (if a nonentity can be spoken 
 of as a world at all), wholly irreconcilable, and 
 hopelessly alien to each other. 
 
 How different this from the Sacramental 
 teaching of Christianity in regard to Matter or 
 the physical world. Here we find, instead of a 
 world to be despised, thought away, declared to 
 be nothingness, and as such worse than worth- 
 less, a world that is sacred, that " was made by 
 Him," 2 a world in which He shines through His 
 works, which " declares the glory of God," "shews 
 forth His handiwork " ; 3 where " winds are His 
 messengers and flames of fire His ministers," 4 
 a world in which God "clothes the grass of the 
 field," 6 "stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain," 6 
 has " set all the borders of the earth," " made 
 summer and winter," " prepared the light and the 
 sun," 7 and where " the invisible things of Him 
 
 1 " Science and Health," p. 66. 2 John i. 3, Gen. i. 
 
 8 Ps. xix. 1. 4 Ps. civ. 4. 6 Matt. vi. 30. 
 
 6 Isa. xl. 22. 7 Ps. lxxiv. 16, 17. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 35 
 
 since the creation of the world are clearly seen, 
 being perceived through the things that are 
 made, even His everlasting power and divinity," 1 
 and where He " left not Himself without wit- 
 ness . . . and gave us rain from heaven, and 
 fruitful seasons," 2 and where, the ancient 
 Hebrews realizing this, they called upon all 
 Nature, the sun and moon, the stars, mountains, 
 seas and rivers, frosts and snows, and upon 
 " everything that hath breath," 3 to join with 
 them in rendering praise and homage to God. 
 
 Then comes the central teaching of Chris- 
 tianity, the Incarnation, when " God was mani- 
 fest in the flesh," 4 and thus hallowed it and 
 made it sacred. There is no teaching here that 
 the flesh is nothing, though we are incessantly 
 reminded not to live for the flesh alone, but to 
 use it as "the temple of the Holy Ghost." 5 
 Finally, in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion 
 the physical elements of bread and wine are 
 dedicated to the most divine and spiritual use> 
 as " outward and visible signs of an inward 
 and spiritual grace, given unto us, ordained 
 by Christ Himself, as a means whereby we 
 
 1 Rom. i. 20. 2 Acts xiv. 17. 3 Ps. cl. 6. 
 4 1 Tim. iii. 16. 5 1 Cor. vi. 19. 
 
36 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 receive the same, and a pledge to assure us 
 thereof." 1 
 
 Christianity, in fine, treats the material world 
 not as necessarily in opposition to the spiritual, 
 not as nothing, but as a means through which 
 the Divine, the Spiritual, may be apprehended, 
 as indeed a something translucent, as it were, 
 through which God is revealed for those who 
 have eyes to see and ears to hear. 
 
 In this comparison we see how infinitely 
 richer and deeper is the Christian apprehension 
 of Matter, of the physical world and all therein 
 contained. It gives us a world of variety as all 
 contained in the One, and a most profound and 
 spiritual depth to our view of the world we 
 find at present around us. We can, when thus 
 view T ed, take great joy in it, find all around us 
 beautiful things which perpetually remind us of 
 God, and tend to bring us into closer communion 
 with Him, instead of, as in Mrs. Eddys teaching, 
 -a world we have to contemn and despise, to 
 regard as quite alien from God, and to shrink 
 from as the very opposite of the Spiritual, 
 instead of rejoicing in as a veil through which 
 we get glimpses of God, and of His marvellous 
 1 Church of England Catechism. 
 
* AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 37 
 
 works. There is all the difference here between 
 nothing (a worse than nothing because, in spite 
 of its nothingness, it leads us into illusion and 
 false thought) and a wealth of variety and 
 beauty seen to be Divine in its origin, if only 
 rightly apprehended ; all the difference between, 
 not the finite and the infinite, but between 
 Nothing and the Infinite ! The one view is 
 impoverishing and destructive to us, whilst the 
 other is enriching and life-giving. 
 
 However, the outcome is ethically more 
 similar than one might suppose, for, putting 
 aside the bad moral effect of continually trying 
 to deny the existence of things, whilst in action 
 having continually to count with them (a thing 
 that psychologically is known to react very 
 injuriously upon the character), both these 
 differing attitudes of mind in regard to the 
 world and all outward things lay great stress 
 on the supreme necessity of seeking the Spiritual, 
 the underlying true essence of Life, and of care 
 not to get entangled with the material world 
 as if it were the Real, as if it had life in itself 
 apart from the Spiritual. All of us, unfortu- 
 nately, Christians and otherwise, have a great 
 tendency to act from and for the outer world 
 
38 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 as if it were all there is, as if it had reality in 
 itself, as if it had nothing to do with the Divine 
 and Unseen. Christian Science warns us off 
 from this by assuring us that the world has no 
 existence, and that in pursuing it we are pur- 
 suing a shadow. Therefore we must turn from 
 it altogether. Christianity warns us off the 
 danger by telling us, not to disbelieve in it 
 altogether, but to be careful not to mistake it 
 for an end in itself, not so to see it or to use 
 it as to fail to see God in it, not to make it 
 our first and sole aim. If we lose sight of the 
 Spiritual of which it is a manifestation, then 
 are we lost as regards our spiritual, our higher 
 life ; then are we the slaves of Matter and sub- 
 ject to its finite limitations. Christianity says 
 it is indeed " the spirit that quickeneth," f and 
 that the flesh taken by itself "profiteth noth- 
 ing. " How constantly St. Paul describes that 
 to live " after the flesh" 2 — that is, according to 
 it without any reference to the Spirit — is to 
 fall into endless lusts, of which he gives long 
 lists. All the movements of the flesh taken in 
 and for themselves fall into vices : the taking of 
 food into gluttony, of wine into drunkenness, 
 
 1 John iv. 63. 2 Rom. viii. 12. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 39 
 
 the need for possessing worldly necessities falls 
 into covetousness, love becomes mere lust. Yet 
 he nowhere declares that these things are noth- 
 ing, or not necessary to us, but that they have 
 to be used under the influence of the Spirit, our 
 bodies to be made a " living sacrifice," x and we 
 are to live, not in conformity to the world, but 
 as "transformed." 
 
 The world, then, is not to be treated as 
 nothing, but to be transformed by the Spirit, 
 as our bodies are also to be transformed. As 
 is the earth taken for itself alone " earthy," so 
 are they that live for it alone " earthy." 
 
 We find, then, that Christianity urges living 
 by the Spirit as strongly as it can be urged ; 
 we might quote endlessly on this point from 
 the Scriptures, old and new. Indeed, the 
 Epistles of St. Paul could be quoted almost in 
 toto in this connection. Why, therefore, did the 
 teaching seem so almost startlingly new ? As 
 a matter of fact, as already said, so materialistic 
 was the generation which was contemporary 
 with the, first beginnings of Christian Science, 
 that to vast numbers the Bible was practically 
 unknown and scarcely read at all. But it 
 
 1 Rom. xii. 1. 
 
40 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 must also be acknowledged, alas ! that Christians 
 generally, even those who did know and read 
 its Scriptures, had failed much in applying its 
 spiritual teaching to the ordinary affairs of our 
 outward life in the world, and were living in- 
 comparably below the standard set forth for 
 us, in an attitude of passive resignation to 
 unhappy circumstances rather than that of 
 active effort to overcome them by faith in the 
 power of God. 
 
 It is scarcely too strong to say, perhaps, that 
 even the most earnest Christians were, as a rule, 
 in the habit of regarding the spiritual life and 
 the physical as two almost separate worlds, 1 usu- 
 ally in more or less opposition to each other, the 
 one capable of being sound and whole in com- 
 munion with God, while the outer man might 
 still be the prey to every evil that comes in its 
 way, succumb helplessly to suffering and dis- 
 ease, be liable to accident and misfortune, and 
 to entanglement in a concatenation of unhappy 
 outward circumstances from which he could 
 expect little relief during this phase of life. 
 
 1 From here to the end of this chapter I quote, with little 
 alteration, from my paper on "Christian Science and Faith 
 Healing," read at the Church Congress, Weymouth, October 
 1905. 
 
AND CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 41 
 
 In the past saints have shown, indeed, how 
 splendidly in the power of the Spirit life can 
 be lived in spite of these outward conditions 
 of misfortune, sickness, and misery, and how 
 marvellously and beautifully the inner man 
 can triumph over them ; but, as a rule, their 
 teaching has left the outer evils to go their 
 own way, at least as far as bringing spiritual 
 influence and help to bear upon them goes, and 
 bodily sufferings which would not yield to 
 physical treatment to run their course, bravely 
 borne indeed, heroically endured, but neither 
 in themselves alleviated nor annulled, nor, in- 
 deed, regarded as in any way capable of being 
 acted upon by the spiritual energy within. 
 This produced a dualism, a discord, a kind of 
 divorce between the inner and the outer man, 
 between the spiritual universe and the physical, 
 the latter being left, as it were, still under the 
 dominion of evil, whilst the former might be 
 radiant in the sunshine of the Divine. The 
 new teaching we are considering was a protest 
 against this, an effort, with its emphatic assertion 
 of Oneness, of unity, to get rid of this dualism, 
 a disclaimer of the necessity of such a discord. 
 
 It argues that, since spirit lies at the basis 
 
42 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the entire universe, the goodness and power 
 of God should be able to penetrate our entire 
 being, the whole of ourselves and of our cir- 
 cumstances, witliout as well as within; and 
 that if things are rightly adjusted, the soul 
 being sound and in a state of health, the 
 physical must tend to be so also. It asserts 
 that, instead of an antagonism and warfare be- 
 tween the two, the ideal should be a harmoni- 
 ous working together of the soul and the body, 
 both being creations of one and the same God, 
 the lower taking its tone from the higher, and 
 becoming permeated with the Divine in such a 
 manner that the health and well-being which are 
 the necessary accompaniment of harmony should 
 be exhibited in the body as well as in the soul. 
 Now, although this is by no means the actual 
 way in which Christian Science expresses it- 
 self, yet on a careful digest of its teaching, 
 when one compares its best statements with 
 its worst, and especially when one studies the 
 writings of its more recent and logical ex- 
 ponents, this cannot fail to be taken as its 
 ultimate meaning. 1 And this we believe to be 
 1 Although, in order to produce this harmony, it made the 
 mistake of denying existence, even dependent existence, to 
 the body. 
 
AND CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 43 
 
 the main thing which, in spite of all its draw- 
 backs and its inconsistent and illogical state- 
 ments, has caused it to meet with such a ready 
 and wide acceptance. Christians have, as 
 already stated, been too ready to accept as 
 inevitable the antagonism between the flesh 
 and the spirit so much lamented by St. Paul, 
 without realizing sufficiently his solution of the 
 difficulty when he speaks of the quickening 
 of our " mortal bodies through His spirit that 
 dwelleth in us." x We have too much neglected 
 to avail ourselves of this "quickening." But 
 the Christian Scientists lay great stress upon 
 it and announce it very forcibly, and upon the 
 fact that in the Gospels spiritual deliverance 
 is accompanied by physical deliverance as well, 
 as if the two should naturally go together. The 
 belief of the Christian Scientists is, in fact, a 
 literal belief in what might be called the life of 
 miracle — namely, a life so infused with Divine 
 energy that, ceasing to be helplessly tied and 
 bound by the limitations of the physical plane, 
 and especially by the tendency to evil due to 
 its falling away from God, we become capable 
 in the power of the Spirit of manifesting the 
 1 Rom. viii. 11. 
 
44 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 " mighty works " shown forth in the Gospels 
 as not only worked by our Lord Himself, but 
 also by His disciples. 
 
 So far, then, as the aim of Christian Science 
 goes, there is little that is inconsistent with the 
 doctrines and belief of Christianity, although 
 in practice the latter has in late centuries not 
 acted so literally upon it as the Christian 
 Scientists endeavour to do. So far as this 
 aspect of their teaching goes, w^e shall find our- 
 selves at issue with them, not so much in their 
 root idea as in their interpretation of it. Un- 
 fortunately, their rendering of this truth has 
 been given with such an entire want of sense 
 and logic, that it sometimes reads as entire 
 nonsense ; and a practical and beautiful truth, 
 that of the power of the spiritual over the 
 physical, has thus been rendered almost ridic- 
 ulous, whilst the minds of Christians in general 
 have been shocked. 
 
 The Christian Science retort to our complaint 
 of the entire want of logic and reasonability 
 in their statement would naturally be that 
 spiritual truths are not learnt by reason, and 
 that logic has very little to do with the things 
 appertaining to faith, with which we entirely 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 45 
 
 agree. But there is a wide difference between 
 acknowledging that religious faith cannot be 
 attained by reason, and in holding a doctrine 
 so utterly at variance with it that all our 
 mental processes of thought in trying to em- 
 brace a truth are completely stultified, as when 
 we are asked to believe that there are no bodies 
 nor a physical world of which they form a 
 part. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that our Lord's appeal was 
 not to the reason of His listeners, but to that 
 element within them which more readily re- 
 sponds to the Divine ; but it is also true that 
 when the reasoning faculty is applied to His 
 teachings, they do not resolve themselves into 
 nonsense, nor into such contradictions that when 
 we try to act up to them our daily life becomes 
 impossible or a mass of inconsistencies. But 
 this is what happens to the teaching of Christian 
 Science when reason is applied to it. It is not 
 my purpose here to enter upon the endless con- 
 tradictions and inconsistencies which this in- 
 volves, for I have devoted much space to it in 
 another book. 1 I need only point out here that, 
 
 1 "The Truth and Error of Christian Science," published 
 by John Murray. 
 
46 CHEISTIANITY 
 
 whilst denying matter in toto, they have con- 
 tinually to speak in terms of material things ; 
 and, whilst asserting in the strongest manner 
 that there is no body and no necessity for food, 
 for clothing, or for rest, etc., they find them- 
 selves continually compelled to act in such a 
 manner as to give the lie to their theory at 
 every turn, to the injury of the sense of truth 
 and of balance of mind. 
 
 This belief in the complete non-existence of 
 any material thing is a form of mysticism which 
 springs up from time to time in the course of 
 every few centuries, probably as a reaction 
 against the idea of the ordinary man that what 
 he sees around him and apprehends so vividly 
 with his senses is not only the reality, but far 
 more real than things, unseen. The discovery 
 on the part of some on© of deeper insight that 
 this is not so, and the announcement of it in 
 some popular form, is intoxicating with the 
 fresh realization of spiritual life it brings with 
 it. These sudden revelations of a hidden truth, 
 which in their effect produce what amounts to 
 a conversion, are intensely dazzling, and usually 
 result in a loss of balance, at least for a while. 
 This one aspect of the truth is seen out of pro- 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 47 
 
 portion to its other aspects — indeed, is realized 
 so vividly that all other manifestations of reality 
 seem to fade away into non-reality. Nothing 
 but the one thing so illuminatingly realized 
 seems true. This is a common experience in 
 any kind of sudden conversion. In the supreme 
 instance of such a conversion on record, that of 
 St. Paul, there is a vague allusion to a long 
 period spent in Arabia, when, the Apostle says, 
 he " conferred not with flesh and blood." ' May 
 it not be that this pause was necessary for the 
 recovery of balance before he was fit fully to 
 enter upon his great work ? Be this as it may, 
 in his teaching he forcibly emphasizes what the 
 spiritual could do for the physical without 
 denying the existence of the physical or failing 
 to count with it in its proper place. We are, 
 as a rule, not wise enough to pause when we 
 have lighted on a great truth so as to recover 
 balance and be able to teach it in its proper 
 relation with other truths. In the discovery 
 of new truth of any kind this loss of balance 
 in judgment is apt to take place, notably in the 
 dazzling discoveries in physical science about 
 material facts which often lead scientific men 
 1 Gal. i. 16, 17. 
 
48 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 to deny that there is anything in existence but 
 Matter. The kind of mystic whom we are now 
 considering does the opposite and denies Matter 
 altogether. What wonder, then, that Christian 
 Scientists, in the extraordinary power with 
 which they have laid hold of the supreme and 
 eternal fact that " in God we live and move and 
 have our being/' * are equally dazzled and un- 
 able to see things in their true proportions and 
 entirety ? Neither is it of any use, in the first 
 flush of it, to talk to them about their incon- 
 sistencies and want of balance or reason. It 
 is impossible to gainsay that countless persons 
 have found their lives transformed by it, that 
 they have found a living reality which has 
 changed their aims, their desires, their conduct, 
 their health — in a sense, the very atmosphere 
 about them. Here is the explanation of their 
 imperviousness to all argument and common 
 sense. They will tell us that they have seen 
 and experienced, and that in the face of that 
 it is of no use to discuss its reasonability or 
 otherwise with them. Yet in the long run 
 such one-sided blindness to all but the one 
 illuminated spot is mischievous ; for in time any 
 
 1 Acts xvii. 20. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 49 
 
 truth so misstated is bound to produce reaction 
 and to lose its influence, and to produce certain 
 distortions which tend to bring discredit upon 
 spiritual things and to induce a swing of the 
 pendulum in favour of materialism. 
 
 However, rather than too much criticize the 
 Christian Scientists in this matter, let us turn 
 our eyes upon ourselves and see how much we 
 have failed to live outwardly and practically 
 in the light of the teaching so long presented 
 to us in the New Testament regarding these 
 spiritual truths, and there expressed far more 
 powerfully than in any of these modern forms. 
 
 There, indeed, it is continually reiterated, 
 and given with the supremely great additional 
 fact that Christian Science seems to neglect, 
 that we can live them in and through a Person, 
 in close union with Divine Love itself as given 
 to us in the Person of Jesus Christ, the " only 
 begotten Son . . . that we might live through 
 Him." * The life of miracle, life lived by the 
 power of the Spirit, could by no religion be 
 more forcibly urged than it is throughout the 
 Gospels and Epistles, as in such passages as, 
 " Abide in Me and I in you/' 2 " In Him was 
 
 1 1 John iv. 9. a John xv. 4. 
 
 (2,037) 4 
 
50 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 life, and the life was the light of men," and 
 " As many as received Him, to them gave He 
 the power to become the sons of God." l And 
 yet, so much have Christians in general lived 
 below it as to make Mrs. Eddy's call to the 
 living of a life so triumphant over the merely 
 outward life in the world seem to many almost 
 new, and, strangest of all, appear a point of 
 superiority over ordinary Christianity. 
 
 The question for us to consider is whether 
 the renewed energy with which Christian 
 Scientists have reasserted the spiritual power 
 of Christianity shall, especially in the matter 
 of healing, be neglected by the Christian 
 Churches, and left to work in an irrational and 
 sporadic manner, and finally to lose its force 
 by overstating or misstating a truth we all 
 believe in; or whether, purged of the alloy 
 with which it has been mixed, rationalized, 
 and brought into line with the acknowledged 
 teaching of Christianity, it may not by it be 
 utilized with potent effect with all the balance 
 necessary for making it a lasting energy. 
 
 One of the most serious results which, to the 
 mind of the Christian, flow from the denial 
 
 1 John i. 4, 12. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 51 
 
 of the reality of the physical world for those 
 who carry it to its logical conclusion, is the loss 
 of the doctrine of the Incarnation as an actual 
 fact, and the splendid result from it, the re- 
 demption of the world, the transformation of 
 the outward and physical, not its annihilation ; 
 and along with it the redemption of man in 
 body, soul, and spirit. 
 
 It is impossible to say with any certainty 
 what is Mrs. Eddy's teaching relative to Jesus 
 Christ. She undoubtedly regards Him as the 
 great Exemplar, and accepts His ethical teach- 
 ing ; she speaks of Him, too, as of virgin birth, 
 and says His great triumph was in His resur- 
 rection. But her statements are, as usual, con- 
 fused and contradictory. As she constantly 
 denies that there is such a thing as physical 
 birth, one cannot tell what she means by the 
 virgin birth, and as she equally denies that 
 there is such a thing as physical death, because, 
 as she often asserts, there is no physical thing 
 to die, one can hardly understand what she 
 literally means by the resurrection of Christ, 
 though probably, taken in its mystical sense, 
 she would say that it destroyed our illusion, as 
 she considers it, of death. 
 
52 CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 But however strained Mrs. Eddy's view re- 
 garding bodily death may be, and however 
 curiously she may interpret the triumph over 
 death, doing as she does great violence to our, 
 as yet, constant experience in regard to the 
 death of the body, her treatment of the im- 
 mortality of the spirit is excellent, and given 
 with such force as to present it with a fresh- 
 ness and vigour which have brought it home as 
 a realizable truth to many who, in this materi- 
 alistic age, had previously found it difficult of 
 belief — for which let us be thankful. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 So far we have been chiefly concerned with 
 the theory of Christian Science, but we come 
 now to its practical side, that of Mind-healing — 
 to that, in fact, for which the theory, such as 
 it is, was developed ; for it was with a view to 
 demonstrating the non-reality of disease that 
 Mrs. Eddy taught her doctrine that no material 
 thing in reality exists at all. But in her en- 
 deavour to establish the non-reality of disease 
 she went much further than necessary in order 
 to prove her point. For there is a long distance 
 between maintaining that abnormal conditions 
 of the body may be due to illusion and holding 
 also that healthy or normal conditions, indeed 
 the body itself, are equally unreal and illusory. 
 Had she contented herself with trying to 
 demonstrate that disease is unreal, this would 
 have been, though still a much exaggerated 
 
 53 
 
54 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 assertion, certainly nearer the mark, for she 
 would then have been in accord with the ancient 
 idea of primitive peoples — namely, that of re- 
 garding the body in health as in accord with 
 the natural order of things, whilst a diseased 
 body was altogether unnatural. So strongly 
 did the ancients think this, and many primi- 
 tive people think the same to this day, that 
 they attributed illness to magic, to some evil 
 influence of an occult nature. And, accordingly, 
 the evil influence had to be sought out and 
 exorcised by some occult means. Now this is 
 an interesting idea — not that we are at all dis- 
 posed now to put disease down to magic, but 
 that it should be looked upon as something 
 that runs counter to the natural order of things 
 does seem suggestive of there being some sort 
 of mistake, something more or less illusory 
 about it, which the true and the normal should 
 be able to overcome. And when we once accept 
 the Spiritual as lying at the foundation of our 
 being, the teaching that this deeper and Divine 
 element should he able to control and to set 
 right abnormal conditions of the body, which is 
 dependent upon it for vitality, presents not only 
 a reasonable idea, but one that is even so natural 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 55 
 
 that it is surprising that such teaching should 
 have seemed almost new and even incredible 
 when given to the world by Christian Science. 
 
 All the more so since we have from time 
 immemorial been familiar with the influence of 
 mind over body in all sorts of ways. We have 
 always known that a mere thought can produce 
 a blush, that an idea can cause us to turn pale, 
 that anger in some people can produce a bilious 
 attack, that grief or disappointment may induce 
 loss of appetite, that sudden joy can have the 
 same effect, and that terror has been known to 
 impart unusual muscular strength, and so on. 
 We are again well aware of the fact that change 
 of thought or of ideas will often act as favourably 
 upon the health as change of air will do. And 
 as for the stimulus of new and interesting ideas, 
 the restorative effect of them upon tired and 
 worn-out nerves is often quite remarkable. 
 
 All of this we have long known. But of late 
 Natural Science has done much by experiment 
 to bring out still more how marked are the 
 effects of thought upon the body. Experiments 
 in the laboratory have shown that the rate of 
 the pulse, the breathing, and the secretions of 
 the glands change almost from moment to 
 
56 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 moment in response to passing thoughts. Well 
 known, too, is it that unhappy thoughts con- 
 tinuously dwelt upon will depress the health 
 and lower vitality even if outer conditions are 
 in every way such as are conducive to physical 
 well-being ; whilst hope or despair, thoughts of 
 hatred or of benevolence also play their part, 
 and that a considerable one, in heightening or 
 lowering our bodily health. 
 
 Although this is all well known, not enough 
 attention has been paid to it, nor has our moral 
 nature been sufficiently brought to bear upon 
 it; especially instruction as to the ill effects 
 upon the body of indulging in thoughts of 
 envy, hatred, and malice, of revenge, jealousy, 
 and meanness has been lacking, although the 
 damaging effects of these things upon the spirit 
 has, let us hope, been duly and carefully 
 taught. 
 
 Perhaps it has not been sufficiently well 
 known until quite lately how exceedingly 
 injurious it is to the health and to sanity to 
 turn our attention incessantly to our uncom- 
 fortable feelings, our pains and physical dis- 
 tresses, a habit only too easily fallen into 
 during a spell of illness or of poor health. It 
 
AND CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 57 
 
 is said that the habit of turning one's thoughts 
 constantly on one's sufferings increases the ill- 
 health we may have had the misfortune to fall 
 into by a kind of compound interest, because 
 it actually and physically uses up nerve-tissue, 
 and reduces the stock of nervous energy we 
 might otherwise be able to draw upon. 
 
 Christian Science has done much to help 
 invalids from this over-much concentration of 
 themselves upon their symptoms of disease — 
 almost carrying it too far, by producing a 
 tendency to too much neglect of them, as well 
 as by causing real suffering by their want of 
 sympathy. But undoubtedly a good deal of 
 their teaching on this has been in the right 
 direction, although, of course, not believing in 
 the body at all, they have not given this 
 physical reason for the ill effects of concentrat- 
 ing attention upon illness. 
 
 However, Christian Science claims mentally 
 or spiritually to have far more control over 
 disease than any of this implies, and asserts 
 itself able to cure, not only cases of what we 
 call neurotic illness, but also of severe and 
 deeply-seated organic disease. Unfortunately, 
 Mrs. Eddy gives few instances of very striking 
 
58 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 cures in her book, and such as she does bring 
 forward are given without any expert opinion 
 as to what was the matter. It is indeed very 
 difficult to prove these alleged cases of cure; 
 and for this we have to make due allowance, 
 because whenever a striking instance of cure 
 has either really or apparently taken place, it 
 is easy for any doctor to explain it by saying 
 that it must have been a case of wrong diagnosis, 
 and that the so-called cure merely proves that 
 a mistake had been made as to the nature of 
 the disease. It would need a great number of 
 successful cases of healing any given disease, 
 supposed to be necessarily fatal, before this 
 argument could be met, and such a thing as 
 cancer, say, proved to be amenable to Mind- 
 healing to the satisfaction of medical experts 
 or, indeed, of people in general. Then again, 
 of course, it is difficult to eliminate chance and 
 mere happy coincidence. 
 
 It is regrettable that it is so difficult to prove 
 these cures. But since many people do fre- 
 quently find striking results follow treatment 
 of this sort, every day adds to the likelihood 
 that such cases of healing are not merely for- 
 tuitous, and that the disease cured was not one 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 59 
 
 merely existing in the imagination of the 
 patient, nor a case of mistaken diagnosis. 
 
 Another thing that adds to the difficulty of 
 getting well-attested cases is that the more 
 deeply reverent the mind of the healer, the 
 more unwilling he is to make any success 
 public ; and whilst the delighted patient may be 
 less shy and more willing to talk about it, there 
 is naturally the tendency a little to discount 
 the patient's account of things owing to his not 
 unnatural state of excitement and enthusiasm, 
 though, on the other hand, he is the more 
 likely to be the one who is sure of the healing. 
 
 Difficult though it is to prove, however, one 
 piece of good progress has been made towards 
 establishing the probability that healing by 
 mental or spiritual processes is a practicable 
 fact, which is that it is now no longer possible 
 to doubt the good faith of most of those who 
 are engaged in this kind of healing. The char- 
 acter of many of them is well established and 
 above suspicion and would be trusted implicitly 
 in any ordinary worldly business. True it is 
 that, in anything that seems to partake of the 
 miraculous (though it may be in perfect accord 
 with laws we are as yet little acquainted with 
 
60 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 and therefore not miraculous at all), whilst we 
 may not doubt a person's good faith, we have 
 to allow for the ease with which unconscious 
 self-deception may occur in these cases ; but 
 even giving due weight to that, there can be 
 no doubt in the mind of any fair-minded 
 person, who has had experience in the matter, 
 that there are certainly occasional cures of this 
 kind, and very many instances in which great 
 relief has been experienced by sufferers. 
 
 Nor is the claim for the possibility of Mind- 
 healing so altogether new, but more ancient 
 instances have been overlooked because regarded 
 as mere cases of superstition with no reality 
 behind them. There are many records of this 
 kind of healing by saints, whose word we trust 
 in everything else, and therefore may give some 
 credence to when they lay claim to healing 
 power. Also there is an implication of Mind- 
 healing in the royal touch for King's Evil. 
 This has long been looked upon as a mere 
 superstition ; but it is on record that, in the 
 reigns both of Charles II. and Louis XVI., 
 careful observation was carried out by experts, 
 and it was found in both cases that there was 
 a small percentage of real cures that followed 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 61 
 
 the touch. There is still a belief in Scotland 
 and elsewhere that the touch of a seventh son 
 of a seventh son has healing power; and a 
 skilled physician has himself verified this, at 
 least in one instance, whilst there are equally 
 well-attested instances of cures by the incanta- 
 tions of a " wise woman." In the pilgrimages, 
 too, to Lourdes for health, it is well established 
 that there is again a percentage of genuine 
 cures, although it cannot claim to be a large 
 one ; whilst there are the well-known cures 
 worked by the Cure d'Ars, in the middle of 
 the last century, in his church, to which much 
 attention was given at the time. All this 
 renders the claims of the Christian Scientists 
 that they have brought about many cures 
 without the use of drugs or of any outward 
 means less startling on consideration and more 
 credible than at first they seem to be, as well 
 as the claims of scattered persons here and 
 there who are not Christian Scientists to the 
 possession of a similar power. 
 
 It is true that there has been great exaggera- 
 tion in regard to the large numbers that 
 Christian Science is alleged to have cured ; 
 also as to the more or less fatal nature of the 
 
62 CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 diseases said to have been healed. There have 
 been very many failures, of which some of us 
 know personally, but of which little is said; 
 and therefore whether the percentage of cures 
 is a large one it is impossible to say. Then, 
 again, there have been many instances of tem- 
 porary benefit only which has not been lasting. 
 Yet, after weighing the matter carefully and 
 taking all into consideration that one can, it is 
 impossible to deny that there have been many 
 real cures of the sort brought about by Christian 
 Scientists and now also by many orthodox 
 Christians, or to resist the hope that Mind- 
 healing may before long, when better under- 
 stood and taken up more wisely, play a large 
 part in our lives for good in time to come, and 
 in harmony with our ever-increasing skill in 
 the use of outward means for the recovery of 
 health. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DIFFERENT KINDS OF MIND-HEALING. 
 
 The entire aim of Mrs. Eddy's "Science and 
 Health," as we have shown, is to teach the 
 world how to cure disease without the use of 
 drugs, operations, or any other physical means, 
 by simple reliance on the mental or spiritual. 
 
 This last phrase brings us up at once against 
 a difficulty. What do we mean by mental or 
 spiritual ? Are they the same thing ? and, if 
 not, are they equally effectual and equally 
 desirable ? 
 
 There is little doubt that Mrs. Eddy, whilst 
 not distinguishing between these two words, or 
 what they stand for, did really mean spiritual 
 healing, but it is a great question whether she 
 did not make use in practice of what we should 
 now call mere mental healing. 
 
 We have used the word Mind-healing to 
 cover both mental and spiritual healing, using 
 
 63 
 
64 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the word Mind here, as the author of " Science 
 and Health " usually did, in its widest sense, 
 namely, as a word implying the opposite of 
 what we understand by Material — all, that is, 
 that is Psychic or Spiritual, which cannot be 
 apprehended by the senses ; anything, in fact, 
 which is spoken of as the Unseen, in opposition 
 to that which is seen. 
 
 This is a fair use of the word Mind, if we 
 understand exactly what is meant by it. It is, 
 however, apt to be misleading, since it is often 
 taken for granted that in Mind, or the Unseen, 
 there are no distinctions. Many think that it 
 is all spiritual, all Divine, and therefore all to 
 be absolutely relied upon as perfectly good, 
 and as giving us truth which cannot be 
 gainsaid. 
 
 Consequently, there are many who implicitly 
 trust any influences which may come from the 
 Unseen, no matter what their source ; anything 
 conveyed to them by automatic writing, by 
 clairvoyance, or clairaudience, by visions, or by a 
 medium during what is called a spiritual stance. 
 All these things are regarded by them as spirit- 
 ual, if not Divine, in their origin, and as equally 
 trustworthy. But of this more presently. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 66 
 
 Although Mrs. Eddy never anywhere, as far 
 as we have been able to discover, gives any 
 account of the constitution of human nature 
 which corresponds with that of modern psy- 
 chology, her whole system of healing is more or 
 less based upon it. It consists in appealing to 
 the mind of the patient, but to that part of it 
 which lies below the level of our ordinary con- 
 sciousness. More and more has it become estab- 
 lished as a fact that we are much larger than 
 our mere consciousness, than just that part of 
 ourselves of which we are fully aware. There 
 is a region underlying this, to put it very 
 crudely, of which, as a rule, we have no know- 
 ledge. This region has been called by various 
 names. Myers calls it the "Sub-liminal self," 
 by which he means that which lies below the 
 limits of our consciousness. Dr. Carpenter, 
 one of the earliest to study this region in a 
 scientific manner, spoke of the activities of this 
 unconscious self as "Unconscious cerebration." 
 Other psychologists speak of this, as yet, little 
 understood aspect of ourselves as the " Un- 
 conscious mind." Yet others call it the " Sub- 
 jective mind," using that phrase in opposition 
 to the term they apply to that part of our 
 
 (2,037) 5 
 
66 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 mind of which we are directly aware — namely, 
 the " Objective mind," so called because we are 
 in a sense conscious of it as an object. But 
 the term now in most frequent use is that of 
 the " Sub-conscious mind." * 
 
 We must be very careful not to fall into the 
 supposition that the " Objective mind " and the 
 " Sub-conscious mind " are two separate minds 
 within us. It is difficult to describe accurately, 
 but it is better to think of them as two layers, 
 so to speak, of one and the same mind, or as 
 two departments, or two different phases of 
 the mind. These are unsatisfactory terms, 
 since to use such words as "department" or 
 " layer " of anything so immaterial as the mind 
 
 1 Some psychologists, and notably Mr. J. A. Had field, as 
 expounded in his article on "Immortality," object to re- 
 garding the aspect of the mind called out under hypnotism 
 as in any sense different from that aspect of it of which we 
 are ordinarily aware, and hold that there is a mere height- 
 ening of attention which is concentrated on one set of ideas 
 to the exclusion of others. But this theory does not appear 
 to us to cover by any means all the phenomena manifested 
 under these conditions. We cannot, however, here discuss the 
 question. It does not affect the results of Suggestion what- 
 ever theory we hold as to its nature, and should this theory 
 prove the correct one, more than ever will it appear certain 
 that what is reached in spiritual seances, or information 
 supposed to be given by automatic writing, and so on, cannot 
 be regarded as emanating from the spiritual plane. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 67 
 
 or spirit must be hopelessly inadequate, and 
 inevitably tend to be misleading. This is a 
 difficulty that always arises as soon as we have 
 to speak of anything mental or spiritual, since 
 all our language has, in the first place, been 
 developed for describing material things, and 
 we can only use them with any propriety for 
 immaterial things — for mind, spirit, ideas, or 
 thoughts— in an allegorical way or as symbols. 
 We must do the best we can. 
 
 Although not much understood, it has long 
 been taught that that part of our being which 
 is not physical consists of at least two divisions 
 which Christianity has described as soul and 
 spirit, and we have, therefore, been described as 
 each one of us being tripartite in our nature, 
 consisting of body, soul, and spirit. This is a 
 convenient but rather rough analysis, and the 
 Easterns subdivide these divisions again, and 
 represent us as consisting of seven layers, or 
 principles, as they prefer to call them. We 
 need not go into these in detail here, but merely 
 mention that of these seven principles in their 
 teaching the three lower ones have altogether 
 to do with the body. Of the four remaining 
 ones two at least are far below the level of the 
 
68 CHKISTIANITY 
 
 highest, and may be spoken of as constituting 
 the psychic plane, whilst the highest of all, 
 and possibly the one next under it, form essen- 
 tially the spiritual plane. 
 
 Our own Western psychology is tending 
 somewhat towards similar results in its classi- 
 fication, though, as yet, very little worked out 
 or understood ; but one thing seems pretty 
 certain, and that is, that when we talk of the 
 " psychic " we are not necessarily talking of the 
 " spiritual," but more likely of principles which, 
 according to the Easterns, lie, as it were, 
 between the bodily and the spiritual. 
 
 The Mystics of old knew well the difference 
 between these two planes, and how great was 
 the danger of mistaking mere psychic ex- 
 periences for spiritual ones. Therefore they 
 submitted themselves, or their spiritual directors 
 did it for them, to very severe tests that they 
 might be certain they were in real touch with 
 the spiritual, and receiving, perhaps, valuable 
 revelations, and not merely the victims of 
 hysterical happenings in the psychic plane, 
 which seems to be open to much danger pf 
 this sort, or taking for gospel any information 
 that might emanate from a plane very little 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 69 
 
 more in touch with spiritual truth than their 
 ordinary mind. 
 
 In these modern days we are apt to think 
 that if we plunge quite recklessly into the use 
 of any means by which we seem to get into 
 some kind of contact with the Unseen, we 
 are thereby safely in touch with the Divine, or 
 perhaps with high spiritual entities, and that 
 anything thus conveyed to us must necessarily 
 emanate from the Source of all Truth. The 
 distinction is a very important one. 
 
 Whatever, theoretically, may be the nature 
 of Hypnotism and Suggestion, the mind of a 
 person in a state of hypnosis is extraordinarily 
 amenable to any thought suggested to it ; and, 
 as a rule, acts upon the suggestion almost 
 mechanically, quite independently of the will 
 of the person, and also without his passing any 
 judgment upon the suggestion as to whether it 
 may be true or false. The self we are ordi- 
 narily aware of has had all the subject's atten- 
 tion taken from it, and, with its critical faculty, 
 has, as it were, fallen asleep. Not only its 
 critical faculty, and probably its power of will, 
 but even its susceptibility to sensations, have 
 become inactive, the attention of the subject 
 
70 CHEISTIANITY 
 
 being so completely removed from the ■ body 
 with its feelings as to prevent his being aware 
 even of very painful operations which may be 
 performed upon him. 
 
 If a man be told that he is blind when under 
 these conditions, blind he will be for the time 
 being. He can, by suggestion, even be rendered 
 blind to some things in the room whilst well 
 able to see others according to the suggestions 
 given him. The suggestion made that there is 
 a burn on his arm will produce a burn with 
 the painful symptoms of one, inflammation and 
 rawness, and all the other distressing accom- 
 paniments ; whilst, on being told that the burn 
 is healed, these symptoms will soon disappear, 
 and the normal state of things be re-established. 
 This obviously opens up a considerable means 
 of possible healing, and it has been found that 
 the suggestion of perfect health, where organs 
 are not performing their due function, has a 
 marvellously restorative effect. 
 
 As a rule, the actual hypnotic trance is not 
 now resorted to. Suggestion will often succeed 
 without this. Sufficiently emphatic statements 
 have their due effect when made to a patient 
 whose ordinary mind is in its normal condition 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 71 
 
 of awareness, if at the same time it be fairly 
 calm and quiescent. Sometimes, even when 
 this calmness is lacking, a suggestion will suc- 
 ceed, if it be sufficiently startling in its nature. 
 It is this method of suggestion which is 
 mainly in use with the Christian Scientists. 
 They do not always admit this ; at any rate, 
 Mrs. Eddy rarely, if ever, uses the word, except 
 to condemn the system. We will not deny 
 that another element may come in, of which we 
 shall speak presently ; but, undoubtedly, when 
 the attention of a patient is suddenly arrested 
 by being emphatically told that there is no 
 such thing as sickness, that there is absolutely 
 nothing the matter with her, that she is in 
 perfect health, and can at once rise from her 
 bed and be as usual, it cannot but be regarded 
 as a case of suggestion, and a suggestion of a 
 startling character. In the case of a patient of 
 simple mind whose critical faculty is not much 
 to the fore, such a statement will often produce, 
 even very rapidly, marked improvement ; also, 
 apart from its suggestiveness in the technical 
 sense, such a statement acts as a stimulus, and 
 brings in the aid of that powerfully helpful 
 agent hope. 
 
72 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 The method of healing by suggestion is what 
 we now ordinarily understand by the name of 
 Mental-healing, as apart from Spiritual-healing, 
 and it will be clear by now that, although it 
 may be a perfectly legitimate way of healing, 
 it does not necessarily appeal to anything 
 deeper than the psychic aspect of ourselves, 
 even though essentially Christian suggestions 
 should be made use of. 
 
 There are other cures besides those of the 
 Christian Scientists which are also mainly due 
 to suggestion, to the play of a forcible idea 
 upon the patient, as in the case of the royal 
 touch for the Kings Evil, or that of the seventh 
 son of a seventh son. Here it is the idea that 
 the touch can heal which acts as a suggestion. 
 The same applies, at least in part, to such an 
 instance as that of the famous cure of the little 
 niece of Pascal, who, when a Holy Thorn was 
 being exhibited to the faithful, touched her 
 eye, which was distressingly diseased, with it, 
 and was almost immediately cured. A similar 
 case we have known of personally, when a 
 devout young priest was healed of an almost 
 incurable ulcer on looking at the Holy Coat of 
 Treves. We are not prepared to say that in 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 73 
 
 these two instances, and others like them, such 
 as those which take place at Lourdes, sugges- 
 tion is the only cause of the cure, but it forms, 
 at any rate, an important element in it. 
 
 It may be asked, and very naturally, why 
 one thing can act thus more than another. 
 Why must it be a king's touch or that of a 
 seventh son, and so on ? Why not the sixth 
 or the fifth or fourth ? Here other considera- 
 tions come into play. The king in ancient 
 times was regarded as Divine — still is in some 
 primitive countries. And everything apper- 
 taining to him, his clothes, the cup he drank 
 out of, the ground he stepped on, etc., shared in 
 his Divine influence, and could in consequence, 
 according to circumstances, cause life or death 
 to those who came into contact with them. 
 Much more, then, with the suggestion of healing 
 in his and in the patient's mind, would his 
 touch be regarded as all-powerful in producing 
 a cure. The surprising thing is that the 
 supposed healing power should, as time passed 
 on, have been limited to that of one particular 
 disease. In the case of a seventh son of a 
 seventh son, the number seven was in ancient 
 times regarded as having an occult property 
 
74 CHEISTIANITY 
 
 which could produce unusual effects. No doubt 
 any other number would have served as well 
 for suggestion, had the idea of peculiar power 
 been attached to it through countless genera- 
 tions. By the time such an idea has been 
 deeply ingrained, as it were, in the mind of 
 humanity, its suggestive power becomes im- 
 mensely enhanced, the idea being continually 
 passed from mind to mind and from generation 
 to generation. 
 
 There is believed to be by some another 
 method of healing which should perhaps come 
 under the head of Mental-healing, although not 
 directly due to suggestion. Some persons claim 
 to be endowed with a gift of healing, generally 
 by touch, in which it would seem as if they 
 were able to transmit some life-giving energy 
 from themselves to other persons. Some speak 
 of this supposed force as Magnetism. There 
 is much controversy upon the subject, the 
 majority of doctors, as yet, disbelieving in any 
 such energy altogether. But less than a 
 century ago they also denied the possibility of 
 Hypnotism, and pronounced it in all cases to be 
 nothing but a fraud. However, there are many 
 others besides doctors, even some who believe 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 75 
 
 themselves to be very successful Mental-healers, 
 who deny that there can be any passing of 
 vital influence from one person to another. 
 On the other hand, there are certain persons, 
 and we have ourselves met with many, who 
 have a strong conviction that they do actually 
 pass some virtue of a healing nature from 
 themselves to other persons. Some have 
 averred that they felt conscious of possessing 
 the power even before they had ever used it 
 voluntarily, and that so persuaded were they 
 that they had it that, with some reluctance, at 
 last they definitely tried to use it, and found it 
 to be the case. The special advocates of sugges- 
 tion, those who are inclined to make that cover 
 all occurrences of this sort, of course urge that, 
 in the case of these cures believed to be due to 
 the transmission of some vital energy, it is in 
 reality merely a case of suggestion. These 
 personal healings, if we may so call them, it is 
 true, generally depend upon actual contact, the 
 laying on of hands, or at least a touch, which 
 it is easy to argue may act in itself as a sugges- 
 tion. And it would be difficult to prove the 
 presence of anything more. It is, however, 
 equally difficult to prove that there is nothing 
 
76 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 more, and in the face of the fact that many 
 persons strongly aver that they feel conscious 
 of possessing such a power — persons, too, who 
 have in everything else proved themselves 
 worthy of trust in all they say and do — the 
 burden of proof would seem to lie with those 
 who deny it. There have been several individ- 
 uals who have so strongly believed themselves 
 to be endowed with healing power of this sort 
 that they have given up all other occupation in 
 order to devote their whole time to healing. 
 They, like others, meet with failure as well as 
 with success, and if there is, as we believe, 
 truth in their claim, it would seem that the 
 power is a fluctuating one, depending upon 
 health and other conditions, and apparently 
 quite beyond the control of their will. There- 
 fore, even frequent failure does not prove that 
 their claim is altogether wrong, nor their belief 
 in the matter a mere delusion. If, by the way, 
 this intermittence were allowed for by those who 
 believe themselves endowed with such a power, 
 much disappointment would be prevented. 
 
 Mrs. Eddy believed very much in some in- 
 fluence which could be transmitted from one 
 individual to another, which she called " Animal 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 77 
 
 Magnetism." But she held it to be altogether 
 baneful and evil, and seems to have had a great 
 dread of it. But as she regarded it as " animal," 
 and no more allowed it to have reality than 
 she allowed reality to the physical in any other 
 form, it is curious that she held it in so much 
 dread. But this only makes one more of the 
 many and strange contradictions in her system. 
 
 Finally, we come to the consideration of that 
 which is regarded as more essentially Spiritual- 
 healing than any of the preceding methods of 
 Mind-healing. 
 
 That which used to be called " Faith-healing," 
 and which was to a certain extent in use long 
 before Christian Science was heard of, comes 
 under this head. This was limited in the 
 main, at least the name of it was, to a particular 
 school of religious thought. A similar kind of 
 healing by prayer is now resorted to which 
 implies faith just as much as that to which we 
 have just alluded, but is used without the name 
 by a different religious school. There is also 
 Spiritual-healing which especially involves the 
 use of the Sacraments, and is known as " Sacra- 
 mental-healing." This may or may not include 
 the " Laying on of hands " and the use of 
 
78 CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 "Unction." The use of these last would be 
 held by some to come more directly under the 
 head of healing due to suggestion, but since 
 these means are always made use of accom- 
 panied very solemnly by prayer, and are, espe- 
 cially the use of Unction, performed as a 
 religious rite, even though suggestion may play 
 a large part in them, they must be included 
 under Spiritual-healing. On this ground the 
 healing associated with Lourdes, as well as 
 that of the Cure d'Ars, must certainly be 
 regarded as Spiritual-healing, although, prob- 
 ably, in all such cases suggestion is an element 
 largely present. And why not ? The cere- 
 mony may be such as reverently to draw upon 
 the highest spiritual influences, and yet sugges- 
 tion be a means used, an instrument of the 
 spiritual forces. 
 
 Obviously, the higher the influences under 
 which healing of any sort can be brought the 
 better, and this applies just as much to the 
 ordinary healing of doctors by drugs and other 
 physical means. We want to apply to the 
 supreme Source of Life for life, and to draw 
 upon this continually for its renewal, no matter 
 what means we employ. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SPIRITUAL-HEALING. 
 
 We have endeavoured to point out the dis- 
 tinction between what we understand by 
 Mental-healing and Spiritual-healing. It is an 
 important one, for there is a difference in 
 fundamental principle. The principle primarily 
 at work in the latter is far more directly con- 
 genial with the spirit of Christianity than that 
 of Mental-healing taken by itself, since here 
 we find ourselves making direct use of prayer. 
 Instead of trying to act upon the merely 
 psychic in the constitution of man, the effort 
 made is by the use of prayer to draw upon the 
 supreme Source of Life for more life. Whether 
 we have any of us the power of transmitting 
 vitality from ourselves to another or not, it is 
 recorded that Jesus Christ had such a power, 
 the influence exuding from His very clothes, 
 
 79 
 
80 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 as when the woman touched the hem of His 
 garment. His very words carried vitality with 
 them. It is probable here that suggestion 
 played its part as a secondary cause ; but un- 
 doubtedly as one studies His cures, more and 
 more does it become evident that the primary 
 cause was that of supplying fresh vitality to a 
 constitution which, from some cause, was de- 
 pressed and lacking in vital energy. No doubt 
 suggestion would come in as an instrument in 
 the process of giving a renewal of life. 
 
 In healing, where the primary idea is that 
 of drawing upon the very Source of Life, we 
 arrive at a much more profound treatment than 
 that of mere suggestion, and one likely to have 
 much more far-reaching consequences. 
 
 Since prayer plays so large a part in Spiritual- 
 healing, it is perhaps necessary to consider the 
 subject a little, since so often is the question 
 asked, " What is the use of prayer ? If God 
 is perfect love and knows what we need, why 
 have to appeal to Him in prayer ? " 
 
 Here we open up a very large subject, which 
 we can only deal with now in a manner far 
 too short for its worthy discussion. It belongs 
 to the general subject of the origin of evil. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 81 
 
 It may be equally justly asked, Why do we 
 need to use suggestion or any other means of 
 healing ? How does it come about that our 
 bodies are subject to disease, whether it be real 
 or merely an illusion ? We can only reply 
 that, whatever the cause, here is the fact that 
 we are apt to be the victims of disease, and, 
 even granting Mrs. Eddy's point that it is 
 nothing but an illusion, still here is the illusion, 
 and even an illusion is in a sense a fact, and 
 one that has to be handled if there is to be 
 deliverance from it. We are entirely in agree- 
 ment with the teaching of Christian Science 
 that God has no part in disease, although we 
 cannot accept the further statement that God 
 has no part in our bodies, and that Matter is 
 utterly alien to Him, as is over and over as- 
 serted in " Science and Health." We are most 
 willing to admit that, since God is perfect, in 
 so far as our bodies suffer from disease, real or 
 imaginary, just so far are we alien from God. 
 And it is this alienation from God, whether 
 moral or physical, which gives rise to the 
 necessity of prayer. We cannot account for 
 the alienation, but there it is, acting unfor- 
 tunately in more ways than one, physically, 
 
 (2,037) 6 
 
82 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 morally, and spiritually. And in so far as we 
 are thus separated from the highest sources of 
 life, are we, as it were, blocking out the 
 activities of God within us. It is not that 
 God's love fails; it is that we fail in response 
 to it. We are in such case like a jar which 
 might be lying in a river, but if its mouth is 
 stopped up by mud or stones, it remains unfilled 
 by water although actually surrounded by it. 
 Swedenborg likens us to vessels standing under 
 a stream of water to be filled by it, but the 
 vessels have somehow become turned upside 
 down, and receive no more water than if the 
 stream had ceased to flow. Or, to adapt a 
 metaphor of Whittier's, we live with the 
 windows of our souls shut instead of throwing 
 them " wide open to the sun." Prayer is the 
 act of turning ourselves to God, to the source 
 of life, the throwing open of our windows to 
 let in the light and air. It is an act of our 
 spirit, as truly an act which may bring about 
 results as the physical act of walking through 
 a door into a garden brings about actual and 
 tangible results. We block out God's energies, 
 and prayer is the act of "liberating these 
 energies;" it is a response we make to them, 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 83 
 
 by which they can become active within us. 
 In prayer we identify ourselves with the highest, 
 bring ourselves into communion with God, and 
 open up a channel through which His goodness 
 can reach us. And by this reinforcement of 
 our higher self we become capable of resisting 
 those tendencies within ourselves which, work- 
 ing independently of God, have allowed whatever 
 is alien to Him to develop, making more and 
 more solid the block, as it were, by which we 
 shut His presence out. Prayer raises us into 
 a higher condition in which health of body, 
 soul, and spirit can become the rule of our life. 1 
 Before leaving this part of our subject, we 
 must allude, though it must be very briefly, to 
 another question which is constantly asked : 
 " Can God alter the course of Nature — can He 
 interfere with its laws, even with such as 
 hold rule in the body ? " To this we must 
 reply that there is no interfering with the laws 
 of Nature. Higher laws may counteract them, 
 as we can counteract the law of gravity by 
 the use of a magnet, which contains a still 
 
 1 The best treatment we know of this, and, indeed, of 
 prayer in general, is that of Principal S. H. Mellone, in an 
 article in the Hibbert Journal of October 1918, entitled 
 "Prayer and Experience." 
 
84 CHEISTIANITY 
 
 more powerful energy of Nature. To lie 
 quiescently and resignedly under the working 
 of the laws of Nature, man has never done 
 since his history began. We have always in 
 more or less degree counteracted the relentless 
 laws of Nature by the exercise of a power 
 stronger still — namely, the thinking and in- 
 ventive 'powers of man's mind. We have so 
 harnessed all those laws that we know of, that 
 we can to a great extent direct their power as 
 we will. Into the concatenation of the natural 
 laws of cause and effect man introduces another 
 factor, a factor which alters the conditions and 
 therefore produces different results ; and the new 
 condition is, as previously said, the thought of 
 man. The very fact of prayer is a new condi- 
 tion brought in which can liberate the spiritual 
 forces, just as our intellectual thought can bring 
 into play a force unknown before, such as 
 electricity, an energy which, as far as man was 
 concerned, lay practically dormant through 
 countless generations. We — each individual of 
 us — are apt to let the spiritual energies of the 
 universe lie dormant and unused, and prayer 
 is the spiritual movement by which we can 
 avail ourselves of them. 
 
AND CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 85 
 
 Prayer then, we find, lies at the root of what 
 we have called more essentially Spiritual-heal- 
 ing. We have, however, yet another difficulty 
 to encounter, and that is the statement often 
 made by those who advocate that suggestion 
 covers all mental, moral, and spiritual pheno- 
 mena of every sort, namely, that after all prayer 
 is a sort of self-suggestion, and answers to it 
 are to be looked upon in the light of successful 
 suggestions. But we have to bear in mind, 
 to begirt with, that suggestion really explains 
 nothing. The " Why " of it is extremely ob- 
 scure. Why does a mind react to suggestion ? 
 Why, when there is an extreme concentration 
 of attention upon one idea, does it result in 
 such implicit obedience to what is suggested ? 
 In ordinary study, especially in mathematics 
 or metaphysics, the mind, although in its 
 normal condition of awareness, has the power 
 of very intense concentration, as any one who 
 has worked in the higher branches of either 
 of these subjects must know ; it is scarcely pos- 
 sible to conceive of more intense attention than 
 has to be focussed upon problems in these sub- 
 jects, and yet the critical faculty is not laid to 
 sleep, is not rendered ineffective, but is capable 
 
86 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of judging and reasoning upon the object thus 
 so concentratedly thought of. We do not 
 believe that the theory of concentrated atten- 
 tion covers all the facts of suggestion, nor that 
 it explains its phenomena. It makes us per- 
 haps understand how some things work, but not 
 why. And then, again, suggestion in no sense 
 claims to call upon fresh supplies of vitality. 
 It calls such vitality as may be present into 
 action, but does not necessarily draw upon 
 more than is there. 
 
 The results upon the character, too, of mere 
 self-suggestion and of prayer are wholly different. 
 In the one case there is a reference to one's self 
 only ; in the other there is reference to a Being 
 other than one's self upon whom we are de- 
 pendent for life, whose supplies are inexhaust- 
 ible, and who in meeting us in our prayers, 
 and supplying our felt needs, inspires us with 
 deep gratitude and love, with a feeling of un- 
 utterable reverence and with a sense of inspira- 
 tion which no mere reference to one's self could 
 draw out. In regard to this question let us 
 quote Principal Mellone's words in the article 
 already referred to : " The truth seems to be 
 that, instead of reducing prayer to a process of 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 87 
 
 self-suggestion affecting our own spirits merely, 
 we must see in prayer a deepening and develop- 
 ment of the unexplained power of self-sugges- 
 tion which we see every day. . . . Our lives 
 must be continuously dependent on the Divine 
 Life of the universe ; but its inflow varies in 
 abundance and power in correspondence to 
 variations in the attitude of our own minds." 
 Faith is one of these " attitudes," which, might 
 be best defined, perhaps, as the response of our 
 deeper self to truth which presents itself to us 
 through an intuitive channel which is other 
 than the senses, a response to that which we 
 cannot see or handle with any of our five senses 
 or with reasoning therefrom. To some these 
 unseen truths, although the reason and the 
 senses cannot deal with them, are more vivid 
 and real than anything ^presented to us through 
 the senses regarding the physical universe. 
 It was undoubtedly so with Mrs. Eddy, how- 
 ever much she may have bungled (which is 
 scarcely too strong a word for it) in her inter- 
 pretation of it. To countless Christians it is 
 so also, as well as to almost any genius, as 
 described by Wordsworth, Tennyson, Ruskin, 
 and innumerable others, many of whom tell us 
 
88 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 how in their childhood even they felt aware 
 that this world is a mere outer manifestation 
 of an infinitely deeper reality which is unseen. 
 
 Faith, then, is the attitude of response to 
 these deeper realities, and by faith it is, ac- 
 companying our prayers, that the Supreme Life 
 is called upon for replenishing our being. 
 
 But this is no reason for refusing the use of 
 suggestion as an instrument, just as on the 
 purely physical plane we make use of food for 
 nourishment, although this without our share 
 in the true Life could not in itself keep us 
 alive, as Mrs. Eddy very truly says — only, in 
 the case of food, she seems to think the in- 
 strument unnecessary. She makes great use 
 of the instrument of suggestion, however; so 
 much so, that to many it might easily seem as 
 if she ignored the higher means of prayer — a 
 point we must go into. 
 
 As already said, the Christian Scientists 
 make use of very startling and arresting sug- 
 gestions, such as that disease and pain are 
 absolutely non-existent; that we are victims 
 of an illusion ; that there is no such thing as 
 Matter in any form, therefore no body to feel 
 pain, and so on. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 89 
 
 Christians of the orthodox sort, when making 
 use of Spiritual-healing, also avail themselves 
 largely of suggestion as a secondary means, even 
 when, as in the case of Christian Scientists, 
 they are not professedly doing so (for sugges- 
 tion comes in very often when it is not re- 
 cognized as such, of that there is no doubt), 
 but they make use of very different suggestions 
 from those of the Christian Scientists. They 
 use very much better ones, because they do no 
 violence to common sense or reason, and there- 
 fore do not arouse the critical faculty, which, 
 when it is aroused, interferes with the response 
 to suggestion. It would be useless to announce, 
 however forcibly, to a person with a much de- 
 veloped reasoning power that he has no body — 
 he knows he has one ; or that he is not suffer- 
 ing pain — he knows that he is in pain ; and 
 Christian Science suggestions of this sort, there- 
 fore, necessarily fail with countless persons. 
 Christian healers, instead of announcing that 
 there is no such thing as a physical world, lay 
 stress upon the transforming power of the 
 spiritual in its action on the physical, as 
 taught by Christianity ; or they speak of the 
 redemptive power of Christ over the body as 
 
90 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 well as of the soul. Such assertions, put in 
 simple language, are quite as arresting as any 
 that can be made by Christian Science. Chris- 
 tianity has endless sources to draw upon for 
 helpful, true, and beautiful suggestions. The 
 Psalms abound with them if we had not fallen 
 into a rather mechanical way of saying or 
 singing them without much regard to their 
 meaning; or if, even where we do pause on 
 their meaning, we had not generally thought 
 of " the great things * that * the right hand of 
 the Lord" can do for us as applying to our 
 souls only, or to our circumstances — to every- 
 thing, in fact, except to our bodies and our 
 health, of which more presently. 
 
 It is needless to say that the Gospels and 
 Epistles are full of promises of life and of what 
 we may be actually here and now, which, when 
 accepted and realized, act as the most powerful 
 suggestions possible. Christianity, then, has 
 nothing to learn in regard to suggestions except 
 to make use of them, which we are now learn- 
 ing to do. 
 
 The question arises, Does Christian Science 
 use suggestion only — does it never soar higher 
 than the psychic in the means it uses ? At 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 91 
 
 first sight, it does not seem as if they made a 
 very direct use of prayer, but it is impossible 
 to say that it does not recognize the Spiritual 
 as the great reality of the universe. And the 
 mere realization of it, in the very vivid manner 
 that they do realize it, is in itself a means of 
 drawing upon the Spiritual. This realization 
 of the Divine and Spiritual is what the Christian 
 aims at when he absorbs himself in meditation 
 upon Divine matters, when he is seeking com- 
 munion with God. To " think on these 
 things" 1 is to develop that part of ourselves 
 which is able to respond to the highest things. 
 
 It is a truism that " like calls out like," and 
 more and more is it being realized that we tend 
 to become like that upon which we set our 
 hearts. We draw into ourselves the influences 
 we allow ourselves to think about. If we con- 
 tinually devote our minds to earthly things, we 
 shall become more and more " earthy," blocking 
 out higher influences, while the spiritual part 
 of our nature not only lies dormant, but be- 
 comes atrophied until it may seem almost dead. 
 It is persons in whom this is extreme that 
 St. Paul describes as "dead in trespasses and 
 1 Phil. iv. 8. 
 
92 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 sins," x and for whom he so urges the quicken- 
 ing power of the Spirit in Christ. But to 
 realize that, we must turn away from worldly 
 things, cease to make these our aim and the 
 object of our affections, and by prayer, by a 
 total alteration of our attitude of mind, make 
 room for this quickening power. 
 
 To induce people to do this Christian Science 
 tries to create, as it were, a distaste for external 
 things by pronouncing them to be unreal and a 
 delusion ; and this undoubtedly with some acts 
 very effectually. Christianity does not go so 
 far as to teach that they have no reality and 
 no worth at all, but that they have no life, 
 no reality, in themselves, and pursued for their 
 own ends in and for themselves, can only lead 
 to death. This world must be used "as not 
 abusing it," 2 and we are to be " not fashioned 
 according to this world." 8 
 
 Both Christianity and Christian Science 
 realize and teach that to put ourselves into 
 rapport with the highest things is to grow like 
 them, is to develop that within us which has 
 
 1 Eph. ii. 1. 
 
 2 1 Cor. vii. 31. The margin gives "not making full use 
 of it," as if it were the only aim and object. 
 
 3 Rom. xii. 2, R.V. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 93 
 
 a true relation with them ; and for this prayer 
 and meditation are necessary. The Christian 
 Scientists make more use of the latter than of 
 the former, especially do they make little use 
 of the prayer which is petition. 
 
 The meditation which they teach has a char- 
 acter of its own, which is peculiarly helpful, 
 and which, in conjunction with the form of 
 meditation more in use with the ordinary 
 Christian, may have very powerful results. 
 Whilst the latter urges us to focus our attention 
 altogether upon God, the former urges that 
 attention should also be given to the contem- 
 plation of one's self as an ideal being. And 
 this they especially recommend to an invalid 
 whom they are attempting to restore to health. 
 They tell him to consider carefully the con- 
 stitution of his true being, to realize that he is 
 in the foundation of his nature a spiritual being, 
 and that being made " in the image of God," * 
 he has a share in the Eternal, in the Divine ; 
 and that, as such, his essential, his spiritual, 
 his ideal self, if it were duly developed, would 
 be perfect; and that in communion with God 
 he can become whole in health, as well as in 
 1 Gen. i. 26. 
 
94 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 mind and spirit. To think of himself as whole 
 is to make himself tend to be so. He helps 
 himself in this by making affirmations or 
 denials : " He is not suffering ; " " he is quite 
 well ; " " he derives his being from God in 
 whom is no imperfection, therefore he has in 
 reality no imperfection ; " " his ideal self, him- 
 self viewed under the aspect of the Eternal, is 
 perfect ; " " he has no pain, no fatigue, no dis- 
 tress : these things do not exist in God, there- 
 fore they have no place in him " — and so on. 
 We Christians would state it a little otherwise, 
 but undoubtedly may learn with much advan- 
 tage a somewhat similar way of meditation with 
 its accompanying healthful suggestions. We 
 should put it that in communion with Christ 
 we become perfect in Him ; that " His strength 
 is made perfect in our weakness ; " x that " His 
 strength is sufficient for us ; " and that " things 
 present and things to come," 2 all are ours. 
 
 It is difficult to lay too much stress upon 
 the importance of fixing our attention upon 
 that which we wish to become like, and upon 
 remembering that we tend to grow like that 
 which we think about. If we look down, like 
 1 2 Cor. xii. 9. 2 1 Cor. iii. 22. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. <J5 
 
 the man in the " Pilgrim's Progress " who had 
 the muck-rake, with his eyes always upon the 
 ground, we shall find ourselves, like him, 
 scarcely able to look upwards ; whilst, if we 
 direct our eyes upward upon that which is 
 pure and beautiful, we tend to call out and 
 to develop the same in ourselves. Thus " look- 
 ing unto Jesus, the author and finisher 
 of our faith," 1 "we shall be like Him." 2 
 Where it is difficult to pray with faith, this 
 form of meditation is a very powerful help 
 towards it ; it is, in fact, a very realizing form 
 of prayer. Bearing in mind, too, that the 
 Eternal knows nothing of past and future, is 
 not limited by Time, but is here and now, it 
 is wonderful what the effect may be of realiz- 
 ing " my ideal self, as viewed from the Eternal 
 point of view, is perfect; in Him it knows 
 nothing of jealousy, envy, uncharitableness, of 
 irritability or anger, of suffering or pain, or 
 disease, but shares in all respects in His per- 
 fection." Such thoughts may act doubly, as 
 suggestions of the best kind, as well as inducing 
 the tendency to become like that which we 
 look upon. Undoubtedly Christian Science has 
 
 1 Heb. xii. 2. 2 1 John iii. 2. 
 
96 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 been instrumental in helping Christians to 
 make a more vitalizing use of its great truths, 
 and to realize more vividly by this form of 
 meditation such statements as that we are 
 "children of God," "joint heirs with Christ," 1 
 and that, as such, we have a very living share 
 in Reality itself, in the Divine. Christian 
 Science can furnish no more powerful or beauti- 
 ful or true suggestions than such as these. We 
 are far from saying that Christians have not 
 in all ages practised meditation of the finest 
 sort ; but ordinary people have now had this 
 sort of realizing prayer more brought home to 
 them by Christian Science and by those who 
 pursue what they call the " Higher Thought." 
 
 Anything that can help us to have a vivid 
 realization of the things of the Spirit helps to 
 call out faith, the right soul-response to them. 
 Some orthodox Christians have found in a 
 somewhat similar way that they can make 
 this leap of faith by the habit of giving thanks 
 at the end of a petition as if it were already 
 granted, thus realizing that God's gifts are 
 independent of time and are already present. 
 They need but to be called out. 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 16, 17. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 97 
 
 Mrs. Eddy speaks of her methods as scientific. 
 Truly all these things are more scientific than 
 at first sight they appear. And in this con- 
 nection we will quote again from the article 
 by Principal Mellone already referred to. " The 
 universe is so constituted," he says, " that if 
 we learn and obey its laws, we receive its 
 treasures. Our natural and scientific know- 
 ledge suggests of itself that there are resources 
 around us which, if we could lay hold on 
 them, would enable us to achieve what is as 
 yet beyond our dreams. Science assumes that 
 the latent resources are no more than physical 
 energy. Our interpretation implies that they 
 are not only physical, but also mental, moral, 
 and spiritual. If Nature says to the discoverer 
 and the inventor, ' Obey me, learn of me, have 
 perfect confidence in me/ much more are the 
 unrealized treasures of the mental, the moral, 
 the spiritual world offered to us on like terms. 
 There are resources available to build up the 
 character, the moral health, the spiritual hap- 
 piness of all who seek their co-operation by 
 fulfilling the conditions through which alone 
 their virtue is obtained " — and we should add 
 to " moral health," physical as well. 
 
 (2,037) 7 
 
98 CHEISTIANITY 
 
 " Prayer for spiritual good for ourselves," 
 continues the article, " if it is genuine, must 
 mean the identification of self with an ideal 
 desired ; for it becomes an act of will. It is 
 impossible to deny that such petitions have a 
 spiritual effect." 
 
 This assertion that prayer is an act of will 
 is interesting, since it is evident that in the 
 kind of meditation we have laid stress on here 
 it is not mere passive meditation, not a mere 
 " emptying of the mind," a thing some mystics 
 enforce as necessary, but is a truly active state 
 of soul. No doubt the more passive, what we 
 might call rather a listening form of medita- 
 tion has also great results, especially for those 
 in a state of spiritual advance, whose wills are 
 already disciplined in the right direction. 
 
 One thing is very important in any kind of 
 Mind-healing, and that is not to watch ner- 
 vously for signs of the results. There should 
 be no incessant examination to see if there is 
 improvement. This would be concentrating 
 our attention upon ourselves, which is above 
 all things hurtful to our health, both spiritual 
 and physical. Self-centredness is fatal. After 
 treatment in any of these forms of healing the 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 99 
 
 whole subject should be left, and something 
 entirely different attended to and thought 
 about where this is practicable. 
 
 The prevention of self-centredness is, how- 
 ever, only one reason why examination of 
 results should be avoided. A profound psycho- 
 logist, 1 who knew much of the sub-consciousness 
 long before it was studied by Myers and others, 
 arrived, after much experience, at the con- 
 clusion that the activity of the subliminal self 
 should be left to itself and as little interfered 
 with as possible. Attention consciously given 
 hinders its working. She used to say that 
 one must consciously start the line of thought 
 or the suggestion one wished the sub-conscious 
 to work upon, then leave it, and occupy one's 
 «elf with something else — with any interest one 
 might happen to have in hand. Most especially 
 was it well, she taught, to start the suggestion 
 at night just before going to sleep. Many 
 psychologists teach this now. And in practice 
 the usefulness of this has long been known, if 
 not in theory, as is evidenced by the common 
 phrase " to sleep upon a thing " that bewilders 
 1 The late Mrs. Boole, widow of the logician of that name. 
 This psychological teaching is scattered throughout her too- 
 little-known works. 
 
100 CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 or puzzles us, and many there are who bear 
 witness to having awakened in the morning 
 with the difficulty cleared. It is no mere figure 
 of speech "to sleep upon a thing," as many 
 have supposed, for the sub-conscious mind un- 
 questionably works without our being aware 
 of it both when we are awake or asleep, but 
 much more in the latter state because not in- 
 terfered with by conscious attention. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 INTERCESSION. 
 
 In the last few pages we have been speaking 
 mainly of self-suggestion, and of the develop- 
 ment of our own individual spiritual nature, 
 but we must now consider our efforts for other 
 people. It is easy to understand, as far as the 
 subject is to be really understood at all, how 
 suggestion can work upon others ; perhaps to 
 influence others by it is even more easy than 
 self-suggestion. But in the matter of prayer 
 for others, and of meditation for others, it is 
 not so easy to understand how it may act. 
 And this brings us to the problem of Inter- 
 cession. Meditating upon and bringing one's 
 own higher self into evidence may be one 
 thing, but can we thus have any effect upon 
 others ? Many ask this question. 
 
 Here, again, we shall find the principle that 
 
102 , . . ..CHRISTIANITY 
 
 " like j3aljs o,ut like ", comes in, and also the fact 
 of the solidarity of human nature. We are all 
 parts of a whole, we all share in the life which 
 we derive from the supreme Source of Life, and 
 thus we are all in touch, a very living touch, 
 with each other. It is, of course, a truism that 
 we can influence each other for good or evil. 
 Spiritually we are in a vital relation, and it 
 is through this that we can most help each 
 other, and far more efficaciously than we can do 
 through merely physical means. No one doubts 
 that we can help each other in outward and 
 material ways, and yet there are many who 
 think that here our power of giving aid to 
 others stops short, although, indeed, it would 
 be an anomaly if we could not help each other 
 in every aspect of our being, as well as in the 
 merely material aspect. We will again quote 
 from the article in the Hibbert Jouvaal, already 
 cited more than once, for it states some of these 
 things so succinctly. " If God is the Soul of 
 souls, aspiration to God is to a centre where 
 the issues of all lives meet. Founded on this 
 faith, prayer as intercession is the endeavour, 
 by means of our communion with God, to 
 benefit another." 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 103 
 
 Being thus in a living relation, realizing in 
 thought the ideal personality that lies, perhaps, 
 quite hidden and dormant underneath the im- 
 perfections of some one in whom we are in- 
 terested, tends to call out the ideal in that 
 other, just as meditating upon our own perfec- 
 tion as regarded in its eternal aspect — as seen 
 in Christ, as we should prefer to put it — tends 
 to bring the attributes of our own perfection 
 into manifestation, to the more or less anni- 
 hilation of our imperfections. Like calls out 
 like. To persist steadily in trying in thought 
 to dwell upon the best in another and not upon 
 his worst, those who have tried it can testify 
 has the most astonishing effects. It need 
 hardly surprise us. We know how "a soft 
 answer turneth away wrath," and how anger 
 brings out anger. We call out of a person that 
 which corresponds with our own frame of mind, 
 although it is strange how little heed the best 
 of us pay to this most evident fact. This does 
 not mean an unintelligent blindness to the 
 faults of others. We must recognize the faults 
 if we are to think them away, as it were ; but 
 it means seeing through them to the ideal 
 which they are hiding. We have to "believe 
 
104 CHKISTIANITY 
 
 all things," to " hope all things," to " think no 
 evil * in regard to another. Thus do we tend 
 to call out the best. Christian Science, in such 
 treatment, teaches that we should utterly deny 
 sin or sickness in another. This is going far, 
 and yet when we realize that there are actually 
 present in another, although lying dormant, all 
 the perfections which should be manifest in 
 him, it amounts to much the same thing, but 
 calls out the good without doing violence to 
 our sense of truth. We regard the imperfec- 
 tions as there, but believe them to be destruc- 
 tible by being left no room for when the better 
 qualities are called out. 
 
 However, whilst intercession for others is not 
 only a legitimate thing, but also a most desir- 
 able one, great care has to be taken not to 
 impress our own individuality upon another, 
 not to invade his own personality, which is 
 sacred to him, nor to try to enforce upon him 
 what we may think right. We want him to 
 realize his ideal self, his perfection as regarded 
 in the light of the eternal, but we must not 
 attempt to prescribe for him exactly what that 
 may be. We must not enforce our own notion 
 of right upon him. It is what is right for him 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 105 
 
 we want to call into manifestation. We must 
 leave it to the all-wise God to know what his 
 individual perfections are, and to develop the 
 characteristics which should be the outcome of 
 his particular temperament. We must not will 
 him to do this or that, or even to be this or 
 that. He has his own type of character, and 
 the duties to perform and the virtues to develop 
 which are consonant with that. All we have 
 any right to do is to help call out all that is 
 perfect within him without attempting to 
 enforce our own, perhaps, mistaken notion 
 about it. Mrs. Eddy, although in so much 
 unwise, was truly wise in this matter, and 
 always urged there must be no enforcing of 
 oneself upon another person, and, above all, 
 carefulness not to convey one's own imperfec- 
 tions to another. She recommended a think- 
 ing of one's own self away, if one may so put 
 it, a sort of emptying of one's self, before en- 
 deavouring to act on another, whether for his 
 health or for any other purpose. A newly- 
 converted Christian Scientist once asked another, 
 " As my maid wants to leave me, and her loss 
 will be to me so great, shall I affirm that she 
 stay with me, and deny that she shall leave ? " 
 
106 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 " No, certainly not," was the answer. " How 
 do you know that it is best for her to remain 
 with you, or best even for yourself ? You 
 must affirm or pray that the right thing may 
 happen, whatever that may be, for both of 
 you." 
 
 In this connection, it must be mentioned that 
 it cannot be denied that Christian Science, in 
 spite of its teaching relative to the non-reality 
 of material things, develops a tendency to 
 dwell very much upon outward and physical 
 prosperity, and this would be likely where the 
 method in use is so largely little more than 
 suggestion, and where there is not necessarily 
 any reference to spiritual ideas. Far be it 
 from us to say that this is at all general, 
 but some of their literature decidedly conveys 
 this impression, where wealth and pleasant 
 outward things are sometimes much dwelt 
 upon. In Christianity the constant reference 
 to a Divine personality necessarily lifts one 
 on to a higher plane, where spirituality and 
 the Divine perfection of God are kept con- 
 stantly, in the very nature of the case, in 
 sight. 
 
 There has always been an accusation made 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 107 
 
 against Christian Science that it lays sometimes 
 almost exclusive stress upon bodily health 
 rather than upon spiritual, and with some 
 truth, though it would be unfair to make this 
 accusation too general. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SPIRITUAL HEALTH AND BODILY HEALTH. 
 
 We have spoken little in any direct manner of 
 Sacramental-healing, especially in regard to the 
 Sacrament of Holy Communion, on the ground 
 that all who are accustomed to it use it experi- 
 mentally far better than we can describe it 
 here. But its use, along with other spiritual 
 means of healing, gives rise to a question not 
 unfrequently asked, which is, How is it that so 
 many deeply spiritual persons, and especially 
 those who make a frequent use of Holy Com- 
 munion, are so often invalids, or, at any rate, so 
 much subject to many little bodily ills which, 
 whilst not incapacitating them, cause so much 
 inconvenience and discomfort, whilst at the 
 same time we see persons who manifest little 
 spiritual development in the enjoyment of good 
 health ? 
 
 1C8 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 109 
 
 This question involves a somewhat compli- 
 cated answer, since there are probably several 
 causes which contribute to the fact. In past 
 times the answer has generally laid stress on 
 the sometimes very beneficial results that spring 
 from sickness and suffering. Nor can this reply 
 be altogether set aside, although it fails now 
 to give us anything approaching satisfaction. 
 There is, of course, some truth in it, since un- 
 doubtedly many thoughtless individuals have 
 become serious, have awakened to the higher 
 aims of life, and in some cases developed a 
 highly spiritual character when laid aside by 
 illness from the ordinary pursuits so attractive 
 in the world. But, on the other hand, it is 
 equally impossible to deny that countless persons 
 become altogether soured and embittered under 
 prolonged suffering. And there is no case re- 
 corded of Our Lord's refusing to heal on the 
 ground that disease was good for any person 
 brought under His notice, nor any word in His 
 teaching that implies that, unless one include 
 sickness as implied in " taking up our cross." 
 It is true that in the persecutions He warned 
 His followers that they might have to bear, 
 very severe bodily suffering was included ; never- 
 
110 CHKISTIANITY 
 
 theless, to judge from His constant habit of 
 healing any case of sickness that was brought 
 to Him, it is clear that He looked upon disease 
 as abnormal, and as an undesirable aberration 
 from the normal. And we have until lately 
 certainly very much overdone our resignation 
 to illness on the ground that it does us 
 good. The better way of looking upon it in 
 this connection would be to grant it as un- 
 doubtedly an evil, but that, as in the case of 
 other evils and misfortunes, good can be 
 brought out of it. Having befallen us, God 
 can redeem it and bring good out of it, as it 
 were, rather than leave it to work itself out 
 as unarrested evil. 
 
 Therefore, on the whole, we cannot rest con- 
 tented with this answer to our question, that 
 disease is appointed for us by God for our 
 good. 
 
 A more satisfactory answer, at least up to a 
 certain point, is that the more highly devel- 
 oped any being, the more refined and the more 
 complex his constitution, the more easily is he 
 put out of gear. We know this is so in the 
 case of machinery ; how much more, then, in the 
 case of beings pulsating with life. This, there- 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. Ill 
 
 fore, may partly account for ill-health in those 
 of a high spiritual development. 
 
 But probably the bodily evils so often en- 
 dured by such are still more due to their in- 
 difference to their bodily condition, and to the 
 fact that, whilst habitually and diligently draw- 
 ing upon the Source of Life for their higher 
 needs, they entirely neglect to do so for their 
 physical needs, even such as are willing to make 
 much use of the skill of the ordinary physician. 
 But since we believe that "bodily health is 
 ultimately the outcome and the expression of 
 spiritual health," 1 or as already mentioned in a 
 former chapter, since spirit lies at the basis of 
 the entire universe and the power of God should 
 therefore be able to penetrate our entire being, 
 physical as well as mental and spiritual, how 
 is it that, when so diligently seeking to draw 
 upon God for the spiritual life, and receiving 
 it, it fails to flow into the bodily expression of 
 ourselves ? In drawing upon Life surely it 
 should permeate every part of us. The fact is 
 that, in neglecting to include our physical self 
 when in any way or by any process we 
 
 1 Gfuild of Health Quarterly for Michaelmas, 1918. Article 
 on "The Place of the Sacraments in Spiritual Healing." 
 
112 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 endeavour to obtain aid for our spiritual life, 
 we create a barrier — an invisible one, it is true, 
 but none the less a barrier — which hinders the 
 flow of Divine life within us. We leave our 
 body in thought outside altogether — we leave it 
 to go its own way, as it were ; it does not make 
 part of our " intention," or has not done so with 
 most in any marked manner until lately. In 
 consequence, this region of ourselves remain? 
 more or less impervious to the inflowing vital 
 influences. 
 
 Until recent years it has been supposed by 
 ordinary persons that thought was too ethereal 
 to be able to present a barrier to anything. 
 But we have now learnt that "thoughts are 
 things," and that this has been realized by 
 people in general we certainly owe in large 
 measure to Christian Science. This went to 
 lengths even absurd in teaching that physical 
 things have no reality and are not things at 
 all ; but its contrary teaching, that thoughts 
 have reality and are things, is quite invalu- 
 able. It has, at least, taught us to realize it 
 in a way we did not before, and the unspeak- 
 able importance of our thoughts in their in- 
 fluence upon our life both moral and physical. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 113 
 
 The moral influence, it is true, has been long 
 realized, but its physical very little until lately. 
 A thought can make a barrier as impenetrable 
 as any solid wall can do ; witness the effect of a 
 " fixed idea," which, if it possess a person, can 
 act as a barrier which may make him absolutely 
 impervious to all reason, and even to the evi- 
 dence of outward facts. 
 
 Thus, it follows that if we allow ourselves to 
 believe that our bodies are not of sufficient 
 dignity or importance to be brought under the 
 influence of the flow of spiritual life, that 
 thought becomes a block through which these 
 influences cannot easily penetrate, and so in 
 their influence they stop short, to put it rather 
 crudely, as soon as that barrier is reached. 
 The realization of this and the including of our 
 body as being in need of fresh supplies of 
 vitality as well as our spirit, will probably in 
 time work quite a revolution in general health. 
 
 (2,037) 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 We have found one very strong point of agree- 
 ment between Christianity and Christian Science 
 — namely, that which lies at the foundation of 
 both, the belief in God as the Supreme Unity, 
 in the " Allness of God," as Mrs. Eddy expresses 
 it. This has always been taught by Christianity 
 and by all its different Churches and sects. 
 The saints have always sought for this unity, 
 and for union with God. It is useful to have 
 this great foundation truth emphatically re- 
 stated from time to time, since we have only 
 too great a tendency to forget it, and to act 
 as if there were two quite separate worlds, a 
 physical one and a spiritual. But the unity 
 as taught by Christianity is very different in 
 its conception from that taught by Christian 
 Science. The latter arrives at the realization of 
 it in thought and belief by throwing away all 
 
 114 
 
CHEISTIANITY AND CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 115 
 
 of what we call the manifold, or, as some put 
 it, the " maniness " presented to us by the 
 universe. It is difficult, as already stated in 
 a previous chapter, to combine in thought the 
 idea of Maniness with that of Oneness, to see 
 in variety an underlying or all-embracing 
 unity. Yet when we speak of union, what 
 do we mean ? Do we mean a Oneness bereft 
 of all variety, a universe in which all is One 
 because there is nothing to unite ? This would 
 be no unity at all — a sameness which would be 
 equivalent to nothingness — an empty unity, if 
 we can use the word where there are no dif- 
 ferences to unite. How impoverishing is thi? 
 thought ! How profound its contrast with the 
 Oneness of Christian teaching, a Oneness which 
 embraces within itself every possible variety, 
 all the varied richness of our infinitely diver- 
 sified world, of all that may be contained in a 
 universe vaster to infinity than anything we 
 can comprehend or conceive, a unity in which 
 every particle is related to every other particle, 
 and yet without swallowing up the individuality 
 of each, since each one has its own little dif- 
 ference, and yet without loss of its vital relation 
 with all. The Oneness of Christianity is a God 
 
116 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 who manifests Himself in every possible variety, 
 and expresses Himself in a universe so rich in 
 diversity that in countless ages it would be 
 impossible to exhaust its riches or its infinitely 
 varied revelations of the Eternal and All- 
 embracing God. Viewed thus, the universe 
 shows itself as one vast poem in the mind of 
 God, revealing Him in every minutest change, 
 whose beauty, as evidenced in Nature, in His 
 Immanence, is intoxicating, whilst what it faintly 
 suggests of what He must be in His Tran- 
 scendence is beyond all power of thought or 
 imagination. What a contrast with the teaching 
 that all the universe is nothing, and that the 
 world is altogether outside of and without God ! 
 
 To apprehend some of the main points of 
 difference in doctrine and theory between Chris- 
 tian Science and Christianity, it may be help- 
 ful to place them in parallel columns, 1 although 
 this can be nothing more than a somewhat 
 crude comparison. Of the difference in the 
 idea of Oneness we have already spoken, so 
 will not mention it again. 
 
 1 This contrast is taken from my pamphlet, * ' Christianity 
 and Christian Science," published by the S.P.C.K. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 117 
 
 Christian Science. 
 
 Denies the existence of 
 Matter ; states expressly that 
 there is nothing in common 
 between Matter and Spirit. 
 Matter is an illusion we 
 have created for ourselves. 
 
 Therefore the outer world 
 has no reality, is only a re- 
 sult of Man's false thinking. 
 If we could quite disbelieve 
 in its existence, it would dis- 
 appear. Mrs. Eddy denies 
 that God has anything to do 
 with it. Hence the outer 
 world is of man's creation, 
 and is left destitute of God. 
 He is altogether transcend- 
 ent to it. 
 
 Consequently, Nature has 
 nothing to tell us about 
 God. 
 
 Our bodies likewise are 
 denied existence, and, like 
 the outer world, are a delu- 
 sion arising from our false 
 belief. God neither created 
 them nor has any part in 
 them. 
 
 Christianity. 
 
 Matter is a manifestation 
 of Spirit, therefore shares in 
 its reality, but is wholly 
 subordinate to it. 
 
 The world was created by 
 God, and He is immanent in 
 it as well as transcendent 
 to it. 
 
 Nature speaks to us of 
 God. He is in it, and not a 
 sparrow falls to the ground 
 without His knowledge. 
 "Consider the lilies;" "the 
 Heavens declare the glory 
 of God, and the firmament 
 sheweth His handy work." 
 
 The body is a manifesta- 
 tion of the spirit of each 
 individual, which owes its 
 origin to God. The body 
 has been especially hallowed 
 since Christ " took our flesh 
 upon Him." It is the 
 " temple of the Holy Ghost," 
 
118 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Evil, also, in all its mani- 
 festations, is non-existent, a 
 result of false belief. Its 
 peculiar development called 
 Sin is equally the result of 
 false belief. Deny it, and it 
 will cease to exist. There is 
 no occasion for forgiveness. 
 
 Disease is also a delusion, 
 a result again of false belief. 
 Disbelieve in it, deny it, and 
 affirm health, and all ailments 
 will disappear. 
 
 All kinds of suffering, 
 whether entailed by poverty, 
 misfortune, ill-health, or by 
 anything else, are unreal, 
 and useless even if granted 
 to be real. They ought, 
 under no circumstances, to 
 be found in the experience 
 of any one ; nor should any 
 sympathy be shown in re- 
 gard to them, since they are 
 not real. 
 
 to be treated with reverence, 
 not ignored as non-existent. 
 
 Evil is so terrible a reality, 
 especially sin, that nothing 
 less than the Incarnation of 
 the Son of God in human 
 flesh could conquer it. 
 Through the Cross of Jesus 
 Christ and His Resurrection 
 sin can be pardoned and the 
 sinner redeemed, made a 
 new man. God can trans- 
 mute evil and bring good 
 out of it — a process con- 
 tinually going on. 
 
 Christ healed by calling 
 out the energy of God and 
 imparting fresh vitality. 
 
 Christ wherever He went 
 mitigated sorrow and pain, 
 and showed profound sym- 
 pathy with the sufferer ; but 
 He neither refused suffering 
 for Himself, nor invariably 
 shielded His disciples from 
 it : " Ye shall indeed drink 
 of My cup." Suffering hav- 
 ing come into the world, 
 God makes use of it to bring 
 good out of evil, redeems by 
 means of it, of which the 
 supreme instance is the 
 Crucifixion of Our Lord. 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 119 
 
 There are many more points on which we 
 might draw out the contrast, but these are the 
 most essential as far as doctrine is concerned, 
 and enough to show us how thin is the theory 
 of Christian Science as compared with that of 
 Christianity ; how incomparably more profound 
 in the teaching of the latter is its treatment 
 of Spiritual things, of mankind, and of the 
 universe. 
 
 Nevertheless, we may frankly confess that 
 we owe to the former the revival of the belief 
 in the possibility of healing by spiritual or 
 mental means. It is no new discovery, as we 
 know. It was practised in the early days of 
 the Church, and although it fell almost entirely 
 into disuse after the first few centuries, yet it 
 never entirely died out. It lingered on in the 
 Faith-healing of the Protestants, and in the 
 reverence for relics and of certain shrines which, 
 combined with prayer, acted as a powerful 
 force in suggestion of the Roman Catholics, 
 not to speak of the healing power of some of 
 the saints, and of persons of very highly 
 spiritual development like the Cur6 d'Ars. 
 And, indeed, amongst such there had been a 
 recrudescence of healing power before the 
 
120 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 days of Christian Science. Still, the revival 
 of this sort of healing on a large scale, and 
 its wide acceptance amongst people generally, 
 we undoubtedly owe to Dr. Quimby and Mrs. 
 Eddy. 
 
 Must this most desirable kind of healing be 
 limited to Christian Science, and to the various 
 schools of thought which have branched off 
 from it ? Many have thought it was so limited, 
 and countless persons have become Christian 
 Scientists in order to avail themselves, if pos- 
 sible, of this Mind-healing. But this is entirely 
 unnecessary, and Christians of all denomi- 
 nations are now realizing, and have done so 
 for some time in an increasing degree, that 
 Spiritual-healing is a power of which Chris- 
 tianity can avail itself to the full, and, as we 
 believe, far more effectually than Christian 
 Science, since in union with Christ (who is to 
 us far more than an Exemplar), in abiding in 
 Him, we are able to lay hold on a spiritual, a 
 living dynamic energy which is truly the Way 
 and the Life. 
 
 And in the use of what we regard as a 
 secondary means, that of suggestion, Christi- 
 anity is not one whit behind in the forcible 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 121 
 
 ideas it can handle for suggestions, these having 
 again the advantage, since they are of a kind 
 that works in harmony with the reasonable 
 part of our nature, instead of doing violence to 
 it and acting in direct opposition, whilst Chris- 
 tians acknowledge as fully as Christian Science 
 does that reason alone cannot enable us to 
 realize spiritual truths. 
 
 There are now many Christian Guilds and 
 Societies formed for the study and practice of 
 Mind-healing in all its forms, in the hope that 
 this revived power, purged of the irrational 
 teaching with which it has been mixed up by 
 the founders of Christian Science, and brought 
 into line with the acknowledged teaching of 
 Christianity, may be utilized with all the sanity 
 and balance necessary for making it a lasting 
 accompaniment of the spiritual life. 
 
 We have to remember that the subject, in 
 many of its aspects, especially in that of sug- 
 gestion, is comparatively new, and, as yet, the 
 results are not as marked as one might hope 
 for. Even where this sort of healing is accom- 
 panied by such powerful adjuncts, both spiritual 
 and mental, as are to be experienced at Lourdes, 
 the number of cures are allowed to be but a 
 
122 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 small percentage. It is impossible to say what 
 may be the proportion of lasting cures rela- 
 tively to the cases attempted by Christian 
 Scientists, or by such as claim to have a special 
 gift for healing, or by any of our Guilds, but 
 undoubtedly there are many disappointments. 
 This need not occasion discouragement when 
 we consider that as yet we are in general very 
 materialistic in our thought, and that a bad 
 habit of thinking acts as a direct barrier in 
 this sort of thing as in everything else. Many 
 mistakes, too, are likely to be made at first. 
 The handling of what we call the "sub-con- 
 scious" is attended with many dangers, some 
 of which we scarcely fully realize; and, as we 
 have already stated, it is easy to mistake the 
 merely psychic for the spiritual, and to follow 
 paths that may be both misleading and unsafe, 
 as well as disappointing. But as mankind be- 
 comes, as we hope, more highly developed 
 spiritually, there is good reason to anticipate 
 that as there may be incalculable moral growth, 
 so there may be a revolution in our outward 
 and physical well-being as well; and that 
 mankind will manifest himself as a sane and 
 harmonious whole, where health prevails 
 
AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 123 
 
 throughout his entire being, spiritually, morally, 
 and physically, and when it shall be no mis- 
 nomer to describe him as " made in the image 
 of God." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT 
 THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS. 
 
" We have nothing but the highest praise for these little books, and no 
 one who examines them will have anything else." — Westminster Gazette. 
 
 THE PEOPLE'S BOOKS 
 
 The Foundations of Science . . . ByW. CD. Whetham,M.A., F.R.S. 
 Embryology— The Beginnings of Life . By Prof. Gerald Leighton, M.D. 
 Biology By Prof. W. D. Henderson, M.A. 
 
 Zoology: The Study of Animal Life .{ B VjlSL R W * MacBride - M A ' 
 
 By M. C Stopes,D.Sc.,Ph.D.,F.L.S. 
 By W. E. Carnegie-Dickson, M.D. 
 By Prof. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S. 
 By E. S. Goodrich, M.A., F.R.S. 
 
 By J. A. S. Watson, B.Sc. 
 
 By Prof. E. C. C. Baly, F.R.S. 
 
 By Prof. J. B. Cohen, B.Sc, F.R.S. 
 
 By Norman R. Campbell, M.A. 
 
 By P. Phillips, D.Sc 
 
 By E. W. Maunder, F.R.A.S. 
 
 By P. Phillips, D.Sc 
 
 By R. G. K. Lempfert, M.A. 
 
 By A. M. Hutchison, M.D. 
 
 By a University Woman. 
 
 Botany: The Modern Study of Plants. 
 
 Bacteriology 
 
 The Structure of the Earth 
 
 Evolution .... 
 
 Heredity . • • 
 
 Inorganic Chemistry . 
 
 Organic Chemistry . 
 
 The Principles of Electricity 
 
 Radiation .... 
 
 The Science of the Stars 
 
 The Science of Light . 
 
 Weather-Science 
 
 Hypnotism and Self-Education 
 
 The Baby: A Mother's Book by a Mother 
 
 Youth and Sex— Dangers and Safe- \ By Mary Schaflieb, M.D., M.S., 8c 
 
 guards for Boys and Girls . . . / F. Arthur Sibly, M.A., LL.D. 
 Marriage and Motherhood— A Wife's 1 By H. S. Davidson, M.B., 
 
 Handbook / F.R.C.S.E. 
 
 Lord Kelvin By A. Russell, D.Sc, M.I. E.E. 
 
 Huxley By Prof. G. Leighton, M.D. 
 
 Sir William Huggins and Spectro-1 By E. W. Maunder, F.R.A.S., of the 
 
 scopic Astronomy / Royal Observatory, Greenwich. 
 
 Emanuel Swedenborg . . . . By L. B. De Beaumont, D.Sc 
 
 H C n hinge er f OIl . : ^ f hU °. SOph . y of }ByH.WildonCarr. 
 
 Psychology' .'!!'.! '. By H. J. Watt, M. A., Ph.D., D.Phil. 
 
 Ethics By Canon Rashdall, D.Litt., F.B.A. 
 
 Kant's Philosophy By A. D. Lindsay, M.A., Oxford. 
 
 —j *n.-!-ti... c^ By M c sturge. 
 
 By H. B. Coxon. 
 By Wilfrid Ward. 
 
 Christianity and Christian Science 
 Roman Catholicism . 
 The Oxford Movement 
 
 The Bible and Criticism 
 
 The Growth of Freedom 
 Bismarck and Origin of German Empire 
 Oliver Cromwell • • . . . 
 Mary Queen of Scots .... 
 Cecil Rhodes, 1853-1902 
 
 Soldic 
 
 /By W. H. Bennett, M.A., D.D., 
 * \ Litt.D.,&W. F. Adeney, M.A.,D.D. 
 By H. W. Nevinson, 
 By Prof. F. M. Powicke. 
 By Hilda Johnstone, M.A. 
 By E. O'Neill, M.A. 
 By Ian D. Colvin. 
 
 ^ror 365 ^ : S . .' St . ateSmaD '. Em ;}By Hilary Hardinge. 
 England in the Making . 
 
 /By Prof. F.J. C. Hearnshaw, M.A., 
 * \ LL.D. 
 
 43. England in the Middle Ages . . . 
 
 44. The Monarchy and the People . . 
 
 45. The Industrial Revolution . . , 
 
 46. Empire and Democracy . • . • 
 
 47. Women's Suffrage • • • 
 
 48. A History of Greece • • • . 
 
 51. Shakespeare 
 
 52. Wordsworth . « . . . . 
 
 53. Pure Gold— A Choice of Lyrics & Sonnets 
 
 54. Francis Bacon ...... 
 
 55. The Brontes By Flora Masson. 
 
 56. Carlyle . • . . . . . By L. Maclean Watt. " 
 £7. Dante • • • • « • • •ByA.G. Ferrers Howell, 
 
 By E. O'Neill, M.A. 
 
 By W. T. Waugh, M.A. 
 
 By Arthur Jones, M.A. 
 
 By G. S. Veitch, M.A., Litt.D. 
 
 By M. G. Fawcett, LL.D. 
 
 By E. Fearenside, B.A. 
 
 By Prof. C. Herford, Litt.D. 
 
 By Rosaline Masson. 
 
 By H. C. O'NeiW. 
 
 By Prof. A. R. Skemp, M.A. 
 
THE PEOPLE'S BOOKS— (ciw/w,. 
 
 58. Charles Dickens .... 
 
 60. A Dictionary of Synonyms . 
 
 61. Home Rule 
 
 62. Practical Astronomy 
 
 63. Aviation 
 
 64. Navigation 
 
 65. Pond Life 
 
 66. Dietetics 
 
 67. Aristotle 
 
 68. Friedrich Nietzsche 
 
 69. Eucken : Philosophy of Life . 
 
 70. Experimental Psychology of Beauty 
 
 71. The Problem of Truth . 
 
 72. Church of England .... 
 
 73. Anglo-Catholicism .... 
 
 74. Hopeand Mission of the FreeChurches 
 
 75. Judaism 
 
 76. Theosophy 
 
 78. Wellington and Waterloo 
 
 79. Mediaeval Socialism 
 
 80. Syndicalism 
 
 82. Co-operation 
 
 83. Insurance as a Means of Investment 
 85. A History of English Literature . 
 
 87. Charles Lamb 
 
 88. Goethe 
 
 92. Training of the Child: A Parents' 
 
 Manual 
 
 93. Tennyson 
 
 94. The Nature of Mathematics 
 
 95. Applications of Electricity for Non- 
 
 Technical Readers . . • 
 
 96. Gardening 
 
 97. Vegetable Gardening . . . 
 
 98. Atlas of the World . 
 ox. Luther and the Reformation 
 
 03. Turkey and the Eastern Question 
 
 04. Architecture (108 Illustrations) . 
 
 05. Trade Unions . 
 
 06. Everyday Law 
 
 07. Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 08. Shelley .... 
 British Birds . 
 Spiritualism 
 
 Kindergarten Teaching at Home 
 
 13. Schopenhauer . 
 
 14. The Stock Exchange . 
 
 15. Coleridge 
 
 16. The Crusades .... 
 
 17. Wild Flowers (209 Illustrations) 
 
 18. Principles of Logic . 
 
 19. Foundations of Religion 
 
 20. A History of Rome . 
 
 21. Land, Industry, and Taxation 
 
 22. Canada .... 
 
 23. Tolstoy 
 
 24. Greek Literature . 
 
 25. The Navy of To-day 
 
 28. A French Self-Tutor . 
 
 29. Germany .... 
 
 30. Treitschke . . • 
 
 31. The Hohenzollerns. . 
 
 32. Belgium ...» 
 133. The British Army , • 
 
 ny Kcac ja 
 By J. H. H 
 By Joseph ( 
 By W. A. F 
 
 By Sidney Dark. 
 
 By Austin K. Gray, B.A. 
 
 By L. G. Redmond Howard. 
 
 By H. Macpherson, Jr., F.R.A.S. 
 
 By S. F. Walker, K.N., M.I.E.E. 
 
 By William Hall, R.N., B.A. 
 
 By E. C Ash, M.R.A.C. 
 
 By Alex. Bryce, M.D., D.P.H. 
 
 By Prof. A. E. Taylor, M. A., F.B.A, 
 
 By M. A. Mugge. 
 
 By A. J. Jones, M.A., B.Sc, Ph.D. 
 
 By C. W. Valentine, B.A. 
 
 By H. Wildon Carr. 
 
 By Rev. Canon Masterman. 
 
 By A. E. Manning-Foster. 
 
 By Rev. Edward Shillito, M.A. 
 
 By Ephraim Levine, M.A. 
 
 By Annie Besant. 
 
 By Major G. W. Redway. 
 
 By Bede Jarrett, O.P., M.A. 
 
 " Harley, M.A. 
 •h Clayton. 
 
 I. Robertson, F.F.A. 
 ByA.Compton Rickett, M.A.XL.D. 
 By Flora Masson. 
 By Prof. C. H. Herford, Litt.D. 
 
 (• By G. Spiller. 
 
 By Aaron Watson. 
 
 By P. E. B. Jourdain, M.A. 
 
 |- By Alexander Ogilvie, B.Sc. 
 
 By A. Cecil Bartlett. 
 
 By J. S. Chisholm. 
 
 By J. Bartholomew, F.R.G.S. 
 
 By Leonard D. Agate, M.A. 
 
 By John Macdonald, M.A. 
 
 By Mrs. Arthur Bell. 
 
 By Joseph Clayton. 
 
 By J. J. Adams. 
 
 By Rosaline Masson. 
 
 By Sydney Waterlow, M.A. 
 
 By F. B. Kirkman, B.A. 
 
 By J. Arthur Hill. 
 f By Two Members of the National 
 { Froebel Union. 
 
 By Margrieta Beer, M.A. 
 
 By J. F. Wheeler. 
 
 By S. L. Bensusan. 
 
 By M. M. C. Calthrop. 
 
 By Macgregor Skene, B.Sc 
 
 By Stanley Williams, B.A. 
 
 By Stanley A. Cook, M.A. 
 
 ByA. F.Giles,M.A.(Edin.&Oxon.X 
 
 By Fredk. Verinder. 
 
 By Ford Fairford. 
 
 By L. Winstanley, M.A. 
 
 By H. J. W. Tillyard, M.A. 
 
 By Percival H islam. 
 
 By W. M. Conacher. 
 
 By W. T. Waugh, M.A. 
 
 By M. A. Mugge. 
 
 By A. D. Innes. 
 
 By A. W. Evans. 
 
 By Captain A. H. Atteridge. 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUB OK THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL PINE OP 25 CENTS 
 
 ™ fi L „ B oot SSES8ED F ° R FA "-"RE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOUR™ 
 
 oCerdue D T ° $, °° ° N ™ E 8EVENTH °™ 
 
 
 
 i^Z-~ 
 
 
 
 •v. 
 
 RErn i n 
 
 - flCC 2 6 'G3 -1 AM 
 
 ___jr20'64 
 
 - 
 
 H AY. 6 ' G 4 13 AM - 
 
 M/iy # 
 
 WO 
 
 iL0_ 
 
 ^CTUttMB) TO 
 
 MftY G 1 70 
 
 I0AN Q»AW**« 
 
 -MAf^e-^98?- 
 
 nfr , g yFQ 
 
 1— 
 
 -m 
 
 CIKV,W 
 
 20 w _ 
 
YA 04112 
 
 U.C BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 BOOaoiS? 1 ?! 
 
 
 401822 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY