Reply to Mr. Purrington

In the North American Review for March, is an article entitled, "Christian Science and its Legal Aspects." As its author forgives Bishop Berkeley for not having understood medicine, he will forgive the writer for not dealing with "legal aspects." There are, however, other points to be defended from the standpoint of experience only, which in this case do not include law. Mr. Purrington begins by accusing Christian Scientists of "charlatanism," but acknowledges that "mental stimulus exercises enormous influence over the body." He also says the "wisest physicians admit they have not attained the limits of psychical knowledge." Are Christian Scientists then more "charlatans" in treating the mind and leaving the body out of the question than physicians are when they treat the body and leave the mind out of the question? Physicians must study metaphysics if Scientists must study medicine. Mr. Purrington says Mrs. Eddy acknowledges that Christian Scientists often give medicine, but in the foot-notes he quotes her statement that in so doing they are "departing from her instruction." Judges of Christian Science must discriminate between the Science and the Scientists. She herself, says in "Miscellaneous Writings," p. 294, "A real Christian Scientist is a marvel, a miracle in the universe of mortal mind." No one knows this better than those who are making the bravest struggles along these lines. So it is that one is not a Christian Scientist when giving medicine.

Our critic says, "Science and Health is guilty of vagueness of expression, hopeless confusion of thought, vain boasting," etc. This is what most people think when first reading the book; more than this it seems a stupid repetition of the statement that Life, Truth, and Love will heal sin, sickness, and death; but after five years of study the sentences are full of meaning to the writer of this article, and the very paragraphs which seemed so much alike give new illuminations to thought. It is a greater difference than one would expect in trying to read Shakespeare at the age of five, and understanding him in the riper years of experience. Mr. Purrington's statement that "the more ignorant the disciple, the more flattered he is to esteem himself a thinker wiser than all who have gone before," is a clever criticism, in fact, the most clever criticism of his entire article. Most Scientists have suffered from this very conceit, and it is a difficult matter to meet this sense of self-importance after a pronounced case of healing, but it must be met, or the work of healing cannot go on, and the healer who is inflated with the success of to-day may have his wings clipped to-morrow, and be shown a new field of labor in working out his own, or another's, salvation.

Laying aside, however, the subject of self-importance, Christian Science does develop the power of thought. Not that the most ignorant in Christian Science are superior to the highest out of it by any means, and this is, of course, not the case; but there is not one person who has learned to remember that God is Infinite Intelligence, and man reflects that Intelligence, who has not done better thinking than he did before. While the Bible teaches this, Science and Health calls our attention to it in a way that awakens slumbering thought and convinces us that in mind only is man the "image and likeness of God." The knowledge of this fact achieves greater results in developing noble thinking than the lack of it ever has achieved.