Article May 18, 1899 Issue

Mortal Mind

Paul Washburn

New Church Independent and Monthly Review

The first thing that attracted my attention to Christian Science, was the beauty of a life that came under its sway The world is full of doctrine; whole libraries teem with it; whole communities overflow with it—of the positive as well as of the negative variety. First there is belief, faith some call it; and then doctrine, or theories. Well, the subject of my observation announced, that only those things were worth anything that you could live, and added, now.

Away back, in an anterior period of my earth-life, there had swept across the path within my sight, a sort of breeze, of theologic aroma that its devotees called sanctification, or Christian perfection; and this Christian Science struck me as a sort of physical perfection, or bodily sanctification. It didn't seem to be doing any harm: and as the doctors' bills, which had always been somewhat luxuriant in my expense account, had ceased to grow, why,—let well enough alone. Being an invalid myself, one of those insomnia drones who spend nights, for weeks, with sleepless eyes and then pretend to attend to business in daylight—it seemed safe to let in any sort of hallucination that would militate against the doctors' accounts. It was a case that doesn't need details. There was neuralgia, asthma, sick-headaches, nervous prostration in the family, together with indigestion, bad teeth, croup, occasional typhoid fever, and a catalogue of diseases and ills,—such as every well (or ill) regulated family is presumed to have,—only we had had lots of 'em, and so were pretty well ill-regulated. Ten times out of nine it is the woman that seizes on to Christian Science, and this case maintained the rule.

But, behold! new phases appeared—or did a scale fall from my eyes? The irritability of nervousness had passed away—which at best is but a negative state, and then began to appear a reign of peace. Ah! this was positive. When a man has tramped through the theologies, native and foreign, and through the non-theologies, from innocent old Tom Paine to Voltaire, common-sense Hume and Stuart Mill, even to decoctive Colonel Ingersoll; has been raised on such pabulum as Calvinism, triturated by Scotch shorter catechisms, and American D.D.'s, like the Dwights, Alexanders, and Hodges, and been remanded to Gehenna for reading Swedenborg—he is not easily alarmed. So, lying in my hammock in that climate which is the Italy of America, where the soft gulf breezes come to meet those which cross the Llano Estacado from the lower Rocky Mountains,—where, if on earth, climate should be a commodity because it is so fine,—spending whole nights stargazing and speculating, figuring out by logarithms how far back the race began and about the importation of the problem of evil, and calculating about when the golden age would begin—there came a demonstration: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The cultivation of insomnia was a most artistic performance. To nurse disease! It did look ridiculous. It seemed to me that my dog—my constant companion in these night wanderings—ought to laugh with me at the idea.

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