Article August 10, 1899 Issue

Reply to Dr. Jenkins on "Remarkable Delusions"

Charles L. Van Fossen

Kansas City (Mo.) Journal

Believing that Dr. Jenkins desired to be just in his remarks of yesterday, as reported in the Kansas City Journal this morning on the above subject, and not in any way to make an erroneous statement, I feel it to be my duty to correct him, and the mind of the public reached by him, with this statement (granted that it is remarkable that some thousands of nineteenth-century Americans can reverently stand to hear a letter read from a healer, too feeble herself to be present, in which they learn that they constitute "an assembly of human consciousness, garlanded with glad faces"—whatever that may mean, etc.). Had Dr. Jenkins read the newspapers carefully he would not have said this, for he would have known that Mrs. Eddy, to whom he refers, was physically strong and healthy, and did travel from her home in Concord, N. H., to Boston, and attended the annual business meeting of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, held in Tremont Temple on Tuesday, June 6, and while there addressed an audience that not only occupied every seat in this large auditorium, but also every inch of standing room. I was in the Temple at that time and I desire to say to you that in Mrs. Eddy I saw as perfect a specimen of health, in every sense, as has ever been my pleasure to look upon.

As to her mental condition, if you will read her address in last Wednesday's papers, as sent out by the Associated Press, you will find you need have no fears about this matter. Now, as regards the newspaper description of the audience. The doctor infers that because this enterprising reporter uses a phrase, not euphonious to his ears, in relating his impressions of what he saw at this meeting, that the people advocating Christian Science and attending its meetings are of a class usually called queer. Assuming that this interpretation is correct, then, from the standpoint of one who has been out of civilization for a long time and had never heard of electricity and its application, we would class a convention of electrical engineers in the same category, as the results of the practice of Christian Science are just as readily seen as the results of electrical engineering.

Nine-tenths of the criticism against Christian Science is that directed against a single individual's application of his understanding of it, and not against the principle itself. And, inasmuch as no human being to-day has put into practise as much as he or she knows of this principle, it is not to be wondered at that the perfect has not been attained by the individual advocate.

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