The Discoverer of Christian Science has met and mastered much ignorant fault-finding directed against her personality or against her teachings. She has done this with a patient love and forbearance that have won the admiration not only of her students, but also of the unprejudiced public at large. Christian Scientists have learned from her not to retaliate in kind nor to make personal attacks. The logic of events is justifying their faith daily and hourly by its beneficent results in reforming the sinner, healing the sick, and comforting the sorrowing. The respect for the rights of others which they are taught, is based upon a clear perception of the Brotherhood of Man as a spiritual reality. They can wait, watch, and work in peace, knowing that the good they do is immortal and that God shows them the way to atone for their mistakes and failures.

In this brief article, therefore, I have no desire to enter into any controversy with persons. The critic may be moved by a variety of motives and influences. He may be honest, but unacquainted with actual facts. He may have no deeper purpose than to give expression to the gossip he hears. I do not consider myself competent to pass judgment upon the critic himself, but experience has shown me the falsity, perversity, and futility of much which passes for criticism of Christian Science, and I believe that the readers of The Independent will be glad of a brief analysis of the subject.

Let me state at once that I have yet to read a criticism of Christian Science which contained a correct or comprehensive statement of its teachings. It is my firm conviction that no one can really understand these teachings without being favorably impressed by them and wishing to put them to immediate application in practical, every-day affairs. Thus a very large number of earnest and intelligent people have already come to the conclusion that Mrs. Eddy's teachings are the very truth of Christianity, uttered to this age, in regard to the nature of God and man and the universe. A still larger proportion of the public are persuaded that her teachings are instince with glorious possibilities for mankind. Only a relatively small number of persons take antagonistic ground, and among this small number it will be found that few have ever even studied Mrs. Eddy's works, much less attempted to put her teachings into practice.

Christian Science offers that which every man is seeking: happiness, health, and a measure of holiness. It does not postpone the promise of the kingdom of heaven until after death. It opens the way, here and now, for the fulfilment of Christ's promises, in so far as the individual has sufficient spiritual understanding to rely upon these promises. Does any Christian desire more? Then why should the teaching and inculcation of a Science which shows man his real self and the real universe under omnipotent good arouse any opposition?

There is no denying the fact that since the appearance of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy, almost forty years ago, a gradual change in popular views on the subject of theology, medicine, and natural science has made itself felt.

Christian Science has roused the world from the lethargy of routine beliefs. It has been persistently emphasizing the Scriptural teaching that "God is Spirit" (John, 4:34. R. V.), and that the real man, made in His image and likeness, must, therefore, be spiritual and not material. Christian Science has been blotting out the awful spectacle of a revengeful god and bringing into relief St. John's grand statement that "God is love." These teachings are not based on sentimental grounds, but on logical, scientific deductions from the Scriptures, and are freeing receptive persons from the mental, moral, and physical diseases caused by the fear of an unnatural god as creator and controller of the universe. Christian Science practice in healing the sick has proved to the medical fraternity the necessity for paying greater attention to mental symptoms and for relying less upon drugs and manipulation. One of Mrs. Eddy's greatest services to mankind was to show the unscientific nature of mesmerism, or hypnotism as it is more commonly called to-day. Years ago she showed how this educated will power affected the sick, but warned the public against its use as detrimental in the long run alike to operator and subject. In establishing the true Christian system of metaphysical healing, it was necessary for her to expose the false human mode of suggestive therapeutics.

As in the realm of theology and medicine, so in that of natural science, Mrs. Eddy's teachings have pointed to a complete revolution of thought. Take, for instance, her very well-known teaching concerning the nature of matter. It is significant that within very recent times noted natural scientists like Lord Kelvin and Sir William Crookes have startled the public by their changed views on this very subject. As far as I can judge from the reports of their utterances published in the newspapers, their investigations have led them to resolve atoms into forces, thus bringing their conclusions ever closer to those of the psychologists who maintain that matter is merely a mental concept.

The bearing of these conclusions upon the subject of Christian Science is readily seen when we consider that they denote an approach, though still a timid one, to the position taken so many years ago by Mrs. Eddy. In Science and Health she writes:—

"Matter is nothing beyond an image in mortal mind" (p. 116).

"The world would collapse without Mind" (p. 209).

"The term Science, properly understood, refers only to the laws of God, and to His government of the universe, inclusive of man" (p. 128).

The theories which presuppose power in matter have been thus characterized by Mrs. Eddy:—

"They either presuppose the self-evolution and self-government of matter; or else they assume that matter is the product of Spirit. To seize the first horn of this dilemma, and consider matter as a power in and of itself. is to leave the Creator out of His own universe; while to grasp the other horn of the dilemma, and regard God as the Creator of matter, is not only to make Him responsible for all disasters, physical and moral, but to announce Him as their source, and so make Him guilty of maintaining perpetual misrule, in the form and under the name of natural law" (p. 119).

In view of the growing perception on the part of the psychologists and physiologists that thought alone is force, and that matter is a mere concept of the human mind, the writings of Mrs. Eddy become constantly more impressive to the general public. The trend of the more progressive thinkers lies clearly in the direction of Christian Science; nevertheless, the teachings of the latter are still so far in advance of general modern thought that for this reason they are more readily apprehended by those persons who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and are ready to make sacrifices in their search for the solution of the problem of being. Christian Science is also having a marked influence upon the position of woman. Without propaganda or pronunciamento, it has placed woman upon a footing of entire equality with man in the Christian Science denomination. The grand results it has accomplished in temperance reform alone would entitle it to a foremost position among the altruistic movements of to-day.

These are some of the services to mankind which Christian Science is performing. In spite of these services, however, futile criticism has been leveled against Mrs. Eddy's education, against her literary style, even against the price of the text-book she has written. Much of this criticism has been uttered from pulpits devoted to the good news of peace on earth, good will to men.

Every means Mrs. Eddy has instituted for the protection of Christian Science from perversion has aroused criticism from quarters in which there seems to be no desire that Christian Science should succeed.

A reasonable remuneration for Christian Science practitioners has been stigmatized as a sign of greed and avarice. At the same time those who have been the recipients of Christian Science benefits declare with justice that no amount of money could adequately pay for the blessings received. Criticism has played up and down the gamut of possible objections, but has proved self-contradictory. It has sometimes objected that Christian Science tries to ignore sin, but on other occasions it has been obliged to concede that this very Science has made men and women better, which, after all, is the only real test of the destruction of sin. Christian has found fault with Christian Scientists for considering it their Christian duty to heal the sick as well as reform the sinner, and yet no criticism has ventured to deny that Jesus, his disciples and apostles, and the early Christians took this same view. As Mrs. Eddy has well said (Science and Health, p. 142):—

"Anciently the followers of Christ, or Truth, measured Christianity by its power over sickness, sin, and death; but modern religions generally omit all but one of these powers,—the power over sin. We must seek the undivided garment, the whole Christ, as our first proof of Christianity, for Christ, Truth, alone can furnish us with absolute evidence."

Christian Scientists have promised, in their church tenets, "to be meek, merciful, just, and pure" (Science and Health, p. 497). They claim nothing for themselves which they are not glad to concede to others. It is by the elimination of sin and sickness that they are proving their right to teach and practise Christian Science.

W. D. McCrackan.
In The Independent.

Mr. McCrackan is a graduate of Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., of eighteen years' standing. He has also graduated from the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, and he is a member of the Authors' Club of this city, the American Historical Association, and the American Social Science Association. Aside from numerous magazine articles he has published in book from "The Rise of the Swiss Republic" and "Romance and Teutonic Switzerland." As a Christian Scientist he is chiefly known to the outside world as the "Christian Science Publication Committee for the State of New York," whose duty it is to act as officially authorized spokesman for the denomination in the press of this State.

Editor of The Independent.