Editorial July 22, 1905 Issue

Fact and Folly

John B. Willis

Mortal sense is certainly a queer compound, and the disclosure of confused and contradictory ingredients would afford continued amusement if the sequence of the situation in human experience were not so saddeningly serious.

There lies before us an extended editorial criticism of Christian Science which is very much in evidence. The writer begins by scoring other critics in unmeasured terms for the nonsense and folly of their course, and then proceeds to indugle in precisely the same type of discreditable comment. He concedes that Christian Science is a great blessing to many, commends its teaching that we should live a quiet, regular life, abstain from luxury, preserve our temper, be kind and just to our neighbors and business associates, and remain invincibly cheerful. He then adds, "So far as Christian Science has made lives cleaner and better, an attack upon it as un-Christian, or unscientific, is worse than folly, Such Christianity is better than most church members practise; such science is quite as worthy as much that passes under the august name. ... Whatever scoffers may say, this faith would never have found adherents all over this country, and even in Europe, had it not been advertised by its loving friends. The true missonaries of Christian Science, the people who have built its costly churches, are those who, as they think, have been brought back from the brink of the grave after regular doctors have failed to relieve pain or have abandoned hope."

Having said all this, and having recognized that, as a body, Christian Scientists would be classed with the intelligent, respectable, and well-to-do, he proceeds to declare that the text-book of Christian Science which contains the teaching he has commended, and in the study of which many respectable people are finding what they regard as a great good, is "a prodigy of ignorance and illiteracy," a mystifying "jargon" which nevertheless "delights its readers;" that argument is quite thrown away upon its students, since "they attach no definite meaning to words and seem incapable of distinguishing between premise and conclusion!" In a word, a very large body of those who are characterized by intelligence,—the ability to conduct commercial affairs successfully, are nevertheless incapable of sane judgment, quite daft indeed, because, forsooth, they do not entertain the critic's view of things. The argument (?) briefly stated is this: Christian Scientists are thoughtful and sincere, but they do not endorse all my opinions, hence they are fools! The extent and continuance of the use of this argument by those who are pleased to criticise Christian Science is a distinctive feature of our times, and when we consider the contrast in general illumination of thought, it must be seen that such a show of wilful prejudice is more discreditable to those responsible for it, than was the sanguinary intolerance of which it is a relic, to the denizes of the Dark Ages.

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