Article November 2, 1907 Issue

With regard to a statement some days ago in the...

Frederick Dixon—London, England.

Daily Telegraph

With regard to a statement some days ago in the Daily Telegraph on the subject of the healing of wounds and setting of bones in Christian Science, I shall be grateful if you will permit me to state the true position of Christian Science on the subject.

This position is made perfectly clear in the text-book of Christian Science, Science and Health, by Mrs. Eddy. "If," she writes, "you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed" (p. 385). The simple fact is that in this respect the teaching of Christian Science is up to a certain point that of modern idealism. The idealist regards matter solely as a creation of mind. Berkeley, says Huxley, asserted "that there is no substance of matter, but only a substance of mind," and Professor Ostwald says to-day that "matter is only a thing imagined." I do not want to beg the question by assuming that this is so, but only to insist that it is as sound a theory as the materialistic one that "material phenomena are the causes of mental phenomena." And this being granted, is it not obvious that, as Mrs. Eddy says, "mortal belief is all that enables a drug to cure mortal ailments" (Science and Health, p. 174), and that, just in proportion as the human mind grasps this, metaphysical healing will supplant the use of material means.

It is because this fact has been to some extent grasped, and is being more firmly grasped every day, that Christian Science healing is being carried on without the use of drugs, and that the healing of wounds presents no particular difficulty. The fact that bones are just as much a subjective condition of mind as flesh has not yet been so firmly grasped, and because of this Mrs. Eddy has advised those who are not prepared to rely implicitly on mental healing to apply to the ordinary surgeon. "Until," she says, "the advancing age admits the efficacy and supremacy of Mind, it is better for Christian Scientists to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while the mental healer confines himself chiefly to mental reconstruction and to the prevention of inflammation. Christian Science is always the most skilful surgeon, but surgery is the branch of its healing which will be last acknowledged. However, it is but just to say that the author has already in her possession well-authenticated records of the cure, by herself and her students through mental surgery alone, of broken bones, dislocated joints, and spinal vertebrae" (Science and Health, p. 401).

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