One of the correspondents in your paper of to-day asks...

Frederick Dixon—London, England.

Daily Telegraph

One of the correspondents in your paper of to-day asks what a Christian Scientist would do in the event of a bicycle accident. Perhaps I may reply to him in the most convincing way out of my own experience. Several years ago I was thrown violently from my bicycle by a rider who ran into me from behind; I was flung over the handle-bars, and fell on my face, tearing away the flesh from one knee in a wound down to the bone. I was living and also working daily with people who were not Christian Scientists, and the fact was known to them. I was also advised that unless I at once rested the leg the muscles would contract, and I should have a short leg. I did none of these things. I tied a silk handkerchief round the leg to keep the blood off my trousers, and went about and did my work as usual. In a few days the wound healed and gave me no more trouble. As for varicose veins. I give in my covering letter the name of one of the best-known solicitors in London, who was healed of varicose veins of a very bad description after he had worn elastic stockings for years, and is able to-day to take the most violent exercise. It is not good for people like the critic to call Christian Scientists "misguided fanatics." The time has gone by for that, as the time has gone by for abusing homeopathy and referring to evolutionists as monkeys.

Let me for a moment examine this critic's facts. He says that Christian Science is "essentially a cult of the wealthy. This is easily seen by attending their meetings." And then comes the usual list, compounded equally of rudeness and inaccuracy, of its followers. Now it may be said at once that an enormous proportion of Christian Scientists are men, and of these men at least ninety-five per cent are active workers at their ordinary avocations. They are drawn indiscriminately from all classes, and cannot possibly be described as wealthy. ... It is a not extravagant assumption that those who are daily and hourly practising a definite teaching are probably quite as good judges of what that teaching is as those who are not. For this reason alone the contention of Christian Scientists that Christian Science has nothing whatever in common with any process of mental suggestion is entitled to respect, and cannot intelligently be brushed aside. Every Christian Scientist is perfectly well aware of what mental suggestion means, and because of this has rejected it as a healing method. ... As the mind through which this suggestion is poured is itself torn with all the human passions, "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," the probability is that the process will yield considerably more evil than good. This is that material sense of good and evil typified in Genesis as the fruit "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

The ablest of all the Oxford schoolmen, the subtlest of the medieval thinkers—perhaps the subtlest thinker, Huxley once hazarded, of all time,—the Doctor Angelicus himself, once declared that the only absolute science was the science of theology, an understanding of which would prove the master-key to all the nearly relative natural sciences. This science of theology, rescued from all dogmas and creeds, is the science of the Word of God, that which in the New Testament is described as the full or exact knowledge of God, the knowledge, that is so say, of absolute truth, of the of Jesus, as distinguished by Westcott from the more relative sense of truth, the of Pilate.

This is the science of Christianity which was taught by Jesus to the disciples, and of which the miracles were simply the object-lessons. Those who believed in him—that is, understood his teaching—would, he declared, be able to repeat these miracles, these or signs. And exactly in proportion as the theology of Jesus is understood and practised do the "signs following" appear. There is no more any element of suggestion or auto-suggestion in all this than there is anything supernatural. There is nothing involved more than an application of the spiritual law, just as in the combination of gases there is nothing more involved than the application of material law. But there is involved an understanding of spiritual forces, which those who insist on defining science as dealing with secondary causes alone are not so much as attempting to grapple with.

Any one who has carefully read the Gospels must have noticed that Jesus always proceeded in direct defiance of material law. When he healed the deaf man in Decapolis he placed his fingers in his ears, and when he healed the blind man in Bethsaida he placed his hands over his eyes, and bade him look through, a proceeding perfectly natural if he was demonstrating his understanding of spiritual law, but futile if he was engaged in suggesting to the mind of the sufferer the healthiness of the auditory or optical nerves. Every day Christian Scientists are engaged in healing deafness and blindness as Jesus taught, but does any one suppose that if matter is substance a wasted nerve is restored by suggesting that it is healthy?

All there is to know about Christian Science may be learned from the Christian Science text-book. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." In this book Mrs. Eddy has given Christian Scientists an understanding of the Bible which is restoring primitive Christian healing. From it they are learning once more that the raiment of Christ is without seam; that the age of miracles is not past; that the Sermon on the Mount is a rule of life to be practised, and not an altruism to be preached; that Christianity must be scientific, and science must be Christian, else one or the other is unnecessary; and that the perception of this will indeed, in the noble language of Wyclif's version, bring "science and health to the people in the remission of their sins."

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