Article June 15, 1907 Issue

Whatever may be thought of Christian Science, it is...

Chicago (Ill.) Chronicle

Whatever may be thought of Christian Science, it is impossible to deny that its underlying doctrine of the power of the mind to control disease and all other ills whatever, runs like a golden thread through universal human literature and thought. In fact, it is only when an attack on Christian Science is to be made that this great truth is called in question or ridiculed. The oldest human literature is the Bible, and in one of its oldest books it is said of man that "as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." The teaching of many parts of the Old Testament is that a condition of immunity from all the ills of life is attainable through faith in God, which means simply a conviction that God is too good to permit them.

The best example of this is in the 91st Psalm, in which it is said of people who are filled with this conviction: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. ... There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." Another Psalm says, "They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever." This doctrine is the key-note of the New Testament and of the Christian religion. "All things are possible to him that believeth," said Christ, and an apostle said, "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." It is utterly impossible to give any other sense to these teachings than this: That believing things to be so makes them so. The same idea runs through profane literature, of which Shakespeare's writings are the most representative. It is almost startling to read Hamlet's remark, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," and there is a still more striking passage in "The Winter's Tale," in which Leontes, referring to the belief current in Shakespeare's day that spiders were a deadly poison, says,—

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