Article March 12, 1910 Issue

What is described as "the policy of telling a deluded...

Frederick Dixon—London.

Electrical Industries

What is described as "the policy of telling a deluded patient that he is really in the best of health," is about the biggest nonsense that could be repeated of Christian Science; it is about on a par with the statement that Christian Scientists tell their patients that they do not exist. I have heard critics make such statements several times, but I always thought it was their idea of humor, or else an indication of a little leaning toward malice. I never dreamed that anybody seriously believed them.

What Christian Science does teach, of course, is that sickness is a mental phenomenon, and that this being so, it has to be overcome by destroying the mental germ. In plain English, that the doctor deals with symptoms, while the Christian Scientist deals with causes. Inasmuch as matter, according to Christian Science, is a phenomenon, it is not, absolutely speaking, real. A Christian Scientist, however, in maintaining this, is not going any farther than the teachings of philosophical idealism, in which it is maintained, equally emphatically, that there is no reality in matter. Ultimately Christian Science parts company with philosophical idealism as completely as with philosophieal materialism. It is, as a matter of fact, absolutely logical in its deductions, and never gets the length of destroying phenomena through phenomena, but always works to destroy the causes producing them. It is not only the only logical, but the only scientific way.

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