Article September 24, 1910 Issue

Christian Science and methods which seek to combine...

Frank Bell

Lewistown (Pa.) Gazette

Christian Science and methods which seek to combine drugs and prayer are not only not akin, philosophically or otherwise, but they bear no resemblance to each other in any important particular. Those who represent these methods undertake to relieve certain forms of sickness by the use of that phase of mental activity commonly known as suggestion or hypnotism. The sufferer weakened by disease or evil habits is brought, in a receptive state, into contact with a stronger mentality that is animated by an intense desire to do him good. The theory is that the stronger mind will dominate the weaker to the latter's advantage. I am not aware that any higher claim is made for the modus operandi of this movement. Christian Science, on the other hand, is based on the premise that the human mind cannot really destroy that which it is supposed to create, namely, sickness and sin; that the divine Mind, God, alone can do this, and that the true healing of human ills consists in directing the thought of the sufferer toward God, in encouraging him to rely upon the divine intelligence, which is omnipotent and omnipresent.

Christian Science asserts that the system of healing demonstrated and taught by the Founder of Christianity was as far above hypnotic suggestion as it was above inanimate drugs, and that a revival of the healing work of the early Christian church is possible only for those who through right thinking and pure living are able to reflect in some degree the Mind which was in Christ Jesus, which, as explained in the Christian Science text-book, Science and Health, heals both "sickness and sin by one and the same metaphysical process" (p. 210). Our purpose in thus writing is not to disparage these other movements but simply to correct the erroneous assertion that they bear any resemblance to Christian Science beyond a common recognition of the fact that the Master's command to heal the sick is no less imperative upon the church today than during the first three centuries of the Christian era, when "these signs" did "follow them that believe."

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