Article January 13, 1912 Issue

I have just read the paragraph on faith-healing in the...

E. M. Ramsay

Edinburgh (Scot.) Dispatch

I have just read the paragraph on faith-healing in the Dispatch, and am much struck by the remarks of the clergyman, as therein quoted: "I truly believe that the time is coming when man will be able to conquer disease by the aid of God, just as, by the aid of God, he can overcome sin." This gentleman holds, we are told, that the world is only just emerging from the dark ages to a period of real knowledge, and that within a few years the reality of the cures effected by mental means will be unquestioned and unquestionable.

There is no doubt that the interest in mental methods of curing disease is greatly on the increase, therefore it is a matter of paramount importance that the public should learn to distinguish one form of mental cure from another; there is great danger in ignorance. Christian Science cannot, correctly speaking, be described as a form of faith-cure, as the term "faith" is usually employed. Christian Science is that scientific understanding of the nature of God and man taught by our Lord and practised by him, his disciples, and the primitive church, whereby the sick were healed and sinners reformed. Accepting the Scriptural declaration that God, good, infinite Spirit, is the only cause and creator, and, perceiving that nothing can be found in an effect which is not to be found in its cause, the Christian Science student recognizes that sin and illness can form no part of God's creation, and hence exist only as Baal and Moloch existed, as nightmares, false impressions, errors to be cast out by the knowledge of the absolute Truth. Thus, in Christian Science, it is God, Truth, Love, that heals, and the most successful practitioner or demonstrator of this Science is the man who has most got rid of self. All other forms of mental healing, so called, rest upon faith, belief, not upon the understanding of Principle. This faith may be in God's willingness to cure, in answer to prayer, a complaint which He is believed to have caused, Himself, or it may be faith in a personality endowed with special powers of healing, or it may be belief in the mysterious properties of a rheumatic ring.

In the case reported in your paragraph, it is plain that the agency employed is mesmerism, animal magnetism, or will-power, since the treatment given exhausted the performer. Prayer, communion with the Father, the source of life, the giver of all good, never exhausts man. While the gentleman referred to has as much right to practise his method of cure as has any one else, he is not justified in calling it Christian Science. The two systems have nothing in common; indeed, they are diametrically opposed. Mrs. Eddy maintains in all her writings that the use of willpower in the cure of the sick is entirely to be condemned; it may seem to benefit, but in reality it is destructive to health and to character. Mrs. Eddy writers: "Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love" (Science and Health, p. 106).

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