Article March 29, 1913 Issue

There is hardly any subject which is at the present...

The Week

There is hardly any subject which is at the present moment exciting such wide interest among people who do a little thinking for themselves as the Science of divine healing. The truths affecting this profoundly interesting subject are set forth in the literature of Christian Science. No modern cult has received more criticism of an adverse character, and probably, no teaching in any age, since that of the lowly Galilean, has been assailed with greater bitterness. The attack upon Christian Science has been waged mainly by two classes of people,—the medical fraternity, and unscrupulous imitators who through questionable means have professed to attain some of the results achieved by Christian Science.

I am neither competent nor concerned at the moment to enter into a defense of this remarkable school of teaching and thought. Christian Science, as collated and expounded by Mrs. Eddy, is but a modern interpretation of truths as old as the hills. There is nothing new in Christian Science, but there is something decidedly new in the manner in which old truths have been collected, correlated, and combined into a harmonious whole. The basis of Christian Science is healing. Its demonstration is in the physical ills it has cured, but not less in the lives it has reformed. People who have not been brought into close touch with its votaries hardly appreciate that the healing of physical ills is not the end of Christian Science teaching, but only a means to an end. The real object is to bring the human will into harmony with the divine, and it has not finished, but only just begun, its work when it has successfully treated some physical malady.

It is true that most people who join the Christian Science church have first been the subjects of material healing; they have naturally been led to reflect on the principles underlying the cure, which often belies all the predictions of the medical fraternity, and to effect. which Christian Science has been evoked only as a dernier ressort. But it is equally true that, having realized the benefits of a bodily cure, they have followed the example of the lame man who was healed by Peter and John at the gate of the temple, and have literally leaped up, acknowledging the divine power which healed them, and entered into the temple.

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