Article April 26, 1913 Issue

The article entitled, Notes on Healing, contributed to...

Frederick Dixon in—Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Australasian Church Quarterly Review

[The following reply by Mr. F. Dixon of London, chairman of the publication committee of the Christian Science movement, was received through a Sydney representative of the Christian Science movement. This Review had already published in its last number a reply to "Medicus" from a local Christian Scientist and an editorial comment upon that reply. However, in view of the gravity of the questions at stake, it seems best to depart from our rule of not continuing a discussion beyond a single number. Mr. Dixon's reply is, therefore, printed herewith, but its contents obviously require further comment from the Christian standpoint. We cannot lend the pages of a church review to the unchallenged advocacy of such a movement, even in the form of a reply to an earlier contribution. The discussion is now terminated.—Editor.]

The article entitled, Notes on Healing, contributed to the June issue of The Australasian Church Quarterly Review by an anonymous writer, under the pseudonym of "Medicus," contains a criticism of Christian Science which really could only have been written by some one sublimely ignorant of the teaching supposed to be elucidated. The contribution seems, indeed, to be fully up to the writer's own standard of "spurious metaphysics, bad logic, and bewildering, unintelligible theology." I do not, however, intend to follow the example of the author of this phrase by making statements dans l'air. I purpose, no matter how unkind it may seem, to substantiate them.

The writer starts off with the declaration that Mrs. Eddy was "a woman in no way distinguished as a scholar, but rather profoundly ignorant of any of the requirements of a religious or social leader." On the very next page, however, the writer says that "there are thousands of people wandering to and fro, restless and unhappy, looking for mental and spiritual comfort," and adds that it is impossible to be "altogether surprised that they were misguided enough to accept as true revelation the rubbish in Science and Health." Now, hundreds of thousands of copies of Science and Health have been sold; the book, in fact, has had a larger sale, probably, in the lifetime of its author than any book ever written. It is clear, therefore, that Christian Science has inspired the lives of an enormous number of people; but this is not all. The movement is a world movement. It matters not to what country or to what quarter of the world you go, there you will find Christian Science churches and Christian Science healing, for wherever it is found, Christian Science is discovered preaching the gospel and healing the sick. You will find it throughout the United States and the Dominion of Canada; you will meet it in South America and in the islands of all the great oceans. You will discover it firmly seated in the British Isles, and the countries which comprise the continent of Europe. It has overflowed into Egypt, and spread itself from Bechuanaland to Cape Town. It services are read along the Persian gulf, and in the cities of India from Quetta to Mandalay. In China and Japan it has a devoted following, and it is not unknown in Australia.

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