Article February 7, 1914 Issue

Our critic, as a controversialist, wanders, so to speak,...

Frederick Dixon—Weymouth, England

Weymouth Telegram

Our critic, as a controversialist, wanders, so to speak, from China to Peru in a few paragraphs. On the present occasion he deals with healing in one paragraph and miracles in the second. A third paragraph is devoted to Mrs. Eddy, the subject of creation, the nothingness of matter and evil, and the use of material means for healing. The fourth paragraph graph deals the question of American teaching, and whether Christian Scientists eat or drink nothing or something, and whether they should go naked or clothed; while in the fifth he discusses the power of the imagination, with education and the architecture of Christian Science churches. In a final paragraph he announces that he does not say that he will get a satisfactory answer to these questions, which shows at least some realization of the situation.

Apparently I am asked to take up my parable and tell the critic what you have to pay for becoming a "healer," and where you get the instruction. That is among the least of this critic's demands. Well, the instruction can be obtained in the Bible, and if he can heal the sick in accordance with the teaching of Jesus, after reading the gospels, he need go no farther. Still, just as the various churches read their commentaries, and what is more, their innumerable commentaries, so the Christian Scientists read their commentary, which is Mrs. Eddy's book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," in order to learn from her, out of her experience and self-sacrifice, her explanation of the gospel teaching with respect to healing. In order to get this instruction, all that one has to do is to read Mrs. Eddy's book, and the critic can borrow that for nothing at any one of the numerous Christian Science reading-rooms in the country, and at a great many of the ordinary public libraries.

The critic is evidently under the impression that the teaching of the unreality of matter constitutes a statement that the human senses are not conscious of anything. He puts it like this : "Of course, as matter is nothing, Scientists eat nothing, drink nothing, do not want clothes or houses." Now, as he himself says, a few lines later on, "Very clever, this!" But has it never occurred to him that there is as much matter in a human being as in the food you eat, and that what he calls a Scientist eating nothing, is not something eating nothing, but nothing eating nothing? What the critic is really engaged in doing, if he had only suspected it, is calling half the great thinkers in the world fools for disagreeing with him. Does he imagine, when one of the greatest chemists in Europe stated to a brilliant assembly of natural scientists that matter was something the human mind had invented for itself, he meant that the pyramid did not exist to the consciousness of the Arab, or the Marble Arch to the consciousness of the Londoner? If he had not been in too great a hurry to think at all, it might have occurred to him that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in his philosophy, and then, instead of asking sarcastically, How long would it take a fairly educated person to acquire this Science? he would have got somebody to explain to him what he did not understand.

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Our critic, as a controversialist, wanders, so to speak,...

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