Article August 8, 1914 Issue

In the London letter of the Advertiser, your correspondent...

Duncan Sinclair

Eskdale and Liddesdale (Scotland) Advertiser

In the London letter of the Advertiser, your correspondent refers to the clerical and medical report on "spiritual, faith, and mental healing," which has recently been published. There can be no doubt that the report has drawn attention in a very marked way to the fact that material methods of treating sickness have no longer the hold they once possessed upon the community. It also indicates that in orthodox circles there is an awakening to the significance of those wonderful demonstrations of divine power which the Founder of Christianity gave in proof of his knowledge of spiritual causation and law.

I should like to point out that as Christian Scientists were not approached with regard to the many healings that have taken place through Christian Science treatment, the pronouncements of the committee who issue the report, cannot in any sense be taken as constituting a judgment upon Christian Science healing; and it would be well if the public kept this clearly in mind. Christian Science treatment of sickness and evil differs entirely from the methods arraigned before the committee; in fact, there is not the slightest indication given that any single member of it, or any one of those who were examined, had the faintest idea of its nature. Neither hypnotism nor suggestion enters into its practice. It will have nothing to do with such methods, for the perfectly obvious reason that if suggestion can heal, it can also cause sickness, and is, indeed, constantly causing it. Christian Science treatment, on the other hand, can never have any other than a good effect on a sick person, since it sets in operation, by the understanding of absolute truth as opposed to a relative sense of existence, laws whose action produces harmony and health alone.

As your correspondent infers, the "mind" has a great deal to do with bodily conditions. Most people will readily admit, for example, the baneful effects of evil; that such emotional states as hatred, fear, jealousy, anger, impurity, etc., are directly responsible for much of the disease that is prevalent today. Christian Science has been pointing this out for upward of fifty years; and by destroying these and kindred evils, replacing them by such virtues as courage, loving-kindness, truthfulness, purity, and at the same time imparting an understanding of the spiritual nature of man and his real relationship to God, it has healed many a case that had baffled the efforts of those practising material methods of healing. Further, it is a great mistake to imagine that Christian Science heals only functional ailments, since organic disease is being constantly healed through its ministrations.

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