Article January 2, 1915 Issue

In a recent report of an address by Mr.—before...

Frank C. Barrett

Lewiston (Maine) Journal

In a recent report of an address by Mr.—before the Androscoggin Medical Association, it appears that Don Quixote engaged in a lively and spectacular tussle with a windmill while under the delusion that he was engaging in a real bout at tilts. Consequently the windmill was apparently in a much damaged condition after the fray. Fortunately, however, for those intelligent people who are Christian Scientists, the attack was not directed at Christian Science at all, and no harm was done except to the windmill, for Don's alleged explanations of Christian Science are as absurd and ridiculous to Christian Scientists as they must be to those who have not yet studied the subject sufficiently to discriminate.

The critic's attempted explanation of a statement attributed to a Christian Science lecturer, to the effect that the "water, salts, ash, etc., in the body have no pain," should have been brought to its logical conclusion,—that matter can indeed feel no pain for the reason that the belief of sensation in matter can only be attributed to mortal mind. Thus, when thought is removed from the body, as for instance when ether has been administered, no pain is felt even though a surgical operation is performed. This, however, is what everybody knows, and has nothing to do with Christian Science except that it illustrates the fact that it is the mortal mind alone which causes the seeming sensation in matter. Is it not, then, the mortal mind which demands food and water to eat and drink? Does the body (matter) really do any thinking? If not, the critic's little fable about bread nothing, water nothing, and body nothing, loses its significance, because mortal mind and not matter is the culprit. It is recorded that Jesus went forty days and forty nights without food or drink. He proved that when the mortal mind is silenced the body does not suffer. Truly, "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," our critic to the contrary notwithstanding.

Since the critic has taken the liberty to discredit the divine origin and nature of the healing "works" accomplished by Jesus, who himself said, "I can of mine own self do nothing," "the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works," and who also said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also," it is not surprising that he should endeavor to discredit Christian Scientists, who rely on God in every hour, in sickness as in health. In attempting to explain a quotation from Mrs. Eddy's writings he says that "these bodies of ours with which we deal in our life are ideas, and that our whole experience is mind." This is the exact opposite of what Christian Science does teach, just as much as the mortal is the antithesis of the immortal. Thus, when Mrs. Eddy says, "Christian Science reveals incontrovertibly that Mind is All-in-all, that the only realities are the divine Mind and idea" (Science and Health, p. 109), it is at once seen that God is the divine creative Mind referred to (not the human or mortal mind), and that the real man made in His image and likeness is God's spiritual idea; and this spiritual idea does not represent a mortal, but an immortal. Therefore, to say that our mortal bodies are ideas of divine Mind contradicts the teaching of Christian Science. So, every statement made by our critic is based on a misapprehension of Christianity and of what Christian Science teaches.

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In a recent report of an address by Mr.—before...

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