Article February 20, 1915 Issue

The statement in a recent issue, that a lawyer, in seeking...

Frank Bell—Allentown, Pa.

The City Item

The statement in a recent issue, that a lawyer, in seeking the acquittal of a client accused of practising a form of necromancy in alleged violation of law, for the purposes of his argument compared Christian Science with such practice, should not be accepted as establishing any similarity between the two. To attempt to employ necromancy, spells, charms, magnetism, hypnotism, mesmerism, mental suggestion, or anything of the kind, in the treatment of the sick, is to depart absolutely from the teaching and practice of Christian Science, and no person entitled to be termed a Christian Scientist would use or countenance such methods. In the light of Christian Science teaching it is apparent that one who yields his mentality to the control of another, must pay dearly for any temporary relief that may be attributed to such a course, the ultimate effect being not helpful, but tending to demoralization.

An essential difference between Christian Science and all so-called systems of mental treatment is that the latter are concerned only with physical results, whereas the concern of Christian Science is not primarily with physical conditions, but with moral or spiritual conditions. There never was a healing in Christian Science that did not reduce the sum total of human belief in and submission to evil, because this healing is always and only the incidental effect of spiritual regeneration. The object is to demonstrate not a healthy animal, but the real man. Christian Science can be practised best by those who are the purest in heart, and its effects are invariably good. The other systems require no moral standard whatever, nor is it claimed for them that they are less effective for improper than for proper purposes. Thus Christian Science is distinguished by the fact that in method, means, and aims, it is Christian. With this clearly in view one may apprehend how far removed it is from any of the things with which it is sometimes thoughtlessly compared.

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