Article September 25, 1920 Issue

On page 107 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"...

F. W. Reed—Blackfoot, Idaho

The Idaho Republican

On page 107 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science." She immediately began teaching and applying the laws of this divine Christianity, and healing inevitably resulted. From that time to this the spread of Christian Science has been rapid, and now its adherents are unnumbered and found in every part of the civilized world.

During its ministry of more than fifty years of healing, countless thousands have testified of its healing efficacy. It is also true that during that time no one was ever healed through Christian Science by the concentrated thought of the healer or patient. When, therefore, the assertion was made in a recent issue of your paper that the Indian sundances "are devotional affairs, and dancers concentrate their thoughts and determination on being well and strong, pretty much the same as Christian Scientists do in their more quiet way of healing," an unwitting error was committed.

If there is one thing that is made plain in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and in all of Mrs. Eddy's other writings, it is that the human mind is not factor in the process of Christian Science healing; and nothing in her works can even be remotely construed to teach the healing of disease or sin by a process of human mind concentration. If cures could be wrought in that manner, which Christian Science disclaims, it would amount to nothing more nor less than mesmerism, or the operation of one human mind over another human mind. This would, necessarily, be a kingdom divided against itself, which Jesus said could not stand. "If Satan cast out Satan ... how shall then his kingdom stand?" Mrs. Eddy has explained this on page 144 of the Christian Science textbook, where she says: "Human will-power is not Science. Human will belongs to the so-called material senses, and its use is to be condemned. Willing the sick to recover is not the metaphysical practice of Christian Science, but is sheer animal magnetism. Human will-power may infringe the rights of man. If produces evil continually, and is not a factor in the realism of being."

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