Article May 27, 1922 Issue

Christian Scientists will be grateful to the writer for his...

Mrs. Agnata F. Butler—Cambridge, England

Cambridgeshire Times

Christian Scientists will be grateful to the writer for his acknowledgment that there is no connection between psychic healers and those who practice the methods of Christian Science. Christian Science has certainly nothing whatever in common with hypnotism, nor is the ability to heal in Christian Science limited to the possessors of a special inherited gift. Christ Jesus told his disciples that the sign of healing the sick would follow "them that believe," and in the book of Acts (chapter 3) we read how Peter and John were able instantaneously to cure a man lame from birth. We also read that they expressly disclaimed any special or personal power, and ascribed the act of healing to their knowledge of the Son of God and faith in his name (or nature).

There is indeed an impassable gulf between the power of healing that results from an enlightened understanding of the nature of God and of His Son and any form of hypnotism. The newspapers have recently reported prosecutions both in France and Germany for crimes supposed to have been committed through the agency of hypnotism; and can we believe that this magnetic influence, susceptible of so much evil, has anything in common with the healing power of Jesus and his disciples, even though it may be employed with wholly honest motives? The correspondent, however, bases his distinction between psychic healers and Christian Scientists on another ground. The latter, he tells us, declare that all illness is imaginary and that doctors are superfluous. In this statement he is not quite accurate. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 460), Mrs. Eddy writes: "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being."

Christian Scientists do not ignore illness, but they resort to that kind of treatment which they have found to be the most efficacious. Recognizing the cause of disease as wholly mental,—some fear or error of belief, often unknown to the patient,—they proceed to remove this fear or misapprehension with the faith and love that flow from an enlightened understanding of God and His Christ. Their work is not accomplished until the disease has been proved to be an illusion and the patient set free. It is because Christian Scientists are doing this work effectively that their numbers are steadily increasing.

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