Article April 27, 1929 Issue

In the symposium on "How to Build a Successful Practice,"...

Orwell Bradley Towne, Committee on Publication for the State of New York,—New York

Dental Outlook

In the symposium on "How to Build a Successful Practice," appearing in your recent issue, a doctor, giving a reason for the rapid growth of Christian Science, says it is "because they [its adherents] have begun to realize more and more all the time that they are able to overcome a great many of their ills by maintaining a proper psychological attitude towards any bodily ailments that they may have." Continuing, he predicts trouble if this "is carried too far." It is apparent that the doctor has been incorrectly informed regarding Christian Science and has confused the teachings of this religion with those of applied psychology and related systems of suggestive therapy, which foster belief in the power of one mind over another. As a matter of fact, Christian Science is the Christian religion and is founded upon the demonstrable fact that there is logically but one intelligence or Mind, which creates all that is created. This one supreme intelligence is God—even the Mind which, according to the Scriptures, "was also in Christ Jesus;" while its practice, like that of the Master and his immediate followers, consists in healing the sick and reforming the sinner by purely spiritual means.

Psychology, in its commonly accepted meaning, has to do with the varying modes of the human mind, operating as suggestion, autosuggestion, et cetera, through belief in the power of the so-called human will. This method, variously called mesmerism, animal magnetism, hypnotism, and more recently mental therapy, is regarded by Christian Science as the activity of the "carnal mind," of which sin and its resultant sickness and death are effects. Christian Science teaches that since the seeming cause of disease obtains in the "carnal mind," which the Apostle Paul states "is enmity against God" and is the source of so-called death, healing must come, not as advocates of suggestive therapy would have us believe, through corporeal human will in any of its various forms, but from the natural operation of the corrective and consistently perfect power of the divine Mind in human consciousness, before which power all phases of sin and disease yield, as darkness disappears before light. In speaking of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of this religion, states in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 146), "Divine Science derives its sanction from the Bible, and the divine origin of Science is demonstrated through the holy influence of Truth in healing sickness and sin." Again, on page 98 of the same book, she says, "Mystery does not enshroud Christ's teachings, and they are not theoretical and fragmentary, but practical and complete; and being practical and complete, they are not deprived of their essential vitality."

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