Who Can Tell How Christian Science Heals?
Grand Rapids Herald
How often we see it stated in sermons against Christian Science, and in articles criticising its ways and methods, that the healing in Christian Science is done through hypnotic suggestion.
How does Christian Science heal? Who can answer this question? Evidently he only who understands its healing methods in some degree; and who understands it except the one who can, to some extent, heal the sick according to its teachings? Do any of these critics pretend to heal according to Christian Science? No, not one of them. Then can any of them tell how it heals? They may deny that it heals, but the cases of healing are so numerous and well attested that few critics at this time deny the works. Denying its healing and telling how it is done, are quite different things. The difference is the same as denying the science of mathematics, and explaining the principle by which its problems are solved. To deny requires no understanding, in fact it demands ignorance, while to correctly explain, understanding is indispensable.
How novel to the mathematician would seem the explanation of how a problem is solved, by one who cannot solve it; yet this is not so wide of the mark as is the explanation given of the method of Christian Science healing by those who cannot thus heal.
The writer does not know how the hypnotist claims to heal and will not try to give his methods, except so far as they are generally accepted as the teaching of its friends. A few general statements of the methods of Christian Science may perhaps show how wide and marked must be the difference between the two systems.
The writer many years ago witnessed a public exhibition of hypnotism, and only one. The operator sought to get control of the mind of his subject, and after this control was obtained secured every manifestation by audibly suggesting to the subject something the operator himself did not believe to be true. It is generally accepted that the hypnotist seeks first to get control of the mind of his patient. Here at the beginning the methods of the hypnotist and the Christian Scientist are directly opposite. Beginning as polar extremes, manifestly they must so continue to the end.
To the Christian Scientist it is a grave offence to take control of another's mind, either with or without his consent. He aims and ever seeks to free his patient from the control of every human mind, thought, theme, and theory, not excepting that of the healer. When treating his patient the healer holds in thought and reflects to the patient only what he firmly believes to be eternally and divinely true. He understands and holds steadfastly to the thought that God is the one and only real Mind, and that this Mind is infinite, pure, perfect, and eternal Truth, which cannot change, and that this Truth is everlastingly and inseparably interwoven with infinite, changeless Life and Love. He understands that God, being infinite Love, is the only real Creator, and never did or could create sin or disease, which are the phenomena of the human mind and not of divine origin. He clings to the everlasting fact that God is the author of Life, not death, of health, not disease, of goodness, not sin, and that therefore these errors do not come through divine law, but are annulled thereby. He holds to these truths with the same confidence and on the same ground that astronomers hold to the fact that the sun is still and the earth in motion, although to the finite, physical senses the opposite appears true.
The Christian Scientist has again and again proved his proposition to be true in ways and methods so numerous that his faith rises into the realm of understanding.
Galileo more than believed his unreceived statements, for he had in many ways demonstrated to his own perception the truth of what he said, and therefore neither doom nor dungeon could change his thought, though they did his word. The Christian Scientist knows, even if he cannot wholly prove as Jesus did, that Truth is greater than human error and can and will master it; that what is not ordained of God is the house built upon the sands of human reason and cannot stand, either in heaven or earth. He discerns how clearly Paul saw the human error of trying to mix good and evil, the spiritual and material, in cause or effect, illustrated in the human attempt to put a spiritual soul in a material body, and declared them contrary the one to the other. See Galatians, fifth chapter. Again when he so tersely asks, "What concord hath Christ [the spiritual] with Belial [the material]?" the Christian Scientist insists that if Paul could so understand and separate between the two as to heal the sick and sinful in the first century, the same faithful, honest, trustful, and spiritual thought can do the same to-day.
The healer knows that if he can fill his own consciousness with these everlasting truths that Jesus and Paul declared and demonstrated, that his patient who comes to him for help will mentally drink from the same Godly fountain, receive the Christly gift of health and peace, arise refreshed and strengthened in mind and body, and go forth with an abiding love for the God who has healed him and will ever after seek and find the secret of his healing in those bountiful storehouses of divine Love, the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker G. Eddy, which unlock the mystery and solve the problem of life. This Christly sense of God, and the real man as His image and likeness, the healer must ever hold in treating his patient, and this is the prayer with which we may "ask and it shall be given unto you."
How can he who has not tried, say that this silent communion prayer does not heal? In what school, ancient or modern, save and except only that taught by Jesus, his disciples the followers, has this understanding of God been taught as the indispensable equipment, the cornerstone, for healing the sick? And what medical board today is able to examine the candidate for practice in this new-old school for healing? This necessary equipment can only be found in Science and Health and the Bible, which always accompanies it in both church and home.
J. M.
Grand Rapids Herald.
