In a recent issue of the News, under the department of religion and social service, a clergyman in an address on the healing of sickness, at the Y. M. C. A., is quoted as making some references to Christian Science and healing by spiritual means which might be misleading. After stating that Jesus healed the sick, he is quoted as "telling of a number of cases where the body was affected through mental suggestion." If the gentleman wishes to convey the impression that the healing work of Jesus, or the healing done through the teachings of Christian Science, was the result of mental suggestion, he has a wrong view of the teachings of the Master as well as of Christian Science.

Mental suggestion is merely another name for mesmerism or hypnotism. It is the alleged control of one human mind over another. It was in vogue in Biblical times under various guises of sorcery, necromancy, witchcraft, Beelzebub. It is the counterfeit of that spiritual healing which Jesus practised and taught to his followers. Jesus declared that his works were done through knowledge of the Father; to use his own words, he cast out devils "with the finger of God." His healing power was of God, and the mesmeric action of mortal mind had no part in it. A wicked man may employ mental suggestion or hypnotism, but this action debars the use of Christian Science, which heals only through exact scientific understanding of God.

The gentleman admits that Christian Science heals the sick, but he thought it "overemphasized the spiritual." Does he mean to infer that there is something besides the spiritual which should be emphasized? Jesus did not so teach. He declared the truth, which overthrew the false beliefs of mortals. A student of geometry knows that he must stick to the truth of the proposition he would demonstrate or he can never prove its truth. He might be told by one who did not understand mathematics that his proposition overemphasized geometrical truths. Such a statement would merely provoke a smile from the student who knows he could never separate truth from error unless he held firmly to the logical basis of his work.

"God is a Spirit," Jesus declared; and unless we reason from that basis and hold that the only reality of all things is Spirit and the spiritual universe, we can never overcome the false evidences of the corporeal senses, manifested in sin, disease, and death. Jesus also said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." It was the declaration of the truth and the knowledge of its power which enabled Jesus to heal the sick and to calm the storm. This same spiritual truth is enabling Christian Scientists today to follow in the footsteps of the Master in healing the sick and reforming the sinning.

Christian Science does not teach that sickness is an imaginary thing, as this critic infers. Sickness seems real to the corporeal senses, but the falsity of the evidences produced by these same senses is apparent to every observer. Christian Science follows the Master's example in destroying these false evidences. To the senses the son of the widow of Nain seemed to be dead, but Jesus knew otherwise, and the result was that the young man arose from the bier. Of Lazarus he said to his disciples: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Knowing that God is Spirit, Love, and that man and the real universe are like Him, spiritual and perfect, the Master was able to reverse the false evidences of matter, sin, and death, and throughout his entire ministry healed the sick and the sinning and raised the dead.

Jesus never taught that death was inevitable. The fact that those he healed probably all passed away later, gives no warrant for assuming that death is unconquerable. By raising the dead and by his own example in overcoming the "last enemy," Jesus proved that death is an illusion of mortal sense, which spiritual understanding destroys. For ages the race has believed in and feared death, but no teaching of the Scriptures is more conclusive than that it can and will be overcome. Jesus said, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?"

The speaker is quoted as saying that Jesus made a distinction between sickness and sin, and that he "could not consider a mental error as the cause of illness." No sayings or incidents in the life of our Master are quoted in support of this statement, and it is evidently merely a personal opinion. This gentleman has overlooked the fact that Jesus clearly taught that sin and sickness are interchangeable terms, and he healed them both by the same method. In the case of the man sick with the palsy Jesus showed that sick ness and sin are both errors of the human mind and are overcome through knowledge of God.

Jesus said: "Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house." Paul also showed the mental origin of both sickness and sin, for after pointing out some of the errors the Corinthians had fallen into, he said, "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep."

The speaker is also quoted as saying, "Beware of any religious cult that has its end in the help of the flesh." If the speaker means by this that Christian Science teaches that the summum bonum of man is to attain ease in the flesh, he is greatly mistaken. Christian Science heals the sick as did our Master. It recognizes that healing the sick is but a step toward the spiritual goal of every true Christian,—complete redemption from mortal ills and the attainment of complete unity with God, the Father. Mrs. Eddy clearly taught that physical healing was not the ultimate of Christian Science. In Science and Health (p. 150) she says: "The mission of Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration, is not primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to demonstrate its divine origin,—to attest the reality of the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world."