anna Southcott. The Comforter, Christian Science. Bible Verities and Christian Science Vaporings Parallels and divergencies. How Jesus healed. The The Last Supper, Prayer, and Marriage The "Key" "In the beginning." God-Elohim. Exegesis accord- Conflict with Medicine and Law The challenge. The boast of Christian Science. The The Mask of Delusion Delusion in the face of experience. Mrs. Eddy close The Mask Withdrawn 93 108 121 139 153 171 Under the spell. A 181 A lost faith. Vaunted cures. FOREWORD. Religion" According to some a new religion was born in the closing years of the nineteenth century. It has its prophet, its revelation, its church and its form of worship. It has also a name. This name it wears as a mask, concealing its real identity. Catching the aroma of the advanced thought of the age, with keen knowledge of human nature learned in years of obscurity and adversity, its founder drew the name from two sources. For well-nigh two thousand years the A "New Western world has hidden in its inmost heart the saying, "Thou hast given Him a name which is above every name." Above every name in the range of human thought soars the name of Jesus, the Christ. Another name that has become mighty in the sphere of intellect is science. The founder of this extraordinary system, where faggots of falsehoods are tied up in bundles of absurdities, mused within herself, and by the candle of the mystic coined the term "Metaphysical Healing," which she afterward called “Christian Science." With wily words and catch phrases culled from Holy Writ and the vocabulary of science, she made a bid for disciples from among the children of light and the kingdom of the world. Success came. The thing thus evolved has stayed these years, although "Christian Science," as a system, is neither Christian nor scientific, except in name. This cult declares that man's life upon earth is a dream; all the world is nothing, and God is everything. Hence there is no real body, and forms of matter are but passing shadows. Yet the head of this marvelous system stoutly reiterates that she does not teach Pantheism. In these so-called revelations the sweet and sacred tenets of the New Testament are interwoven with fantastic and crude dogmas savoring of the occult and mystic East, and curious “isms” struggle for recognition along with the ethics of Jesus. Similar manifestations of strange philosophies and religions trooped in swarms around the early Christian Church. One was Gnosticism, another Neo-Platonism. The latter nurtured within its bosom devotees of magic, theosophy and mysticism. Some of the early sects claimed special illumination and power to work miracles. Denying the testimony of the senses, they fell into all sorts of sensual excesses. Social and intellectual characteristics marking that period are repeated in our own. Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Spiritmalism, Theosophy, Mind Healing and Christian Science are all manifestations of the same spirit of curiChristian Science teaches its disciples to deny the testimony of the senses. Tomething about the teaching of the book, "Science and Health," has captivated certain types of men and There must be intrinsic good in it, and some kemeis of wheat among all its chaff. What may be sada is favor? What is the nugget of truth that wractiveness? In the first place it is a protest against the bald ma terialism of our times. Men need to be reminded that the seen is only temporal, and that God "has set eternity" in the hearts of his children. If Christian Science, though it may be a fleeting fad, on account of its aspirational nature helps to fix the thought on the all-sufficiency of God and His eternal verities, it may fulfil a mission. Men have said of it, "Not only was my body healed, but my soul was lifted into a nobler spiritual attitude." It is also a protest against the agnostic's ignorance of his Maker. Sad is his boast of a civilization without hope and without God in the middle of it. In spite of its tangle of errors and inconsistencies, Christian Science does at least set forth the immanence of God in human heart and life. The healing of the hurt of the body, loudly heralded as it is, is not the only, nor perhaps the greatest, factor about this system. A gravely important practical bearing of these tenets lies in the fact that they are a constant rebuke to the god of Worry, that scowling menace to the peace of human life. They presume to furnish the world with an incentive to do just what Jesus, when we understand Him aright, would have us do; that is, to live with a tranquil mind, without malice, without envy, without fretting, and without anxiety. Has the Christian Church lost the spirit of His invitation, "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, and ye shall find rest unto your souls"? It means just this blessed tranquillity. Herein is the secret of success of Christian Science in its attempt at habit-sculpturing and character-formation. If we only believed Christ and His ability to help us, we should live without the unrest that makes carking care the curse and despoiler of human existence. We are told that the peculiar opinions represented in "Science and Health" have done wonders for those accepting them. Mind is exalted over matter and the peace of the Infinite comes to dwell in the human soul. These views of Christian Science, it is affirmed, do not destroy one fundamental article of Christian faith, but add to it the elements of peace and strength that make the soul free. Speech is also made about the solar radiance and peace imprinted on the "mortal face" of those trusting in these precepts. This new religion takes such parts of the Word of God as it pleases to appropriate, and ignores or denies those passages that oppose its teachings. It denies sin and consequently impeaches the authority of the Decalogue. Opposite the copyright page stands this motto from Shakespeare, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Froude, the historian, liked Hamlet's speech so well that he gave it an anarchistic twist, subversive of the authority of the Decalogue and much else, to which Carlyle replied in his trenchant way, "Such reasoning will result in anarchy and broken heads!" To those in "Science," marriage is not well thought of, and motherhood, at least by implication, has lost its sacredness, as morality may be preserved, when "time matures," and the highest relationships exist between the sexes outside of the marriage bond. If it is only thinking makes it so, what prevents the home being doomed and all the |