attentively "Science and Health." So that it is quite difficult to attempt to eliminate on the part of the patient faith altogether. "According to thy faith be it unto thee" is a maxim of Him whom the Christian Science movement says it imitates. When you come to compare metaphysical healing with other forms and systems of healing you will find that in many of these, from the practitioners of the most scientific and approved schools down through all the esoteric and eclectic systems not acknowledged by the regular schools, much attention has been paid to the mind of the sick one, to the awakening of faith in some person or method. A case in point was that of a lovely young lady confined in one of our lunatic asylums. Her mania took the form that she was especially called of God to do some great work which had not yet been indicated to her. Mixed up with this delusion was the habit of fasting, excessive prayer, and other harmful practices. Months passed. She waited in expectation of the summons to her important work. It came not. Her condition grew worse rather than better. At last one of the physicians, deeply interested in studying the phenomena of the influence of mind on body, thought of a plan which might prove a most powerful stimulus, which he trusted would react upon the body. At any rate it was an experiment well worth trying. It might be termed a mental operation. The doctor introduced a tube into her room without her knowing of its presence. He also prepared a The Healer strong calcium light with which at the appointed time to flood the room with the rays of intense brilliancy. The young woman had not walked a step for months. When the hour came, while the physicians of the institution and a Christian woman, deeply sympathetic with the girl, were present, the experimenter spoke through the tube in the name of the Lord, informing the girl that she should be sent upon her mission, and soon return to her home to acclaim His glory. At the same instant that the voice sounded the room was filled with a radiance surpassing the midday sun. The girl's face, with the simplicity of implicit faith, was lighted up with a joy that seemed too great for mortals. Those situated so that they could see it said that hardly ever had they seen such an expression of seraphic bliss. The question now was how she would act in the days to come. The next morning she came down to breakfast, walked the length of the hall, continued to improve and was discharged from the institution practically cured.* In spite of the loud protestations of the power of mind over matter-nothing, the prophet of this system has had to pay visits to her dentist the same as an ordinary mortal. This story is told of her going to one of the local Concord, New Hampshire, dentists for the purpose of having a tooth extracted. The Rev. Mr. Whitaker, it transpired, had criticised the "Mother" for so far going back on a prophet's proc*"Christian Science and Mind Cure." lamation as to have a tooth extracted. This called forth a letter from the dentist which is quoted: The story told by the Rev. Dr. Whitaker and others, to the effect that Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy called at my office in Concord, N. H., in great pain, and had a carious tooth extracted, requesting me to use a local anesthetic before extracting the tooth, is incorrect. Mrs. Eddy did call at my office and had a troublesome tooth extracted. But it was not a carious tooth, neither was she in pain at the time. She did request me to extract the tooth, allowing me to use my own painless method for extracting teeth, which I had recommended. I shall take no further notice of enquiries on this subject. Signed Concord, N. H., November 22, 1900. Now follows the very unique and sophistical way in which Mrs. Eddy wriggled herself and her "Science" out of a somewhat awkward situation, if any dilemma can be awkward to a Christian Scientist or in any way unsettle his equipoise: Explain "Bishop Berkeley and I agree that all is mind. Explanation Then consistently with this premise the conclusion is that does not that if I employ a dental surgeon, and he believes that the extraction of the tooth is made easier by some application or means which he employs, and I object to the employment of this means, I have turned the dentist's mental protest against myself; he thinks I must suffer because his method is interfered with. Therefore his mental force weighs against a painless operation, whereas, it should be put into the same scale as mine, thus producing a painless operation as a logical result." This explanation may suffice for the initiated whose "Absent Treatment" thinking processes whirl around the maelstrom of Mrs. Eddy's mental gyrations, but to the onlooker and cool logician it smacks too much of an explanation that does not explain. One of her followers claims to have had no need of a dentist for a “carious tooth." Her friends wanted her to use some reason and good sense and go to a dentist. But she said: "Let me give Christian Science a fair trial first. The healing seemed very slow, and for about two months I labored faithfully. The result was, indeed, glorious, as I found the cavity in the tooth growing up, and all pain ceased, neither heat nor cold disturbed the tooth, which filled, not with a foreign substance, but the genuine, white and perfect. My friends were eager to examine it, because they could not believe without seeing, but they were satisfied, and error stood dumb before Truth."* The lady goes on to say that she is "learning that the entire moral dream is a deep dream cavity of nothingness." As to absent treatment so much vaunted by Christian Scientists, these in all Mind Cures proceed on the theory that to think with concentrated abstraction of another results in the spiritual presence of that other. The "living image and inner personality seem to stand before us, and what we say to it we say to him." Healers endeavor to extend this phenomenon so as to make it actually annihilate space. An instance Mrs. Eddy has given with considerable pride, as a demonstration of her powers in absent treatment, recounts how in the case of a very sick *Christian Science Journal, Vol. xvi, page 758. woman her husband wrote to Mrs. Eddy, and an almost miraculous cure followed in this wise: "The day you received my husband's letter I became conscious for the first time in forty-eight hours." What does this prove? Simply nothing. Letters similar have been written and the patient died. There are records of cases where treatment has been given by Christian Science healers and the patient died. What does it prove one way or another? The coincidence of the letter being written and the patient's recovering consciousness, or of Mrs. Eddy's receiving the letter and the patient being cured, are in no way related. Instances are on record of the healer invoking the spiritual presence of a person who did not exist or who never existed. There is no healer of this class who may not be so imposed upon. What is it they speak to? If in case of a hoax being played upon one of them, and he thinks he is speaking to a "spiritual presence" when nothing of the kind exists, is not the inference clear that the whole business is a delusion and a snare, and that in every case the healer is talking only to "such stuff as dreams are made of"? As has been previously remarked, in all forms of Metaphysical Healing much effort has been expended on the mind of the patient. The different types of metaphysical healing, while showing the power that mind exercises over the body, also demonstrate the readiness with which mind may trick and deceive itself. Most of these forms of Mental Healing are one in acknowledging the existence and reality of matter. |