Modern Religious Cults and Movements

tion of Mrs. Eddy's system as a healing force. Her philosophy and theology are incidental, or-if that is not a fair statement-they both condition and are conditioned by her system of healing. The

he is reacting. Her reactions against the environment of her girlhood and early womanhood affect her point of

ication of Philosophy and

ecial providence. One ought not justly to say that Mrs. Eddy ever categorically affirms that she had been taught this, or as categorically denies the truth of it, but there are statements-as for example page 366-which seem to imply that she

l in "Science and Health" is not in what the author says, but in the reader's power to discover behind her statements what she is "writing down." Her system is both denial and affirmation. In the popular interpretatio

use of drugs which was at the same time limited in its materia medica and too largely experimental in its practice. She was writing before the day of the trained nurse with her efficient poise. The atmosphere of a sick room is not naturally cheerful and generally

Christian Sci

t is the outcome of disciplines due to the acceptance of her theology and philosophy. It is hard also to distinguish between the part the healer plays and the contribution of the subject. There is no logical place in Christian Science practice for physi

The sickness must not be thought or talked. Here also, as far as the patient is concerned, is a procedure of undebated value. It all comes back, as we shall see presently, to suggestion, but any procedure which frees the patient from depressing suggestion and substitutes therefor an encouraging suggestion is in the right direction. At the same time those who are not C

ten played golf. He called this healer up one morning to make an appointment. His voice was not recognized over the telephone and he was mistaken for a patient. The reply came back in professional t

concessions to common sense which she makes over and over again, but when she attempts to explain how erroneous or-as one may venture to call it-diseased belief expresses itself in bodily function one is reminded of Quimby. Temperature, for example, is wholly mental. Mrs. Eddy's reason for believing this is apparently becau

of energy real as a dynamo. There is nowhere any recognition of the commonplaces of modern medical science in the tracing of germ infections. True enough, medical science had hardly more than begun when "Science and Health" was first written to redefine feve

of Mental

uth, Love; Deity, which outlines but is not outlined" (page 591). In other words Mind is an ideal affirmation which Mrs. Eddy assumes to underlie human experience and possibly to reveal itself through human experience, and it certainly does not follow that while an ideal affirmation is not sick, a human being involved in the necessary relationships of our present mater

rces are not consistently defined. Sometimes they are the "power of the mind to sustain the body" (page 417); sometimes "the power of Christian Science" (page 412), or "the power of Truth" (

the upheaval produced when immortal Truth is destroying erroneous mortal belief. Mental chemicalization brings sin and sickness to the surface, forcing impurities to pass away, as is the case with a fermenting fluid" (page 401).[57] She recognizes

he Quimby Manus

wn nurses as well as their own healers; in certain regions they must confine their reading to their own literature; their children must be educated, on their religious side, in their own cult schools and they cannot consistently associate themselves with remedial movements which assume another philosophy as their basis. It is difficult for a detached observer to see how a consistent C

ease as a Belief Which if Tre

o the field in which suggestion may operate. Mrs. Eddy is most specific about diseases, concerning which the medical practice of her time was most concerned and in the light of later medical science most ignorant-fever, inflammation, indigestion, scrofula, consumption and the like. These are all beliefs and if treated as error they will disappear. Even death is a d

ding of that deathless allegory are reproduced in this particular passage which the author is inclined to believe she wrote with more pleasure than anything else ever turned out by her too facile pen. Personal Sense is the plaintiff, Mortal Man the defendant, False Belief the attorney for Personal Sense, Mortal Minds, Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, Hypnotism, Envy, Greed and Ingratitude constitute the Jury. The court room is filled wi

imby Manuscr

nce Has a Rich

te of our great advance in medical knowledge and practice and in spite of the results of an improved hygiene there remains in society at large a very great deposit of physical ill-being sometimes acute, sometimes chronic, sometimes clearly defined, sometimes vague, badly treated cases, hopeless cases and

healer; they are the comrades of the pilgrims to Lourdes and Ste. Anne de Beaupré; they belong to the fellowship of those who, in the Middle Ages, haunted shrines and sought out relics and asked to be touched by kings. We discover their forebears in the pages of the Gospels and as far back as any records go we see this long, pathetic procession of the hopeless or

tian Science Journal, and yet the basal principles by which these men have claimed to work are as different from the basal principles of Christian Science as east is from west. While this is being revised Coué, the apostle of sug

y-Drawn Systems of Psyc

en localized. It is shrewdly organized, as far as propaganda goes, and effectively directed. It is widely advertised by its friends-and its critics. Its temples, for beauty and dignity, put to shame most Protestant churches. Its rituals combine in an unusual way the simple and the dramatic. It is so fortunately situated as to be able to keep finance-which is a tr

iblical interpretation it is illicit. Its very dogmatism is an asset. It could not do its work if it were less sure. The confusions of the systems which try the critically minded are a contribution to the devout who find in them an added opportunity for faith. Its experience meetings create enthusiasm

a practical observation of the working of Christian Science has knowledge enough not only of looseness and inconsistency but of what seems to the non-Christian Science mind positive untruth. Something, however, must always be allowed here for the way in which the mind acts under excitement and for the way in which delusion deludes. All this combines to make any final judgment in this region difficult, but there still remains, after all qualification, an arresting solidity of achievement. Christian Science does work, especially with the self-absorbed, the neurotic and those who have nee

in which no one refers to his ailment and every one to his well-being is a therapeutic atmosphere. Psychologists have taught us that if we go through the motions of being happy we are likely to

mentally a Syst

line and philosophy of Christian Science produce their results. The answer to this question is as plain as anything can be in our present state of knowledge, for essentially, as a healing force, Christian Science stands or falls with the therapeutic power

tries to analyze these separate elements they are, taken singly, inconsistent, often unverifiable and often enough, by any tests at all save the tests of Christian Science, positively untrue. But as Mrs. Eddy has combined them and as they are applied in practice they do possess an undeniable power. They are not dependent, as has been said, fundamentally upon persons or th

by Our Growing Understandin

agreed in their conclusions, but we do know enough about the complex character of consciousness, the actuality of the subconscious and the reaction of strongly held attitudes upon bodily states to be in the way, generally, of freeing this whole great m

adened to include nervous maladjustments as well-is functional, suggestive therapeutics have a far-reaching and distinct field. When Christian Science or any other healing cult reports cures in this field, those cures, if verified by sufficient testimony, may be a

c. Here is a border-land not so much of fact as of diagnosis. A cure may be reported as of an organic trouble when the basal diagnosis was wrong and it was only functional, but the body possesses undoubtedly the power of correcting or at least of limitin

st organic disease. Thoughtful physicians are ready to concede this and thus open a door for a measure of organic healing which technically their science denies. A very revealing light has been let in upon this whole region by hypnotism. Some of the students of hypnotism are inclined

Psychology of S

it is so narrowly true. Those to whom it makes its appeal are, for the most part, not capable of analyzing through to their sources its fundamental inveracities, nor would they be inclined to do that if they were able. Its vagueness and its spacious rhetoric re

else. A system which believes that the toxic effect of poisons depends upon the vote of the majority in that arsenic will cease to be a poison when everybody ceases to think of it as a poison and will be a poison as long as anybody believes it is, is

t in Teaching That God Has M

ealth and just such tangible things. But Christian Science meets a demand of the time also just here. Our own age, deeply entangled in material satisfactions, has no mind to postpone the satisfactions of religion to a future life. The monk and, indeed, the generality of the devout in the medieval Church sought in self-limited earthly joy a proper discipline for the soul and a state in contrast to which the felicities for which they paid so grea

ny cults which seek the proof of the love of God in health, happiness and prosperity. And indeed all this is natural and right enough. If religion be real the fruits of it should be manifest, though whether these are the more significant and enduring fruits of t

with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then sh

hat is centrally best in the whole system. God, that is, has a meaning for life not hereafter but now, not in creeds but in experience, not alone in hard disciplinary ways, but in loving and intimate and helpful ways. True enough, this

it were, a barrier between the perplexed and their God; His love has not, somehow, seemed sufficiently at the service of men, and though Christian Science secures the unchallenged supremacy of the love of God by emptying it of great ranges of moral meaning and shutting away therefrom all the sh

gnores Too Largely the Processes

in a changed world is a process whose immensity is not even so much as hinted at in "Science and Health." Christian Science too largely ignores and seems commonly to deny the whole disciplinary side of life with its inevitable accompaniment of failure, fault and pain. Pain is no delusion; pain is the sign of something gone wrong in the great business of normal physical life. Nor is sin only an unreality which "seems real to human erring belief"; sin is a sign that something has gone wro

place in Christian Science for the Beatitudes and less still for that fine courage which is itself the one assured victory which the hard beset may win on any field of battle. The writer believes that while this severe judgment is justified by "Science and Health," it is not justified by the practical outcome of the cult in the lives of many of its disciples. They are in devotion and kindness the equal of many in the Church and superior to some. Their loyalty to their Church rebukes a good deal of orthodox easy-going. All of which

gh for the Whol

se that within ten days. This is only an illustration but it does illustrate. We must work if we are to dig up the roots of evil things and get a better growth in their stead and anything which attempts to substitute for this a denial of the reality of the evil,

r. If Christian Science follows the history of such movements in the past, it will, after having made its own distinct assertion of whatever measure of truth it contains, be gradually swept back into the main current of religion and practice. It will maintain a nominal distinctness, but in t

its own place-life and experience will do that-and it is safe to say that in the end Christian Science will have to come to terms with a truth bigger than its own, with a body of experience which cannot be dealt with on the selective process of taking what you want and denying the rest, and more than that, it will have to come to terms with the whole great