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“CHRISTIAN SCIENCE” i
By THE REV. ROBERT HUGH BENSON, M.A
It is extremely easy to make fun of “ Christian Science.”
In fact, if we consider it as it is in itself, or rather as
it appears to present itself to the casual observer, it is
extremely difficult not to do so. It appears to solve
problems by denying that they exist; to remove the
toothache by assuring the sufferer that he is under
a complete misapprehension, for he has neither a tooth
nor an ache ; it claims to be an universal religion, and
at the same time its professors charge heavy fees for
instruction in its tenets ; its founder has written a
slender but expensive volume with the title Science
and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and causes this
to be bound up to resemble the Bible. In fact, the
complete absence of any sense of humour in the pre
sentation of this religion to the world arouses a corre
sponding counterpoise of laughter in ourselves.
But this is a shallow method of meeting the question.
If Christian Science were as ludicrous as it appears_
or, rather, if it were nothing more than ludicrous—we
should have to relinquish to a large extent our faith in
human nature ; for it is beyond a doubt that this system
is making almost unprecedented strides in the modern
1 A paper read at the Catholic Conference at Brighton, 1906.
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world. Statistics, especially when they come from
America, where nothing is ever done except on a
gigantic scale, are apt to be misleading, but we are
bound to pay some respect to them when they inform
us that the recently built “Temple” of the Scientists in
Boston cost .£400,000 ; that the organ cost ^8,000,
and thirty thousand of the denomination attended its
opening.
Neither are converts made only among the un
educated. It is true to a large extent, if we may trust
our own observation and the tone of the testimonies
put forth by its adherents, that Christian Science is
chiefly triumphant amongst the partly educated—
amongst those who have sufficient learning to be im
pressed by oracular paradoxes, but not enough to
detect their shallowness ; but it is also true that very
highly educated persons indeed are to be found
amongst its supporters, and those, not only educated
in irrelevant subjects, but qualified exponents of the
very sciences which it claims to supplant. Doctors as
well as classical scholars and mathematicians worship
at the shrine of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. Humourists,
philosophers, and Christians seem the only persons un
represented in this body. Lastly, unless we are pre
pared to doubt the word of obviously sincere persons,
and even, in the case of some of us, the evidence of our
own senses, we are bound to admit that the practical
claims of this religion are to a large extent justified ;
and that persons who have hitherto spent much money
on physicians without amendment of health have been
cured by the methods of this curious sect.
Briefly the history of Christian Science is as follows:
It was discovered by Mrs. Eddy in 1866, as a result
of her Scriptural researches ; she began her propaganda
in 1867 ; her Science and Health was published in
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1875, and by 1903, 270,000 copies had been sold. In
1879 she organized the “ Church of God Scientist in
Boston,” and in 1881 she was ordained to the ministry
and founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College ;
in 1883 she founded The Christian Science Journal.
Since that date the denomination has gradually spread,
and in recent years has met with extraordinary success
in England as well as in America. There has been
more than one formidable secession ; but in this paper
I propose to deal rather with the original body from
which all sprang.
Its Tenets : Religious Aspect.
We must now proceed to an examination of its tenets,
and this (as admirably stated by Miss Margaret Benson
in a tract published by the Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge) falls naturally under three heads :
the religious, the philosophical, and the physical.
First, then, its religious aspect, and in particular its
claim to be considered Christian. The famous essay
on “ Snakes in Iceland ” is irresistibly suggested to the
mind. There are no snakes in Iceland ; and Christian
Science is not Christian • and we shall see presently
that it is not scientific either.
It is not Christian, I mean, in the ordinary sense of
the word. It is not more Christian, for example, than
the religion of Mahomet. Mahomet wrote in the Koran
that Mary should “bear the Word proceeding from
God,” and that “ Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary,” was
“ one of those who approach near to the presence of
God” (chap. ii.). Such was his mistaken reverence for
our Blessed Lord that he stated that “the Jews slew
him not . . . but he was represented by one in his like
ness” and that “God took him up unto himself”
(chap, iv.), Mrs. Eddy, however (who, as we should
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expect, affixes no index to her works—there is none at
least in my copy of Science and Healtti), is as explicit as
her confused mind will allow her to be, that “Jesus
is the human man, and Christ the divine ideal”
(S. and H., 473), she implies by her silence that the
Person of Our Lord was human, not divine ; she
criticises His institution of the Holy Eucharist {ibid.
p. 34), calling it His “ritualism or concessions to
matter” (p. 33). Yet her connection with Christianity
is sufficiently strong to allow of her falling into several
heresies condemned and exploded many centuries ago.
“God never created matter ” (p. 335), we are informed.
That is all a mistake ; it came into its attenuated
shadow of existence through what she calls “ mortal
mind.” “ Temporal things,” she says, “are the thoughts
of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the
real or spiritual and eternal” (p. 337). The conclusion
of such.logic, as Miss Benson points out, is irresistible.
East, which is real, has West for its opposite. There
fore West is unreal. Or, even better, my left ear is the
opposite of my right; but my right ear exists, therefore
my left cannot. I only think that it does. She is a
kind of elementary Gnostic, therefore, in her views of
matter, and a kind of Docetic in her views of the Incar
nate Son of God. She further denies the Atonement,
at least in any sense in which that word has ever been
understood by Christians. “ Does erudite theology,”
she sarcastically asks, “regard the crucifixion of Jesus
as chiefly providing a ready pardon for all sinners who
ask for it and are willing to be forgiven ? . . . Then we
must differ” (p. 24). “Its efficacy,” she continues,
“ lies in the practical affection and goodness it de
monstrated for mankind.”
One wonders, therefore, with all this, why she pays
such deference to the Holy Scriptures at all. But the
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difficulty is less great when we consider that, first, she
would get no hearing from the ill-educated Protestants
who form her sect if she did not; secondly, that her
early Congregational teaching is too strong for her • and,
thirdly and supremely, her method of exegesis. This
last point repays deep study. She makes the Scriptures
mean exactly what she likes. Contemplate if you
please the following passage. It is taken from the 29th
division of the tenth chapter of the work on Science
and Health, beginning at the first verse :—
“ The word Adam is from the Hebrew ‘ Adamah,’
signifying the ‘ red colour of the ground, dust, nothing
ness? Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and
it reads ‘ a dam ’ or obstruction.” (One can only be
thankful that it means nothing worse.) “ This,” proceeds
the oracle, “ suggests the thought of something fluid, of
mortal mind in solution : it further suggests the thought
of that ‘ Darkness . . . upon the face of the deep,’
when matter or dust was deemed the agent of Deity in
creating man—when mattei' stood opposed to Spirit as
that which is accursed. Here ‘ a dam ’ is not a mere
play upon words, for it means much. It illustrates the
separation of man from God, and the obstacle the
serpent, sin, would impose between man and his Creator.
The dissection and definition of words, aside from theii'
metaphysical meaning, is not scientific” (p. 338) . . .
and so and so on.
I beg to assure my hearers that this sublime pas
sage is as I have read it. You will observe that
Moses is also set aside in it as a blind guide to mortal
minds, and that Mrs. Eddy has penetrated mysteries
where the friend of God was at fault. Perhaps the
only point in the passage to which, one is able to give
one’s cordial consent is that the word Adam, as in
terpreted by the American prophetess, does indeed
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“ suggest the thought of darkness upon the face of
the deep.”
Or consider this comment upon the ninth verse of the
first chapter of Genesis—a verse which would, super
ficially considered, appear to offer at least some little
difficulty to a lady who denies God’s creation of matter,
the goodness and even the reality of matter itself, and
at the same time pledges herself to a belief in the
inspiration of the Scriptures. But Mrs. Eddy is
undaunted.
“ And God called the dryland Earth: and the gather
ing together of the waters called He seas ; and God
saw that it was good.” Here is the comment:—
“ Here the human concept and Divine idea seem
confused by the translator, but they are not so in the
scientifically Christian meaning of the text. Upon Adam
devolves the pleasureable task of finding names for all
material things ; but Adam has not yet appeared in the
narrative. In metaphor, the dry land illustrates the
absolute formations instituted by mind, while water
symbolizes its elements. Spirit duly feeds every object,
as it appears in the line of creation, so that it may
express the fatherhood and the motherhood of God.
Spirit names and blesses all. Without natures par
ticularly defined all things would be alike, and creation
full of nameless children, wanderers from the parent
mind, strangers in a tangled wilderness ” (p. 506).
This is the whole of the comment; and it, as well as
the preceding passage, is an admirable example of Mrs.
Eddy’s style and methods. Upon myself, who have
really attempted to understand what she means, I can
only say that the effect has been one resembling that of
incipient imbecility. They are certainly English words
arranged in tolerably grammatical order ; but they pro
duce to my poor intelligence rather less than no meaning
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at all. I feel indeed, in her own beautiful expression,
a “ wanderer from the parent mind, a stranger in a
tangled wilderness.”
After these examples we are not surprised to learn the
following facts.
The river Hiddekel means “ Divine Science, under
stood and acknowledged.” “ In ” (i-n) is “ a term obsolete
in Science, if used in reference to Spirit or Deity.”
“ Gad ” means “ Science ; spiritual being understood :
haste toward harmony.” “ Assher ” means “ Hope and
Faith ; spiritual compensation, the ills of the flesh
rebuked.” And lastly—and this is a piece of exegesis
that seems to me significant—Gihon (a river) means
“ The rights of woman acknowledged morally, civilly,
and socially ” (pp. 581-588).
Not
to be
Taken Seriously.
It would be possible to go on for ever quoting
passages of this kind, in illustration of Mrs. Eddy’s
religious position—I think it is the most confused and
intricate that I have ever come across. I picture her
seated at her desk with the Bible before her—with what
is called the Authorized Version—and a small heap of
second-rate Nonconformist commentaries upon the text.
(“ Adamah, red colour of the ground, dust, nothingness,”
irresistibly brings back the memory of the Scripture
lesson on Monday mornings at my private school.)
Seated at her desk, then, absolutely confident that she is
inspired from on high, yet dependent for mere techni
calities of the etymological meaning of words upon the
coarse erudition of dissenting divines, she proceeds to
find her system in the Bible. Gad must mean some
thing, therefore why should it not mean science,
spiritual being, understood, haste towards harmony ?
There is no reason why it should not, therefore it docs.
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There must be something about women’s rights ; Gihon
seems tolerably unoccupied, therefore Gihon means
women’s rights. Here is Moses saying that God made
mountains and seas and saw that they were good. But
God did nothing of the sort: Moses entirely misunder
stood the situation, or at any rate his translator did.
Therefore this must be set right. And so on.
Now, I sincerely intended when I began this paper to
take Mrs. Eddy seriously, but it is simply impossible.
In religious matters she resembles a bull—or shall we
rather say a well-intentioned cow ?—in a china shop.
She means ever so well; she has grasped the outline of
the idea that Scripture can be allegorically interpreted,
and that there is such a thing as symbolism ; so she
proceeds, as it were, to drink out of the spout of a coffee
pot and put a slop-basin upon the top of her head to
protect her from the sun. These clay objects, she
argues, occasionally resemble other things than those
for which they were designed ; a china apple may serve
as a pepper-pot; then why in the world should not a
slop-basin serve as a hat ?
Hence follows the scene of confusion and the sound
of trampling and breakage, of which I have given you
only the minutest glimpse.
Mrs. Eddy’s Philosophy.
When we turn to her philosophy, we are not in much
better plight • for the most charitable construction that
we can put upon her system is that she provided herself
with the smaller edition of a philosophical dictionary,
asked her friends the meaning of some words and
guessed at the rest.
Briefly stated, her philosophical system, so far as it is
coherent at all, is as follows :—
God is mind, and God alone has true existence in the
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highest sense. Man also is mind (she is not explicit
as to whether man is, therefore, Divine or not ; but we
will be charitable and assume that she is not a sheer
Pantheist, although this is a hard task when we read
that God is “ the only Ego
But we will allow that
man has a secondary kind of personality dependent
upon God. Very well, then. Since God—or shall we
say, “ The Divine ” ?—alone is real, all that is opposed
to the Divine must be unreal. But the Divine is Spirit,
and the opposite of spirit is matter. Therefore matter
is unreal. Again, God is good, therefore the opposite
of good is not God, therefore it is not real; therefore
evil has no existence.
Here, then, is the philosophy with which Mrs. Eddy
sets out to attack the problems of sin and suffering.
“ There is no sin or suffering ” is inscribed upon her
banner. She is quite explicit about this. “There is
but one primal cause,’' she says, “ therefore there can
be no effect from any other cause.” (One notes in
passing that she is apparently unaware of what are
-called secondary causes.) “. . . And there can be no
reality in aught which proceeds not from this great and
only cause.” And again, “ God does not cause man to
sin, to be sick or die.” And the conclusion is, as I
have said, that sin, sickness, and death have no real
existence.
But somehow the world persists in believing in these
things ; and this must be accounted for. This, then, is
her solution. The mind of man has somehow become
rather debased—she does not explain how this is
possible, if deterioration from the primal cause is an
impossibility—but—well, it is so. This debased percep
tion she calls by the name of “ mortal mind,” and sick
ness and death, though not real in themselves, have a
kind of phantom life when regarded by mortal mind.
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The cure, then, is evident—man must refuse to yield to
the allurements of mortal mind ; he must stoutly deny
its veracity, and thus gradually the idea of sin and sick
ness will be eradicated, and with the eradication of the
idea such an attenuated existence as they possess will
also pass away.
Its Fallacies.
Now in this summary we have really the pith of Mrs.
Eddy’s system. First let us expose the fallacies.
Mrs. Eddy does not understand the meaning of
existence. She is right, in a hazy kind of way, when
she thinks that God alone has existence in the highest
sense ; but she is wrong when she thinks, if she does so
think, that there is no other kind of existence possible.
She ignores the possibility that creation, secondary
causes, and man’s free-will may be capable of modifying
the extension of God’s original idea. She is, that is to
say, an Idealist in such a sense that she denies any sort
of reality to anything except ideas. She does not seem
to be aware that matter may be a product of spirit and
of a different constitution from spirit without thereby
destroying the supremacy of spirit.
She contradicts herself also flatly, as I have already
hinted. If nothing can truly exist except that which is
in harmony with the creative Spirit, how is it, we ask,
that mortal mind exists ? She has no answer to this
except that of saying that it doesn’t. Yet she bases the
existence of the idea of sin and matter upon the fact
that it does, and that it is, moreover, extremely energetic.
Here again is another contradiction. There can be no
effect from any other cause except the Primal Cause,
she tells us : yet almost in the next paragraph she tells
us that sin and matter, so far as they exist, have come
into existence from mortal mind which is certainly any
thing but a Primal Cause.
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It is really useless to go on—it is like arguing with a
fog. And her final retort, of course, silences us at once.
We ourselves are in a condition of mortal mind, she
informs us ; therefore, of course, we cannot understand
her. And indeed we cannot.
A True Principle amid Confusion.
But is there nothing in her ideas ? No, I think there
is a good deal in them. There is that truth in them
which the Christian religion has taught for nineteen
centuries ; namely that spirit is superior to matter, and
the original cause of it, and that under certain circum
stances spirit can control matter.
Here is the principle that is true under all her con
fusion. I say that the Christian religion has taught it
for nineteen centuries; I will go further and say that the
mind of man has grasped it since the creation of the
world. It is this that underlies every miracle that God
has overwrought; it is by this that the Saints have lived ;
and it is this that modern psychologists are at last begining to verify by scientific methods. It is the vast and all
dominating principle on which we resist temptation,
namely that spiritual interests are better worth securing
than carnal; it is on that principle that the madman can
perform feats impossible to the sane, and that the
hypnotist can banish a nervous headache, and can,
under certain circumstances, modify the ravages of
organic disease. But it does not therefore follow that
because the master is greater than the servant therefore
the servant is a phantom ; nor that there may not be
occasions when the weary master can deal with matters
better through his servant than himself, as when a
doctor gives a chemical drug instead of hypnotism.
“ All good things are ours,” says Browning, “ nor soul
helps flesh more now than flesh helps souls.”
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This, then, is our answer to Mrs. Eddy : You are
right, we say, when you declare that God is a Spirit ;
you are wrong when you deny that the Word was made
Flesh. You are right in proclaiming the superiority of
Mind, you are wrong when you deny the existence of
matter. You are right when you say with the Idealists
that the qualities of matter have no existence apart from
mind ; you are wrong when you deduce from that pro
position that if human minds ceased to perceive there is
no Divine Mind to save the situation. You are right,
then, with nearly every other heretic under the sun in
your affirmations ; you are absolutely wrong with ab
solutely every heretic in your negations.
The Practical System.
We will pass on to the practical system of Christian
Science. Now this is chiefly directed to the destruction
of such delusions as bodily suffering by a means other
than that of medical science. The success of this
religion is indeed largely due to its results in this direc
tion ; for there is no question at all that cures are
wrought by this extraordinary philosophy. The close,
indeed, of Mrs. Eddy’s remarkable book consists largely
of testimonies to this effect; and one or two recent trials
are evidences to the fact that, even if these cases were
a little unfortunate owing to the perversion of mortal
mind (which, as we have seen, can have no existence),
yet that there are persons of integrity sufficiently satisfied
as to Mrs. Eddy’s claims to risk and indeed to sacrifice
their lives in her cause.
I must confess that the extracts from rejoicing ex
patients, given in her book, seem to me a little uncon
vincing ; but I am perfectly willing to allow that they
are genuine, and that it is only my cold insular nature,
coupled with my “ mortal mind,” that makes me hesitate.
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“ I wish to say,” writes a lady, “ to those who think
the price of our literature is too high, that if I could not
get another copy, there is no price on earth that would
induce me to part with my Science and Health. Not
mentioning the money paid for doctor’s bills, I gave for
one medical book $3.50, for another, $6.75, and after
studying these I found I had more diseases than before
their purchase.”
(This reminds me of Mr. Jerome’s experience in
similar circumstances ; his was even more shocking, for,
perhaps you will remember that he discovered that he
had every disease enumerated in the book except house
maid’s knee.)
“ For the small sum of $3,” the lady continues, 11 I
purchased a copy of Science and Health, and through
reading it understandingly found I had no diseases. It
always brings a feeling of pity when I hear any one say
our text-book is too costly. Who would not give three
dollars to be freed from all diseases ? I seemed to have
all, or nearly all, the ills that flesh is heir to. I will not
try to enumerate them, but one that I was made free from
—one that had always been with me—was a pain on the
top of my head. . . . The doctors told me that I never
would be freed, as my brain was too large for the space
allotted to it, and that was what caused the pressure
and pain. Soon after reading Science and Health I
forgot that I had a brain that was too large, for all the
pain and pressure was gone. Oh 1 I can never tell
how free I felt, with no pain after so many years of
suffering (p. 613).—M. M. S. Clinton, Iowa.”
But this same lady seems to have been but an imperfect
disciple, for she informs us also that “from being a
shadow of ninety-five pounds, she reached one hundred
and sixty-five pounds” from a perusal of the book.
Surely she should rather have ceased to weigh any
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pounds at all since matter is a delusion ! Yet we
cannot but rejoice at her liberation even to this extent,
for, previously to this, we learn that she was in the habit
of taking medicine every fifteen minutes throughout
the day.
And this is a tolerably characteristic example of Mrs.
Eddy’s followers. Honestly, I opened the book at
random, when I fell upon this precious passage. Per
haps I was guided to do so. But I do not say they are
all of this nature ; I am quite willing to allow that even
objective diseases may be cured by Mrs. Eddy’s system ;
for the power of self-suggestion is certainly a remarkable
fact; and I should hesitate from attempting to limit the
effect of a convinced mind acting upon the body. But
where I take exception to the system is in the fact that
bodily disease seems to be selected alone for treat
ment from all the manifestations of mortal mind. Food
also, according to the new gospel, ought to be a
delusion ; so is money, so are carriages and horses and
trains and steamboats and clothes—for they are all
manifestations of a thing which does not exist, since
God is Spirit and Spirit is all. Yet I am not aware that
Christian Scientists have less than three square meals a
day—in fact, I am acquainted with one family belonging
to this denomination which joyfully sits down to a late
supper of tinned lobster, exclaiming at the liberating
doctrine which tells them that there is no such thing as
indigestion. Mrs. Eddy herself wears, I believe, a black
silk dress ; she certainly charges three dollars fifty cents
for her miracle-working book, demanding prepayment,
and, I rather fancy, a sum of about twenty pounds
sterling for a course of higher study ; I happen to know
that her followers travel by train—and, in fact, lay
themselves open generally to the charge of not quite
believing what they say.
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Its Inconsistency.
Yet what do they say to this ? They say that at
present concession must be made to these fantastic
ideas, the mortal mind of the rest of the world is still
too strong for the elect, and that they must continue to
wear their chains a little longer. Mrs. Eddy goes even
further, and sadly laments the limiting power of vulgar
credulity. “ Until the advancing age/’ she writes,
“ admits the efficacy and supremacy of mind, it is better
to leave surgery, and the adjustment of broken bones
and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while you
confine yourselves chiefly to mental reconstruction and
the prevention of inflammation.” Another irresistible
parallel suggests itself. When David Copperfield, you
remember, was giving his little supper, ending as it did
in such a lamentable manifestation of mortal mind,
under the delusive influence of non-existent alcohol,
one by one the preparation of the dishes was consigned
to the manipulation of the pastrycook round the corner,
thereby allowing Mrs. Cripps, his landlady, to “giveher
undivided attention to the potatoes ” and “ to serve up
the cheese and the celery as she would wish to see it
done.” But a good time is coming, says the prophetess :
“ The time approaches when mortal mind will forsake
its corporeal, structural, and material basis, when im
mortal mind and its formations will be apprehended in
science, and material beliefs will not interfere with
spiritual facts.”
Yet, until that time comes, we may surely be pardoned
if we continue to see a little inconsistency in all this, and
to explain what successes are attained by the system by
the principle of self-suggestion rather than by a philoso
phical fallacy. It might be otherwise if there was any
really startling evidence that Christian Scientists believed
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what they said. When Mrs. Eddy -lscends a pillar like
St. Simon Stylites, or confines her diet to pulse and
water like the holy children—for even we do not ask
that she should subsist entirely on high and noble ideas
—when American professors of this creed cross the
Atlantic on millstones, or even without them, upborne by
their supreme consciousness of the superiority of mind
over matter—even, we might almost say, when the
preachers of this religion go out barefooted and brownfrocked—for we will grant them that concession to mortal
mind for the present—to proclaim the good news of the
kingdom to those who cannot afford three dollars fifty
cents as the price of their liberation—when we see all this,
I say—when we see even one-hundredth part of the self
denial of the meanest among the Christian saints, or the
very faintest sign that God is working among them in a
manner in which He does not work in hypnotic estab
lishments, perhaps then we shall be able to treat them
with more respect and less laughter, and be patient
enough to study their complicated books with something
resembling sympathy.
Neither Christian nor Scientific.
In conclusion, then, we have seen that Christian
Science cannot claim, in any acknowledged sense of
those words, to be either Christian or Scientific. It is a
digest of an emasculated Protestantism and a misunder
stood Idealism manifested in an inconsistent course of
life. Yet Mrs. Eddy has one true principle—namely,
that mind is master of matter ; and she has proclaimed
this principle to an undiscerning and credulous public
who had forgotten it, sunk in materialism, or, at the
very best, in an utterly conventional and de-spiritualised
form of Christianity, in language resembling that of a
Uould-be minor prophet confined in an American asylum
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on the charge of thinking himself the Apostle John. To
such people as these, accustomed to regard matter as
supreme, and religion as a kind of pleasing emotion
largely dependent on the state of the liver, her message
has come as a revelation ; and for this, I think, we may
be thankful. Anything in the world—the creed of the
Hottentot or of the Red Indian—I had almost said
even spiritualism itself—is better than materialism. It
is better to be aware of the spiritual world, seeing it
through even Mrs. Eddy’s spectacles, than not to be
aware of it at all; and it is something to know that God
is Love, even if one forgets that He must also have some
attribute corresponding to common sense.
For this, then, we may be thankful, though it is hard
to preserve our gratitude when we consider the huge
superincumbent weight of dross that lies about the
gold ; still more, when we remember the thousands of
immortal souls whom God made for Himself, whom He
endowed with reason, and whom Mrs. Eddy has suc
ceeded in diverting from the path that leads to Him.
But if all roads lead to Rome, at least a great many may
lead to God, and it is impossible to say that many
Americans, and, indeed, English as well, are not better
as cheerful, healthy-bodied, though mind.-deluded,
“ Scientists ” than as narcotic, materialistic, hopeless
invalids. This is, I am afraid, faint praise, but it is all
that I have the heart to utter.
Recommendations.
You will forgive me, perhaps, if I end with two or
three recommendations to any who have to deal with
persons suffering from this distressing form of thought.
First, I am sure that we must keep our tempers ; and,
secondly, our sense of humour. If it is true that Protes
tantism rises in any degree from the absence of this
�18
“ Christian Science"
latter virtue, I am certain that Christian Science, its
latest development, rises almost entirely from it. I do
not say that no scientist possesses a grain of humour
but that such is bound to keep it in a locked cupboard
when he treats of his religion. Let us therefore bring
to bear this genial solvent of laughter and see whether
Christian Science is as impervious to it as to so many
other facts of the world in which we live.
But supremely let us remember that the sacramental
system is the one and only positive scheme which can
be advanced with any hope of success. It is from the
loss of this that this new heresy has had its rise. When
matter was no longer understood to be the divinelyappointed vehicle of spirit, it became its enemy. Let it
be our business, then, so to know our own faith that we
may state it intelligently to others ; that we may show
how fallen matter, evil indeed so far as it is abused, has
been caught up and purified by the divinely-inspired
Revelation of God ; how bread and wine brought forth
from the earth by the labour of man for bodily suste
nance are transformed by divine power into the Bread
that comes down from heaven and the Atoning Blood
of the Son of God ; how human words that in one
man’s mouth may deceive and ruin, in another’s may
convey the message of heavenly pardon ; how the water
that man defiles yet flows from the Paradise of God and
washes souls as well as bodies—how, in fact, the whole
range of matter that had become man’s enemy has
become again his friend—and how that which was an
occasion of falling has turned again to his wealth and
peace ; and how supremely, as the very keystone of the
glorious arch that God has built from earth to heaven,
hangs the doctrine of the Incarnation, by which the
Creator became linked ineffably to the creature, and
the spiritual to the material in bonds that are eternal;
�"Christian Science"
19
and how, finally, the truth that the Word was made
Flesh illustrates, underlies, and emphasizes in a fashion
of which man could never have dreamed, the further
truth of which it is the correlative, that God is a Spirit,
that they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit
and in truth ; that God is Light, and in Him is no
darkness at all.
�PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
U
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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"Christian science"
Creator
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Benson, Robert Hugh
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 19 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "A paper read at the Catholic Conference at Brighton, 1906."
Publisher
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Catholic Truth Society
Date
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[1906?]
Identifier
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RA1552
Subject
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Christianity
Science
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ("Christian science"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Christian Science-Doctrines
Health
Mary Baker Eddy
Science