Christian Science practice is the application of its philosophy and theology to bodily healing. This is really the end toward which the whole system is directed. "Science and Health" is an exposition 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. There is hardly a page in her book without its reference to sickness and health. Her statements are consequently always involved and one needs to stand quite back from them to follow their outline. Here, as elsewhere, one may read deeply and indirectly between the lines attitudes and beliefs against which she is reacting. Her reactions against the environment of her girlhood and early womanhood affect her point of view so distinctly that without the recognition of this a good deal of what she says is a puzzle without a key.
Christian Science the Application of Philosophy and Theology to Bodily Healing
She had been taught, among other things, that sickness is a punishment for sin. One may safely assume this for the theology of her formative period fell back upon this general statement in its attempt to reconcile individual suffering and special 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 is arguing against this and directing her practitioners how to meet and overcome it. This perhaps accounts for the rather difficult and wavering treatment of sin and sickness in a connection where logically sickness alone should be considered.
Mrs. Eddy would not naturally have thus associated sin and sickness had they not been associated for her in earlier teaching and yet, as has been said, all this is implicit rather than explicit. The key to a great deal 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 interpretation of it quite as much is made of denial and the recognition of error as of its more positive aspects, but in the book there is a pretty constant interweaving of both the denial of evil and the affirmation of well-being.
There is a sound element of wisdom in many of her injunctions, but more needed perhaps fifty years ago than now. We must remember constantly that Mrs. Eddy is writing against the backgrounds of a somber theology, a medical practice which relied very greatly on the 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 both the medical procedure and the spiritual comfort of the sick room of the fifties and sixties did very little to lighten depression. When, therefore, Mrs. Eddy urges, as she does, an atmosphere of confidence and sympathy she is directly in the right direction.
Looseness of Christian Science Diagnosis
As we pass beyond these things which are now commonplace, what she says is not so simple. It is difficult to say how far the healing which attends upon Christian Science is in her thought the result of Divine Power immediately in exercise, and how far it 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 physical diagnosis. "Physicians examine the pulse, tongue, lungs, to discover the condition of matter, when in fact all is Mind. The body is the substratum of mortal mind, and this so-called mind must finally yield to the mandate of immortal Mind" (page 370).
The result of this in practice is that the Christian Science healer accepts either the diagnosis of the medical schools, reported second-hand or else the patient's own statement of his condition. Needless to say there is room for very great looseness of diagnosis in such a practice as this. The actuality of sickness must be recognized neither directly nor indirectly. 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 Christian Scientists would rather stubbornly believe that somebody must recognize the fact of sickness or else we cannot begin to set in action the machinery for curing it, even if that machinery be Christian Science itself, and we do not change this rather stubborn fact by covering sickness with the blank designation Error. Even the error is real for the time being.[56]
[56] The writer once received an unexpected sidelight on the practice of the Christian Science healer in this connection. He once enjoyed the friendship of a Christian Science healer with whom he often 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 tones—"And what error are you suffering from this morning?" When he answered that his own particular error was his persuasion that he could play golf the telephone atmosphere was immediately changed.
The results of fear are constantly dwelt upon and this too is in the right direction. Much is made of the creative power of mind in that it imparts purity, health and beauty (page 371). When Mrs. Eddy says on page 373 that disease is expressed not so much by the lips as in the functions of the body she is making one of those 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 because "the body when bereft of mortal mind at first cools and afterward it is resolved into its primitive mortal elements." "Mortal Mind produces animal heat and then expels it through the abandonment of a belief or increases it to the point of self-destruction" (page 374). Fever is a mental state. Destroy fear and you end fever.