In stating categorically and without qualification that "mortal ills are but errors of thought," Mrs. Eddy seems to have overlooked two classes of patients to whom it would be somewhat difficult to apply this sweeping generalisation. We wonder, for instance, how this theory could be made to cover the large category of infantile ailments. How, we are {133} entitled to ask, would Christian Science deal with the teething-troubles which attend babyhood? Is it seriously suggested that a feverish, wailing child is merely the victim of an hallucination—and how would the Christian Scientist undertake to convince him of his illusion? On the face of it, such an enterprise does not look hopeful. But further, it so happens that human beings are not the only sufferers from pain and sickness; animals are subject to diseases, and often to the same diseases as men. We disclaim all intention of treating the subject otherwise than seriously—but if a man's rheumatism is an illusion, what causes the same affection in a dog or a chimpanzee? And if an embrocation may be used with good effects in the latter case, why may it not be used in the former? We need not press these questions; they will serve as they stand to show once more how this whole pretentious philosophy about the unreality, the imaginary nature, of pain breaks down as soon as we subject it to simple tests. So also with the Christian Science attitude towards "drugs," the prescribing of which Mrs. Eddy places in the same category as the denial of God.[8] An obvious comment suggests itself: If drugs cannot cure, it follows that they cannot hurt; will some adherent to this teaching show his consistency in the faith by swallowing a small, but sufficient quantity {134} of oxalic acid? And so, finally, with Mrs. Eddy's singularly futile question, "As power divine is in the healer, why should mortals concern themselves with the chemistry of food?" [9] Without unkindliness, one feels tempted to reply that this kind of language will begin to be convincing when Christian Scientists show their readiness and ability to sustain life on substances chemically certified to be without nutritive properties.
But it is not its denial of physical evil that makes this and allied movements a real menace; dissent as we may from the Christian Science theory of bodily illness, and deplore as we must the fatal results of which we read every now and again when a patient has been persuaded to substitute the Christian Science "healer" for the trained physician—these results concern, to put it rather bluntly, no one but the sufferer and his immediate friends. But when we remarked that the natural man desired to be made well rather than to be made good, we were not merely thinking of one side of Christian Science teaching; we were bearing in mind that the author of Science and Health declares the illusoriness of pain only as part of the illusoriness of all evil, moral as well as physical. Christian Science explicitly denies the reality of sin: and that denial follows with inexorable logic from its first principle—that {135} God is All, and All is Good. And here rather than in the material domain lies the danger we have to face; this is the side of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine which, the moment it is attractively presented to, and grasped by, half-educated and unstable minds, will, we fear, exercise a fatal fascination over large numbers. For one person who will seriously persuade himself that there is no matter, or that his sore throat is imaginary, there will be a number to welcome the good tidings that what they had hitherto regarded as sin wears in reality no such sinister complexion—that, as Mrs. Eddy openly states, what seems "vice" is to be explained as "illusions of the physical senses." That is precisely what every sinner would like to believe. "I have done that, says my memory. I cannot have done that, says my pride, and remains obdurate. In the end, my memory gives in." So wrote Nietzsche, keenly and cynically observant of his kind. As a matter of fact, men would give almost anything to be able to convince themselves that they "have not done that"—not necessarily from pride, but in order to be rid of shame, of remorse, of self-contempt; will not many of them only too eagerly accept this fatal anodyne when it is offered to them in the pretended name of religion?
We have but one comment to urge, one protest to make. It has taken long ages to develop and heighten man's sensitiveness to {136} the distinction between good and evil; we say with the most solemn emphasis that anything calculated to dull that sensitiveness, to wipe out that distinction, to drug the conscience, is nothing less than a crime of high treason against humanity. Better call evil an unfathomable mystery, so long as we also regard it as a dread reality, a foe we must conquer or be conquered by; but to solve the problem by denying its existence, to get over the fact of evil by declaring that all is good—that way not only madness but moral disaster lies. Let us at least understand what this doctrine is, which is being so energetically pressed upon us to-day; and if we see the direction in which that ill-digested pseudo-revelation is likely to lead those who consistently accept it, let us meet this insidious propaganda with equal energy and better arguments. Our first and simplest duty in dealing with the specious doctrine which asserts that evil is "not-being"—a mere illusion which, like the idols spoken of by the Apostle, is "nothing in the world"—is to point out promptly and uncompromisingly that whatever such a reading of the facts may be, and from whatever quarter it may be offered, it is not Christian, but at the furthest remove from Christianity. Shall we be told that "the question is not whether these opinions are dangerous, but whether they are true?" We reply that we are well aware that truth is the highest expediency; but we are not {137} acquainted with any other test of the truth of an opinion save this—whether and how it works. If a speculative theory, when carried into practice, should appear to make straight for pernicious results, in what intelligible sense of the word can it be "true"?
It is the immense merit of Christianity that it has spoken out with no uncertain voice upon this subject; it has never sought to minimise or explain away the fact of moral evil; on the contrary, it has consistently pointed to the true nature of sin, by connecting it vitally and causally with the sacrificial death of the Son of God: tanta molis erat (if we may slightly vary the immortal line) humanam solvere gentem. A gospel which lightly dismisses this terrible reality, and seeks to hide its hideousness behind a rose-coloured mist of fine words,—such an emasculated gospel is not a message of life, but has the answer of death within itself. That in the past, in a doctrine such as that of man's total depravity, the fact of sin has been over-emphasised, may be readily granted; but in the present all the symptoms indicate that the peril we have to meet is its under-emphasis. Against this whole tendency we must resolutely re-assert the Christian standpoint and attitude. Christianity is that religion which affirms in unfaltering accents the reality of evil—but it sets over against it the greater Reality of atoning Love; it proclaims unsparingly the sinfulness and deadliness {138} of sin, but offers us the victory over sin and death through Jesus Christ our Lord.
"O Timotheus, guard your trust, and eschew the irreverent empty phrases and contradictions of a mis-called 'Science,' professing which some have missed their true aim in regard to the faith."
NOTE.
In order to afford an illustration of Christian Science as a thing in being, we reproduce without comment the following report of an inquest, as published in the Tribune, on January 9th, 1908:—
Remarkable questions were put by the coroner to witnesses at a Richmond
(Surrey) inquest yesterday on Mary Elizabeth Dixon, 58, a Christian
Scientist, who died of bronchitis.
Mrs. E. D., of St. John's Road, said that at the request of Mrs. Dixon she gave her Christian Science help—prayer which she had faith would be answered.
The Coroner (Dr. Michael Taylor): Was it?—She was in a state of collapse on Saturday night, but revived much. When Mrs. Dixon had a cold previously it improved wonderfully under Christian Science.