And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit and touched his tongue.
Will the Christian Science healers explain the functions of the "hand," the "fingers," and the "spit" in "mental medicine"? If it be answered that Jesus resorted to material means to illustrate the power of the spirit, etc., it would follow that material means may be used to advantage, and that there is no such feud between matter and mind as the Eddyites proclaim.
Many other texts could be quoted to show that Jesus used material means. He touched the bier, he laid his hands on the patient, which is the kind of manipulation vehemently denounced by Mrs. Eddy in her comments on mesmerism. The "touch" so frequent in the miracles performed by Jesus is downright heresy in Mrs. Eddy's system of healing.
Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them. (Luke iv, 40.)
Again, Jesus recommends to his disciples dieting by way of abstinence from food—that is, fasting—for the healing of obstinate diseases. Evidently he believed that dieting increased one's healing power.
In the same pamphlet published and copyrighted by the Christian Science Publication Society, the author, William R. Rathbon, member of the Board of Lectureship of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, writes: "He [Jesus] gave himself no concern about physical symptoms... He cared little about what the sick man had been eating, but much about what he had been thinking." In the New Testament, however, nearly every patient's symptoms are described, to which Jesus listened without a word of protest and with apparent consent. Had the evangelists believed, as the Christian Science lecturers teach, that disease is purely mental, they would not have gone into details in describing physical symptoms.
"And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years" (Mark v, 25.) Does not that describe the nature and duration, as well as the physical effects, of the woman's disease?
"Lord, have mercy upon my son, for he is a lunatic" (Matt, xvii, 15).
"And one of the multitude said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son"; and then the father proceeds to describe the symptoms of his son's malady: "He foameth and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away" (Mark ix, 17).
In all these cases there was not a word of rebuke from the great healer because of the symptoms described.