Note.—In this article I have dealt with healing as exercised on the ills of another, not on one’s own ills; and the prayer associated with such healing has therefore been presented as intercessory prayer. But of course the troubles which we have in view may be our own. In such a case the method will be much the same as that sketched above; relief may be effected subconsciously through the medium of prayer. But the procedure is now much simpler. Instead of sending out our subconsciousness (the phraseology is necessarily materialistic and fearfully inadequate) to work on that of another, we merely commission it to work on the seat of our own malady. The method now becomes one of auto-suggestion, i.e. the healing suggestion is made by us to ourselves. We know the power of this process in the moral sphere; we know how, by fixing our minds on lofty and ennobling ideas, we can break the power of temptation, not by a frontal attack, but by getting round it and above it to a higher level of life and thought. This, in fact, is the main purpose and effect of meditation as ordinarily practised. The scope of meditations only have to be slightly extended in order to apply to our physical as well as our moral troubles. But, although this method of healing becomes simpler in procedure, because applied to ourselves, yet for the same success it demands still greater humility and purity of intention. If, when we pray for others, it is hard for us to believe that the prayer may be really and effectually answered in other ways than by the removal of the physical suffering, it is still harder for us to recognise this in our own case. To meet this difficulty, it will be well that prayer for our own relief should be as much as possible silent prayer. We shall concentrate our attention on God’s love and power, as revealed in Christ, just spread out our trouble before Him, and resolve to trust Him to the uttermost. The suggestion thus conveyed to our own subconscious life will be charged with God’s grace; if physical healing results, the restored health will be transformed by dedication to God’s service; if the relief takes the form of strength to endure, it will be none the less relief, lifting us above the level of self-pity into tranquil communion with Christ crucified, and may be none the less an instrument in God’s hands for the doing of His blessed will.
THE METAPHYSICS OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
BY
M. CARTA STURGE
THE METAPHYSICS OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
By M. Carta Sturge
In attempting to criticise the Metaphysics of Christian Science, as put forth in the book which claims to be the authority for its doctrine, ‘Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,’ one is tempted to quote the famous chapter on ‘Snakes in Iceland,’ which runs ‘There are no snakes in Iceland,’ and to say at the outset that Christian Science has no Metaphysics. Since, however, it claims to explain the Universe, and to give a theory of such metaphysical subjects as Matter and Spirit, as well as of Unity and Reality, it may be well to examine its statements on these abstruse matters to see if they can justly claim to have value as Metaphysics, to search the island, as it were, before pronouncing that there are no snakes in it.
Undoubtedly Christian Science owes a good deal of its attractiveness to its teaching of a sort of popular Idealism. It was put forth at a time when a great wave of Materialism had overspread the Christian world, not owing only to discoveries in Natural Science, which seemed in the first flush of their triumph, before they had been adjusted with other fields of thought, to destroy all belief in Spirit, but owing also to the fact that Religion had been for so long established and, apparently, firmly seated upon a secure spiritual foundation, that it had been loosely taught as to its fundamental basis. So little had its relation with physical things been explained that the spiritual and physical aspects of the Universe had become, as it were, separated in thought and shut up respectively in watertight compartments. The result was that in the popular mind the two worlds, the spiritual and the physical, stood in a merely artificial relation with each other, connected, as it were, by unmeaning hooks, instead of standing in an intimate organic relation, so close that no true statement regarding the one could possibly stand in collision with the truth of the other.
In consequence of this merely artificial relation of the two in the popular mind, at the first breath of the new scientific announcements the two worlds in the minds of only too many fell apart, and the spiritual world floated away, if one may say so, to nowhere, whilst the physical, with all its limitations, its ruthless laws, its indifference to the individual, its total disregard of pain, and its insurmountable barriers, reigned alone. Materialism had triumphed with its apparently hard-and-fast solidity; whilst the ideals of Poetry, the truths hinted at by Art, the revelations of the prophet, the dreams of the young and the visions of the old, and our intuitions of unseen realities which cannot be uttered, were consigned by many, supposed to be wise, to the region of illusions, the realm of nothingness, and Man seemed indeed to be nothing more than a creature helplessly subject to circumstance, the sport of every wind, and entirely beyond the region of hope wherever physical aid failed.
It was in the midst of a state of things something like this that Christian Science came with its contrary announcement that all is Spirit, and this given forth with the energy and freshness which always accompanies the discovery of a new aspect of truth, or, as in this instance, the rediscovery of a world-old truth which had been for a time despised or forgotten. And with it came a message of hope, the assurance that we are not the creatures of mere circumstance, that we are not limited to physical life, nor altogether tied down by its limitations, that things are not as hard and fast as they seem, and that in the power of Spirit we can throw down many a barrier and rise above circumstances. Most welcome teaching, and yet to those of us accustomed to singing, on the third evening of the month, ‘With the help of my God I shall leap over the wall,’ it seems strange that it should appear quite so new! However, as before said, Materialism had darkened much of this old truth and somewhat blinded our eyes. Whether, therefore, it seems new or old to us, we can only welcome a powerful reassertion of Idealism, of the supremacy of Spirit, provided it come with good credentials, and be so stated as to appeal to the best and sanest part of ourselves, and with the breadth and depth of treatment that so wonderful a truth calls for. Unfortunately, it is here that Christian Science fails us. It is a cheap, too much ready-made Idealism that is put before us, and one that rather appeals to our less sane moments than to our more brilliantly illuminated ones.
Idealism, by reason of its very greatness, by its perception of things that lie outside our senses, by its apprehension of infinities far beyond our grasp, has many and great difficulties to encounter as soon as, leaving the inspired region of Poetry, and of prophetic vision, it tries to present itself as rational to our intellect, and as conformable with our knowledge of physical things. Had the foundress of Christian Science confined herself to the uninquiring assertions of Seership, and left the explanation of Spiritual truths (of which no one can deny that she caught some luminous glimpses) to minds equipped with the necessary knowledge and training, Christian Science would have been shorn of much of its incoherence and false teaching, and perhaps have proved itself a real ally to Christianity.