‘On the morning of the dedication of the Chicago Church, November 14, 1898, I was in my bedroom in the third story of our house (the house is three stories and basement). I was getting ready to go to the morning service, and my little daughter, five years old, was playing about, when suddenly I felt a silence. I instantly noticed that the child was no longer there and that the window was open.’
‘I looked out and saw her unconscious form on the ground below, her head on the cement sidewalk. Instantly I thought, “All is Love.”
‘As I went downstairs the entire paragraph in “No and Yes,” page 19, beginning, “Eternal harmony, perpetuity, and perfection constitute the phenomena of Being,” came to me and took up its abode with me, and with it the clear sense of the great gulf fixed between the child and the lie that claimed to destroy. The child was brought in, and as she was carried upstairs she cried. As she was laid down, the blood was spurting from her mouth, and had already covered her neck and shoulders. I instantly said, “There is one law—God’s law—under which man remains perfect,” and the bleeding immediately stopped. The child seemed to relapse into unconsciousness, but I declared, “Mind is ever present and controls its idea,” and in a few moments she slept naturally. During the morning she seemed to suffer greatly if she was moved at all, and her legs seemed paralysed, lifeless. In the afternoon, all sense of pain left, she slept quietly, and I went to the afternoon service rejoicing greatly in my freedom from the sense of personal responsibility.’
‘When I returned she sat in my lap to eat some supper, with no sense of pain, but still unable to control her limbs, which presented the appearance of entire inaction. At eight o’clock she was undressed without inconvenience, and there was no mark on her body but a bruised eye. During the day she had not spoken of herself. At eleven o’clock when I went upstairs, I found her wide awake and she said: “Mamma, error is trying to say that I fell out of the window, but that cannot be. The child of God can’t fall; but why do I lie here? Why can’t I move my legs?”
‘The answer was, “You can move them. Mind governs, and you are always perfect.” In a moment she said, “I will get up and walk.” It seemed to require one or two trials to get her legs to obey, but she rose, walked across the room and back and climbed into bed. . . . She then sat up, ate a lunch, fell into a natural slumber, and woke bright and happy in the morning.’
The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a solemn warning in connexion with this question at a recent conference at Lambeth Palace, and the following statement from the medical side is important.
‘Christian Science seems to present one fundamental point of difference from all other forms of spiritual healing. This is, that whereas the cures said to be wrought at Lourdes and other shrines are attributed to the direct action of Christ, exercised at the intercession of His Virgin Mother or His Saints, Mrs. Eddy and her disciples claim, as far as we understand the teaching—which is not only obscure in itself, but often inconsistent—to cure disease by the same power of healing that was given to Christ. In the sacred book of the sect we read:
‘Our Master healed the sick, practised Christian healing, and taught the generalities of its divine Principle to His students; but He left no definite rule for demonstrating His Principle of healing and preventing disease. This remained to be discovered through Christian Science. A pure affection takes form in goodness, but Science alone reveals its Principle and demonstrates its rules.’[2]
She tells us that ‘when God called her to proclaim His Gospel to this age, there came also the charge to plant and water His vineyard.’ What she calls her ‘sacred discovery’ was made in 1866, and since then it has become widespread in America and in this country. It does not commend itself to the Latin mind, which is nothing if not lucid and logical. Its methods and results are fully discussed by some representatives of the most advanced medical thought in the present issue of the Journal, and we have nothing to add to what they say. To anyone who wishes to see the whole case against Christian Science put most clearly and convincingly from the medical point of view, we cordially recommend Mr. Stephen Paget’s book on the subject.[3] It is attractively written, well ‘documented,’ and informed with the true scientific spirit.
We need say only one thing more about Christian Science, which, to speak plainly, is a repulsive subject, inasmuch as it shows, in a way no other form of spiritual healing does, the depths of degradation to which the human mind can sink under the weight of superstition. That it cures cases of the kind that have been healed at all sorts of shrines—pagan, Christian, Buddhist, Mohammedan—from time immemorial, it would be idle to deny. That it brightens the lives of some persons who have no aim in life, and have nothing to do but evoke pains and ailments by thinking of their health, is also true. But, none the less, its pretensions go far behind anything that is credible, except by such as accept Tertullian’s paradox, Credo quia impossibile; and, instead of courting the light as other methods do, it seems to love the darkness. We have asked over and over again for facts that would convince a trained mind, but none are forthcoming. Christian Science may, indeed, be described as faith with the least possible amount of works and the largest possible number of words. Here are fair specimens of the kind of facts which forms all the evidence vouchsafed to us of its healing efficacy; they are taken from the Christian Science Sentinel of May 28, 1910, p. 777: