Work-cure is, I think, the sanest and most helpful part of Christian Science, as of all other types of psychotherapy. The Christian Scientists do set idle people to work and turn inverted attention outward upon the world. This is a great service—the greatest, I think, that can be done to a human being. By setting their patients to the work of healing and teaching others, Christian Scientists have wisely availed themselves of the greatest healing power on earth.
I believe that suggestion, education, and work-cure can be used in far safer and saner ways by physicians, social workers, and teachers or clergymen properly trained for the work than by the Christian Scientists. Heretofore these last have held the field of psychotherapy largely without competition. American physicians have confined themselves mostly to physical and chemical methods (diet, drugs, and surgery), which have a place in the cure of functional disease, but not, I think, the chief place.
Now that scientific psychotherapy is being taken up by physicians, social workers, and educators (including the clergy), not instead of, but in conjunction with physical and chemical treatment, I think it is reasonable to expect that Christian Science will have to stick closer to the truth if it is to hold its ground in competition.
SOUTH STREET
BY
FRANCIS E. FALKENBURY
As I came down to the long street by the water, the sea-ships drooped their masts like ladies bowing,
Curtseying friendly in a manner olden,