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 Christian Science Healing 
 
 versus 
 
 Mental Suggestion 
 
 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 
 Frederick Dixon, C.S.B. 
 
WORKS ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
 
 Written by MARY BAKER EDDY 
 
 SCIENCE .VND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES. In one 
 volume, 700 pp. The oriuinal. standard, and only text-book on 
 
 Christian Science Mind-healing. Cloth $3 00 
 
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 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 471 pp. Cloth 2 25 
 
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 THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, AND MISCELLANY. 364 
 
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 CHRISTIAN HEALING AND THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD . . 55 
 
 CHRISTIAN HEALING. Paper covers. 20 pp 20 
 
 THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD. Paper covers. 14 pp 20 
 
 POEMS. 70 pp., all of Mrs. Eddy's hymns and hsr earlier poems 1 50 
 
 FEED MY SHEEP. Solo 50 
 
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 description see price list furnished upon request. 
 
 Address orders for above works and make remittances payable to 
 
 ALLISON V. STEWART, ^"'StV Masks'" U.'l T^' 8 
 
 msmsmmm^m 
 
Christian Science Healing 
 
 versus 
 
 Mental Suggestion 
 
 FREDERICK DIXON, C.S.B. 
 
 IN THE 
 WEEKLY BUDGET, LONDON, ENGLAITO 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY 
 
 FALMOUTH AND ST. PAUL STREETS 
 
 BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 U. S. A. 
 

 Copyright, 1912, by 
 The Christian Science Publishing Society. 
 
♦ CA^ 
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 versus 
 
 MENTAL SUGGESTION 
 
 npHERE is, perhaps, no question occupying the 
 attention of the public today, a correct understand- 
 ing of which is more essential to its welfare, than that 
 which is summed up in the phrase "mental healing." 
 It is, therefore, peculiarly desirable that, at a time 
 when this treatment is surely and rapidly taking its 
 place as a recognized therapeutic medium, some 
 explanation of such antithetic systems as Christian 
 Science and mental suggestion should be forth- 
 coming. 
 
 Mental suggestion is by no means the new dis- 
 covery that the "man in the street" is apt to regard 
 it. It is as old as the human mind, and is based on 
 that inherent tendency toward a belief .in dualism 
 which seems to hypnotize the race. The dualism ulti- 
 mately resolves itself into a belief in good and evil, a 
 belief which found expression in the metaphor of the 
 tree in the Jehovistie document of Genesis. If the 
 admission is once made that, speaking absolutely, evil 
 is not real, the deduction that the human mind, 
 with its claim of intelligence, will-power, thought- 
 transference — in short, of suggestion in any form — is 
 not a factor in spiritual healing, must inevitably 
 follow. 
 
 363220 
 
4 j;iJP;JSTl;A^N SqiENCE HEALING 
 
 That mental suggestion, from a standpoint of rela- 
 tive truth, may produce certain changes in a human 
 mentality or in physical conditions is nothing to the 
 point. It only proves that certain effects follow, under 
 certain conditions, until a better knowledge of law 
 enables you to ignore these conditions which are 
 imposed by ignorance. 
 
 LIMITATIONS, NOT LAWS 
 
 The primitive man, for instance, crept round his 
 coasts in a canoe. Gradually the canoe developed into 
 a galley, in which longer voyages in more difficult, 
 circumstances became a possibility. The evolution 
 of the sailing ship led to the discarding of the galley, 
 but still human efforts were limited by the laws im- 
 posed by tides and winds. The era of the steamship 
 overcame the restrictions which had existed for sailing 
 ships. What had appeared to be laws were found to 
 be nothing more than the limitations of ignorance. 
 Men began to perceive that they had been battling not 
 so much against the laws of nature as against their 
 own self-imposed beliefs of time and space. 
 
 To Mrs. Eddy it occurred that the gospels recorded 
 a fact always passed over as supernatural and imprac- 
 tical — the fact that Jesus had carried the boat across 
 the lake in an instant. It was an indication of spirit- 
 ual law which must have struck her in the way that the 
 steam issuing from the kettle appealed to Watt's per- 
 ception of physical law, and it was only one indication 
 among many. All that followed, to a person of her 
 intense spiritual alertness, was not only natural: it 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 5 
 
 was inevitable. Huxley once said that when a phys- 
 ical phenomenon is observed which appears contrary 
 to an existing acceptance of law, it is more intelligent 
 to recognize a result of a hitherto unsuspected law 
 than to proceed to acclaim a miracle. In the Bible 
 Mrs. Eddy found the record of numerous phenomena 
 which the world had learned to regard as supernatural 
 violations of law. She knew, however, that a violated 
 law never had been a law, therefore some other ex- 
 planation was necessary. She forestalled Huxley's 
 advice, and recorded her action in that well-known 
 passage, on page 109 of Science and Health: "I knew 
 the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be 
 God, and that cures were produced in primitive 
 Christian healing by holy, uplifting faith; but I must 
 know the Science of this healing, and I won my way 
 to absolute conclusions through divine revelation, 
 reason, and demonstration." 
 
 BELIEF IN DUALISM 
 
 This discovery of the Science of spiritual law which 
 Jesus taught in his theology and demonstrated in his 
 miracles or object-lessons brought with it the percep- 
 tion that the ignorance of that law constituted the 
 belief in the counterfeit comprised in material law. 
 Now, the admission that material law is the expression 
 of the absolute reduces man to the acceptance of the 
 dualism which acknowledges good and evil as power. 
 It is consequently necessary to show that evil is only 
 an expression of human ignorance, the belief in which 
 can be corrected and destroyed by that knowledge of 
 
() CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 absolute Truth which Jesus said would free the world; 
 and what could it free it from but ignorance? 
 
 The primitive man, ignorant of what is called phys- 
 ical law, listening to the thunder crashing amid the 
 mountain-tops, or the wind moaning over the ocean, 
 deified his own fears, and made his graven image of 
 Jupiter Tonans, or the demon of the southwest wind. 
 Thus, gradually, there sprang up that army of "other 
 gods" whom the Israelites so persistently "sought 
 after," and the prophets so ruthlessly "cut off." As 
 time went on, the evil deities gained in popularity, at 
 the expense of the good, for the worshipers, convinced 
 that their deities were of like passions with them- 
 selves, came naturally to devote themselves less to 
 adoring those they regarded as benign, than to pla- 
 cating those they were convinced were inimical. A 
 single example, taken from the nature-worship out of 
 which idolatry grew, will be sufficient. 
 
 To the primitive people, little accustomed to going 
 down to the sea in ships, the ocean presented a picture 
 of fury and desolation which found expression in their 
 acceptance of it as the type of evil and chaos. When 
 darkness fell over the tempest-driven waters, it 
 seemed as though evil had made itself master of all, 
 and consequently the rising sun brought hope and 
 courage to their hearts. In this way, the eastern 
 tribesmen, accustomed to personify every object, 
 adopted the word "Tehom," as the type of evil. It 
 is a Semitic word, commonly derived by Hebraists 
 from the verb hurrif which is supposed to have orig- 
 inated from the sound of the incoming tide. In our 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 7 
 
 own language, we still have it in the "humming tide" 
 of Milton and the "hoaming sea" of Dryden. The 
 writer of the Elohistic document of Genesis uses it 
 to signify chaos, constructing his sentence, as Dr. 
 Palmer points out, without the article, so as to neces- 
 sitate the translation, "Darkness was upon the face 
 of deep." This word, "Tehom," is a type of evil. 
 It is the equivalent of the Assyrian "Tiamat," and 
 of a long line of synonyms stretching through the 
 languages of the world. 
 
 This personification of the restless power of evil, 
 typified by the heaving sea, gradually took the form 
 of a monster, the dragon of darkness; and so the 
 dragon passed into the folk-lore of the world as the 
 personification of evil, whether in the Assyrian tab- 
 lets, the apocryphal book of "Bel and the Dragon," 
 the Revelation of John, the mythology of Europe, the 
 legends of the Ojibway Indians, or the ballads of 
 the nursery. 
 
 STORY OF MERODACH 
 
 No matter, however, to what extent a belief in the 
 power of evil may be embedded in the human con- 
 sciousness, nothing can destroy the consciousness of 
 the reality and power of good. In this way it came 
 to pass that even while the legend of "Tiamat" was 
 being spun, an understanding of Truth was manifest- 
 ing itself in the story of "Merodach." Merodach was 
 the Sun-god, rising, no matter how dark or tempest- 
 uous the night, to scatter his chariots over the horizon, 
 in the dawn, lifting his head, as Jeremy Taylor puts 
 
8 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 it, over the eastern hills, "thrusting out his golden 
 horns, like those which decked the brow of Moses." 
 The victory of Merodach is, perhaps, the earliest 
 indication of the human realization of the inevitable 
 victory of Truth over error. We meet it no matter 
 where we turn ; in the story of Apollo and the Python, 
 in that of St. George and the Dragon, and nowhere 
 more clearly than in the narratives of the Bible. 
 
 The Bible is an eastern book, filled, as an eastern 
 book would be, with all the allegory and imagery of 
 expression inherent in the eastern mind. It is not a 
 book, as is sometimes argued, of verbal inspiration, so 
 sacred in every letter that not even "the blessed word 
 Mesopotamia" could be deleted without sacrilege. It 
 is a series of documents, biblia, composed by men in 
 different ages and of different grades of spiritual 
 understanding, for the purpose of unfolding the evo- 
 lution of Truth in the human consciousness. Here, 
 at the very outset, we have the sea, "Tehom," taken 
 as the type of evil, and the serpent, or dragon, as the 
 personification of it, and here we have the omnipo- 
 tence of good proclaimed: "And the Spirit of God 
 moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 
 Let there be light: and there was light." 
 
 MEANING OF THE DELUGE 
 
 When the wickedness of the earth grew to such a 
 pitch that of mortal man it could only be said that 
 "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was 
 only evil continually," what Mrs. Eddy has termed, on 
 page 405 of Science and Health, the necessity of sin to 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 9 
 
 destroy itself, was expressed in the deluge. Noah, 
 however, and his household, found safety in the ark, 
 riding out, in their perception of Truth, the storm, 
 the bounds of whose destroying power are shown, 
 from one end of the Bible to the other, to be control- 
 lable through spiritual understanding: "Hitherto shalt 
 thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud 
 waves be stayed." 
 
 It was into the sea, into error, that Jonah fell, when 
 he was swallowed by the tannin, the sea monster, or 
 personification of error. It was from the sea that the 
 dragon of Revelation arose, and it was into the sea 
 that it was cast back; and just as the book of Genesis 
 opens with the announcement that "the Spirit of God 
 moved upon the face of the waters," so the book of 
 Revelation closes with the intimation of "a new heaven 
 and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first 
 earth were passed away; and there was no more 
 sea." 
 
 To the people for whose guidance these books were 
 written, evil was very real and very powerful. They 
 personified it, not merely as the serpent or the dragon, 
 not only as the devil or Satan, but as behemoth and 
 leviathan, the hippopotamus and the alligator, which 
 very naturally form the crest of the Society of Apothe- 
 caries; as Beelzebub and Rahab, and by innumer- 
 able other names. These various deities all in time 
 became endowed with powers for afflicting the human 
 race, and in their train there arose that army of false 
 prophets and false priests, proclaiming and serving 
 them, and that crowd of magicians and diviners, 
 
10 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 astrologers and necromancers, sorcerers and wizards, 
 all professing to be able to control the evil spirits 
 and enlist them as the servants of man. 
 
 ALWAYS CONSIDERED ILLICIT 
 
 What the methods employed by these wonder- 
 workers exactly were, it is perhaps impossible to say, 
 but from the very earliest times the best kings and 
 the prophets of Israel waged a war of extermination 
 against them. That the method of the magicians was 
 some species of mental manipulation there is no ques- 
 tion, and that it was very far from being innocuous 
 is quite positive. The magicians of Egypt, who 
 represented a sort of sacred college, were no mere 
 tricksters. The necromancers who, like the witch of 
 Endor, called up the dead, produced some mental 
 condition capable of receiving the desired impression. 
 One thing is certain, that the purer the monotheism 
 of Israel became, the more illicit and nefarious the 
 various arts of the diviners were recognized to be. 
 
 The captivity brought the Israelites more than 
 ever in contact with the magicians of Babylon, but 
 though, after the return to Jerusalem, the influences 
 at work were rather those of Egypt, the method of 
 exorcism, extensively in use in Babylon, was imported 
 to Palestine, where, during the first century of the 
 Christian era, it became an almost regular practice. 
 There was nothing more material about the methods 
 of the exorcists than about those of the other occult 
 workers. They worked by meaijs of incantations, 
 what we should call formulas today, of which Jose- 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 11 
 
 phus gives us a specimen, which he attributes to 
 Solomon. 
 
 Like all other occult workers, they appeared to 
 have called on what sometimes were regarded as 
 powers of light, and sometimes powers of darkness, 
 and it was this, coupled with the knowledge of the 
 perpetual battle which had been maintained for cen- 
 turies against "other gods," to which the scribes and 
 Pharisees alluded when, to prejudice in the eyes of 
 "the common people," the healing done by Jesus, they 
 declared, "This fellow doth not cast out devils, but 
 by Beelzebub the prince of the devils." 
 
 THE DIVINE ARGUMENT 
 
 The reply of Jesus, in the light of the fact that 
 exorcism was no doubt practised quite commonly and 
 quite openly, without reproof from the hierarchy, must 
 have been crushing: "Every kingdom divided against 
 itself is brought to desolation; and every city or 
 house divided against itself shall not stand: and if 
 Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; 
 how shall then his kingdom stand ? And if I by Beel- 
 zebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast 
 them out? therefore they shall be your judges. But 
 if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the 
 kingdom of God is come unto you." 
 
 In these words Jesus, in the clearest possible man- 
 ner, drew the line, once and for all, between Christian 
 healing and healing by occultism or mental suggestion 
 of any description. The Pharisees, perfectly con- 
 scious that the exorcists had been professing to cast 
 
12 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 out devils by appealing to all sorts of deities, were 
 silenced. 
 
 The reply of Jesus went, however, much deeper 
 than this, and dealt, in a sentence, with the claim of 
 mortal mind to heal the inharmonies of its own crea- 
 tion. It must be remembered that divine healing is 
 not confined to physical diseases. It covers the whole 
 gamut of material inharmony, whether of sickness or 
 disease, of pain or accident, of poverty or sorrow, of 
 sensuality or sin. Jesus said to the paralytic man, 
 "Whether is eaeier, to say. Thy sins be forgiven thee; 
 or to say. Arise, and walk.^" 
 
 Mrs. Eddy puts the same truth in different words 
 on page 210 of Science and Health, when she says: 
 "Jesus healed sickness and sin by one and the same 
 metaphysical process." Sin, again, covers something 
 far larger than the infringement of a definite moral 
 code. If this were not so, sin would become a geo- 
 graphical and temporal expression. Jesus showed 
 this plainly, in the course of the sermon on the mount, 
 when, after enumerating the things which men should 
 and should not do, he wound up with the famous 
 phrase, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father 
 which is in heaven is perfect." 
 
 SIN OF OMISSION 
 
 There is, of course, the sin of commission, which 
 lies in the infringement of an accepted moral code, 
 but there is no less the sin of omission, which consists 
 in believing in anything apart from God; the one 
 might be expressed in the conscious breaking of the 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 18 
 
 commandments, the other, in the failure to live in 
 consonance with the beatitudes. 
 
 Christian healing, then, is the attempt to destroy 
 in the human consciousness the belief that there is 
 life, power, substance, or intelligence apart from God, 
 and if this is successfully accomplished, all the beliefs 
 of materiality vanish like the unrealities they are. 
 "Mortal mind," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 178 of 
 Science and Health, "acting from the basis of sensa- 
 tion in matter, is animal magnetism ; but this so-called 
 mind, from which comes all evil, contradicts itself, 
 and must finally yield to the eternal Truth, or the 
 divine Mind, expressed in Science." 
 
 All occult working is a species of mental manipu- 
 lation. The witch of Endor did not reincarnate 
 Samuel, but she did superinduce in Saul the belief 
 that he was in the presence of the prophet. The 
 vagabond Jews, the exorcists of Ephesus, certainly 
 produced on the minds of those over whom they exer- 
 cised their incantations some impression which ex- 
 pressed itself in a physical result. The whole process 
 was one of mental suggestion, and that process, 
 whether under the name of necromancy or exorcism, 
 of astrology or divination, of enchantment or witch- 
 craft, of mesmerism or hypnotism, is simply the result 
 of that conscious or unconscious belief in animal 
 magnetism which Mrs. Eddy has explained, on page 
 103 of Science and Health, in saying: "As named in 
 Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is 
 the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the 
 false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil 
 
14 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 and good; that evil is as real as good and more pow- 
 erful. This belief has not one quality of Truth." 
 
 THE HOUSE DIVIDED 
 
 Christian Science is founded entirely on the Bible, 
 and anybody who will compare the words of Jesus 
 with the two extracts just quoted from Science and 
 Health will see how completely they agree. Mortal 
 mind, Mrs. Eddy says, contradicts itself, and this is 
 exactly what Jesus explained by describing it as a 
 house divided against itself. Again, mortal mind, as 
 she says, is the belief that mind is in matter and is 
 both good and evil. It was this very belief in the 
 power of good and evil which Jesus exposed as a 
 house divided against a house, and it was this very 
 belief in the possibility of effecting healing through 
 the action of the human mind, which is itself fully 
 imbued with the belief in good and evil, which he 
 repudiated in claiming that true healing was wrought 
 by the Spirit of God. 
 
 The claim of the human mind that it is possible 
 to do good through suggestion is absolutely insepa- 
 rable from the claim that it is possible to do evil. The 
 statement is beginning to be circulated that hypnotic 
 suggestion is a healing method through the operation 
 of which no harm can come. There is, however, no 
 fragment of justification for this, and the opposite of 
 this has been brought out in the clearest manner in the 
 courts of Europe within the last few years. 
 
 It is urged sometimes in defense of the use of 
 suggestion that suggestions of evil can only be 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 15 
 
 implanted in a mind with a natural tendency in the 
 direction of the suggestion made. This is in itself a 
 sufficiently damning excuse, as it would place every- 
 body under a certain moral level at the mercy of the 
 hypnotist. 
 
 BELIEF IN EVIL 
 
 The fact is that no one has ever yet had the hardi- 
 hood to deny that the human mind is largely permeated 
 with a belief in the power and reality of evil. Conse- 
 quently, when the theory of mental manipulation is 
 imparted to this mind, it is let loose to thrust out sug- 
 gestions of good or evil in every direction. This is 
 precisely the mental condition typified by Jesus as a 
 house divided against a house, and, as he said, such 
 a house cannot stand. 
 
 The writer of the Jehovistic document of the book 
 of Genesis put the same statement equally forcibly in 
 the allegory of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
 evil, the eating of which he declared would produce 
 death. This statement has been constantly quoted 
 without those who have quoted it perceiving what it 
 fully implies. Death, Paul wrote to the Romans, 
 entered the world through sin. It is therefore obvious 
 that a belief in good and evil constituted what in 
 Paul's opinion was sin, and it is therefore impossible 
 to maintain, from a Christian point of view, that 
 healing can proceed from a mind conscious of good 
 and evil. What would proceed from such a source is, 
 as the Bible clearly states, death, and so, necessarily, 
 sickness and inharmony of every description. Now 
 
16 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 Jesus said that it was impossible to obtain figs from 
 thorns, or grapes from a bramble bush. It is, there- 
 fore, as evident as anything can be that a mind 
 believing in the reality of both good and evil, and so 
 predisposed to death, is incapable of healing sickness. 
 
 THE POWER THAT HEALS 
 
 What does heal sickness Jesus put quite clearly in 
 the very answer in which he disposed of the human 
 mind as a healing agency. ' "If," he said, "I cast out 
 devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God 
 is come unto you." The kingdom of God never came 
 upon any man by suggestion from a mind torn by 
 human passions and believing now in good and now in 
 evil. The kingdom of God comes to man exactly in 
 the proportion in which he acquires the Mind which 
 was in Christ Jesus, for the possession of the Mind 
 of Christ frees man from a belief in the lie of 
 evil. 
 
 In that terrific mental battle with the Jews, recorded 
 in the eighth chapter of John, which ended in the 
 attempt to stone him, Jesus referred once more to the 
 belief in evil producing death, in a way that has gen- 
 erally escaped attention. "Ye are of your father the 
 devil," he said, "and the lusts of your father ye will 
 do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and 
 abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in 
 him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own : 
 for he is a liar, and the father of it." Speaking in 
 a manner which would be quite intelligible to those 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 17 
 
 he was addressing, he personified evil in a way strange 
 and almost incomprehensible to western ears. The 
 Hebrew, however, who, it has been truly said, never 
 opened his mouth without emitting a metaphor, took 
 the substantive Satan, or adversary, and personified 
 it as a synonym for evil, just as he took the adjective 
 belial, worthless, and used it in the same way. Evil, 
 Jesus said, was a murderer from the beginning, from 
 the moment when the eating of the fruit of the tree 
 of th6 knowledge of good and evil first brought death 
 into the world. Yet, he added, the whole thing is a 
 lie, which abode not in the truth, because there is no 
 truth in it. Take away the imagery of the east, re- 
 duce the phrase to the matter-of-fact English of the 
 twentieth century, and what does it amount to but 
 this: in reality the lie never existed, because there is 
 no reality in it. This is the truth, and the truth in 
 exposing the lie strips it of its claim to reality and 
 power. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
 make you free." 
 
 ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE 
 
 A great thinker of the last century, equally famous 
 as a churchman and a scholar, has shown how the 
 atpostle John, by a particular use of the definite article, 
 has separated the absolute from the relative through- 
 out the fourth gospel. In the sentence just quoted 
 the definite article is emphatically used, so that it is 
 the knowledge, not of any mere relative sense of truth, 
 but of absolute Truth, which is to free the world/ 
 
18 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 Now, a knowledge of absolute Truth is a knowledge 
 of God, and thus, in the epistles, we find an expres- 
 sion translated knowledge of God, but which should, 
 of course, be translated full, exact, that is absolute, or 
 scientific, knowledge of God. This truth, says Dr. 
 Westcott, which is to make men free, is expressed in 
 "perfect conformity to the absolute — to that which is. 
 Intellectually this conformity is knowledge of the 
 truth: morally, obedience to the divine law." 
 
 The absolute, howbeit, is spiritual, and spiritual 
 things can be only spiritually discerned. It follows, 
 consequently, that a knowledge of absolute Truth 
 can be gained only through spiritual perception, and 
 never through the human intellect, confined, by the 
 very reason of its belief in good and evil, to a belief 
 in the relative. A knowledge of the absolute sweeps 
 away any recognition of duality, and leaves good 
 enthroned as omnipotence, — "Hear, O Israel: The 
 Lord our God is one Lord." 
 
 Just, however, as Truth is necessarily absolute, so 
 law is necessarily absolute. Law which admits good 
 and evil to equal or even unequal copartnership im- 
 plies either that the tree which bears the fruit of 
 death, the knowledge of good and evil, was planted 
 by the divine Mind, conscious only of infinite Life, 
 Truth, and Love, or else a recognition of many gods. 
 The first is a metaphysical impossibility. The second 
 a metaphysical absurdity, which promotes animal 
 magnetism in all its phases, mesmerism, hypnotism, 
 and mental suggestion, to power, and exclaims: 
 "These be thy gods, O Israel" ! 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 19 
 
 It is common among those matter-of-fact people 
 who believe what they are pleased to call common 
 sense to be science, to sneer at metaphysics. If they 
 would only read a certain essay of Huxley's on this 
 subject they might have an occasional qualm. "By 
 way of escape/' he wrote, "from the metaphysical 
 will-o'-the-wisps generated in the marshes of literature 
 and theology, the serious student is sometimes bidden 
 to betake himself to the solid ground of physical 
 science. But the fish of immortal memory, who threw 
 himself out of the frying-pan into the fire, was not 
 more ill-advised than the man who seeks sanctuary 
 from philosophical persecution within the walls of 
 the observatory or of the laboratory." 
 
 "common sense" philosophy 
 
 The meaning of this is plain enough, and may be 
 shown by two illustrations of Huxley's own in another 
 essay. The common sense philosopher who looks at 
 the sky is absolutely positive that the sun rises and 
 sets. So certain were people of this that in medieval 
 Europe those who dared to question it were in danger 
 of prison or death. Today, the person who questions 
 it is in danger merely of being thought a fool. 
 
 Another illustration may bring the matter down to 
 our own times. The common sense person is con- 
 vinced that pain is in a wound. If you were to tell 
 him that it was not within "two feet of it," he would 
 proceed to tell you that his senses convinced him that 
 it was. When, however, he turns to the laboratory, 
 the scientist answers by telling him that pain "is a 
 
20 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 state of consciousness." The moral is obvious. The 
 teaching in Christian Science of the unreality of mat- 
 ter is not a bit more ridiculous to the common sense 
 philosopher of today than the statement that the sun 
 was stationary was ridiculous to the medieval inquis- 
 itor; while the statement that pain is mental, however 
 ridiculous it may be to the common sense philosopher, 
 is not ridiculous to the laboratory. "Of all the dan- 
 gerous mental habits/' to complete Huxley's summing 
 up, "that which schoolboys call 'cocksureness' is 
 probably the most perilous ; and the inestimable value 
 of metaphysical discipline is that it furnishes an ejffec- 
 tual counterpoise to this evil proclivity." 
 
 The great teachers of idealism in natural science 
 have never pretended that, because matter was a mere 
 phenomenon, and so absolutely unreal, it was not rela- 
 tively a fact to the human consciousness. They have 
 never doubted, any more than that sardonic material- 
 istic Pilate, that life could be destroyed. Jesus of 
 Nazareth, whom orthodox Christianity has proclaimed 
 God, and sympathetic agnosticism as the greatest of 
 ethical teachers, was in reality, as Mrs. Eddy has 
 pointed out, on page 313 of Science and Health, "the 
 most scientific man that ever trod the globe." He 
 knew that Life is God, and therefore spiritual and 
 indestructible. The necromancers, speaking in the 
 supposed shrill voices of Sheol, in what Virgil calls a 
 ghost of a voice, called up shades which they claimed 
 to be the dead; Christ Jesus, standing in the mouth 
 of the tomb in Bethany, cried in a loud voice, "Lazarus, 
 come forth." He had won, by complete obedience to 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 21 
 
 divine law, the understanding of absolute Truth, and 
 was far better able to demonstrate it than the natural 
 scientist of today is able to demonstrate his knowledge 
 of the relative truth of chemistry. 
 
 ANIMAL MAGNETISM 
 
 The priests of Asklepios muttered their incanta- 
 tions, and encouraged their patients by a view of the 
 snakes which represented the deity. Jesus of Naza- 
 reth healed every manner of sickness with a word, 
 and had no need of the formula of the exorcists. Now, 
 the necromancers no more believed that they raised 
 the dead with their incantations, than the priests of 
 Asklepios imagined that the harmless, hooded snakes 
 of the temples healed the sick. Both of them knew 
 perfectly well that they used these means to suggest 
 to their patients what they desired. 
 
 Because, after a lapse of centuries, occultism has 
 found new names and new methods, it is not any the 
 less the expression of animal magnetism. The knowl- 
 edge of the Christ, of Truth, which constituted the 
 Mind which was in Christ Jesus, healed the sick 
 scientifically by destroying the lie which produced the 
 belief of sickness. But animal magnetism, as Mrs. 
 Eddy writes on page 102 of Science and Health, "has 
 no scientific foundation, for God governs all that is 
 real, harmonious, and eternal, and His power is 
 neither animal nor human. Its basis being a belief 
 and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, 
 mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possess- 
 ing neither intelligence, power, nor reality, and in 
 
22 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 sense it is an unreal concept of the so-called mortal 
 mind." 
 
 It is perfectly clear from all this that Jesus drew 
 a distinct line between the spiritual fact expressed in 
 divine law and the material fact expressed in physical 
 law. The first is absolute, the second relative; the 
 first eternal_, the second temporal. He never said that 
 sin, disease, and death did not seem desperately real 
 to the human consciousness; he admitted that they 
 were so relatively true as to need to be shown to be 
 untrue, and he explained that this demonstration could 
 be made only through the understanding of absolute 
 Truth. In the same way he did not say that the 
 occult workers did not produce an effect so far as the 
 human senses were concerned, but he showed in the 
 raising of Lazarus, and in the casting out of devils, 
 and healing the sick, the difference between mental 
 suggestion and the operation of divine law. 
 
 OCCULTISM AND SPIRITUALITY 
 
 It would be interesting to know whether the ex- 
 ponents of suggestion are prepared to consign the 
 Bible to the scrap-heap of Haggardic literature, and 
 to maintain that the occultism and esoteric magic of 
 the east is an old wife's tale, to be dismissed with the 
 airy humor with which Lord Byron disposed of the 
 Berkeley ballads. Because, if not, if these things 
 had a foundation in belief, if we have their descend- 
 ants in the mesmerism, hypnotism, and mental sug- 
 gestion of today, is Christian Science, which, as its 
 discoverer and Founder, Mrs. Eddy, has told us, is 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 28 
 
 built up on the Bible, wrong for drawing the distinc- 
 tion Jesus drew between occultism and spiritual heal- 
 ing, and showing the world how to protect itself 
 against the one by relying on the other? 
 
 To describe Christian Science as the apotheosis of 
 fear, for teaching the world how to protect itself 
 against animal magnetism, is just about as sensible as 
 to accuse Paul of being a coward for advising Chris- 
 tians to protect themselves with the whole armor of 
 God. Fear, as ordinarily defined, is the mental effect 
 produced on people by the belief of an inability to 
 defend themselves against a power stronger than them- 
 selves. Relatively speaking, this is accurate enough, 
 but, speaking absolutely and scientifically, fear is the 
 belief that man is material and not spiritual, for if he 
 were known to be spiritual there would be nothing to 
 fear for him. 
 
 WHAT LOVE IS 
 
 What love is, from a relative human standpoint, it 
 would be difficult to say. It would take too long to 
 attempt to reconcile the various definitions, but, scien- 
 tifically, love is either a synonym for God, or an 
 attribute of God, and it is so used in an absolute 
 sense in the Bible. Relatively speaking, the more 
 human beings love one another, the greater is their 
 fear when danger threatens the object of their love, 
 but in the exact proportion in which their love is made 
 perfect, in which, that is to say, it realizes that man 
 is spiritual and not material, and is consequently not 
 
24 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 under any relative human law, the fear vanishes in 
 the perception of divine protection. Thus, "perfect 
 love casteth out fear." 
 
 Animal magnetism is essentially the belief that man 
 is material; how then Christian Science, which teaches 
 the exact reverse, can produce fear, it is quite impos- 
 sible to say. The fact, of course, is precisely the 
 other way. Everywhere the critics of Christian Sci- 
 ence are bearing witness to the joy and peace notice- 
 able in the lives of Christian Scientists. 
 
 Let us take two instances only, and these from the 
 ranks of the two professions, in the very nature of 
 things most inimical to Christian Science. The Arch- 
 bishop of York, speaking, not long ago, at the York 
 Diocesan Conference, asked how they were to account 
 for the lives Christian Scientists lived. "He could 
 only say that he had rarely met with such capacity 
 to enter some of the deeper aspects of truth, and he 
 had seen the lives of Christian Scientists, tranquil, 
 bright, cheerful." "They [his own church] ought," 
 he continued, "to have had all along the elixir of life 
 to give to their people. Had they lost it? Why was 
 it that they so seldom met in the ranks of their own 
 people any one of whom a visitor from Mars would 
 say, 'What is the secret of that man's or that woman's 
 life.^' that radiant sense of the supernatural, that 
 brightness and reality of spirit.^" 
 
 The other profession is of course that of medicine; 
 and in a letter, not very long ago, to the Daily Mail, 
 Dr. John Shaw, of Harley street, a man with a great 
 London practice, wrote, "I am not a Christian Scien- 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 23 
 
 tist, but I believe in what I should regard as the 
 essential tenet of their creed, and which I might sum 
 up in the words, 'The Lord's hand is not shortened, 
 that it cannot save.' " 
 
 TWO TESTIMONIES 
 
 Here, then, are two men, distinguished in their 
 professions, speaking from personal knowledge and 
 observation, dwelling on the extraordinary absence 
 of fear in the lives of Christian Scientists, and 
 on the tranquillity and radiancy which pervade 
 them. 
 
 The archbishop asks. What is the secret of it all.'* 
 Well, it is this — that Christian Scientists have learned 
 that spiritual things are not supernatural, as he imag- 
 ines, but divinely natural, and, in consequence, they 
 do not fall into the mistake of crying, "Lo here! or, 
 lo there!" — "for, behold, the kingdom of God is 
 within you." The fact is, that Mrs. Eddy has taught 
 Christian Scientists how to master and control the 
 animal propensities which make for fear, anxiety, and 
 unrest in the human consciousness. These propensi- 
 ties John described as "the lust of the flesh, and the 
 lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," and it is 
 through the supposititious existence of these things 
 that conscious and unconscious suggestion reaches the 
 human mind. It was because he possessed the Mind 
 of Christ, that Jesus was able to say, "The prince of 
 this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." "Evil 
 thoughts, lusts, and malicious purposes cannot go 
 forth, like wandering pollen," Mrs. Eddy writes, on 
 
26 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 page 234 of Science and Health, "from one human 
 mind to another, finding unsuspected lodgment, if 
 virtue and truth build a strong defence." 
 
 BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT 
 
 The wonder-workers of the east, before the Chris- 
 tian era, knew something — we shall, perhaps, never 
 know exactly how much — of mental suggestion, and 
 that knowledge passed, to some extent, into Europe, 
 through the Roman empire, in the days of the astrol- 
 ogers and wizards, and found at lasl concrete expres- 
 sion in the belief of witchcraft. Because, however, 
 many innocent and harmless creatures were tortured 
 as witches, this does not prove that animal magnetism, 
 in the form of witchcraft, did not exist, though these 
 sufferers may have known nothing of it. A recent 
 critic has reproduced two illustrations, one of "a 
 lemon pierced with nails; a Neapolitan method of 
 invoking evil influences," and the other, "a pig's heart 
 transfixed with pins and thorns — an English rustic's 
 malicious charm." He seems to think that these two 
 instances of gross superstition advance his case in 
 proving a belief in malicious animal magnetism to be 
 the nightmare of ignorance. He does not seem to 
 know that they are but links in a chain of mental 
 suggestion, one end of which is lost in the twilight 
 of history in the east, while the other is anchored in 
 London, New York, and Rome, and the other great 
 cities of today. 
 
 The magicians of the east made their figures of 
 clay to represent their victims, just like the Neapoli- 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 27 
 
 tan peasant or the English rustic, and studded them 
 with nails, not because they imagined that that mere 
 act was going to have any effect, but as a means of 
 fixing in their thought the fears and sensations they 
 wished to impart mentally. This was in the days 
 before Sir Kenelm Digby had started his theory of 
 animal attraction, or Paracelsus that of the magnetic 
 system, a doctrine which in due time Goelenius de- 
 scribed as witchcraft. Now, it does not matter an 
 atom whether Goelenius was right or wrong. Here 
 we have traveling down .the centuries the belief in 
 animal magnetism, called now by this name, and now 
 by that, carrying with it a load of fear and detestation, 
 venting itself, as such things always do, in cruelty 
 and hatred, and creating a snowball of mental belief 
 in the power of evil. 
 
 ABOUT INTELLECTUALITY 
 
 It has been said that as knowledge grew, supersti- 
 tion vanished. The writer of the Book of Ecclesi- 
 astes puts matters a little differently: "Then said I, 
 Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor 
 man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not 
 heard," a saying approximating to that in Proverbs, 
 "The knowledge of the holy is understanding." 
 Here, then, are the writers of two of the great wisdom 
 books of the Bible, pointing out that the knowledge 
 which destroys ignorance is not expressed in intel- 
 lectual pride, but in a knowledge of the spiritual, that 
 very scientific knowledge of God, spoken .of in the 
 epistles. A great Chinese philosopher, writing six 
 
28 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 centuries before the Christian era, declared that if 
 there was no evil in the human consciousness, wisdom 
 would be at least innocuous, but that as there was 
 more evil than good, it merely converted the ignorant 
 knave into the dangerous knave. "Reason," Mrs. Eddy 
 writes, on page 327 of Science and Health, "is the 
 most active human faculty. Let that inform the 
 sentiments and awaken the man's dormant sense of 
 moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the 
 nothingness of the pleasures of human sense and the 
 grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense, which silences 
 the material or corporeal.'* 
 
 Now, as the ignorant malice of the rustic, sticking 
 thorns in his pig's heart, gave place little by little to 
 the cultivated human knowledge of the mesmerist or 
 the hypnotist, the belief of power in evil seemed to 
 grow in intensity, "The mild forms of animal magnet- 
 ism," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 102 of Science and 
 Health "are disappearing, and its aggressive features 
 are coming to the front. The looms of crime, hidden in 
 the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour 
 weaving webs more complicated and subtle." To 
 pretend that the looms of crime are not perpetually 
 weaving evil is to shut your eyes to the relative fact 
 of the existence of evil as a belief in the human mind ; 
 but, in proportion as the teaching of Christian Science 
 is assimilated, the student learns to watch, less with 
 consternation and more with amusement, the labors 
 of the weavers, spinning the thread which, like the 
 cloth in the famous fairy-tale of "The King's New 
 Clothes," has no existence. The only true thing that 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 29 
 
 can be said about evil is that it is a lie, and the only 
 power a lie can ever even seem to simulate is the 
 temporary sense of power which a lie appears to 
 exert so long as it is believed in. "Ye shall know 
 the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 
 
 METHODS OF HEALING 
 
 That the employer of mental suggestion, with his 
 focus narrowed to the range of human intelligence, 
 should find it impossible to detach science from an 
 examination of secondary causes or physical facts, 
 and to extend it to an understanding of primary 
 causes or spiritual facts, is not remarkable. The 
 remarkable thing is that people who are not held 
 wtthin the immediate thrall of a belief in mental 
 suggestion should be willing to conclude that any one 
 knows more of Christian Science than a Christian 
 Scientist does. 
 
 The complete failure of the employer of mental 
 suggestion to get beyond his own view of mental 
 practice is made manifest the moment he attempts to 
 deal critically with Christian Science. To argue, for 
 instance, that a Christian Science practitioner treats 
 a patient by ignoring symptoms, while an ordinary 
 medical practitioner attacks the cause, is not merely 
 absurd, it is a practical reversal of the position. To 
 the Christian Scientist, as well as to the doctor, a 
 symptom is an indication of a cause. To the doctor, 
 believing disease to be purely material, the cause is 
 always a material one, and the patient is dealt with 
 as if he represented so much matter. To the Chris- 
 
30 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 tian Scientist the cause is always a mental one, even 
 though it is expressed physically, and the treatment 
 is therefore directed to eradicating the mental cause. 
 It will be seen from this that the medical practitioner 
 is a materialist, while the Christian Scientist is an 
 idealist, for, speaking roughly, the difference between 
 idealism and materialism consists of this — that the 
 materialist conceives of mind as contained in matter, 
 whereas the idealist conceives of matter as contained 
 in mortal mind. 
 
 MEANING OF SYMPTOMS 
 
 Now, the symptoms of consumption may originate 
 in a variety of causes. To the doctor those causes 
 are physical. He proceeds to attack the physical 
 cause, and, as far as this goes, he is correct. The 
 Christian Scientist goes deeper than this; he goes to 
 the mental cause in which all apparently material 
 causation has its origin. The consequence is, that 
 instead of confining himself to the physical cause, as 
 the doctor does, and trying to destroy that, he attacks 
 the mental cause which lies behind the apparent phys- 
 ical cause, with the result that, if he is successful, the 
 disease is destroyed for ever, and no relapse is 
 possible. 
 
 For instance, a doctor treating a case of consump- 
 tion never gives credit for the fact that the physical 
 conditions producing the symptoms originate in mind. 
 The consequence is that, even if he succeeds in tem- 
 porarily overcoming one physical condition, he leaves 
 another physical condition capable of, at any moment, 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 31 
 
 again producing consumptive symptoms. The Chris- 
 tian Scientist, on the other hand, regarding the phys- 
 ical cause of the disease as merely a mental result, 
 attacks the mental cause, which may be a dozen differ- 
 ent things of which the doctor has never dreamed, and 
 if this is destroyed it is absolutely mentally oblit- 
 erated, and is entirely incapable of reasserting 
 itself. 
 
 The employer of mental suggestion who attempts to 
 treat a case of disease can succeed only in inducing 
 the patient to believe that he has not got this disease. 
 This simply means that as long as the manipulation of 
 the patient's mind continues the operation of the 
 mental causes producing the disease is held back. 
 The moment, however, that the treatment ceases the 
 mind reverts to its former attitude, and the symptoms, 
 in an aggravated form, return. It is like putting a 
 weight on a turned-back spring: the moment the 
 weight is removed the spring swings back to its former 
 position. 
 
 METHODS NOT AKIN 
 
 Not long ago, a gentleman who had practised heal- 
 ing by mental suggestion and who was well known as 
 a mental healer of this description, called on me. He 
 informed me that he had employed this practice for 
 between three and four years, with the result that 
 he had noticed that practically every nominal case of 
 healing was followed by an eventual relapse. He also 
 informed me that, while practising mental suggestion. 
 
82 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 he had watched many cases of Christian Science heal- 
 ing, and observed that the relapses were practically 
 non-existent. The results so impressed him that he 
 came to ask for an explanation of the difference be- 
 tween the two systems. When the explanation was 
 given to him, he saw with perfect clearness the differ- 
 ence between the two, and admitted, not only that 
 there was no connection, but that the methods em- 
 ployed were as far apart as the poles. One inevitable 
 result of mental suggestion is to weaken the normal 
 will-power of the patient, with the result that, if it is 
 employed in connection with ordinary medical treat- 
 ment, the vital force of the patient is so weakened 
 that he is apt to sink under the medical or surgical 
 treatment. 
 
 The difference between faith-healing and Christian 
 Science is apparent from this, and it will be seen that 
 the use of drugs is absolutely as much faith-healing 
 as an appeal to an anthropomorphic deity. The witch 
 doctor who succeeds in making a patient believe that 
 by the propitiation of some deity his sickness can be 
 removed, plays no more on the patient's faith than 
 does the medical doctor who persuades a patient that 
 certain physical conditions can be removed by a drug. 
 The cause of disease being mental, what happens in 
 each case is that the belief in the vagaries of the witch 
 doctor, or the belief in the drug, produces the same 
 effect. 
 
 "absent" treatment 
 
 The difference between Christian Science practice 
 and every phase of mental suggestion is manifest in 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 33 
 
 the fact that the Christian Scientist does not do what 
 is termed, "place himself en rapport" with the patient. 
 To say that a Christian Scientist treats a patient at 
 a specific time by arrangement, during which time 
 the patient places himself mentally at the disposal of 
 the Christian Science practitioner, is simply to state 
 something which every Christian Scientist knows to 
 be ridiculous. 
 
 Perhaps the most perfect disproof of this exists in 
 what is known as absent treatment. The practitioner 
 who gives absent treatment has not the faintest con- 
 ception where the patient is, or what he is doing at 
 the moment he treats him, nor does he in the least 
 care. His practice is based absolutely on the teaching 
 of the Bible, and is entirely Christian. Jesus healed 
 not only those who came to him directly for healing, 
 but he healed those, as in the case of the centurion's 
 servant, who were unable to come. The Christian 
 Science practitioner talks to his patient, when the 
 latter is present, and explains what the Christian 
 Science teaching is, in order to show him how he may 
 do without treatment, so that he may learn, through 
 his own understanding of Christian Science, how to 
 meet his own difficulties, but it is a matter of perfect 
 indifference to him, as far as the actual treatment is 
 concerned, whether the patient is in the room with him, 
 conscious that he is being treated, or a thousand miles 
 off, unconscious of the moment at which he is being 
 treated. What happens in either case is that the 
 specific lie in which the patient is believing is destroyed 
 in mortal mind and, being destroyed in mortal mind, 
 
34 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 vanishes from the consciousness of everybody con- 
 cerned. 
 
 RIGHT TO INDEPENDENCE 
 
 When Christian Scientists are asked why they do 
 not endeavor to close the hospitals and to destroy the 
 contents of chemists' shops, they are tempted to smile 
 at the question. To a Christian Scientist, every single 
 person has a right to think for himself and to act 
 for himself. If he thinks he is benefited by being 
 operated upon for appendicitis, in spite of the deadly 
 record of operations for appendicitis, no Christian 
 Scientist would think of interfering with him. If he 
 thinks that his health can be improved by drenching 
 himself in drugs, in spite of the record of drugs in 
 the past, no Christian Scientist would dream of de- 
 priving him of them. If he thinks it is scientific prac- 
 tice which confines one generation of consumptive 
 patients in rooms from which every breath of air is 
 excluded, and exposes the other on balconies where 
 every breath of air reaches them, no Christian Scien- 
 tist would attempt to prevent him from adopting either 
 alternative. 
 
 Christian Scientists know perfectly well that the 
 way to convert people is by demonstration, not by 
 persecution. The doctors who, knowing the absolute 
 failure of medical science to meet the woes of human- 
 ity, would yet attempt to force mankind to accept that 
 treatment, whether they liked it or not, are not one 
 whit advanced beyond the Inquisition, which attempted 
 to make men accept religious views which were repug- 
 
VERSUS MENTAL SUGGESTION 35 
 
 nant to them, and will be every whit as unsuccessful. 
 The most dangerous campaign upon which a govern- 
 ment or a nation can embark is one of persecution, no 
 matter how skilfully it may be wrapped up in legal 
 quibbles. The day is past forever when it can be 
 hoped that thought can be burned in the market-place 
 or imprisoned in a dungeon. Thought is free, and 
 freedom of thought will always remain, as it always 
 has remained, to confound persecutors, no matter what 
 temporary advantage may have seemed to accrue to 
 them through the torture of what they believed to be 
 matter. Whatever else may or may not occur, the 
 doom of the persecutor is inevitable and irrevocable. 
 Mind does not pass away with the body. 
 
 END OF PERSECUTION 
 
 Christian Science is a little too big to be dealt with 
 in the drastic way so amiably suggested by some of 
 its critics. An enormous number of thoughtful men 
 and women, respected by those among whom they 
 move in their daily life, are not to be intimidated or 
 suppressed by the clamor or threats generated by the 
 intolerance of those who differ from them. They 
 claim the right, and they will maintain the right, to 
 worship God in their own way, even though that way 
 may not be in accordance with the practice of others. 
 It is a curious commentary on the centuries of the 
 growth of what is termed liberty and the observance 
 of what is named Christianity that the human mind 
 should still show indications of a desire to confine 
 liberty to orthodoxy and to measure Christianity by 
 
86 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 
 
 compulsion. The spirit which cast Daniel into the 
 lions' den, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego 
 into the fiery furnace, has changed its cry, and that 
 is all. The Romans threw the Christians to the lions. 
 When the throne of the Caesars gave place to the 
 chair of St. Peter, the Christians bound the heretic to 
 the stake. The crowd which attended the auto da fe 
 was as barbarian and brutal as the crowd which 
 screamed on the tiers of the amphitheater. When 
 the Anglican took the place of the Romanist in the 
 seat of Augustine, the rack was exchanged for the 
 boot and the stake for the pillory and the cart-tail. 
 When nonconformity, escaping from the pillory and 
 the cart-tail, established itself in power, it proved 
 that it was just as possible to play the persecutor in 
 a steeple-crowned hat as in a shovel one. Even when 
 the Anglican regained his power the methods altered, 
 but not the spirit, and though 
 
 Whitfield preached to the colliers grim, 
 Bishops in lawn sleeves preached at him. 
 
 Christian Science has come, among other things, to 
 teach the world something of what love really means, 
 — to show it that love is the fulfilling of the law, but 
 that this law is not a human law, but the law con- 
 densed in the saying: "A new commandment I give 
 unto you. That ye love one another; as I have loved 
 you, that ye also love one another." 
 
Periodicals Published by 
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