doctors, druggists, and patent medicines of the country.” Christian
Science came to his help, and “the old sick conditions passed away,” and
along with them the “dismal forebodings” which he had been accustomed to
employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a healthy and cheerful
man, now, and astonished.
But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have
been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he
watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and
compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human
invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing
imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against sub-sequent
applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, “I am
well! I am sound!–sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound,
perfectly well! I have no pain; there’s no such thing as pain! I have
no disease; there’s no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind;
all is Mind, All-Good Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a
series, ante and pass the buck!”
I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it
doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to
the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was
used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from
unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every
purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely
that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious spirit
a powerful reinforcement in his case.
The second witness testifies that the Science banished “an old organic
trouble,” which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs
and the knife for seven years.
He calls it his “claim.” A surface-miner would think it was not his
claim at all, but the property of the doctor and his pal the surgeon–for
he would be misled by that word, which is Christian-Science slang for
“ailment.” The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him there is no
such thing, and he will not use the hateful word. All that happens to
him is that upon his attention an imaginary disturbance sometimes
obtrudes itself which claims to be an ailment but isn’t.
This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has now gone over to the
new sect. He was “almost blind and deaf.” He was treated by the C. S.
method, and “when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually.” Saw
spiritually? It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable; but this C. S. magazine
is poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.
The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims :
Indigestion,
Rheumatism,
Catarrh,
Chalky deposits in
Shoulder-joints,
Arm-joints,
Hand-joints,
Insomnia,
Atrophy of the muscles of
Arms.
Shoulders,
Stiffness of all those joints,
Excruciating pains most of the time.
These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but “I never realized any physical relief from that source.”
After thirty years of torture, he went to a Christian Scientist and took
an hour’s treatment and went home painless. Two days later, he “began to
eat like a well man.” Then “the claims vanished–some at once, others
more gradually”; finally, “they have almost entirely disappeared.” And–
a thing which is of still greater value–he is now “contented and happy.”
That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist-Church
specialty. And, indeed, one may go further and assert with little or no
exaggeration that it is a Christian-Science monopoly. With thirty-one
years’ effort, the Methodist Church had not succeeded in furnishing it to
this harassed soldier.
And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims,