"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE."

A friend writes to us from the West asking us to give our opinion of this new doctrine of the origin and cure of disease, of which he seems to have witnessed some strange results in the way of restoration from sickness,

We confess that our knowledge of this subject is limited to such as we have been able to derive from newspaper paragraphs and magazine articles. The article by Dr. J. B. Buckley in The Century for July is the most complete review of it we have met with. Probably most of our readers have read this. Dr. Buckley is a writer whose intellectual discernment exceeds his spiritual insight. And therefore we do not consider him qualified to do full justice to such subjects as "the Faith Cure" and "the Mind Cure," both of which have been recently treated by his facile pen. And yet his digest and résumé of principles is always clear and useful. And we may safely accept his aid in arriving at the leading principles of this new claimant to the confidence and gratitude of mankind, called Christian Science.

1. Its first principle seems to be that "Matter has no sensation." It is non-intelligent. Christian Science assumes this as self-evident. But how do we know this? What is matter? The best definition we can think of is that it is a group of force-centres. A stone, for example, is a mass of atoms held together by certain forces to which we give the names of cohesion, chemical affinity, gravitation, etc. Each atom is a centre from which these forces operate. It is assumed that these

atoms are inert and indivisible units of substance. And yet no man ever saw an atom, or knows really what it is. All that we can take cognizance of is the forces of which the stone is a centre. These resist our attempts to compress it and give it the quality of hardness. They determine its outline and give it shape. What is the real thing in the stone? Who shall say whether it be these hypothetical atoms or these forces? If it be the forces, how do we know that they are without sensation" and "non-intelligent ?" All we can say concerning this first postulate of Christian Science, which affirms that matter is non-sentient, is that it is not proven. We know as little about matter as we do about spirit. We are not yet prepared to run a dividing line between these two realms. Scripture everywhere speaks of the forces of nature as if they were intelligent. It calls them "angels, principalities, and powers." (Col. I., 15–17; Heb. I., 7, etc.) Science will very likely have yet to revise all her theories about "dead matter." And if so, Christian Science will have to build itself upon some other corner-stone.

2. The second principle is that as matter cannot think or feel, all pain and disease is due to perverted states of the mind. Let these be rectified and disease will disappear. The theory assumes that, as man is made in the image of God, it is his privilege to assert for himself the prerogatives of such a creature; that is, to think of himself as essentially pure and sinless and immortal, and to expect these characteristics to reveal themselves in the whole region of his mind and body. Such right thinking about ourselves would banish disease, which results

from perverted thinking-from false ideas which have fastened themselves upon us, and have been inwrought into the fibre of the race. The mission of Christ was to set us right about this matter.

Now, it seems to us that this falls far short of the Bible teaching about the way in which sin entered the world, and death and disease by sin. And it reduces the saving work of Christ to such low elements as sink out of sight its characteristic grace and power. We believe that the curse of man's sin, and the condemnation that fell upon him because of it, was a diseased condition of his whole nature, body and mind, in which he lost control over those natural forces over which he was given dominion, and that something more than a new power of right thinking is necessary to restore it. Christ came to impart to men a new and eternal life. It is a gratuitious assumption that man by nature first possessed this life, and that it is inherent in him. The mission of Christ was something more than a rectification of a great mistake, or of a great disorder in human life. The life with which man was at first endowed proved itself incapable of sustaining him in his position as a child of God. Hence he must die out of this life and be raised again in the power of an endless life. The record of the Gospel is that God hath given to us this life in His Son. "6 W Christian Science" assumes the worthiness and capability of the natural man. It denies the necessity of his death, or of the diseases that lead to it, as the wages of his sin. It virtually denies new creation and resurrection, reducing these terms to a mere rectification of the mind.

And yet, as in every form of error, there is in this system the shadow of much that is true. The way in which it exhorts us to view the material body as not of the real self, and as dead, is very like St. Paul's frequent exhortations to reckon this body of sin as dead, and ourselves as set free in spirit, and alive unto God. And its assertion of the right of the mind to dominate the body, and to bring it into subjection, even to the yoking down of its bad tempers and disorders, is only what the Christian is urged to do in the strength of the Spirit freely given to him of God. And its anticipation of a disenthralled humanity is only a crude foreshadowing of that ultimate triumph of the spiritual over the material toward which mankind and the whole creation is struggling, but which only the anointed Christ can effect. It is also to be observed that this affirmation of the supremacy of mind over disease is only an enlarged application of a principle whose curative effects has always been recognized in medical science. It is relied upon by all intelligent practitioners. It is not to be wondered at that many cures have been wrought by the mindhealers.

While therefore we do not believe that this is a heaven-ordained method for ridding the world of sin and disease, we may still regard it as a crude attempt to realize that complete subjection of matter to the control of spirit, which forms the goal of human progress, but toward which only Christ can lead, and which can be reached only as His Spirit shall take complete possession of us. We have defined matter as a group of cenThe body of man is a battery of nature's

tres of force.

forces by means of which his spirit comes into possession and control of this system of nature. Sin has robbed us of that supremacy in this system which is our birthright. "Sin is lawlessness," as St. James defines it. These forces, therefore, run riot and make havoc of human nature. Hence passion and unbridled cravings in the mind and disease in the body. Salvation is the cure of this disorder, and the final enthronement of man as the master of all these forces and the lord of this whole realm. There is no doubt that men may enter now upon the first fruits of this salvation. Their bodies may now become temples of the Holy Ghost, subdued to His sway and guarded by His power against the assaults of evil. So far as this result is realized, it follows of necessity that infirmities are neutralized and diseases warded off or overcome. Many people have been helped by the faith-cure, and some, perhaps, by the mind-cure, to a new and more worthy estimate of the dignity of our position as the sons of God, in whom His eternal life has begun to live, antagonizing the downward tendencies of our evil nature and filling the channels of our lives with His strong and remedial presence. But still the fact remains that these mortal bodies of ours are too frail and cumbrous a vehicle for that triumphant life. Hence they must be transformed, "fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to that mighty power whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself." So far as Christian Science dispenses with the necessity for that change, so far it is anti-Christ. So far as it testifies, even in blindness, to the coming of a time when man in Christ shall come to his full supremacy over nature, and