Similarly, when we are tempted to praise Christian Science for the honor which it does to Truth, we are bound to stop and ask, not only materially, what this Truth is to which it gives honor, but also, formally, whether it can be commended for the functions which it assigns to Truth in its system. What it calls " Truth," when it speaks hon- oringly of Truth, is just its pantheistic theory of Being — that all is mind, and mind is God, and besides God there is nothing. To this "Truth" as such — that is to say, to its mere apprehension as true — it ascribes all healing power.
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It is therefore that it calls itself "metaphysical healing," healing, that is, by metaphysics, and that it named its college, founded in Boston in 1881, the "Massachu- setts Metaphysical College." This is, in point of fact, its only distinguishing feature, borrowed indeed from P. P. Quimby, but made all its own. There are other systems of mental healing abroad, seeking healing through other mental activities — faith, say, or the will. Mrs. Eddy re- marks:54 "The common custom of praying for the recov- ery of the sick finds help in blind belief, whereas help should come from the enlightened understanding." "Will- power is not Science," she says again.55 "Willing the sick to recover is not the metaphysical practice of Christian Science, but sheer animal magnetism. . . . Truth and not corporeal will is the divine power which says to dis- ease, 'Peace, be still.'" A "Christian Science Healer" explains the whole matter clearly.56 Every man, he de- clares, has a "God-given right" to "spiritual, mental and bodily wholeness"; and this wholeness is "received in proportion to man's intelligent understanding of the God- nature and its operation." We pass by the mere phrases "God-given right," "spiritual, mental and bodily whole- ness." The former is only a fashion of speaking with no specific meaning on a Christian Scientist's lips except as a strong way of saying, it is an inalienable right. The latter is merely rhetorical enumeration to emphasize the single idea of completeness; on Christian Science ground mind and body are both nonentities and no man can have a right to anything mental or bodily — he has only a right to be rid of all such things. What is to be noted is that everybody is affirmed to have an inalienable right to whole- ness, and this wholeness to which every one has an inaliena- ble right is affirmed to be actually enjoyed only — here is the point, note it well — in proportion as each has an intelli- gent understanding of "the God-nature and its operation." Here, you see, is a truly rampant intellectualism, a pure
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Gnosticism. To understand is to have and to be. In pro- portion as we understand, and understand intelligently, we possess. The thing to be understood and the understand- ing of which brings wholeness is described as "the God-na- ture and its operation." In this system "the God-nature" is denned as the All. "God is all," we are told, "and all is God." Understand that, and you are "whole." It is the mere understanding of it that does the work ; it always does the work, and the work is not done where this under- standing is not present. This is the reason why puzzled pastors sometimes complain— surely they are themselves showing little understanding — that members of their flock who are tainted with Christian Science are found to have turned away from historical Christianity. It is the first step in Christian Science that you must turn away from historical Christianity.57 It is the "new knowledge" that does the work. Unless you have the "new knowledge" you have no Christian Science; for Christian Science is just this "new knowledge," and this "new knowledge," being just pantheistic acosmism, is the contradiction of historical Christianity. You can have a little Christian Science in your Christianity just as little as you can have a little water in your fire ; and a little Christianity in your Christian Sci- ence just as little as you can have a little fire in your water. The things are mutually exclusive.
This bald intellectualism is pressed even to the absurd extreme that curative value is ascribed to the mere read- ing of Mrs. Eddy's writings. "The perusal of the author's publications," she tells us herself, "heals sickness con- stantly." 58 A palsied arm, we are told, was cured by read- ing a single sentence: "All is Mind." Sometimes, no doubt, appearances are against this doctrine. But Mrs. Eddy has her explanation and her encouragement to offer. "If pa- tients sometimes seem the worse for reading this book," she says,59 — and who can wonder, if they do? — "the change may either arise from the alarm of the physician, or may
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mark the crisis of the disease. Perseverance in its reading has generally healed them completely." This is healing distinctly by reading. Tolle, lege, is the command in a new sense.