not really live by eating, and this mere knowledge — with- out any effort to do without food, or lessen it, or indeed interfere with our ordinary simple habits at all — has the effect of making us less dependent on our meals both as to what and when to eat. 9. And in the same way we grow less dependent upon clothing, warmth and coldness, for comfort." But she immediately adds: "Here let us say emphatically that we neither enjoin, nor encourage, any experiments about food or clothing. Experience shows us that any changes, to be worth anything, must and do come about of themselves, in persons who, having learnt the truth of life, accepted and begun to live by it, demon- strate it naturally and spontaneously." This is, of course, only a repetition of Mrs. Eddy's constant manner. For example: 78 "Food does not affect the real existence of man . . . but it would be foolish to venture beyond present understanding, foolish to stop eating until we gain more goodness, and a clearer comprehension of the living God."79 But what about the success, in actual healing, of this system which describes "a mental cure" — this is the way that Luther M. Marsdon puts it — as "the discovery of a sick person that he is well," and the practice of which con- sists^simply in the transference of this thought from the practitioner to the patient ? It is just as successful as any other of the many systems of mental practice ; no more and no less. Its list of cures is long, and many of them are re- markable.80 We have no reason to doubt the reality of large numbers of these cures. But by now, we surely understand that there are limitations to them which are never over- passed. These limitations are brought sharply into view by a challenge cast out by Professor L. T. Townsend.81 He made this proposition: "If you or the president of your college, or your entire college of doctors, will put into place a real case of hip or ankle dislocation, without resorting to the ordinary manipulation or without touching it, I will give you a thousand dollars. Or if you or your president,
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or your entire college, will give sight to one of the inmates of the South Boston Asylum for the Blind, that sightless person having been born blind, I will give you two thou- sand dollars." The money was never called for. But in the Journal of Christian Science this reply appeared: "Will the gentleman accept my thanks due to his generosity, for if I should accept his bid he would lose his money. Why, because I performed more difficult tasks fifteen years ago. At present I am in another department of Christian work, where 'there shall be no sign given them,' for they shall be instructed in the principles of Christian Science that fur- nishes its own proof." We have observed that in a similar vein a Faith-Healer, Doctor Cullis, explained that "a broken bone is not sickness, and should be put into the hands of a surgeon." Mrs. Eddy does not thus curtly refuse, she only postpones, the treatment of such cases. "Until the advancing age admits the efficacy and suprem- acy of Mind," she writes,82 "it is better to leave the adjust- ment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while you confine yourself chiefly" — that "chiefly " is very good! — "to mental reconstruction or the preven- tion of inflammation or protracted confinement." Even while saying this, however, she asseverates that cures of this kind have nevertheless already been actually performed both by herself and her pupils.
It was not the magnitude of the task asked by Professor Townsend which led Mrs. Eddy to palter thus. It was the nature of it. The drawing of a tooth is not a great thing, but Mrs. Eddy's Science was not equal to it. We do in- deed hear here too of "more difficult tasks" already per- formed. We hear, for example, of " the ' good-sized cavity ' of an aching tooth filled up by mental treatment, 'not with foreign substance, but the genuine, white and perfect.' " 83 But when Mrs. Eddy herself had a troublesome tooth, she employed the good offices of a dentist to obtain relief, and even availed herself of his "painless method" to guard her-
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