15. Hastings's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. V, p. 700b. He has explained himself more at large in his book Spiritual Healing, London, 1914, and quite in this sense. But a certain amount of ambiguity in this matter is not unnatural, and may be met with in many writers. Elwood Worcester, for example, gives expression occasionally to a mystical theory which assimilates him to the theory of spiritual healing described by Cobb (e. g., Religion and Medicine, pp. 67 ff.). On the other hand, Percy Dearmer (Body and Soul,9 1912, p. 318), who also holds to a mystical theory of the universe, must be classed distinctly as an advocate of "Mind- cure"; although he lays all the stress on religion, and refers every- thing to God as the ultimate actor, he yet is thoroughly naturalistic in his analysis. "All power is of God," he says, " — whether it be electricity or neurokym, or grace; and to him who does not believe in God, all power must be left unexplained. On the other hand, the high power of religion can quite fairly be called mental; no one would be less ready to deny this than the Christian for whom, as I have said, the very operations of the Spirit of God, his gifts and his fruits, are mental phenomena which are habitually obtained in a lower form without the special aid of religion. There is no ultimate barrier then between what is sacred and what is secular, since all things come of God and of his own do we give him; the difference is one of degree and not of kind."
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1 6. Two other important movements, tracing their impulse back to P. P. Quimby, deserve mention here — the "Mind-cure Movement," the best representative of which is probably Warren F. Evans; and the "New Thought Movement," the best represen- tative of which is probably Horatio W. Dresser. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience,21 191 1, pp. 94 ff., gives an adequate account of the "New Thought Movement"; a good brief account of both streams of development will be found in Frank Podmore, Mesmerism and Christian Science, 1909, pp. 255 ff. Some details of W. F. Evans's career may be found in McClure's Magazine, vol. XXX, pp. 390 ff. A useful bibliography of out-of- the-way books on "New Thought" is given in The New Schajf- Herzog Encyclopedia, vol. VIII, p. 148, but the best books are missed. See, especially, Horatio W. Dresser, Handbook of New Thought, 1917.
17. "The truth, therefore, about Christian Science," says W. F. Cobb (Mysticism and the Creed, 1914, p. 316), "seems to be that the power displayed in the cures which it indubitably performs is not peculiar to it, that is, is not Christian Science at all, but that which is its peculiar glory is the bad philosophy by which it seeks to set forth the power which comes from the Spirit, and is under the guardianship of religion."
18. "Many imagine," she says, Science and Health, 161st ed., 1899, p. xi, "that the phenomena of physical healing in Christian Science only present a phase of the action of the human mind, which, in some unexplained way, results in the cure of sickness." This, she declares, is by no means the case. She condemns the several books "on mental healing" which have come under her notice as wrong and misleading, precisely because "they regard the human mind as a healing agent, whereas this mind is not a factor in the Principle of Christian Science" (p. x). The phrase "human mind" in passages like this probably is to be read as equivalent to "mortal mind," a cant phrase in the system, as, for example, on p. 303: "History teaches that the popular and false notions about the Divine Being and character have originated in the human mind. As there really is no mortal mind, this wrong notion about God must have originated in a false supposition, not in immortal Mind." This "mortal mind," we are told (p. 45), "claims to govern every organ of the mortal body," but the claim is false; "the Divine Mind" is the true governor. There "really is no mortal mind." Of course this distinction between mind-cure and Mind-cure is not maintained, and endless confusion results. Thus the Christian Sci- ence writer quoted in the American Journal of Psychology, X, p. 433, in the same breath repudiates the ascription of their healings
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to a "material, mental or bodily cause," and affirms that "the only agency ever effective in curing diseases is some faculty of mind."