Part 1

WHAT IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE?

By M. M Mangasarian

London:

WATTS & CO.,

1922

_In this brochure the author makes an earnest endeavour to understand Christian Science and define its mission. He scrupulously verifies all his citations and references, and appeals to the judgment of those who are willing to hear both sides of the question._

"The blood, heart, lungs, brain, have nothing to do with life."

"The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural than taking a fish out of water and covering it with dirt would be natural."

"Christian Science is more safe and potent than any other sanitary method."

"The condition of food, stomach, bowels, clothing, etc., is of no serious import to your child."

"Gender is also a quality or characteristic of mind, not of matter."

"Until it is learned that generation (birth) rests on no sexual basis, let marriage continue."

"To abolish marriage and maintain generation is possible in (Christian) science."

What is Christian Science?

|You do not understand Christian Science" is the usual reply of the followers of Mrs. Eddy to any one disputing their claims, or trying to point out the many inconsistencies in their creed. If it is impossible to understand Christian Science, how does it expect to propagate itself? To answer that one must accept the doctrine before one can understand it would be like asking a man to see before he opens his eyes, or to think _after_ he has made up his mind. It is just as useless to try to understand Christian Science after it has been accepted as true as it would be for a judge to examine the evidence after a verdict has been pronounced. And if Christian Scientists can understand the beliefs which they reject, why may not other people have intelligence and honesty enough to understand Christian Science without believing in it?

But can a person who is not a mathematician understand or discuss profitably the intricate problems of mathematics? No; hence no one but a Christian Scientist may discuss its doctrines and interpret its metaphysics. Neither has that defence any value. We do not have to be expert mathematicians to know that twice two make four. It is possible to detect an error in an example of addition, multiplication, or subtraction presented by the greatest mathematician without possessing equal knowledge or ability. Mrs. Eddy may be more advanced in metaphysics than any of her critics, but twice two make four in "Divine science" as well as in human science. Square your statements with the facts, and you disarm criticism. Ignore, suppress, or tamper with the facts, and you will have the universe against you.

Why I Discuss Christian Science

|If asked why I devote time and labour to the discussion of such seemingly foolish propositions as those propounded by Mrs. Eddy, my defence is that I am very much interested in the people who accept Christian Science, and would like to be of service to them, even though they may hold me and my motives in derision. Then, again, I feel that if we stand idly by while the Christian Scientists are concentrating all their efforts, sparing neither time nor money to spread their doctrine, we may wake up some morning to find that all our institutions--newspapers, courts, schools, etc.--have passed under the control of Mrs. Eddy's followers. That, in my opinion, would be a national menace.

If the teachings of Christian Science prevail, there will come into prominence the type of mentality which will dispense with all forms of inquiry, and accept for authority the "say-so" of a book, a man, or a woman as all-sufficient and final.

The passive mind easily becomes the plaything or instrument of every kind of imposture--political, economic, or religious. Non-resistance will prove the death of free institutions. I am opposed to Christian Science because I am opposed to the least departure from sanity. I have no other motive in this propaganda against the new cult. Whatever undermines the _morale_ of the nation or is hurtful to the free and rational development of humanity should be combated again and again until it ceases to be a menace.

Mrs. Eddy's Mentality

|The founder of Christian Science was, indeed, one of the busiest women of her day. She was preacher, writer, teacher, missionary, organizer, manager, etc. But even a superficial reading of her books will show that her activity resembled that of children at play rather than of men at work. Mrs. Eddy's mind displayed all the qualities and defects of primitive man. Though incessantly active, she followed in all her mental efforts the line of least resistance. Children are never at rest of their own will; they run and romp almost continually; but it is the activity of play, not of work, which they enjoy. To work requires concentration and effort in a definite direction, and submission to rules and regulations; while in play one is at liberty to follow one's own fancy, moving in any direction and at any speed one pleases. Again, the worker is expected to show results; the player, on the other hand, though equally busy, keeps going round and round, or back and forth, just for the pleasure of being in motion.

Mrs. Eddy had the child's fondness for activity and the child's dislike for work. She rebelled against discipline. Rules and restrictions were as distasteful to her as to children who have been allowed to "grow up" without discipline, while logic and reason meant no more to her than they would to primitive man.

_Science and Health_ is a book consisting largely of extraordinary claims put forth with the most provoking indifference to the universally accepted rules of evidence, and with an abandon suggesting that of the steed who has thrown his rider. If her readers ask for proofs, she points to the authority of her name. Has she not received a revelation? Is she not "the Comforter" whom Jesus promised to send into the world? And if there are obscure passages in her writings, it is not because these are really "dark," but because there is not enough light in the eyes of the readers of her books. This free-and-easy method carries her through seven hundred pages of her "masterpiece," _Science and Health_, without encountering the least obstacle or being checked for an instant by a single difficulty. Writing was like play to her, and sentences and phrases flow copiously and swell into a veritable flood in her pages, because what satisfied her was that she could say so much, and not whether what she said had any basis in fact.

In the Preface to _Science and Health_, Mrs. Eddy, in order to prove the usefulness of medical knowledge, quotes the example of the antediluvians who knew nothing of drugs, and yet some of whom lived to be nearly a thousand years old. Mrs. Eddy makes this statement with as little concern as a boy tosses a ball. The reasoning that men were healthier and lived longer before the Deluge because there were then no physicians, whose presence in our times has shortened human life, may do for the "child-mind," but is it permitted to a full-grown person to make such careless use of his or her faculties? How does Mrs. Eddy know that the antediluvians would not have lived longer if they could also have had the services of trained and skilful physicians? It would be just as reasonable to assert that there would have been no Deluge had there been doctors to prevent it, as to say that the antediluvians owed their longevity to the lack of them. Without caring to make sure of her data, or to look into the truth of the statement that there was a flood, or that before this terrible downpour men lived to be a thousand years old, Mrs. Eddy accepts the rumour of the tradition as if it were a demonstrated fact, and proves by it, to her own satisfaction at least, the utter uselessness and positive menace to the human race of medical science. What an argument and what a conclusion!

I am not accusing Mrs. Eddy of insincerity, but of mental indolence. Nothing, for example, but a distaste for work could account for her failure to verify her references in the following instances, or to supply to her readers the means of verifying them for themselves. She had to choose between making assertions and offering proofs, and she chose the easier of the two. "I have healed Infidels" (p. 359). * What were their names? Where did they live? Of what maladies were they healed? "One whom I rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion in which the senses had engulphed him" (p. 382). And what sort of a disease is that, and who was the person suffering from it? "A little girl who had badly wounded her finger" (p. 287); "A woman whom I cured of consumption" (p. 184); "A famous naturalist says" (p. 548); "One of our ablest naturalists has said" (p. 553); "It is related that a father" (p. 556), etc., etc. All these stories and illustrations fail completely to impress the inquiring reader, for the simple reason that Mrs. Eddy did not take the trouble to furnish the details to render her testimony admissible. In no court would such statements as "I heard a man say," or "I knew some one who heard a man say," or "It has been said by so and so," be accepted as evidence. Very likely Mrs. Eddy possessed the data, names, addresses, etc., of the patients and the naturalists she writes about, but she was too indolent to reach for her note-book, if she kept one. Again, only mental fatigue or sheer indolence can explain a statement like the following, from which all the important items which alone could give it force and effectiveness are left out:--

* The quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from Mrs. Eddy's _Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures_.

_I have seen age regain two of the elements it had lost--sight and teeth. A woman of eighty-five whom I knew had a return of sight. Another woman of ninety had new teeth, incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and one molar. One man at sixty had retained his full set of upper and lower teeth without a decaying cavity_ (p. 247).

Evidently these cases are cited to carry conviction with the reader of her book; would it not, then, have greatly enhanced their evidential value had she made it possible for her readers to verify their claims? But how can they do so when no names or addresses are given! If Christian Science does not need demonstration, why cite these cases of remarkable cures at all; if it needs demonstration, why not supply the details necessary to complete the demonstration?

"I knew a person," writes again Mrs. Eddy, "who when a child adopted the Graham system to cure dyspepsia" (p. 221); and then she proceeds to relate how this led him to death's door and he was ready to die, "having exhausted the skill of the doctors, who kindly informed him that death was indeed his only alternative," and how "Christian Science saved him, and he is now in perfect health without a vestige of the old complaint" (p. 221). Surely this fortunate person would have no objection to have his name announced and his case investigated. Why, then, suppress-his identity?

Printed in italics at the foot of page xii of _Science and Health_ will be found the following notice or advertisement:--_The author (Mrs. Eddy) takes no patients, and declines medical consultation_.

The above offers an excellent illustration of the distinction between work and play. Mrs. Eddy, with the mentality she possessed, found it easier to compose phrases and make vague statements about past cures than actually to grapple with "patients" or to take part in "medical consultation," whatever that may mean in Christian Science. After repeatedly asserting that the only way to demonstrate the truth of her science is by healing the sick, she herself positively declines to give this demonstration. It is really puzzling. Here is a woman who had discovered the only power that can heal the sick as nothing else can, and no other person understands the _modus operandi_ of this power better or even as well as she does, and yet she will take no patients--that is, she will under no circumstances apply her remedy, however urgent the need for it may be!

Some people might be led to think that Mrs. Eddy's refusal to practise healing was due to her fear that she might not always succeed, which would greatly diminish her prestige and prejudice the public against her discovery. To claim, as we have explained elsewhere, that Mrs. Eddy's motive in refusing to heal the sick herself was that she might have more time and strength for matters of higher importance would imply that she was not strong enough to do both. But would not such an admission prove fatal to the claim that all is divine Mind, and that in divine Mind there is no sin, sickness, fatigue, or limitation of any kind?

The husband of Mrs. Eddy died; that was an event calling for an explanation from the discoverer of an unfailing remedy for all maladies who happened to be the widow of the deceased. How could any one so closely related to Mrs. Eddy, and taking her treatment, succumb to sickness of any kind? Mrs. Eddy looked about for an answer to that question. "My husband died from the effects of arsenical poisoning mentally administered" was her first effort at self-defence.

But Mrs. Eddy was quick to realize that she could ill afford to admit that an imaginary dose of arsenic mentally administered could deprive a Christian Scientist of his life, for she hastened to explain further that unfortunately "circumstances debarred me from taking hold of my husband's case."

"Circumstances," then, killed her husband, since had she not been debarred by them she would have come to his rescue with her "divine" science and prevented his death. To further exonerate and defend herself she is inclined to blame her husband a little. "My husband declared himself perfectly capable of carrying himself through, and I was so entirely absorbed in business that I permitted him to try, and when I awakened to the danger it was too late." Now we know why Christian Science failed in this particular case. Mrs. Eddy was too busy, and she awoke to the seriousness of her husband's condition too late. Besides, the patient himself believed he was quite able to cope with the trouble without his wife's help. In short, "circumstances" proved too much for Christian Science. That is why Mrs. Eddy's husband died.

The more Mrs. Eddy explained, the more she had to explain. If Mr. Eddy was murdered by means of mesmeric poison (whatever that may be), mentally administered by an absent practitioner who, Mrs. Eddy believed, was one of her own apostate disciples--that is, if some one could from a distance kill her husband--what prevented her, by the same absent treatment, and without taking any time from her other duties, from defeating the work of the mal-practitioner by a thought or two of her own? If this could not be done, and since there is a possibility of other divine healers being so entirely absorbed in business as to neglect their patients, had we not better hold on to the doctors a little longer, at least until Christian Science has become a match for "circumstances, etc."? And if a healer equipped with "divine" science can have more to do than he or she has the strength to attend to, in what sense is "divine" science more resourceful than plain, ordinary science?

But there is more to come. Mrs. Eddy declares that one of her rejected students tried to kill her in the same way as her husband had been killed. But he could not, "because I instantly gave myself the same treatment that I would give in a case of arsenical poisoning (mentally administered), and so I recovered, just the same as I could have caused my husband to recover had I taken the case in time." There is no such thing as failure with Mrs. Eddy. Her husband would never have died had she given him the same treatment as she gave herself. Of course, years later Mrs. Eddy died too; but there, again, "circumstances" must have proved too formidable for Christian Science, otherwise both the Eddys might be living still.

The founder of this popular cult believed that she had now explained the death of her husband to the satisfaction of her faithful flock. She certainly could have saved Mr. Eddy's life had she not been too busy with other matters, or "too late" in taking hold of his case. To prove this she goes on to give examples of her wonderful powers, as will be seen by the following: "Only a few days ago I disposed of a tumour in twenty-four hours that the doctors had said must be removed by the knife. I changed the course of the mind to counteract the effect of the disease"; and of course the malignant tumour took wings and flew away, twenty-four hours of Christian Science being all it could stand. It was really unfortunate that so powerful a healer was prevented by pressure of "business" from lending a thought to her sick husband. It was not because she did not want to help him, nor because her "divine" science was not equal to his trouble, but because of "circumstances." We hope that in the near future some advanced practitioner of Christian Science will discover a cure for that terrible malady called "circumstances," which reduced Mrs. Eddy to impotency at the bedside of a dying husband; a cure which will be as effective against "circumstances" as against tumours, cancer, etc. In comparison with such sophistry or make-believe, how refreshing is the intellectual honesty which sees true and aims straight.

"Mortal Mind"

|Mrs. Eddy's efforts to explain what she calls "mortal mind" give us an even better insight into her mentality. Though constantly denouncing mortal mind as the source of all human ills, the author of _Christian Science_ makes no serious attempt to account for its origin. The fundamentals of Christian Science as expounded by its author are summed up in the following statements:--

_God is All in All.

God is Good, God is Mind.

God Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.

Life, God, omnipotent good deny death, evil, sin, disease_ (p. 113).

The important deduction which the founder of Christian Science draws from these assertions is that sin, suffering, sickness, and death do not exist, since there is no room for them in God, who is All in All, or in a universe where Mind is the sole reality and "Nothing is matter." Our experience and our senses may testify to the contrary, but, replies Mrs. Eddy, "I find that God is true, and every (mortal) man a liar" (p. 113).

In the opinion of Christian Scientists, that ought to end the discussion. "God is true," never mind what men may say. But what is the proof that Mrs. Eddy is speaking for the Deity? Calvin and Mohammed too claimed to speak for the Deity.

If God is the All, whence comes mortal mind? The All plus mortal mind would give us more than the All. God cannot be the all unless he is immortal and mortal mind at the same time. It is true that Mrs. Eddy denies reality to mortal mind. By mortal mind she means false beliefs about God and man. But how did false beliefs originate in a universe where God or Good is the only reality?

Mrs. Eddy's efforts to make room for mortal mind in her perfect world are really amusing, as will be seen by what follows.

Man is defined as "God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal" (p. 115). She explains further that, while man is not God, he is nevertheless made in God's image, and is therefore God-like. The distinction between God and man, according to Mrs. Eddy, is one of quantity and not of quality. Jesus Christ was not God, she writes; he was only "the ideal of God, now and for ever, here and everywhere" (p. 361). It is true Jesus said, "I and my father are one"; but, explains Mrs. Eddy, what is meant is one in _quality_, not in _quantity_. Jesus was God in the sense that a drop of water is the ocean, or a ray of light is the sun--in essence, not in size. In that sense man too is God, or a little god. Both man and Jesus possess all the qualities of divinity, but in limited proportions.

"The science of being," our prophetess goes on to say, "reveals man as perfect, even as the Father is perfect, because the Soul and Mind of the spiritual man is God" (p. 302), but in quality only, since "man is in _a degree_ as perfect as the Mind that forms him" (p. 337). It follows that if man were God-like in quantity as well as in quality--that is, if he were not undersized or underweighted spiritually, there would have been no mortal mind, and therefore no sin or sickness in the world. But who clipped man's divinity, or made him an underling? In a perfect world how does man happen to be a dwarf?

Forgetting her own statement, that man is not so "bulky" as God, Mrs. Eddy insists that, as there is no error or sickness in God, there can be none in man, who is "God's spiritual idea." Yet, in order to justify Christian Science healing, she is compelled to make a further distinction between God and man. God is one, but there are two kinds of men--the spiritual and the mortal, and it is the latter who need the high-priced services of healers.

"God is not corporeal... mortals are corporeal" (p. 116).

If we ask Mrs. Eddy how man could possess a body and yet be "the reflection of God," who is incorporeal, she replies that this body of which she speaks is only a make-believe body; the real man is all soul, as is the Deity. "The description of man as both material and spiritual... is the Pandora box from which all ills have gone forth. Matter is a fiction" (pp. 170-1). From which it follows that man is as incorporeal as God; but the former _thinks_ he has a body, and hence the sufferings from which the Deity is immune. "Mistaking his origin and nature, man believes himself to be combined matter and spirit" (p. 171). This, Mrs. Eddy considers, is as great an absurdity as to think of Christ as both God and Devil (Belial and Christ). How, then, did man come to have a body? He has none; he has only come to think he has one. And how did that happen? "The human mortal mind, by an inevitable perversion, makes all things start from the lowest." That is the way, according to the author of _Science and Health_, in which man came to believe in matter. This false belief is "mortal mind" (pp. 172-89), the Dragon which the St. George of New England offers to slay for what she considers a moderate price.

Let it be observed that Mrs. Eddy attributes the existence or the belief in the existence of "mortal mind" to the "inevitable perversion" of the human mind. Mark the use of the word "inevitable." Does she mean that "mortal mind"--that is to say, sin, suffering, and death--were predestined? If she does not mean that, what made man's departure from truth, or his "perversion," _inevitable?_ Was there another power, greater than the All, who pulled man down into error? And how can Christian Science, if it could not prevent the "perversion" which called into existence the worst of all as well as the parent of all diseases--"mortal mind"--be a remedy against the innumerable ills which flow from it?

In pronouncing "mortal mind" or the "perversion" which called it into existence inevitable, Mrs. Eddy has virtually created a power greater than her "All in All," since the latter could not prevent the catastrophe.