"We do not take possession of our ideas, but are possessed by them. They master us and force us into the arena, Where, like gladiators, we must fight for them.”

-HEINE.

THE ARENA

VOL. XXV.

JANUARY, 1901.

No. I.

I

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE HEALING ART.

I. WHY NOT BE A CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST?

T seems reasonable to say that, if Christian Science is even in small part what is claimed for it, its merits should command investigation; that if it has prophylactic or therapeutic force of even slight efficiency, afflicted men and women should know that fact; and certainly if it heralds, in any measure, the "glad tidings" Jesus published to the world, the weary children of men everywhere should know that fact.

In words as simple as my purpose is sincere, without theological veiling or shadow of mysticism, I venture to make some suggestions by way of encouraging honest, dispassionate investigation of a subject that has profoundly impressed my own highest sense of truth. I do not invite controversy, partizan discussions, or denominational wrangling, but simply an honest, patient seeking after truth, with the utmost freedom of thought and expression, and yet with the fullest recognition of the right of others to think. I do not assail any man's thought of God, but declare my own. I do not disclose the foibles, if there be any, in another's religious belief, but emphasize the good there is in my own, believing that in this way and this way only the highest concept of life will be presented for the free choice of

all who seek the truth, the ultimate and infinite good. I shall discuss very briefly Christian Science in a twofold aspect: first, as a curative agent, and, second, as a religion to be lived and practised.

Mental Therapeutics.

If Christian Science be tried by its works-its cures, if tested by the same rules applied to the use of any material remedyyou will find that it meets all the requirements exacted in the use of drugs; so that, if your highest concept of life is physical supremacy-bodily health and the tangible results of healththen there is every reason for your accepting what may be termed the medicinal virtues of Christian Science, as a preserver of health and as a destroyer of disease, that you can assign for reliance upon material remedies.

I am sure that my reader is aware of the fact that the use of material medicine from the beginning has been, and now is, purely a matter of experiment-with dumb animals when opportunity offered, and with men when necessity required. It is quite safe to say that there is not a physician living who can tell you why any given drug has a given effect; and no writer upon material medicine, from the Greeks to our own time, has attempted to solve the mystery of the results of medicine-to state the reason why, etc. Really, information of the why in medicine is not attainable; the aggregate medical learning of the world cannot tell you why quinine or arsenic or strychnine, in a given quantity, acts as a tonic, or why opium will deaden sensibility. All the doctors know respecting the active properties of the remedies they give is what they have learned by experiment.

The whole practise of the administration of drugs is based solely upon observation of actual tests, and is wholly dependent upon the theory that a remedy effective in a large majority of cases, involving similar conditions, is a safe remedy to administer in that class of cases. That is, if upon trial-actual test-perhaps covering thousands of cases of a named disease, the cases being similar in early manifestations, condition of

pulse, respiration, digestion, secretions, etc., it is found that a given drug produces a favorable result in sixty, seventy, or eighty per cent. of the cases tested, then by the consensus of medical men the world over it becomes a rule-a law of material medicine-that the given drug is a safe one to prescribe in all cases coming within the scope of the experiment made; and the result of such test is absolutely the limit of the physicians' knowledge upon the question of the choice of medicine to be used.

It is understood, of course, that I am not complaining of the modus employed by the doctors in reaching their ultimate standard of judgment. In fact, it might be freely conceded that none better could be suggested-that it is the climax of human reason upon a subject that human reason cannot compass; and I refer to it, not to criticize or lessen its force, but simply to invite all satisfied with it to try by the same test the medicinal virtues, or the healing power, of Christian Science.

Christian Science has been practised in this country for about a third of a century-in a limited way for several years, but for the last two decades quite extensively; so that now its practitioners are numbered by thousands and its patients by hundreds of thousands. In the time I have mentioned, in the United States alone, at a low estimate one million people, including both sexes and all ages, in every variety of condition and climate, have been treated by Christian Science and cured of all manner of diseases, named and unnamed, substantially covering the whole range of mortal affliction. There were some failures, it is true; but the percentage of these was many times smaller than the percentage of failures by material medicine in any age of the world.

Now, add to this statement of cases cured the fact that a considerable percentage of the cures thus effected by Christian Science were of people confessedly beyond the reach of material remedies, and you have an experimental test of mental therapeutics, divine healing, in every way as satisfactory and conclusive as is afforded of the curative quality of any drug or material remedy by the history of medicine.

Now, if you may determine the virtues of medicine by experiment-if, by human observation and experience, you may ascertain the efficacy of a given remedy by a percentage of cures effected then is it not clear beyond controversy that this same test will measure with equal accuracy the medicinal virtues of Christian Science? And, in common fairness and by the logic of the axiom that "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other," are you not driven to include the tens of thousands of closely observed tests of the medicinal merit of mental medicine, in what men are pleased to call their common sense, in forming your judgment of Christian Science?

The time has long since passed when any one can say that Christian Science does not have its victories over disease; that it does not restore health; that it does not reclaim the drunkard; that it does not heal wounds of bone and flesh; that it does not give vision to the eye and hearing to the ear; that it does not "minister to a mind diseased." In almost every city, village, and hamlet of our country examples of these cures exist and may be easily known to all intelligent men, and of course to my readers.

The practise of Christian Science, judged by the senses, has not been an unbroken success; there have been some failures; not all the treatments have resulted in perfect cure; there have been some fatalities: but these have been comparatively few, as will appear by a comparison that I think is wholly within bounds-that the deaths occurring under Christian Science treatment in thirty years, in the States of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, are not in the aggregate equal to the recorded deaths under medical treatment for any one day in the last two years in the two cities of Chicago and New York.

If this is true, is there any possible reason why an intelligent man having faith in the practise of material medicine, by reason of experimental tests, should scorn to be influenced by similar tests of Christian Science healing? And is it a satisfactory explanation for not doing so for such a one to