The first truth that has been exaggerated beyond recognition is this, that a large proportion of human diseases are pure fiction of morbid imaginations, induced by the power of the mind.  That such is the case, all medical men admit.  Thus, the mind may often be used as a therapeutic agent, and clever physicians never fail to employ this kind of Christian Science.  Mrs. Eddy is therefore no more the discoverer of the “malade imaginaire” than Moliere.  When you’ distort this truth and write books proclaiming the fact that all ills are of this sort, then you have Eddyism up to date.  Mrs. Eddy gathers her skirts in her hand and leaps over the abyss between “some ills” and “all ills” with the agility of a gazelle.  Yes, the mind has a wonderful power for healing, but it will make just as much impression on a broken leg as on a block of granite.  So much for the scientific part of the theory.

The method of healing of Jesus Christ and that of the foundress of Christian Science are not one and the same method, although called by the name of faith they appear at first sight to the unwary to be identical.  There is a preliminary act of the intelligence in both; there is the exercise of the will power; and a mention of God in Eddyism makes it look like a divine assistance.  To the superficial there is no difference between a miracle performed at Lourdes by God at the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and a “cure” effected by the Widow of New Hampshire hills.

Yet there is a wide difference, as wide as the abyss between error and truth.  In faith healing, God interposes and alone does the healing.  It is a miracle, a suspension of the ordinary laws of nature.  Faith is not a cause, but an essential condition.  In Christian Science, it is the mind of the patient or of Mrs. Eddy that does the work.  It is God only in the sense that God is one with the patient.  Mind is the only thing that exists, and the human mind is one with the Mind which is God.  Then again this cure instead of being in opposition to the normal state of things like a miracle, itself establishes a normal state, for disease is abnormal and in contradiction with the natural state of man.  Mental healing, according to this system sets the machine going regularly; miracles put it out of order for the moment.  Christian Science therefore, repudiates the healing method of Jesus by faith and sets up one of its own, thereby forfeiting all title to be called Christian.

Being, therefore, neither Christian nor scientific, this new cult is nothing but pure nonsense, like all superstitions; the product of a diseased mind swayed by the demon of pride, and should be treated principally as a mental disorder.  The chief, and only, merit of the system consists in illustrating the truth, as old as the world, that when men wander from the House where they are fed with a celestial nourishment, they will be glad to eat any food offered them that has a semblance of food, even though it be but husks and refuse.  Man is a religious animal; take away the true God, and he will adore anything or everything, even to a cucumber.  However limited otherwise, there is no limit to his religious folly.