Christian Science -- Controversial literature; Eddy, Mary Baker, 1821-1910
This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has now gone over to the
new sect. He was “almost blind and deaf.” He was treated by the C. S.
method, and “when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually.” Saw
spiritually? It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable; but this C. S. magazine
is poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.
The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims:
Indigestion, Rheumatism, Catarrh, Chalky deposits in Shoulder-joints,
Arm-joints, Hand-joints, Insomnia, Atrophy of the muscles of Arms.
Shoulders, Stiffness of all those joints, Excruciating pains most of the
time.
These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but “I never realized any physical relief from that source.”
After thirty years of torture, he went to a Christian Scientist and took
an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later, he “began
to eat like a well man.” Then “the claims vanished--some at once, others
more gradually”; finally, “they have almost entirely disappeared.”
And--a thing which is of still greater value--he is now “contented and
happy.” That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist
Church specialty. And, indeed, one may go further and assert with
little or no exaggeration that it is a Christian-Science monopoly. With
thirty-one years' effort, the Methodist Church had not succeeded in
furnishing it to this harassed soldier.
And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims,
declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the
praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is
cured; and St. Vitus's dance is made a pastime. Even without a fiddle.
And now and then an interesting new addition to the Science slang
appears on the page. We have “demonstrations over chilblains” and such
things. It seems to be a curtailed way of saying “demonstrations of
the power of Christian-Science Truth over the fiction which masquerades
under the name of Chilblains.” The children, as well as the adults,
share in the blessings of the Science. “Through the study of the 'little
book' they are learning how to be healthful, peaceful, and wise.”
Sometimes they are cured of their little claims by the professional
healer, and sometimes more advanced children say over the formula and
cure themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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