It would be unfortunate to emphasize the popular preëminence of
Christian Science at a cost of the neglect of the significance of the
many other forms of "drugless healing," which bid for public favor
by appeal to ignorance and to occult and superstitious instincts.
Some are allied to Christian Science, and like it assimilate their
cult to a religious movement; others are unmistakably the attempts
of charlatans to lure the credulous by noisy advertisements of
newly discovered and scientifically indorsed systems of "psychic
force," or of some personal "ism." For many purposes it would be
unjust to group together such various systems, which in the nature
of things must include sinner and saint, the misguided sincere, the
half-believers who think "there may be something in it," or "that
it is worth a trial," along with scheming quacks and adepts in
commercial fraud. They illustrate the many and various roads traveled
in the search for health, by pilgrims who are dissatisfied with the
highways over which medical science pursues its steadfast though it
may be devious course. Among them there is plausible exaggeration and
ignorant perversion and dishonest libel of the relations that bind
together body and mind. Among the several schisms from the "Mother
Church of Christian Science" there is one that claims to be the
"rational phase of the mental healing doctrine," that acknowledges
the reality of disease and the incurability of serious organic
disorders, and resents any connection with the "half-fanatical
personality worship" (of Mrs. Eddy) as quite as foreign to its
tenets as would be the views of the "Free Religious Association" to
the "Pope of Rome." "Divine Healing" exhibits its success in one
notable instance, in the establishment of a school and college, a
bank, a land and investment association, a printing and publishing
office, and sundry divine healing homes; and this prosperity is now
to be extended by the foundation of a city or colony of converts,
who shall be united by the common bond of faith in divine healing
as transmitted in the personal power of their leader. The official
organ of this movement announces that the personification of their
faith "makes her religion a business and conducts herself upon
sound business principles;" their leader publicly boasts of his vast
financial returns. With emphatic protest on the part of each that
he alone holds the key to salvation, and that his system is quite
original and unlike any other, comes the procession of Metaphysical
Healer and Mind-Curist and Viticulturist and Magnetic Healer and
Astrological Health Guide and Phrenopathist and Medical Clairvoyant
and Esoteric Vibrationist and Psychic Scientist and Mesmerist and
Occultist. Some use or abuse the manipulations of hypnotism; others
claim the power to concentrate the magnetism of the air and to excite
the vital fluids by arousing the proper mental vibrations, or by some
equally lucid and demonstrable procedure; some advertise magnetic
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