McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908Various
History
McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
In this interpretation the petitions have been converted into
affirmations, and Mrs. Eddy's prayer seems a somewhat dry enumeration of
the properties of the Deity rather than a supplication.
This method of "spiritual interpretation" has given Mrs. Eddy the habit
of a highly empirical use of English. At the back of her book, "Science
and Health," there is a glossary in which a long list of serviceable old
English words are said to mean very especial things. The word
"bridegroom" means "spiritual understanding"; "death" means "an
illusion"; "evening" means "mistiness of mortal thought"; "mother" means
God, etc., etc. The seventh commandment, Mrs. Eddy insists, is an
injunction against adulterating Christian Science, although she also
admits the meaning ordinarily attached to it. In the _Journal_ of
November, 1889, there is a long discussion of the ten commandments by
the editor, in which he takes up both personal chastity and the Pure
Food laws under the command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Mrs. Eddy insists, and doubtless believes, that her "Science" is simply
an elaboration, a more advanced explanation, of the teachings of the New
Testament. Yet on the subject of repentance, which occupies so important
a place in the teachings of Christ, we hear never a word, and upon that
consciousness of sin, which is the burden of the Epistles, she is
consistently silent. Paul's reiterated explanation of original sin, of
the Atonement and Redemption, are ignored. "As in Adam all die, so in
Christ shall all be made alive" is made to read: "As in error all die,
so in Truth shall all," etc. Even Paul's "Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?" is made substantially to mean, Who shall deliver me
from the belief that there is sensation in matter? Whatever cannot be
"spiritually interpreted" into a confirmation of Mrs. Eddy's theory that
sin, sickness, and death are non-existent, she refuses to consider.
_Mrs. Eddy's Therapeutics_
Mrs. Eddy's theology is, of course, a mere derivative of her system of
therapeutics, an attempt to base her peculiar variety of mind-cure upon
Biblical authority. In her therapeutics there is nothing new except its
extremeness. That the mind is able, in a large degree, to prevent or to
cause sickness and even death, all thinking people admit. Mrs. Eddy's
fundamental propositions are that death is wholly unnecessary and that
the body and the organs of the body have nothing to do with life. A man
could live just as well after his lungs had been removed as before, if
he but thought he could. "Cold, heat, exercise, study, food, infection,
etc., never caused a sick or healthy condition in man." "Scrofula,
fever, consumption, rheumatism or small-pox never produced pain or
inharmony." "A dislocation of the tarsal joint (ankle-joint) would
produce insanity as perceptible as that produced by congestion of the
brain, were it not that mortal mind thinks this joint less intimately
connected with mind than is the brain."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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