Modern Religious Cults and MovementsAtkins, Gaius Glenn
Religion
Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Atkins, Gaius Glenn
Christian Science; New Thought; Religion; Spiritual healing
be brought to bear upon the very sources of all the evil side of life,
and the bare philosophy of Christian Science is not equal to this task.
_Is Not Big Enough for the Whole of Experience_
It is doubtful if Christian Science has ever made an appreciable change
in the mortality statistics of any city and yet if the Public Health
Department were to permit for forty-eight hours the milk or water supply
of a city to be polluted, statistics would disclose that within ten
days. This is only an illustration but it does illustrate. We must work
if we are to dig up the roots of evil things and get a better growth in
their stead and anything which attempts to substitute for this a denial
of the reality of the evil, a mystical religious attitude and a mere
formula of faith, no matter how oft repeated or how sincerely accepted,
or indeed no matter how efficacious in certain selected regions among
certain selected groups, is on the whole not a contribution to human
well-being.
Very likely Mrs. Eddy's followers in the practical conduct of their
lives are already recognizing this and gradually, and maybe
unconsciously, adapting themselves to it. There are already signs of
certain processes of conformity to the necessities of experience; these
are likely to go farther. If Christian Science follows the history of
such movements in the past, it will, after having made its own distinct
assertion of whatever measure of truth it contains, be gradually swept
back into the main current of religion and practice. It will maintain a
nominal distinctness, but in the general conduct of life it will lose
its more outstanding characteristics and become largely a distinction
without a difference. Milmine, in her thoughtful criticism of Christian
Science at the end of her history says that the future of Christian
Science stands or falls with psycho-therapy.
That is true only on the one side. As far as Christian Science has true
religious insights and approaches it will go on in spite of what happens
to psycho-therapy, though there is enough in psycho-therapy to assure
its future within well-defined regions if that were all. Something
bigger than psycho-therapy will finally judge and dismiss Christian
Science to its own place--life and experience will do that--and it is
safe to say that in the end Christian Science will have to come to terms
with a truth bigger than its own, with a body of experience which cannot
be dealt with on the selective process of taking what you want and
denying the rest, and more than that, it will have to come to terms with
the whole great matter of an intellectual, moral and spiritual struggle
governed by law and conditioned by the vaster world of which we are a
part. This is not to deny that Christian Science and allied teachings
have made contributions of real value to our common problem. It is only
to affirm that here is something not big enough for the whole either of
truth or experience.
VIII
NEW THOUGHT
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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