Has the pulpit itself--orthodox and not so orthodox--contributed to the success of Eddy "Science"? We must say it has. The practise, among the sects, of twisting the Bible out of its straight, historical, natural significance, and fitting its texts to every sort of whim, folly, and malefaction--this general practise has at last culminated in Mrs. Eddy's _Key to the Scriptures_, with pretty nearly the dissolution of them in the abomination of interpretation. But "Christian Science"--the Eddy misfit for a specious name--has had its rise, and it has probably risen about as high as it can reach, notwithstanding its rapid extension for the moment. Only its protrusion from insignificance and non-attention was needed to uncover its foundation on the sands of ignorance, its strength in the perennial weakness and credulity of mankind, and its business success in ordinary, or more than ordinary, business cupidity. Has it done no good in the world, then? Ah, that is another question. Whatever may have been the chief motive of its founder, and whatever may have been its "comedy of errors," it has forced the inception of a movement that, as a whole, may have vast results for the human mind and the human body. Whatever material medicines may be necessary to mankind while they themselves are in a material condition, psychic forces in the cure of disease can no longer be ignored. What is the extent, and what the limit, of these forces, is a problem that must be examined. As conditionally--here and now--man is _both spiritual and corporeal_--it would seem to be a self-evident conclusion that he must have both material and spiritual aids to health. That we can "jump" our condition, before we get out of it, is the most tremendous paradox ever presented to the human mind; but the sequences--even physical--of systematically opening the finite soul to the Infinite Spirit may be incalculable. The revival, or definite rediscovery, in modern times, of healing the sick by the soul and the laying-on of hands, came to pass some fifty years ago, in the United States, through the honest, single-minded, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. If the spirit of evil--of hypocrisy, selfishness and avarice--has entered into the movement of mental healing through another source, the frequent necessity of very human means to divine ends is once more illustrated. CHAPTER XVIII. VARIOUS SCHOOLS OF THE NEW THOUGHT. Just now, the general cause of metaphysical therapeutics is separating rapidly into various "schools," few of them having much consideration for the pretentious health-trust, "Christian Science."