The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic InterpretationSinclair, Upton
Religion
The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation
Sinclair, Upton
Christianity -- Controversial literature
I told the story of some of these experiments in Hearst's
Magazine for April, 1914. Suffice it here to say that if you will
lay your hands upon a sick person, forming a vivid mental picture
of the bodily changes you desire, and concentrating the power of
your will upon them, you may be surprised by the results,
especially if you possess anything in the way of psychic gifts.
You do not have to adopt any theories, you do not have to do it
in the name of any divinity, ancient or modern; the only bearing
of such ideas is that they serve to persuade people to make the
experiment, and to make it with persistence and intensity. So it
has come about that "miracles" of healing are associated with
"faith"; and so it comes about that scientists are apt to flout
the subject. But read of the work of Janet and Charcot and their
followers at the Salpetriere; they have proven that all kinds of
seeming-organic ailments may be entirely hysterical in nature,
and may be cured by the simplest form of suggestion.
Understanding this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact
that cripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the
grotto of Lourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus
performed all the miracles of healing attributed to him
--including the raising up of people pronounced to be dead by the
ignorance of that time. I am convinced that in the new science of
psycho-analysis we have a universe as vast as the universe of the
atom or of the stars.
The Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have
mixed it up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or
five hundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows
how many million pamphlets and books. I once invested three of my
hard-earned dollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, and let myself
be stunned and blinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings. It
is unadulterated moonshine--as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and
Hegelian and other orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can
prove to you in one minute. What interests me about the
phenomenon is not the slinging of tremendous words, but the
strictly Yankee use which is made of them. There is no nonsense
about saving your soul in Christian Science; what it is for is to
remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney, and to enable
you to hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the growth
of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith,
and corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the
development of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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