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MENTAL MALPRACTICE

From ordinary mental practice to Christian Science is a long ascent, but to go from the use of inanimate drugs to any susceptible misuse of the human mind, such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and the like, is to subject mankind unwarned and undefended to the unbridled individual human will. The currents of God flow through no such channels.

The whole world needs to know that the milder forms of animal magnetism and hypnotism are yielding to its aggressive features. We have no moral right and no authority in Christian Science for influencing the thoughts of others, except it be to serve God and benefit mankind. Man is properly self-governed, and he should be guided by no other mind than Truth, the divine Mind. Christian Science gives neither moral right nor might to harm either man or beast. The Christian Scientist is alone with his own being and with the reality of things. The mental malpractitioner is not, cannot be, a Christian Scientist; he is disloyal to God and man; he has every opportunity to mislead the human mind, and he uses it. People may listen complacently to the suggestion of the inaudible falsehood, not knowing what is hurting them or that they are hurt. This mental bane could not bewilder, darken, or misguide consciousness, physically, morally, or spiritually, if the individual knew what was at work and his power over it.

This unseen evil is the sin of sins; it is never forgiven. Even the agony and death that it must sooner or later cause the perpetrator, cannot blot out its effects on himself till he suffers up to its extinction and stops practising it. The crimes committed under this new-old regime of necromancy or diabolism are not easily reckoned. At present its mystery protects it, but its hidden modus and flagrance will finally be known, and the laws of our land will handle its thefts, adulteries, and murders, and will pass sentence on the darkest and deepest of human crimes.

Christian Scientists are not hypnotists, they are not mortal mind-curists, nor faith-curists; they have faith, but they have Science, understanding, and works as well. They are not the addenda, the et ceteras, or new editions of old errors; but they are what they are, namely, students of a demonstrable Science leading the ages. QUESTIONABLE METAPHYSICS

In an article published in the New York Journal, Rev.--- writes: "To the famous Bishop Berkeley of the Church of England may be traced many of the ideas about the spiritual world which are now taught in Christian Science."

This clergymen gives it as his opinion that Christian Science will be improved in its teaching and authorship after Mrs. Eddy has gone. I am sorry for my critic, who reckons hopefully on the death of an individual who loves God and man; such foreseeing is not foreknowing, and exhibits a startling ignorance of Christian Science, and a manifest unfitness to criticise it or to compare its literature. He begins his calculation erroneously; for Life is the Principle of Christian Science and of its results. Death is neither the predicate nor postulate of Truth, and Christ came not to bring death but life into the world. Does this critic know of a better way than Christ's whereby to benefit the race? My faith assures me that God knows more than any man on this subject, for did He not know all things and results I should not have known Christian Science, or felt the incipient touch of divine Love which inspired it.

That God is good, that Truth is true, and Science is Science, who can doubt; and whosoever demonstrates the truth of these propositions is to some extent a Christian Scientist. Is Science material? No! It is the Mind of God -- and God is Spirit. Is Truth material? No! Therefore I do not try to mix matter and Spirit, since Science does not and they will not mix. I am a spiritual homeopathist in that I do not believe in such a compound. Truth and Truth is not a compound; Spirit and Spirit is not: but Truth and error, Spirit and matter, are compounds and opposites; so if one is true, the other is false. If Truth is true, its opposite, error, is not; and if Spirit is true and infinite, it hath no opposite; therefore matter cannot be a reality.

I begin at the feet of Christ and with the numeration table of Christian Science. But I do not say that one added to one is three, or one and a half, nor say this to accommodate popular opinion as to the Science of Christianity. I adhere to my text, that one and one are two all the way up to the infinite calculus of the infinite God. The numeration table of Christian Science, its divine Principle and rules, are before the people, and the different religious sects and the differing schools of medicine are discussing them as if they understood its Principle and rules before they have learned its numeration table, and insist that the public receive their sense of the Science, or that it receive no sense whatever of it.

Again: Even the numeration table of Christian Science is not taught correctly by those who have departed from its absolute simple statement as to Spirit and matter, and that one and two are neither more nor less than three; and losing the numeration table and the logic of Christian Science, they have little left that the sects and faculties can grapple. If Christian Scientists only would admit that God is spirit and infinite, yet that God has an opposite and that the infinite is not all; that God is good and infinite, yet that evil exists and is real, -- thence it would follow that evil must either exist in good, or exist outside of the infinite, -- they would be in peace with the schools.

This departure, however, from the scientific statement, the divine Principle, rule, or demonstration of Christian Science, results as would a change of the denominations of mathematics; and you cannot demonstrate Christian Science except on its fixed Principle and given rule, according to the Master's teaching and proof. He was ultra; he was a reformer; he laid the axe at the root of all error, amalgamation, and compounds. He used no material medicine, nor recommended it, and taught his disciples and followers to do likewise; therefore he demonstrated his power over matter, sin, disease, and death, as no other person has ever demonstrated it.

Bishop Berkeley published a book in 1710 entitled "Treatise Concerning the Principle of Human Knowledge." Its object was to deny, on received principles of philosophy, the reality of an external material world. In later publications he declared physical substance to be "only the constant relation between phenomena connected by association and conjoined by the operations of the universal mind, nature being nothing more than conscious experience. Matter apart from conscious mind is an impossible and unreal concept." He denies the existence of matter, and argues that matter is not without the mind, but within it, and that that which is generally called matter is only an impression produced by divine power on the mind by means of invariable rules styled the laws of nature. Here he makes God the cause of all the ills of mortals and the casualties of earth.

Again, while descanting on the virtues of tar-water, he writes: "I esteem my having taken this medicine the greatest of all temporal blessings, and am convinced that under Providence I owe my life to it." Making matter more potent than Mind, when the storms of disease beat against Bishop Berkeley's metaphysics and personality he fell, and great was the fall -- from divine metaphysics to tar-water!

Christian Science is more than two hundread years old. It dates beyond Socrates, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Darwin, or Huxley. It is as old as God, although its earthly advent is called the Christian era.

I had not read one line of Berkeley's writings when I published my work Science and Health, the Christian Science textbook.

In contradistinction to his views I found it necessary to follow Jesus' teachings, and none other, in order to demonstrate the divine Science of Christianity -- the metaphysics of Christ -- healing all manner of diseases. Philosophy, materia medica, and scholastic theology were inadequate to prove the doctrine of Jesus, and I relinquished the form to attain the spirit or mystery of godliness. Hence the mysticism, so called, of my writings becomes clear to the godly.

Building on the rock of Christ's teachings, we have a superstructure eternal in the heavens, omnipotent on earth, encompassing time and eternity. The stone which the builders reject is apt to be the cross, which they reject and whereby is won the crown and the head of the corner.

A knowledge of philosophy and of medicine, the scholasticism of a bishop, and the metaphysics (so called) which mix matter and mind, -- certain individuals call aids to divine metaphysics, and regret their lack in my books, which because of their more spiritual import heal the sick! No Christly axioms, practices, or parables are alluded to or required in such metaphysics, and the demonstration of matter minus, and God all, ends in some specious folly.

The great Metaphysician, Christ Jesus, denounced all such gilded sepulchres of his time and of all time. He never recommended drugs, he never used them. What, then, is our authority in Christianity for metaphysics based on materialism? He demonstrated what he taught. Had he taught the power of Spirit, and along with this the power of matter, he would have been as contradictory as the blending of good and evil, and the latter superior, which Satan demanded in the beginning, and which has since been avowed to be as real, and matter as useful, as the infinite God, -- good, -- which, if indeed Spirit and infinite, excludes evil and matter. Jesus likened such self-contradictions to a kingdom divided against itself, that cannot stand.

The unity and consistency of Jesus' theory and practice give my tired sense of false philosophy and material theology rest. The great teacher, preacher, and demonstrator of Christianity is the Master, who founded his system of metaphysics only on Christ, Truth, and supported it by his words and deeds.

The five personal senses can have only a finite sense of the infinite: therefore the metaphysician is sensual that combines matter with Spirit. In one sentence he declaims against matter, in the next he endows it with a life-giving quality not to be found in God! and turns away from Christ's purely spiritual means to the schools and matter for help in times of need.

I have passed through deep waters to preserve Christ's vesture unrent; then, when land is reached and the world aroused, shall the word popularity be pinned to the seamless robe, and they cast lots for it? God forbid! Let it be left to such as see God -- to the pure in spirit, and the meek that inherit the earth; left to them of a sound faith and charity, the greatest of which is charity -- spiritual love. St. Paul said: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

Before leaving this subject of the old metaphysicians, allow me to add I have read little of their writings. I was not drawn to them by a native or an acquired taste for what was problematic and self-contradictory. What I have given to the world on the subject of metaphysical healing or Christian Science is the result of my own observation, experience, and final discovery, quite independent of all other authors except the Bible.

My critic also writes: "The best contributions that have been made to the literature of Christian Science have been by Mrs. Eddy's followers. I look to see some St. Paul arise among the Christian Scientists who will interpret their ideas and principles more clearly, and apply them more rationally to human needs."

My works are the first ever published on Christian Science, and nothing has since appeared that is correct on this subject the basis whereof cannot be traced to some of those works. The application of Christian Science is healing and reforming mankind. If any one as yet has healed hopeless cases, such as I have in one to three interviews with the patients, I shall rejoice in being informed thereof. Or if a modern St. Paul could start thirty years ago without a Christian Scientist on earth, and in this interval number one million, and an equal number of sick healed, also sinners reformed and the habits and appetites of mankind corrected, why was it not done? God is no respecter of persons.

I have put less of my own personality into Christian Science than others do in proportion, as I have taken out of its metaphysics all matter and left Christian Science as it is, purely spiritual, Christlike -- the Mind of God and not of man -- born of the Spirit and not matter. Professor Agassiz said: "Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next, they say it has been discovered before. Lastly, they say they had always believed it." Having passed through the first two stages, Christian Science must be approaching the last stage of the great naturalist's prophecy.

It is only by praying, watching, and working for the kingdom of heaven within us and upon earth, that we enter the strait and narrow way, whereof our Master said, "and few there be that find it."

Of the ancient writers since the first century of the Christian era perhaps none lived a more devout Christian life up to his highest understanding than St. Augustine. Some of his writings have been translated into almost every Christian tongue, and are classed with the choicest memorials of devotion both in Catholic and Protestant oratories.

Sacred history shows that those who have followed exclusively Christ's teaching, have been scourged in the synagogues and persecuted from city to city. But this is no cause for not following it; and my only apology for trying to follow it is that I love Christ more than all the world, and my demonstration of Christian Science in healing has proven to me beyond a doubt that Christ, Truth, is indeed the way of salvation from all that worketh or maketh a lie. As Jesus said: "It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master." It is well to know that even Christ Jesus, who was not popular among the worldlings in his age, is not popular with them in this age; hence the inference that he who would be popular if he could, is not a student of Christ Jesus.

After a hard and successful career reformers usually are handsomely provided for. Has the thought come to Christian Scientists, Have we housed, fed, clothed, or visited a reformer for that purpose? Have we looked after or even known of his sore necessities? Gifts he needs not. God has provided the means for him while he was providing ways and means for others. But mortals in the advancing stages of their careers need the watchful and tender care of those who want to help them. The aged reformer should not be left to the mercy of those who are not glad to sacrifice for him even as he has sacrificed for others all the best of his earthly years.

I say this not because reformers are not loved, but because well-meaning people sometimes are inapt or selfish in showing their love. They are like children that go out from the parents who nurtured them, toiled for them, and enabled them to be grand coworkers for mankind, children who forget their parents' increasing years and needs, and whenever they return to the old home go not to help mother but to recruit themselves. Or, if they attempt to help their parents, and adverse winds are blowing, this is no excuse for waiting till the wind shifts. They should remember that mother worked and won for them by facing the winds. All honor and success to those who honor their father and mother. The individual who loves most, does most, and sacrifices most for the reformer, is the individual who soonest will walk in his footsteps.

To aid my students in starting under a tithe of my own difficulties, I allowed them for several years fifty cents on every book of mine that they sold. "With this percentage," students wrote me, "quite quickly we had regained our tuition for the college course."

Christian Scientists are persecuted even as all other religious denominations have been, since ever the primitive Christians, "of whom the world was not worthy." We err in thinking the object of vital Christianity is only the bequeathing of itself to the coming centuries. The successive utterances of reformers are essential to its propagation. The magnitude of its meaning forbids head-long haste, and the consciousness which is most imbued struggles to articulate itself.

Christian Scientists are practically non-resistants; they are too occupied with doing good, observing the Golden Rule, to retaliate or to seek redress; they are not quacks, giving birth to nothing and death to all, -- but they are leaders of a reform in religion and in medicine, and they have no craft that is in danger.

Even religion and therapeutics need regenerating. Philanthropists, and the higher class of critics in theology and materia medica, recognize that Christian Science kindles the inner genial life of a man, destroying all lower considerations. No man or woman is roused to the establishment of a new-old religion by the hope of ease, pleasure, or recompense, or by the stress of the appetites and passions. And no emperor is obeyed like the man "clouting his own cloak" -- working alone with God, yea, like the clear, far-seeing vision, the calm courage, and the great heart of the unselfed Christian hero.

I counsel Christian Scientists under all circumstances to obey the Golden Rule, and to adopt Pope's axiom: "An honest, sensible, and well-bred man will not insult me, and no other can." The sensualist and world-worshipper are always stung by a clear elucidation of truth, of right, and of wrong.

The only opposing element that sects or professions can encounter in Christian Science is Truth opposed to all error, specific or universal. This opposition springs from the very nature of Truth, being neither personal nor human, but divine. Every true Christian in the near future will learn and love the truths of Christian Science that now seem troublesome. Jesus said, "I came not to send peace but a sword."

Has God entrusted me with a message to mankind? -- then I cannot choose but obey. After a long acquaintance with the communicants of my large church, they regard me with no vague, fruitless, inquiring wonder. I can use the power that God gives me in no way except in the interest of the individual and the community. To this verity every member of my church would bear loving testimony. MY CHILDHOOD'S CHURCH HOME

Among the list of blessings infinite I count these dear: Devout orthodox parents; my early culture in the Congregational Church; the daily Bible reading and family prayer; my cradle hymn and the Lord's Prayer, repeated at night; my early association with distinguished Christian clergymen, who held fast to whatever is good, used faithfully God's Word, and yielded up graciously what He took away. It was my fair fortune to be often taught by some grand old divines, among whom where the Rev. Abraham Burnham of Pembroke, N.H., Rev. Nathaniel Bouton, D.D., of Concord, N.H., Congregationalists; Rev. Mr. Boswell, of Bow, N.H., Baptist; Rev. Enoch Corser, and Rev. Corban Curtice, Congregationalists; and Father Hinds, Methodist Elder. I became early a child of the Church, an eager lover and student of vital Christianity. Why I loved Christians of the old sort was I could not help loving them. Full of charity and good works, busy about their Master's business, they had no time or desire to defame their fellow-men. God seemed to shield the whole world in their hearts, and they were willing to renounce all for him. When infidels assailed them, however, the courage of their convictions was seen. They were heroes in the strife; they armed quickly, aimed deadly, and spared no denunciation. Their convictions were honest, and they lived them; and the sermons their lives preached caused me to love their doctrines.

The lives of those old-fashioned leaders of religion explain in a few words a good man. They fill the ecclesiastic measure, that to love God and keep His commandments is the whole duty of man. Such churchmen and the Bible, especially the First Commandment of the Decalogue, and Ninety-first Psalm, the Sermon on the Mount, and St. John's Revelation, educated my thought many years, yea, all the way up to its preparation for and reception of the Science of Christianity. I believe, if those venerable Christians were here to-day, their sanctified souls would take in the spirit and understanding of Christian Science through the flood-gates of Love; with them Love was the governing impulse of every action; their piety was the all-important consideration of their being, the original beauty of holiness that to-day seems to be fading so sensibly from our sight.

To plant for eternity, the "accuser" or "calumniator" must not be admitted to the vineyard of our Lord, and the hand of love must sow the seed. Carlyle writes: "Quackery and dupery do abound in religion; above all, in the more advanced decaying stages of religion, they have fearfully abounded; but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of religion, but their disease, the sure precursor that they were about to die."

Christian Scientists first and last ask not to be judged on a doctrinal platform, a creed, or a diploma for scientific guessing. But they do ask to be allowed the rights of conscience and the protection of the constitutional laws of their land; they ask to be known by their works, to be judged (if at all) by their works. We admit that they do not kill people with poisonous drugs, with the lance, or with liquor, in order to heal them. Is it for not killing them thus, or is it for healing them through the might and majesty of divine power after the manner taught by Jesus, and which he enjoined his students to teach and practise, that they are maligned? The richest and most positive proof that a religion in this century is just what it was in the first centuries is that the same reviling it received then it receives now, and from the same motives which actuate one sect to persecute another in advance of it.

Christian Scientists are harmless citizens that do not kill people either by their practice or by preventing the early employment of an M.D. Why? Because the effect of prayer, whereby Christendom saves sinners, is quite as salutary in the healing of all manner of diseases. The Bible is our authority for asserting this, in both cases. The interval that detains the patient from the attendance of an M.D., occupied in prayer and in spiritual obedience to Christ's mode and means of healing, cannot be fatal to the patient, and is proven to be more pathological than the M.D.'s material prescription. If this be not so, where shall we look for the standard of Christianity? Have we misread the evangelical precepts and the canonical writings of the Fathers, or must we have a new Bible and a new system of Christianity, originating not in God, but a creation of the schools -- a material religion, proscriptive, intolerant, wantonly bereft of the Word of God.

Give us, dear God, again on earth the lost chord of Christ; solace us with the song of angels rejoicing with them that rejoice; that sweet charity which seeketh not her own but another's good, yea, which knoweth no evil.

Finally, brethren, wait patiently on God; return blessing for cursing; be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good; be steadfast, abide and abound in faith, understanding, and good works; study the Bible and the textbook of our denomination; obey strictly the laws that be, and follow your Leader only so far as she follows Christ. Godliness or Christianity is a human necessity: man cannot live without it; he has no intelligence, health, hope, nor happiness without godliness. In the words of the Hebrew writers: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths;" "and He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday."

The question oft presents itself, Are we willing to sacrifice self for the Cause of Christ, willing to bear our bosom to the blade and lay ourselves upon the altar? Christian Science appeals loudly to those asleep upon the hill-tops of Zion. It is a clarion call to the reign of righteousness, to the kingdom of heaven within us and on earth, and Love is the way alway.

O the Love divine that plucks us

From the human agony!

O the Master's glory won thus,

Doth it dawn on you and me?

And the bliss of blotted-out sin

And the working hitherto --

Shall we share it -- do we walk in

Patient faith the way thereto?