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Show CHRISTIAN SCIENCE Not a System Philosophically Inconsistent Incon-sistent Practically Contradicts Itself. Christian Science as a philosophical and ethical system was lately renewed in the London Tablet by the Rev. R. 1L Benson. The reviewer attempts to dissect the so-called system in a cool and impartial way, with the purpose, of finding some kernel after he has cracked and thrown away the shell, lie has in the manner of other thinkers found very much shell, some of which seriously involved the palata-bility palata-bility of the kernel. Christian Science has been found to be as a philosophical system a loosely connected series of assumptions, attractive to certain cer-tain inquisitive minds, because it is intricate, and consoling to others because after much rummaging rummag-ing to find connection of parts the system leaves the searcher without the necessity of forcing himself him-self to any binding conclusion and therefore In the delectable position of absolute intellectual independence. in-dependence. There is a fascination about puzzles. puz-zles. There is still greater fascination about them if the. solution of them has become the fad among the so-called elete set, i. e., a class of people for whom commonplace mode of thinking and a grasp-ingyof grasp-ingyof too plain facts and theories is a bore. Exclusion Ex-clusion "is a characteristic of elite society, and just such elite minds must then not think of what is too obvious and plain, nor think as does the rest of the world. Hence the followers' of Mrs. Eddy occasionally are found among otherwise bright, intelligent people. Mrs. Eddy's system, as Father Benson says, if it be seriously taken and led to its ultimate results, re-sults, must necessarily deny the existence of everything every-thing beyond God. All supposed positive knowledge knowl-edge is due to the diseased condition of what slice calls the "mortal mind." Of course, how an unreal mind can bo-diseased is not explained, or how disease dis-ease which is a disorder in a constituted organism can exist if it has no subject is also not an object of worry to the Scientist. These are mere philosophical phil-osophical objections from diseased mortal minds. The mortal minds of the Christian Scientists are only unreal and unsound inasmuch as they arc mortal minds, but cease tJ be mortal minds, (hough still mortal, I presume, when they are illumined by Christian Science. Xow, why the system has concentrated itself in an attack on bodily disease, and neglected belief in all other objective realities is one of the intricacies of Christian Science. As Father Bensonjsays : "Food also, according to the new gospel, must be a delusion. So is money; so are carriages and horses and trains and steamboats and clothes for they are all manifestations of a thing which does not exist, since "God is spirit, and spirit is all." This fact seriously involves our Scientists into embarrassing explanations. One would almost think if their usual manner of proceeding in the daily affairs of life were a criterion, that our Scientists Scien-tists did not. have the courage of their convictions. Money, for instance, seems to have assumed unwarranted unwar-ranted claims to reality and so impressed its claims on the mortal mind of Mrs. Eddy that she charges five dollars for her hook and a hundred dollars for participation in the sum of her new knowledge. Mrs. Eddy evidently believes in compromises, and she is prepared, martyr-like, to suffer temporlrily for the ultimate triumph of the cause. ,The elect are not yet strong enough to proclaim their utter disregard for. these "fantastic ideas." They must suffer a little longer amid the enjoyments of life, and as if to furnish greater occasions for this suffering, suf-fering, they must go to the "unreal" courts of the world and violently contest among themselves for the possession of these hampering "unrealties." With bodily disease as the backbone of resistance to these unrealities, she writes: "Until the advancing age admits the efficacy and supremacy of mind, it is better to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while you confine yourself your-self chiefly to mental reconstruction and the pre-' vention of inflammation." Of course, there is a kernel in this shell, as I before stated. Unfortunately, though, for Christian Chris-tian Science, this fruit had been discovered long before Mrs. Eddy appeared on the scene, the power of self-suggestion in the treatment of subjective and objective disease. The poor, purblind and misled medical profession had stumbled on this long ago. and even hazarded to employ it in their practice long before the "elect" had begun their warfare against "unrealities." Strange to say. it was even known to all physicians and even to other commonplace "mortal minds" in the world. Why, it has been carried so far that mesmerism, magnetism, mag-netism, hypnotism and even auto-hypnotism are well known terms today to the "mortal mind" of the average student. We cannot better end this article than by quoting quot-ing this veiy sensible and apt conclusion on the subject from the pen of one who has lately reviewed the work of Father Benson: "It might be otherwise if there was really any startling evidence that 'Christian Scientists' be-lieed be-lieed what they said. When Mrs. Eddy ascends a pillar like St. Simon Stylites, or confines her diet to pulse and water, like the holy children for eveif we do not ask that she should subsist entirely on high and noble ideas when American professors of this creed cross the Atlantic on mill-stones, or even without them, upborne by their supreme consciousness conscious-ness of the superiority of mind over matter even we might also say, when the preachers of this religion re-ligion go out barefooted and f rockless to proclaim 0. the good news of the kingdom to those who cannot afford five dollars as the price of their liberation when we see 'all this when we see even one-hundredth part of the self-denial of the meanest among the Christian saints, or the very faintest sign that' God is working among them in a manner in which he does not work in hypnotic establishments, perhaps per-haps then we shall be able to treat them with more respect and less laughter, and be patient enough to study their complicated books with something resembling re-sembling sympathy." "The mind for future inventors of philosophical systems 'is: "When you are going-'to strike with strength af mind and mallet of argument at world-accepted world-accepted but presumed fallacies, see that there is no loose end of the board to knock you into senselessness." sense-lessness." . |