METAPHYSICAL HEALING
It is therefore that it calls itself "metaphysical healing," healing, that is, by metaphysics, and that it named its college, founded in Boston in 1881, the "Massachusetts Metaphysical College." This is, in point of fact, its only distinguishing feature, borrowed indeed from P. P. Quimby, but made all its own. There are other systems of mental healing abroad, seeking healing through other mental activities — faith, say, or the will. ]\lrs. Eddy remarks:^^ "The common custom of praying for the recovery of the sick finds help in blind belief, whereas help should come from the enlightened understanding." "Willpower is not Science," she says again. ^^ "Willing the sick to recover is not the metaphysical practice of Christian Science, but sheer animal magnetism.... Truth and not corporeal will is the divine power which says to disease, 'Peace, be still.'" A "Christian Science Healer" explains the whole matter clearly.^^ Every man, he declares, has a "God-given right" to "spiritual, mental and bodily wholeness"; and this wholeness is "received in proportion to man's intelligent understanding of the Godnature and its operation." We pass by the mere phrases "God-given right," "spiritual, mental and bodily wholeness." The former is only a fashion of speaking with no specific meaning on a Christian Scientist's lips except as a strong way of saying, it is an inalienable right. The latter is merely rhetorical enumeration to emphasize the single idea of completeness; on Christian Science ground mind and body are both nonentities and no man can have a right to anything mental or bodily — he has only a right to be rid of all such things. What is to be noted is that everybody is affirmed to have an inalienable right to wholeness, and this wholeness to which every one has an inalienable right is affirmed to be actually enjoyed only — here is the point, note it well — in proportion as each has an intelligent understanding of "the God-nature and its operation." Here, you see, is a truly rampant intellectualism, a pure
Gnosticism. To understand is to have and to be. In proportion as we understand, and understand intelligently, we possess. The thing to be understood and the understanding of which brings wholeness is described as " the God-nature and its operation." In this system " the God-nature" is defined as the All. "God is all," we are told, "and all is God." Understand that, and you are "whole." It is the mere understanding of it that does the work; it always does the work, and the work is not done where this understanding is not present. This is the reason why puzzled pastors sometimes complain — surely they are themselves showing little understanding — that members of their flock who are tainted with Christian Science are found to have turned away from historical Christianity. It is the first step in Christian Science that you must turn a"w^y from historical Christianity.^^ It is the "new knowledge" that does the w^ork. Unless you have the ''new knowledge" you have no Christian Science; for Christian Science is just this "new knowledge," and this "new knowledge," being just pantheistic acosmism, is the contradiction of historical Christianity. You can have a little Christian Science in your Christianity just as little as you can have a little water in your fire; and a little Christianity in your Christian Science just as little as you can have a little fire in your water. The things are mutually exclusive.
This bald intellectualism is pressed even to the absurd extreme that curative value is ascribed to the mere reading of Mrs. Eddy's writings. "The perusal of the author's publications," she tells us herself, "heals sickness constantly." ^^ A palsied arm, we are told, was cured by reading a single sentence: "All is Mind." Sometimes, no doubt, appearances are against this doctrine. But Mrs. Eddy has her explanation and her encouragement to offer. "If patients sometimes seem the worse for reading this book," she says,^^ — and who can wonder, if they do? — "the change may either arise from the alarm of the physician, or may mark the crisis of the disease. Perseverance in its reading has generally healed them completely." This is healing distinctly by reading. Tolle, lege, is the command in a new sense.
It puzzles us greatly, therefore, to learn that healing can apparently be had nevertheless without the reading of Mrs. Eddy's book, and indeed without the understanding which we are instructed to look upon as itself the healing.
Mrs. Eddy tells this story:^° "A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed, and yet the patient looked like a barrel as she lay in her bed. I prescribed the fourth attenuation of Argenitum nitricum, with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sidphuris. She improved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the ordinary theories of medical practice, and learning that her former physician had prescribed these remedies, I began to fear an aggravation of symptoms from their prolonged use, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine when she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her unmedicated pellets, and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain. Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one day, and risk the effects. After trying this, she informed me that she could get along two days without globules; but on the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by taking them. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets — and receiving occasional visits from me — but employing no other means, and was cured." What had ''metaphysical healing," that
is, healing through understanding, to do with this cure? If understanding is heahng, how was this woman, who did not understand, healed? Of course, Mrs. Eddy would say that by the deception practised on this woman she was got to project herself gradually a well-body, and so she gradually found herself with a well-body. But that is not "metaphysical" healing, in which knowing is being.
But, it seems, not only may you be healed without understanding, but you may fail to be healed even if you do understand. If you take poison you will die; even, it seems, if you do not know you have taken it. "If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, and the patient dies," Mrs. Eddy posits a case,^^ "even though physician and patient are expecting favorable results, does belief, you ask, cause this death?" "Even so," she answers, "and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken." Then follows the adjustment of the case to the
theory. "In such cases," we are told, "a few persons be- Heve the potion swallowed by the patient to be harmless; but the vast majority of mankind, though they know nothing of this particular case, and this special person, believe the arsenic, the strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to be poisonous, for it has been set down as a poison by mortal mind. The consequence is that the result is controlled by the majority of opinions outside, not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions in the sick chamber." If this be true,
then it is all up with "metaphysical healing," It is not the individual's understanding; it is the common opinion of mankind — not as to this particular case of which few have knowledge — but in general, which determines results. Material things, having the ground of their being and modes of action in the common opinion of mankind, are just as objectively real to the individual as if they had the ground of their being and modes of action in themselves. The individual is helpless in their presence, and aU the better understanding which he may possess as to their real nature as illusions, can serve him in no possible way.
A pantheist has no right to a religion. He must be content with a philosophy and its postulates. As a Christian Science Healer already quoted tells us, he understands "the God-nature and its operation," and forthwith is "whole" with that "spiritual, mental and bodily wholeness" which is his indefeasible right. Get into your place
TYPE OF PIETY
as a part of that great whole which is God, and, being in your place, you have your wholeness. This is as much of a religion as a pantheist can have. It was this that the Stoic meant when he said: "Get into the stream of nature, and if you do not like the way it is flowing, at least you need not squeal." ^" And this is the reason why the religion of mystics — who are pantheizing in their fundamental thought — tends to run into what we call Quietism, which is on the passive side resignation, on the active renunciation, and in its lowest reaches becomes placid acceptance of the lot that has come to us, in its highest rises into disinterested love. Do we not have here the account also of the special type of piety which is said to be developed in Christian Science circles? Christian Science, we are told, has brought not only relief from suffering and disease, but release also from worry, anxiety, contentiousness. We will let Frank Podmore depict this self-centred piety for us.
"The religion of Christian Science," says he,^^ "oils the wheels of the domestic machinery, smooths out business troubles, releases from fear, promotes happiness. But it is entirely egoistic in expression.... For Christian Scientists there is no recognized service to their fellows, beyond the force of their example." "There are no charities or institutions of any kind for social service in connection with the Christian Science churches." "Poverty and sin, like sickness, are illusions, errors of 'mortal mind,' and cannot be alleviated by material methods. If a man is sick, he does not need drugs; if poor, he has no need of money; if suffering, of material help or even sympathy. For the cure in all cases must be sought within. The New Religion, then, is without the enthusiasm of Humanity. It is, in fact, without enthusiasm of any kind. We shall look in vain here for spiritual rapture, for ecstatic contemplation of the divine. There is no place here for any of the passions which are associated with Christianity, nor, indeed, for any exalted emotion. There can be no remorse
where there is no sin; compassion, when the suffering is unreal, can only be mischievous; friendship, as we shall see later, is a snare, and the love of man and woman a hindrance to true spirituality. There is no mystery about this final revelation, and there is no room, therefore, for wonder and awe. Here are no 'long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults'; the Scientist's outlook on the spiritual world is as plain and bare as the walls of his temple, shining white under the abundant radiance of the electric lamps."
The ethics of pantheism tend either to license or to asceticism. The flesh is nothing, and all its dehghts and desires are nothing, and may be treated as nothing — whether in the way of careless indulgence or of stern extirpation. We may be thankful that Mrs. Eddy's thought turns in the direction of asceticism, though, to be sure, it is to an asceticism of sufficiently mild a t3^e. On all matters of dietetics and hygiene she of course pours contempt, because she is thinking of them primarily as curative agents, and she can have nothing to do with curative agents; yet she manages to spice her remarks upon them with an ascetic flavor. Eat what you please is her prescriptio"n: much or Kttle — it is all nothing. God gave men "dominion not only over the fish in the sea, but over the fish in the stomach." ^^ But, of course, relnember^^ "that gustatory pleasure is a sensuous illusion, a phantasm of the mortal mind, diminishing as we better apprehend our spiritual existence, and ascend the ladder of Life" — ^Life with a capital "L," for Mrs. Eddy was not thinking of growing old. "A metaphysician never... recomVnends or trusts
in hygiene." ^^ "The daily ablutions of an infant," writes she,^'^ "are no more natural or necessary, than would be the process of taking a fish out of water every day, and covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive more vigorously thereafter in its native element. ' CleanHness is next to godliness '; but washing should be only for the purpose