Part 11 (1/2)

_One of the Most Strongly-Drawn Systems of Psycho-therapy Ever Offered_

Now Christian Science is one of the most strongly drawn psycho-therapeutic agencies ever offered. Most faith healing systems heretofore have depended upon some place, some thing, some healer. Here is a system capable of the widest dissemination and dependent only upon a book and its interpreters. It universalizes what has heretofore, for one reason or another, been localized. It is shrewdly organized, as far as propaganda goes, and effectively directed. It is widely advertised by its friends--and its critics. Its temples, for beauty and dignity, put to shame most Protestant churches. Its rituals combine in an unusual way the simple and the dramatic. It is so fortunately situated as to be able to keep finance--which is a trying element in Protestant Church life--in the background. Its followers have that apostolic fervour which attaches to movements sure of their divine commission and not yet much worn by time. It possesses distinctly one of Sir Henry Jones' hall-marks of religion. ”It impa.s.sions the spirit of its disciples and adds consequence to the things it sanctions or condemns.”

It draws upon deeply established Christian reverences and faiths. It secures for its authority the persistent but perplexed faith in the Bible which the average Protestant inherits and for those who believe in it the force of this authority is no wise weakened by the fact that by every sound canon of Biblical interpretation it is illicit. Its very dogmatism is an a.s.set. It could not do its work if it were less sure.

The confusions of the systems which try the critically minded are a contribution to the devout who find in them an added opportunity for faith. Its experience meetings create enthusiasm and confidence. It is, in short, more than any one of the movements we are here considering, a clearly defined cult whose intensities, limitations and mystic a.s.surances all combine to produce among its disciples the temper most favourable to suggestion and it locks up on its force as a system of healing.

An accurate a.n.a.lysis of what it actually accomplishes would require an immense and probably impossible labour--a knowledge of each case, an accurate diagnosis when even for the trained diagnostician the thing is difficult enough, and the following up of all reported cases. The medical faculty would probably have done better to have taken such movements as these more seriously and to have brought to them a trained investigation which, except in the case of Lourdes, has never even been attempted. Doubtless there is looseness and inconsistency in the whole system. Almost any one who has had a practical observation of the working of Christian Science has knowledge enough not only of looseness and inconsistency but of what seems to the non-Christian Science mind positive untruth. Something, however, must always be allowed here for the way in which the mind acts under excitement and for the way in which delusion deludes. All this combines to make any final judgment in this region difficult, but there still remains, after all qualification, an arresting solidity of achievement. Christian Science does work, especially with the self-absorbed, the neurotic and those who have needed, above all, for their physical deliverance, a new access to faith and courage. Christian Science pract.i.tioners have also an unusual opportunity in what may be called moral rehabilitation with physical consequences. The physician has a better chance with the bodies of his patients than with their souls; the minister a better chance with the spiritual needs of his paris.h.i.+oners than with their bodies and habits; the Christian Science pract.i.tioner to an unusual extent has the whole of life under his control and it ought in all fairness to be conceded that this power is helpfully employed.

The very discipline of Christian Science is itself a therapeutic. There are really a good many things which become non-existent directly you begin to act as if they did not exist. An atmosphere in which no one refers to his ailment and every one to his well-being is a therapeutic atmosphere. Psychologists have taught us that if we go through the motions of being happy we are likely to have an access of happiness; if we go through the motions of being unhappy we have an access of misery.

If we go through the motions of being well, very often we achieve a sound measure of health.

_But it is Fundamentally a System of Suggestion_

All this has been so strongly dwelt upon of late as to make any extended consideration of it unnecessary here, as indeed any extended consideration is impossible for any one save a specialist. What we are more concerned with is the way in which the discipline and philosophy of Christian Science produce their results. The answer to this question is as plain as anything can be in our present state of knowledge, for essentially, as a healing force, Christian Science stands or falls with the therapeutic power of suggestion. It is a strongly drawn system of psycho-therapy because it is a strongly drawn system of suggestion. Its suggestion involves a.s.sumptions which are sometimes philosophy, sometimes theology, and more commonly a baffling interplay of the two.

But the outcome of it all is the practical persuasion on the part of the patient that he is not sick and does not need so much to get well as to demonstrate that he is well, and that in this demonstration he has an absolute force on his side. To this end the whole body of affirmation, persuasion, a.s.sumption, suggestion and technique of Christian Science is directed. As one tries to a.n.a.lyze these separate elements they are, taken singly, inconsistent, often unverifiable and often enough, by any tests at all save the tests of Christian Science, positively untrue. But as Mrs. Eddy has combined them and as they are applied in practice they do possess an undeniable power. They are not dependent, as has been said, fundamentally upon persons or things or places. Here is a coherent system, the force of which may be felt when it is not understood and it bears upon the perplexed or the impressionable with very great power. It would be appreciably weakened if any one of its const.i.tuent elements were taken out of it. But fundamentally it can do no more than any other system of suggestion, unquestionably accepted, can do.

_It is Bound to be Affected by Our Growing Understanding of the Ranges of Suggestion_

A deal of water has gone under the bridge since Mary Baker Eddy began her work. What was then almost wholly involved in mystery is now beginning to be reduced to law. The psychology of suggestion is by no means clear as yet, nor are the students of it agreed in their conclusions, but we do know enough about the complex character of consciousness, the actuality of the subconscious and the reaction of strongly held att.i.tudes upon bodily states to be in the way, generally, of freeing this whole great matter from the priest, the healer, the charlatan or the prophet of strange cults and referring it hereafter for direction and employment to its proper agents--the physician, the expert in disordered mental conditions and the instructed spiritual adviser.

It is now generally agreed that suggestion, however induced, may positively affect bodily function. If it is a wrong suggestion its effects are hurtful, right suggestion its effects are helpful. Now since a vast range of physical maladjustments--and this may be broadened to include nervous maladjustments as well--is functional, suggestive therapeutics have a far-reaching and distinct field. When Christian Science or any other healing cult reports cures in this field, those cures, if verified by sufficient testimony, may be accepted as accomplished. Those who have accomplished them may take what credit they will for their own agency in the matter, but for all that the cure is no testimony at all to the truth or falsity of their system. It proves only that those helped have believed it.

The matter of organic healing is more difficult. Medical Science does not generally admit the possibility of organic change through suggestion. There may be, however, a real difference of opinion as to whether a particular trouble is functional or organic. Here is a border-land not so much of fact as of diagnosis. A cure may be reported as of an organic trouble when the basal diagnosis was wrong and it was only functional, but the body possesses undoubtedly the power of correcting or at least of limiting organic disease. Tuberculosis is an organic disease but it is again and again limited and finally overcome without the knowledge of the subject. Post-mortem examinations may reveal scars in the lungs and so reflect processes only thus brought to light.

Whatever serves general physical well-being may greatly help the body in eliminating disease and securing a going measure of physical health. In such indirect ways as these suggestion may, therefore, while not acting directly upon diseased organism, contribute most distinctly to arrest organic disease. Thoughtful physicians are ready to concede this and thus open a door for a measure of organic healing which technically their science denies. A very revealing light has been let in upon this whole region by hypnotism. Some of the students of hypnotism are inclined to go as far as to admit organic change under hypnotic suggestion. ”Strong, persistent impressions or suggestions made on the reflex organic consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their functional disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic structures.”[59]

[Footnote 59: Sidis, ”The Psychology of Suggestion,” p. 70.]

Christian Science, then, as a healing agency has a great field for there are always folk enough to heal. It has a method, a discipline highly effective in producing changed mental and spiritual states and, strangely enough, it is all the more effective because it is so narrowly true. Those to whom it makes its appeal are, for the most part, not capable of a.n.a.lyzing through to their sources its fundamental inveracities, nor would they be inclined to do that if they were able.

Its vagueness and its s.p.a.cious rhetoric really give it power. It does produce results and probably one case of physical betterment has a prevailing power which a chapter of criticisms cannot overcome and, more than that, one case of physical betterment may screen a dozen in which nothing happened at all.

For Christian Science has in this region two alibis which can always be brought into action, the most perfect ever devised. If it fails to cure it is either because the one who was not cured lacked faith, or because of the erroneous belief of some one else. A system which believes that the toxic effect of poisons depends upon the vote of the majority in that a.r.s.enic will cease to be a poison when everybody ceases to think of it as a poison and will be a poison as long as anybody believes it is, is perfectly safe even if it should fail to cure a case of a.r.s.enical poison, for until facts and experience cease to weigh at all there will always be some one somewhere believing that a.r.s.enic is a poison and that one will be the scapegoat for the system.

_As a Religion it is Strongest in Teaching That G.o.d Has Meaning for the Whole of Life_

Christian Science is, however, more than a system of mental therapeutics, it is also a religion and due allowance must be made in any just appraisal of it for the way in which it has made religion real to many for whom religion had ceased to have a working reality. It needs to be said on one side that a good deal of Christian Science religion is really taking the Ark of G.o.d to battle, using religion, that is, for comfort, material prosperity, health and just such tangible things. But Christian Science meets a demand of the time also just here. Our own age, deeply entangled in material satisfactions, has no mind to postpone the satisfactions of religion to a future life. The monk and, indeed, the generality of the devout in the medieval Church sought in self-limited earthly joy a proper discipline for the soul and a state in contrast to which the felicities for which they paid so great a price should be the more welcome. The devout of Mary Baker Eddy's time, though inclined to find in material well-being a plain mark of divine favour, none the less accepted sickness and sorrow as from the hand of G.o.d and prayed that with a meek and lowly heart they might endure this fatherly correction and, having learned obedience by the things they suffered, have a place amongst those who, through faith and patience, inherit His presence.

But our own time is not so eager to inherit promises as to enter into possession. A religion which does not demonstrate itself in actual well-being is under suspicion. The social pa.s.sion now much in evidence among the churches grows out of this as well as the many cults which seek the proof of the love of G.o.d in health, happiness and prosperity.

And indeed all this is natural and right enough. If religion be real the fruits of it should be manifest, though whether these are the more significant and enduring fruits of the spirit may be questioned. A religion which demonstrates itself in motor-cars and generous incomes and more than comfortable raiment may be real enough to those who profess it, but its reality is not quite the reality of the religion of the Sermon on the Mount.

Christian Science is in line with a distinct contemporaneous demand to demonstrate G.o.d's love in about the terms of Jacob's famous vow at Bethel--”If G.o.d will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my G.o.d.” This is a far cry from the n.o.ble protestation of Job which sounds still across the years: ”Though he slay me, still will I trust in him.”