EDDYISM v. REASON

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 440, 4 December 1930, Page 5

EDDYISM v. REASON

Sir, —I note Miss Hewitt’s denial that Mrs Eddy was the promised “Comforter,” but in view of her claim to be the Revealer of Divine Science, i.c., Airs Eddy’s notions or dogmas, and that when she has been asked for proof she invariably pointed to the authority of her name, her identity with the promised Comforter of St. John was not unwarranted. It is rather remarkable that the Christian Scientists, in their plenitude of divine science, need so many practitioners amongst them. With so much faith professed it is surprising that there is any sickness at all in their midst. Christian Scientists claim to have wrought many cures of disease, and no doubt, like other faith healers, they can be allowed credit for some success. But have they ever cured a real case of cancer, that can be testified to by qualified doctors? Airs Eddy alleged that she had cured such, but never adduced any evidence. Her book “Science and Health” contains many testimonials of alleged cures of diseases, but as such are of no scientific proof whatever. Airs Eddy had no conception of scientific tests, and was accustomed to making unverifiable assertions. Just imagine a person charging another in an American court with witchcraft and sorcery! And yet such were Mrs Eddy’s mentality and intellectual outlook that she accused an apostate practitioner named Spoffard of mentally causing a Aliss Brown to suffer dreadfully severe spinal pains, neuralgia, temporary suspension of mind. Judge Gray dismissed the charges, declaring, with a twinkle in his eye, that it was not within the jurisdiction of the court to control Air Spofford’s mind. When tho last Air Eddy died Airs Eddy asserted that he was mentally poisoned by arsenic administered by another apostate. One can but wonder as to how that could happen if there is no matter, as Airs Eddy declares Airs Eddy’s followers are equally as irrational and inconsistent. Says a well-known American writer on their cult: “The physical sciences are not the only studies which Christian Scientists will suppress should they come into power. History, ethics, and the humanities will also be forbidden. To a Christian Scientist, the history of centuries before Mrs Eddy’s discovery, is summed up in one word—error. No Christian Scientist will teach the history of error—of illusion, and “mortal mind.” The late world war was to them only a non-roality, God [ not even knowing that there was a war ion in Europe, said the committee on Christian Science publications, in explaining the attitude of their church on the war. Just try and think of a God like that, who never heard the i roar of 10.000 big guns—not even the ! prayers and groans of the combatanta, i Why. the old Israelite deity YaftyeW I was far more real. I have only just I been reading Dean Stanley’s work on I Palestine, wherein he tells you of how. | when Joshua routed a great army of ; Canaanites the tribal God of Israel lent

! a might hand, hurling out of Heaven on to the fleeing enemy great boulders that still can be seen to this very day. A god like that commands respect. But a Christian Science Deity is a fiction

of unbalanced minds, and about as credible as that there is no physical disease. What Christian Science treatment in diseases amounts to has nothing of a real scientific nature in it. Its practitioners do not have to study the human body, the properties of drugs, the nature of anaesthetics, the germ theory of disease, the effects of diet and climate upon the human organism, the causes of epidemics, the means of control of contagious maladies —nothing at all of this. A few lessons in metaphysics, a copy of Mrs Eddy’s book and a number of texts on his tongue, and he may begin practising and collecting fees from patients. Naturally enough the Americans not only want to get rich quick, but they want to get well quick too; consequently the practitioners, to get the first, do their best to supply the other. Back of the faith habit of mind lies many centuries of heredity, the accumulative force of which still persists in inducing a ready acquiescence on the part of many people in primitive notions of the causes of disease. Superstition dies bard and, as Goethe says, is so intimately and anciently associated with .man that it is one of the hardest things to get rid of. The inquiry habit is too recent in growth as yet t-o have much force with most people, the majority of whom appear to only part with one superstition to replace it with another. Eddyites point to their growing numbers, their big churches; but what of it? It proves’ only that their cult is fashionable, easy of belief, requiring no hard thinking to render it unpopular. What Matthew Arnold said of the multitude of England equally applies to an Ain erican multitude to-day. Pcobably in no country is the multitude more unin telligent, more narrow-minded, more passionate than in this. In no country is so much nonsense so firmly believed.

It may be of interest to your readers to learn that a recently published work on Christian Science by the Hon. H. A. I. Fisher, entitled “Our New Religion,” a work of great literary merit, mercilessly exposes the fraud and quackery which have enriched the

Christian Science Church at the expense of ruined lives and unnecessary deaths. The church may effect a few cures, but this is far outweighed by the harm it does. It not only would banish all freedom of thought, but tho liberty of teaching, binding its adherents down to Mrs Eddy’s interpretation of tho Bible, which she claims to bo divinely authorised to communicate to the world. Eddyism, with its overemphasis on science, is the sworn foe of everything human. Huxley well said that modern civilisation rests upon physical science. Take away her gifts, our country’s position among the civilised nations of the world is gone tomorrow. It is physical science that, makes intelligence and morality than brute force.

In conclusion, sir, one would emphasise that there is for the community to combat and oppose the new superstition which is menacing the religious and mental life of the .State. Eddyism would allow onl. two books to read—the Bible and the works of Mrs Eddy, all other books being contaminated by mortal error.—l am., etc.