CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

a religious denomination based on the teachings of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, from which has spread branches in all Protestant countries of the world, but more especially in the United States. The theology of Christian Science defines God as ‘incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.’ It affirms the divine personality of God, but denies his individuality in a human sense. Every Christian Science convert, says Mrs. Eddy ‘must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is.’ All that may be made the subject of thought, unle it expre es His Being, is illusive, unreal. Therefore the main effort should be to purify thought. Jesus is recognized as the man, who, as the Christ, was the ‘divine manifestation of God, who was sent to this earth to destroy incarnate error.’ Sin is wrong thinking, which results in a disturbance of the divine harmony. It is at this point that the theology of the sect approaches the aspect in which it has been regarded with most interest; its powers of healing. Christian Science, as supposed by many, does not deny the existence of sickne or disease, but if it recognizes it as a fact, it is only as a manifestation of wrong thought. As wrong thought, disturbing the divine harmony, may cause moral evil, resulting in unhappine , so wrong thinking may produce a similar condition in the physical sense, disturbing the harmony of the body, resulting in sickne . The cure is to remove the cause of error; to regain harmony by right thinking. This is but stating in theological terms the fact which is accepted by many modern psychologists and medical men; that bodily disorders may be caused by a disturbance of the equilibrium of the subconscious mind, brought about by unconscious suggestion, the cure of which is conscious autosuggestion. Most medical men limit these disorders to those that are cla ed as ‘functional,’ and within the limits thus set do not deny the efficacy of Christian Science healers to bring relief. The same results may be achieved, however, by the patient’s own unaided efforts, through conscious auto-suggestion. This aspect of Christian Science, therefore, is not original with Mrs. Eddy, and was practiced by the pagan priests of the Greeks, notably by means of the ‘temple sleep’ and later by the Christian churches of the middle ages, by means of the relics of saints, etc. Established in 1879, in Boston, the ‘Mother Church’ of Mrs. Eddy has since developed into a world-wide organization of over 2,000 congregations, of which a fourth are in foreign countries. The Mother Church and its branches are governed by a board of directors, originally appointed by Mrs. Eddy, but the local congregations are largely self-governing, being bound only by the tenets of the creeds as set forth in the books written by Mrs. Eddy and published by the board of directors in Boston. The many publications of the church are i ued through the Christian Science Publishing Co., which in 1908 founded The Christian Science Monitor, a daily newspaper, now. one of the most influential in the country. In 1919 there was an attempt on the part of the trustees of the publishing company to secede from the main organization and function independently, resulting in a law suit, but in 1921 the Supreme Judicial Court of Ma achusetts decided this case in favor of the Church. By many it was believed that after the death of Mrs. Eddy, in 1910, there would be a decline in the membership of the sect, but quite the contrary has been the result. In 1922 notable growth was reported, especially in foreign countries, and more especially in Germany, where the government ban on Christian Scientist churches had been removed.