SPIRITUALISM IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

 

While Spiritualism embraces all that is true and valuable in Christian science, the votaries of the latter scorn to be thought leaning in the least toward the former. Perhaps the real difference is not as great as the arguments of the scientists would lead us to infer, for they clothe their thoughts in a phraseology difficult to understand, which often runs away with them and they substitute the words for ideas. It appears profound, and unfathomably wise, and they who use these terms often become rankly opinionated and immeasurably conceited. Masked behind such phraseology, they are proof against logic, or the plain forms of speech.

 

Christian science sets out by affirming that everything is a part of God, or in other words God is everything which he must be if infinite and omnipotent. Many Spiritualists would accept this statement. Spiritualism does not pretend to know so much about infinite and incomprehensible things. Its fundamental statement is that man is an immortal spirit that will continue in an unbroken line of progress the life be began here. To this is united the highest code of ethics, calling for the best self-sustaining efforts of the individual. The ranks of Christian science, faith cure, occultism, theosophy, etc., are recruited by Spiritualists, who think it a little more popular to be one or the other of these new sects, than simply Spiritualists. It is a case of a rose by another name smelling sweeter. Each one of these sporadic efforts has some special belief which it exploits and makes pivotal, whereas Spiritualism as a complete science of life, of the evolution and maintenance of spiritual beings, embraces in its immeasurable sweep all these, which are attached to it as capes, promontories, dangerously extending reefs, and low-lying islands to some vast continent.

 

They all will have their brief day and disappear, but Spiritualism as embodying the highest aspirations of man, will take the place of all other systems of science and religion.

 

WHEREIN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, METAPHYSICAL HEALING, LIGHT CURE APPLY.

 

There are many good things in all these systems, but they become false when pressed, as they are by many of their advocates to cover the whole field. They are minor parts of the great whole.

 

The heat, light, electricity and magnetism from the sun have great influence on life and its manifestations. How great this influence is may be forcibly seen in plants growing in shaded places or in darkened cellars, comparing them with those growing in the sun-lighted garden. Human beings are in like manner affected, only the more as they are more delicately organized. But these elements do not hold all influences. They are distinct from the psychic, or mesmeric, hypnotic or whatever name it may be called, and they are not comparable.

 

There are two distinct methods of cure by Christian science, magnetism, metaphysics, etc. One is by suggestion, and some there are who assume that suggestion covers the whole ground, explaining all phenomena. Thus a magnetic healer suggests to his patient that he is well and he becomes so. The Christian scientist suggests to his subject that as a part of God he cannot be sick, and his sickness vanishes. Such a method gives good results where there are no organic changes and the ailment is from depleted nerve force or mental, rather than physical.

 

The other method is by direct influence of psychic force from the operator to the subject. This is a positive influence and independent of suggestion. It is thus seen that neither of these methods covers all the acts, and to exclude either and make the other supreme would lead to error. There are multitude of facts supporting one or the other. Suggestion, given by others, or self-suggestion, which leads to the dominance of one idea, is a most important factor in human conduct. The man who keeps his mind at such a tension that the bodily ills have no time or place for consideration, lives above their suggestion, until a crisis may be reached.