Life — May 17, 1888 — page 2: what you’re looking at

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“QPile there's Life there's Hope.” VOL. XI. MAY 17, 1888. No. 281 28 West TWENTY-THIRD STREET, NEW YorK. Published every Thursday, $5.00 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 10 cents. Back numbers can be had by applying to this office. Vol. I., bound, $15.00; Vol. II., bound, $10.00 ; Vols. III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX. and X., bound or in flat numbers, at regular rates. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope, Subscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. Some estimable and otherwise sensible persons, who honestly believe in the blasphemous nonsense that is promulgated under the name of “ Christian Science,” “ Faith Healing,” and ‘Mind Cure,” are deeply grieved because LIFE took the occasion of the recent death of a woman who was being professionally treated by one of these medical charlatans, to speak some plain truths on the subject. We see no reason, nevertheless, to modify our original proposition that all the disciples of this school may be classed either as knaves or fools. No intelligent person in the possession of his or her mental faculties can be imposed on with such shallow sophistry as “Christian Science” teaches; and, as many do accept it unconditionally, the fools are accounted for. The knaves are the others who play upon the credulity of the class aforementioned. These facts might be presented less bluntly, perhaps, but it is just as well to state truths in- volving so serious considerations plainly. * * * E are aware that many of the disciples of the three cults we have mentioned do not use the names inter- changeably, but their basilar principles are the same except that the “mind cure” is a little less objectionable in that the title is not sacrilegious. In the other instances the pro- jectors of these fraudulent institutions have covered them- selves with the cloak of religion, and practise these frauds— whether conscious that they are frauds or not—under the guise of piety and Christianity. They have even gone so far as to establish “ colleges” in various parts of the country where charges are made for tuition, and a regular curriculum of study is gone through with. Pupils take a course of a few months in one of these institutions and are then graduated and sent forth with a license to practise these rites upon any person who is fool enough to pay them for doing so, In some of the States they are restrained to a limited extent by the laws, and in others they are not. NTELLIGENT persons know, of course, that there are some disorders, mostly of a nervous nature, that may be helped, or even cured, by the patient's effort of will, or by inducing the patient to believe that some-occult power will miraculously restore him to health; and if “Christian Science” stopped at this it might be a praiseworthy move- ment. But the high priests and priestesses of these schools of charlatanry teach that mental processes will cure broken bones, fevers and all other diseases and afflictions of the body. It needs but one or two extracts. from the standard authorities on “Christian Science” to prove to sensible people the utter ridiculousness and fallacy of the entire system. For instance the “ President” of the “ Massachusetts Metaphysical College,” who claims to have invented “ meta- physical healing” and the term “ Christian Science,” bases her theories on this principle, which she exploits in “Science and Health:” ‘Divine science shows that matter and mortal body are the illu- sions of human belief, which seem to appear and disappear to mortal sense alone. When this belief changes, as in dreams, the material body changes with it, going wherever we wish, and becoming what- soever belief may decree. Human mortality proves that error has been engrafted into both the dreams and conclusions of material and mortal humanity. Besiege sickness and death with these principles, and all will disappear.” The author of a modest but comprehensive treatise on “Christian Science,” called “God, Man, Matter, Disease, Sin and Death, Healing, Treatment and Universal Truth,” explains matters thus: “The seuses say matter can suffer pain; God says matter is in- sensible. The senses declare a man sick; God says the real man knows nothing of disease. A mental cure is the discovery made by a sick person that he is well.” * * * UCH twaddle as this would only be amusing if it did not involve an enormous addition to the total of human misery. The influence that it exerts among the fool ele- ments of the population may be estimated to a certain extent by the circumstance that there are two “Christian Science" “colleges” in this city, one in Brooklyn, one in Boston, one in Milwaukee, one in Colorado, and four in Chicago, and that all are doing a flourishing business. As we have said before, the law ought to close these institutions as common swindles. They not only obtain money by false pretenses, but they constitute a continual menace to human life. * * * INCE the death of the woman we have alluded to, the “Christian Scientists” have gathered in another victim, a woman who died in Washington from cancer of the stomach, in terrible agony, without any of the alleviating agencies of medical science, while two or three of these sanctimonious quacks prayed at her bedside. comicbooks.com