se; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind; all
is Mind, All-Good Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a series,
ante and pass the buck!"
I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it
doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to
the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was
used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from
unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every
purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely
that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious
spirit a powerful reinforcement in his case.
The second witness testifies that the Science banished "an old organic
trouble," which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs
and the knife for seven years.
He calls it his "claim." A surface-miner would think it was not
his claim at all, but the property of the doctor and his pal the
surgeon--for he would be misled by that word, which is Christian-Science
slang for "ailment." The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him
there is no such thing, and he will not use the hateful word. All that
happens to him is that upon his attention an imaginary disturbance
sometimes obtrudes itself which claims to be an ailment but isn't.
This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has now gone over to the
new sect. He was "almost blind and deaf." He was treated by the C. S.
method, and "when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually." Saw
spiritually? It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable; but this C. S. magazine
is poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.
The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims:
Indigestion, Rheumatism, Catarrh, Chalky deposits in Shoulder-joints,
Arm-joints, Hand-joints, Insomnia, Atrophy of the muscles of Arms.
Shoulders, Stiffness of all those joints, Excruciating pains most of the
time.
These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but "I never realized any physical relief f
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