icult, but there still remains, after all qualification, an
arresting solidity of achievement. Christian Science does work,
especially with the self-absorbed, the neurotic and those who have
needed, above all, for their physical deliverance, a new access to faith
and courage. Christian Science practitioners have also an unusual
opportunity in what may be called moral rehabilitation with physical
consequences. The physician has a better chance with the bodies of his
patients than with their souls; the minister a better chance with the
spiritual needs of his parishioners than with their bodies and habits;
the Christian Science practitioner to an unusual extent has the whole of
life under his control and it ought in all fairness to be conceded that
this power is helpfully employed.

The very discipline of Christian Science is itself a therapeutic. There
are really a good many things which become non-existent directly you
begin to act as if they did not exist. An atmosphere in which no one
refers to his ailment and every one to his well-being is a therapeutic
atmosphere. Psychologists have taught us that if we go through the
motions of being happy we are likely to have an access of happiness; if
we go through the motions of being unhappy we have an access of misery.
If we go through the motions of being well, very often we achieve a
sound measure of health.

_But it is Fundamentally a System of Suggestion_

All this has been so strongly dwelt upon of late as to make any extended
consideration of it unnecessary here, as indeed any extended
consideration is impossible for any one save a specialist. What we are
more concerned with is the way in which the discipline and philosophy of
Christian Science produce their results. The answer to this question is
as plain as anything can be in our present state of knowledge, for
essentially, as a healing force, Christian Science stands or falls with
the therapeutic power of suggestion. It is a strongly drawn system of
psycho-therapy because it is a strongly drawn system of suggestion. Its
suggestion involves assumptions which are sometimes philosophy,
sometimes theology, and more commonly a baffling interplay of the two.

But the outcome of it all is the practical persuasion on the part of the
patient that he is not sick and does not need so much to get well as to
demonstrate that he is well, and that in this demonstration he has an
absolute force on his side. To this end the whole