Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/313

 difficulties to encounter as soon as, leaving the inspired region of Poetry, and of prophetic vision, it tries to present itself as rational to our intellect, and as conformable with our knowledge of physical things. Had the foundress of Christian Science confined herself to the uninquiring assertions of Seership, and left the explanation of Spiritual truths (of which no one can deny that she caught some luminous glimpses) to minds equipped with the necessary knowledge and training, Christian Science would have been shorn of much of its incoherence and false teaching, and perhaps have proved itself a real ally to Christianity.

But the foundress was not content with the rôle of giving forth such insight as she may have had as a Seer. She tries to explain it, and the consequence is such a tangle of incoherent, inconsistent, confused statements, contradictory to each other, as has, perhaps, never seriously been given to the world before. And where, occasionally, the statements, at least as to their wording, are clear and unmistakable in their meaning, so far from clearing away the difficulties of Idealism, they add much to the obscurity, and leave the subject in a position likely to act in the long run in favour of Materialism rather than in the direction intended.