Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/103

 As a result of this gathering up of all these so-called occult methods of treatment into the more or less exact science of Psycho-*therapeutics, have come into prominence many cults—or sects, shall we call them?—such as Mental Healing, Faith Cures, Peculiar People, Metaphysical Healing, Christian Science, each of which is overlaid with doctrines of a more or less dubious kind. The growth of these various bodies of late years has been extraordinarily rapid: to mention two of them only, Christian Science and New Thought are now enthusiastically practised and believed in by many thousands of people, both here and in America, and hundreds of churches have been provided and erected in their names.

It must not be lost sight of that Christian Science, as well as New Thought, which has been described by Mr. Dresser, one of its chief exponents, as being 'a common-sense, rational phase of the Mental Healing Doctrine,' 'are dealing with genuine facts in the sphere of Mental Therapeutics'; but these facts are entirely independent of the theories by which either school attempts to explain them.

The spread of Christian Science was viewed with considerable alarm by many influential members and dignitaries of our own Church,