Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/824

802 and has no time for medical consultation.” As president of the “Massachusetts Metaphysical College,” she doubtless feels that her time is more profitably used, and her luxurious home on Boston's finest avenue testifies to the magnitude of the profits.

If Mrs. Eddy can claim that failures are sufficient proof that the healer does not practice the right method, she must likewise accept success as sufficient proof that the healer does practice the right method. Now there are several different methods. Although she denounces as heresy any deviation from her doctrine, yet some of her former disciples, who do not hold that every person's mind is a part of the Divine Being, have success in healing that will compare favorably with that of the faithful. Hence this part of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine is of no consequence in healing. These heretics prefer to be called “mental healers.” Then there is the faith-cure, with its “Beth-shan,” in London, its conventions at Old Orchard, Maine, and its sanctuary in Jersey City. It has also been used somewhat in England by the Salvation Army. The theory of the faith-curers is simply an extension of the Christian's belief in the efficacy of prayer for the sick. They do not assert that matter is unreal, and that nothing exists but mind, yet they perform enough cures to show that this part also of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine is of no consequence in the practice of healing.

A variety of faith-healing has been practiced in the Roman Catholic Church for hundreds of years. There is plenty of testimony, as good as the Christian Scientists can furnish, that persons have been healed by the aid of the prayers of priests and bishops, by touching the bones or other relics of saints, or by bathing in the water of sacred springs. A noted locality for such cures at the present time is the grotto of Lourdes in France. The Mormons are not behind the Catholics or Protestants in making cures. One of the chief methods employed by their missionaries in gaining converts is to pray with the sick, who often recover and join the sect. The cures credited to the wonderful Dr. Newton, who flourished twenty-five to thirty years ago, as well as those which gained Dr. Perkins's “tractors” their fame at the close of the last century, must be counted as mental healing. Hence, there have been successful mind-curers before Mrs, Eddy, although their theories agreed in little or nothing with hers. In fact, from the teachings of one of the irregular healers who preceded her, Mr. P. P. Quimby, Mrs. Eddy is charged with appropriating everything of importance in her system. This charge she indignantly denies.

Moreover, cures have been effected when healer and patient held a belief that was demonstrably false. Prince Radzivil, of