Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/569

Rh cheerful and enthusiastic mendacity, inform you that you haven't any pain, that you haven't any boils, that you haven't any rheumatism or sciatica, or whatever it may be; and if you should point ruefully to the affected part, will exclaim: "Why, that isn't you; that's a mere mass of matter—soulless matter—and you are a soul, a spirit. You ought to rule your matter and not let your matter rule you." This is a point in the proceedings at which the faith of the sufferer is sometimes severely tried. Cases have been known in which, breaking into language neither wholly Christian nor rigorously scientific, the patient has demanded to know why, if that wasn't him—even grammar may be sacrificed in these emergencies—he should be enduring such abominable tortures on account of it; and up to date the satisfactory answer of Christian science to that particular question has not been formulated.

Give people a fad, however, that they thoroughly enjoy and they will make great sacrifices for it, looking pleasant under circumstances which would test the good humor even of a Mark Tapley, Here is where the Christian scientists may sometimes score; for good spirits are certainly both a prophylactic and a remedial agency of no mean value in various physical troubles. This is the one grain of truth in their bushel of nonsense. On the other hand, they do widespread and serious moral mischief by promoting the bad habit of ignoring facts. We have heard of the case of a Christian-science practitioner who, called in to see a child whose head was covered with a herpetic eruption, declared, while looking steadily at the head, that she could not see any eruption. A little girl who by accident had cut her hand at school somewhat objected to having it bound up by the teacher, giving as her reason that her parents were "Christian science." It certainly is lamentable that, in addition to all the other influences which tend to weaken the sense for truth and fact, there should have sprung up a so-called religious society which places a willful blindness to fact at the foundation of its creed and practice. Surely that kind of thing does not need encouragement or cultivation.

Meantime, Wisdom is crying aloud. Science has revealed itself as the helper and guide of mankind, and, in reply to all questioning of its claims, points to the works it has wrought. "They are they," it may say, "which testify of me." The essential and peculiar mark of science is that it ignores no fact. "Hold thou the fact!" might be taken for its motto. It holds the fact, it wrestles with it till it yields a blessing. The individual scientific thinker, honest though he be, may ignore a fact, may turn aside from evidence that ought to command his attention; but, in so far as he does this, he is unfaithful to the mandate of Science. The fact, however, abides; and Science, through some other of her servants, or perhaps later through this very one, will take it up and make it yield its meaning. Science has all truth for its domain, and for that reason there can be but one science. To apply to science such an epithet as "Christian" involves a total misunderstanding of what science is. Science can do no more than investigate all truth, nor can it, consistently with its essential nature, do less.

In the matter, however, of relieving human suffering and prolonging human life, what is the record? The record is that since science obtained a secure footing in the world it has been steadily making better conditions of life for mankind; that it has