Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/784

762 call at his house. He lived out of town. I went to his house, and spent the greater part of an evening trying to prevail upon these two people to show me or to introduce me to these subjects of locomotor ataxia and cancer of the tongue. They utterly refused to do so. Their line of argument was quite of the same sort as that contained in the letter of their better-known "brother in the church," which appears earlier in this paper. I was not investigating in the right way. What I ought to do was to study Science and Health and the other elucidatory works—above all with an obedient spirit, and "the truth" would come to me in time. Or it may be this pair of "healers" had in mind this reasoning, not new in my observation of this odd cult: In the mind of the Christian Scientist the locomotor-ataxia patient was healed, but he was withheld from inspection by the deceptive senses of those outside the Christian-Science pale, to which senses the patient might appear to stagger about and be as ill or more ill than ever before. Following is this "healer's" letter to me:

": I received your letter with Joy, and name next Monday eveng [sic] as a time to give you for your enquiry into the workings of Truth as it has come under my notice. Our field is a broad one coverig [sic] several towns, and we have not lately had an eveng [sic] free for discussin [sic] the subject coverig [sic] this sublime and stately Science That leads into all Truth even to the solving of the problem of Being. The healing of the sick is only the primary steps this step however is an important one as its demonstration with proof attests its divine origen [sic] even God—Good, its principle source and ultimates in Eternal Life. For the Life is in his Son and Divine Science reveals this son Even our own Christ our spiritual Individuality God being our Father and mother,

The writer of this letter is the leader of that Christian-Science church in New Jersey a member of which was a woman who died, in June of this year, of consumption, and this woman's "healer" was the writer's wife. The woman who died left the Episcopalian Church and became a Christian Scientist in January, 1899. In April she contracted a heavy cold, to which she gave no attention. Her husband remonstrated with her, and wished her to consult a physician, but she would not do so. She declared she could not be ill, but that she was well and happy. The services of her "healer" were the only ministrations she received. In the