Christian Science, Mind Cure, Faith Cure—their Psychic Relations.

Out of the recently received views of spirit, derived by psychic investigations, have grown a number of systems, drawing nice distinctions between their claims, and, in some instances, expanding to the estate of psychic science, attempting not only to correlate the facts of spirit, but to found on them a system of morals. It is because of this that Christian science, theology, mind cure, faith cure, metaphysics, etc., have a place in the discussions entertained in this volume. Nearly all of these begin as methods of healing. Their first office is to restore health. Such has been the application of almost all new discoveries, which reveal and are half shrouded in mystery. Electricity and magnetism met this fate, and mesmerism was at first thought to be a curative agent for all diseases.

It is a singular fact that all religious systems, from that of the lowest savage, whose god is represented by a stick or a tuft of feathers, to the purest form of Christianity, depend on miraculous healing for their evidence of genuineness. It is true the weight of such evidence is constantly lessened with the advance of culture, yet it still remains in force, and by many believers is received as conclusive and final.

Charlatanism seized mesmerism, as it has everything new, and brought its healing potencies into disgrace by its ignorance and pretensions. The germ of truth was then, and from time to time has reappeared under startling names, and in some instances so changed as to appear superficially, as something entirely new. Those who scorn mesmerism received the new claimants, the only change being in name.

I propose to briefly examine some of these, and, if possible, find the rock of truth on which they rest.

Christian Science.—First, as having attracted most attention, is Christian Science. It claims to be a system for curing the sick, preserving health, and a perfect moral guide in the conduct of life.

Healing the sick is only an accidental means of testing the genuineness of the devotee’s belief. Healing is the first step on the lowest plane. It makes the proud claim of being the Science of Spirit, and as spirit is causation, Christian Science is the Science of Sciences. It aims to be a complete system of religion and morality, and demands the highest, most unselfish, devoted lives. It demands universal love, unfaltering charity; neither to think or act evil; the suppression of scorn and hate; a belief that all is good, for all is God, who is absolutely good.

It widely differs from the “faith cure,” and mind cure, as it introduces and demands the highest excellence in the conduct of life, while the faith cure calls for simple faith in the means employed, or in the power of God.

Christian Science shows the source of its inspiration when it declares healing to be a test of faith and character.

Theosophy resembles Christian Science, extending over the broadest field of morality, intellectuality, and spirit, eschewing healing as a test. The teachings of both, by appropriating all that is valuable in other doctrines, are similar. Theosophy, however, states one fundamental doctrine on which its superstructure rests. This is the pre-existence of the soul or spirit, and its repeated incarnations on earth. As this doctrine has been criticised elsewhere, the arguments against it need not be here introduced. As guides in the conduct of life they have nothing true which they can claim as new, and their distinctive features remain to be demonstrated, or are revived speculations and dreams of the world’s dawn, when nature was a riddle and life a mystery.

The Faith Cure rests on the declarations of the Bible, that faith will remove mountains, and redeem the lost. When Christ or his disciples laid hands on the sick to heal, the first and paramount question was: Have they faith? There is curative power in faith. It is half gained to have the sick confident that they will recover; and the belief that they will be sustained by certain means often has more influence than the means.

The Mental Cure asserts the superiority of the mind over the body, as a scientific fact, without appeal to God or faith. In vital essence, in making the body the servant of the mind, all these systems are identical. Christian Metaphysics and Christian Science, a difference of name, and mental cure, mind cure, etc., have the same basis. Each has enclosed a narrow field, and writes its name over the entrance. Christian Science, by making the greatest display, has become most conspicuous. Many of its propositions call forth no dissent, others are on their face too absurd to require contradiction.

The same line of argument will apply to all these systems, and they need not be taken separately.

Influence of the Mind Over the Body.—The mind has a very great influence over the body, as has been remarked by those who have investigated the subject since the time of Hippocrates. The strongest mind sometimes is found in a weak body.

Lord Brougham, with a frail physique, performed the most Herculean mental tasks. It is said that he once worked one hundred and forty-four hours, or six consecutive days, and then slept all Saturday night, Sunday, and Sunday night, and was waked Monday morning by his valet to resume his labors.

The power of mind over the body is illustrated by the annals of explorers in the frigid zone, and in the deadly regions of the tropics. The leaders of such expeditions, with all the burden and responsibilities of their position, bear up better than their men, and rarely succumb to adversities to which the latter yield. The hardships met by Dr. Kane and Lieut. Greely are fresh in the mind; and the invincible Stanley, braving the savage foes and deadly malaria of the Black Continent, is another example. Such leaders, encouraged by the honors success will yield, and dreading the shame of defeat more than death, persevere against all opposing forces, while their men, with less at stake either to win or lose, sink, apathetically, before reaching the goal. In such cases, the will sustains the body, and shows its independence of the material forces which affect it.

In no instance is the control of mind over the sensations, affecting it through the body, shown with greater force than in the terrible ordeals of martyrdom. The weak and delicate woman, as well as the strong man, was bound on the rack, or subjected to the unspeakable horrors of the thumbscrew, burning pincers, or the smouldering fagots, and yet so far from uttering moans or sighs, smiled on their tormentors, or sang hozannas amid the flames. Their minds had risen to such exaltation that physical pain was unfelt, in fact, was a relief to the mental tension.

There is no pathological phenomena more freely attested than the sudden vitiation of the secretions by intense mental disturbances. A mother subjected to intense fright, or fear, will have her milk become poisonous to her babe. Dr. A. Combe mentions an instance where a mother left her child to assist the father in combat with a drunken soldier. After the fight was over she nursed the babe, which was strong and healthy. After a few minutes it ceased nursing, and sank dead in its mother’s arms. The milk had become a virulent poison.

A lady with a violent temper was warned by her physician against indulging it while nursing her babe, and she had obeyed until the child was several months old, strong and healthy. At that time she became enraged at some trivial circumstance, and soon afterwards she nursed her babe, which became ill, and within an hour was dead. The changes wrought in the saliva by anger are well known. The bite of an enraged man is as much to be dreaded as that of a mad dog. Blood poisoning is almost a sure consequence of inoculation with the saliva of an angry man or brute.

Hydrophobia itself is probably a spontaneous production in canines subjected to starvation and ill-usage.

Great joy or grief produces secretions in the blood, which make it poisonous. The prostration by grief is only equaled by that of violent disease. The blood and all secretions therefrom become so affected that a long time is required to eliminate the morbific matter from the system. If this is not accomplished, lingering illness or death is the final result. This is distinct from sudden death, on the disclosure of some startling news, of grief or joy. The heart in these instances suddenly fails at the nervous shock. Successful labor is always invigorating, while unsuccessful is depressing. It was observed in the early mining days of California that a stranger passing the claims could readily discover those that paid and those that did not, by the manners of the men who were working them. If unsuccessful, they were depressed, ill with fevers and idle. If successful they were at work early and late, cheerful, well, and energetic.

Every pursuit that ennobles and elevates the mind, tranquilizes the system, enhances the general health, and prolongs life.

Such is the wonderful sway the mind holds over the body. On the other hand, we find the body exciting a powerful influence on the mind; so intense and complete that leading physiologists believe that the latter is a result of, and entirely dependent on, the former, and having no existence independent thereof.

The microscope has poured a flood of light on disease. In most cases, as with these epidemics and contagions, a specific germ is introduced into the blood and multiplies, feeding on the vital fluid. If taken into the system of a saint it will, by multiplication, produce the disease, just as certainly as in the system of the vilest malefactor. There would be more reasonable grounds for hoping to drive a hungry tiger away by mind cure, than the myriads of microbes that swarm in a drop of the fever patient’s blood, or the microbes in the lungs of a consumptive.

Then is the system of mental cure a sham? No! It claims too much. When millions of bacilli swarm in the lungs, or the micrococcus brings on fever, shall we say we are well, that the mind, as a part of God, can not be sick, and as the body is fathered by the mind it can not be? We may say this, but the inexorable logic of facts refute our opinions. We might as well attempt to stay the spring of the tiger by an effort of will.

But there is a consideration back of this. By the accumulation of an endless series of taints of body and of mind, by false ideas and views of life, the power of mind over the body can not be compared with what it would be in a perfect state of right living. This is a consideration of greatest value, for it shows us, not what the past has been, but what the future may be.

The limits of the power of the mind over the body are not known, but with knowledge it ever enlarges its boundaries. The class of diseases which may be regarded as essentially corporal, as the previously mentioned contagions produced by microbes, the effects of ptomaines, and the mineral and vegetable poisons, has its limits contracted by mental influences. Individuals in the most terrible contagions, although in contact with the sick and dying, physicians, nurses or companions, are often exempt. Their systems do not furnish the necessary conditions for growth of the disease germs. Such individuals are fearless; and it is said that their indifference to danger is their shield of protection; yet it is often the case that when they become exhausted by excessive care, they fall victims. This conclusion, however, may be safely drawn, that there are conditions of body or mind, or of both, invulnerable to disease. What these conditions are we may not now know, but it is possible to know.

In these cases of purely physical disease, the body reacts on the mind, and the giving way of the will is the first indication of the approach of the malady. It is folly to talk of the will overcoming a disease that has insidiously sapped its foundation. This is not saying that were the wrong conditions of living righted, and the taints of heredity eliminated, the power of the will would not be able to maintain the body against all succeeding influences. But to reach that perfect state will require many generations of rightly directed culture.

If grief, anger, or excessive joy are able to vitiate secretions, and cause sickness and death, a happy frame of mind, intellectual exertion and moral excellence tend to the perfect health of these secretions. Health is a condition to be gained and kept by careful observance of its laws, and these laws are of the physical as well as mental being.

Whatever truth there is in these newly named theories of healing, is identically the same as that claimed by the mesmerists and magnetists. The process, the cause and effect, are the same under the name of Christian Science as that of mesmerism. In the large class of diseases called nervous, the soothing influence of another mind is of unmeasured benefit. Even the hope aroused that some mind is exciting its will to relieve, is beneficial. The strengthened will and imagination are wonderfully healing agencies. While the influence of the mind over the body is admitted without contradiction so long as the former is connected with the latter, the limitations of the physical world must be felt. There is a sickness of the mind, and of the body, and over the latter the mind has not full control. Yet with a race freed from hereditary taint, having for generations obeyed the laws of health until its conditions are fixed by heredity, it may not be said what the power of the mind may be.

If the mother can stamp her unborn child with the monstrosity she fancies in her fright; if she can impart the insane thirst for stimulants and the fiendish hate and cruelty of savages, might she not by glorified conditions, exalted motives, and the over-shadowing consciousness that her mind is divine, the creator of an immortal being, endow the child with angelic qualities and make it a divine being? The children of many generations of such mothers, what exalted spiritual and intellectual attainment would be their inheritance!

Nor should the mother alone be held responsible, as has been the custom. Divine motherhood is linked with divine fatherhood, the opposite element, but of equal value. The germinal impulse carries with it all that has entered into the lives of remotest parental ancestors, and the recipient mother acts upon it, and is reacted on, until her entire being, physical and spiritual, is modified. However grand the ideal excellence of the future, it is not realized in the present, and may not be for ages to come. The present race of men are born with the sins of all the past stamped into their constitutions. It is folly to teach that there is no sickness except in the mind; idle to teach faith can cure disease, the seeds of which were planted unnumbered generations ago, and grown rankly from parent to child. Purity, true nobility of life, spiritual culture, devotion to right, and obedience to the laws of health may be accepted and the ideal attempted, but not fully realized now.

Meanwhile, old methods must not be wholly discarded. Old remedies can not be safely cast aside. The lame must have their staff and crutch until strong enough to walk alone.

Conclusion.—The Ideal may be sketched in our fond fancy, and the attempt to realize it began by living a higher, nobler, purer life. Know we what this means? It means more than simple living. There is everything beyond that. What this means will be best comprehended by referring to the preceding pages, where it is taught that there is a thought-atmosphere, from which sensitive minds receive a glorious flood of inspiration. Magnetism, Mesmerism, Hypnotism, or the states of healing by Faith or Christian Science are but the temporary approaches to that one condition of sensitiveness. In that condition great changes may be affected in the vital forces promotive of the normal functions of the various organs, as fear, grief, remorse, etc., may disturb their healthy action, and induce pathological changes in them.

Death will come to all physical forms sooner or later, for it is as necessary to the fulfillment of our destiny as to the transformation of the caterpillar to the butterfly; but disease and all the sufferings, losses, and disappointments in its train, may be, and will be, eliminated, when mortal life is so ordered that it will constantly walk in the shadow of spiritual forces.

Then sickness will be regarded as a mark of ignorance, if not a crime.