done, or it must permit its members to
use their minds. Those who use their minds will discover that Christian
Science is only one method of applying a general truth, and that it is a
method which is hampered by a great deal that is illogical and absurd;
that if Christian Science, as Mrs. Eddy has promulgated it, were
universally believed and practised, it would be the revolt of a species
against its own physical structure; against its relation to its natural
physical environment, against the needs of its own physical organism,
against the perpetuation of its kind. The moment a Christian Scientist
realizes that the helpful and hopeful principle of his religion can
operate quite independently of all the inconsequential theories which
Mrs. Eddy has attached to it, that moment he is, of course, lost to Mrs.
Eddy. Mrs. Eddy's church organization stands as a sort of dyke between
the general principle of mind cure and Mrs. Eddy's very empirical,
violent, and temperamental interpretation of that principle. It is the
future of psycho-therapeutics that will determine the future of
Christian Science. If "Mind Cure," "Christian Psychology," and regular
physicians offer the benefits of suggestive treatment in a more rational
and direct way than does Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy's church will find
in them very formidable competition. On the other hand, if Christian
Scientists throw down their barriers and join the general mind-cure
movement, and the two branches of Quimbyism meet, then half of Mrs.
Eddy's life-work is lost. The labor of her days has been to keep these
two streams apart; to prove one the true and the other the false. Her
efforts to stem the progress of all other schools of mental healing have
been secondary only to her efforts to advance her own. Yet,
unconsciously and against her own wish, she has been the most effective
instrument in promoting the interest of the whole movement.

On the theoretical side, Mrs. Eddy's contribution to mental healing has
been, in the main, fallacious, pseudodoxal, and absurd, but upon the
practical side she has been wonderfully efficient. New movements are
usually launched and old ideas are revivified, not through the efforts
of a group of people, but through one person. These dynamic
personalities have not always conformed to our highest ideals; their
effectiveness has not always been associated with a large intelligence
or with nobility of character. Not infrequently it has been true