now watched Phillida for a moment before proceeding.
"You see when I began I didn't know anything about Christian
Science,--the new science of mental healing, faith-cure,
psychopathy,--by which you act on the spirit and through the spirit upon
the body. Matter is subject to mind. Matter is unreal. All merely
physical treatment of disease is on the mortal plane." Miss Bowyer
paused here waiting for this great truth to produce its effect; then she
said, "Don't you think so?" and looked straight at Phillida.

"I haven't thought a great deal about it," said Phillida.

"No?" This was said with the rising inflection. "I thought not; mere
faith-healing doesn't require much thought. I know, you see, having been
a faith-healer at first. But we must go deeper. We must always go
deeper. Don't you think so?"

"I don't understand just what you mean," said Phillida.

"You see," said Miss Bowyer, "faith-healing is a primitive and apostolic
mode of healing the sick."

Miss Bowyer paused, and Phillida said, "Yes," in a hesitant way; for
even the things she believed seemed false when uttered by Eleanor
Bowyer.

"Well, ours is a scientific age. Now we practise--we revive this mode of
healing, but in a scientific spirit, in the spirit of our age, and with
a great deal more of knowledge than people had in ancient times. We
reject the belief in evil; we call it unreal. Disease is a mistake. We
teach faith in the unity of God the All-good."

Miss Bowyer evidently expected Phillida to say something at this point,
but as she did not, Miss Bowyer was forced to proceed without
encouragement.

"When I found that there was a great deal in it, I took the subject up
and studied it. I studied mind-cure, or metaphysical healing, which
strikes at the root of disease; I went into hypnotism, mesmerism, and
phreno-magnetism, and the od force--I don't suppose you know about the
_od_ which Reichenbach discovered."

"No."

"Well, it's wonderful, but mysterious. Blue blazes seen by the
sensitive, and all that. I studied that, and theosophy a little too, and
I took up Swedenborg; but he was rather too much for me. You can't quite
understand him, and then life is too short to ever get through him. So I
only read what somebody else had printed about Swedenborgianism, and I
understand him a good deal better that way. That's the best way to
tackle him, you know. Well, now, all of these go to explain the unity of
truth, and how the miracles of the Bible