stand
to show once more how this whole pretentious philosophy about the
unreality, the imaginary nature, of pain breaks down as soon as we
subject it to simple tests. So also with the Christian Science attitude
towards "drugs," the prescribing of which Mrs. Eddy places in the same
category as the denial of God.[8] An obvious comment suggests itself: If
drugs cannot cure, it follows that they cannot hurt; will some adherent
to this teaching show his consistency in the faith by swallowing a small,
but sufficient quantity {134} of oxalic acid? And so, finally, with Mrs.
Eddy's singularly futile question, "As power divine is in the healer, why
should mortals concern themselves with the chemistry of food?" [9]
Without unkindliness, one feels tempted to reply that this kind of
language will begin to be convincing when Christian Scientists show their
readiness and ability to sustain life on substances chemically certified
to be without nutritive properties.

But it is not its denial of physical evil that makes this and allied
movements a real menace; dissent as we may from the Christian Science
theory of bodily illness, and deplore as we must the fatal results of
which we read every now and again when a patient has been persuaded to
substitute the Christian Science "healer" for the trained
physician--these results concern, to put it rather bluntly, no one but
the sufferer and his immediate friends. But when we remarked that the
natural man desired to be made well rather than to be made good, we were
not merely thinking of one side of Christian Science teaching; we were
bearing in mind that the author of _Science and Health_ declares the
illusoriness of pain only as part of the illusoriness of all evil, moral
as well as physical. _Christian Science explicitly denies the reality of
sin: and that denial follows with inexorable logic from its first
principle--that {135} God is All, and All is Good_. And here rather than
in the material domain lies the danger we have to face; this is the side
of Mrs. Eddy's doctrine which, the moment it is attractively presented
to, and grasped by, half-educated and unstable minds, will, we fear,
exercise a fatal fascination over large numbers. For one person who will
seriously persuade himself that there is no matter, or that his sore
throat is imaginary, there will be a number to welcome the good tidings
that what they had hitherto regarded as sin wears in reality no such
sinister compl