al cure denies that either matter
or evil exists, and heals by inspiring the belief that the disease
cannot assail the patient because he is pure spirit; the other class,
faith cure, recognizes the disease, but cures by faith in the power of
divinity, persons, objects, or suggestion.

Without doubt the best example of the former theory and the most
successful application of it are found in Christian Science. Perhaps
it is not so difficult to understand the frame of mind which brought
about this theory on the part of Mrs. Eddy. Here was an hysterical,
neurotic woman who knew nothing all her life but illness and
misfortune. She had suffered much from many physicians and was none
the better but rather worse. One physician had called her disease one
thing, another had designated it another, until confusion and
uncertainty were increased with every physician consulted. She began
to despair of ever either knowing about her disease or of having it
cured. As a last resort she went to Quimby, and he told her there was
no disease and no need of suffering. He denied the suffering, and she
accepted his teaching; she followed him in denying disease and then
matter, and kept on with her theory of negation and denial until she
evolved her present theory. It was a natural reaction from all
conceivable pains characteristic of hysteria, to no pain; from all
conceivable diseases which different physicians had opined, to no
disease; from the infirmity of body with its inhibitory discomfitures,
to no body. The history of the founder of Christian Science is its
best _raison d'etre_, especially from a psychological stand-point, and
the rather strange thing is that a reaction from an abnormality, going
as it naturally does to another abnormality, should find a response in
the religious cravings of so many; the philosophy undoubtedly would
not attract as it does were there not connected with it, in the
practical working of the system, the lure of mental healing.

Faith cure, the other form of mental healing, has such a variety of
forms that it is practically impossible to describe a typical one.
Faith in some power, or, what amounts to the same thing, the
uncritical reception of suggestions concerning the cure, is the common
factor in all forms.

The question naturally arises, Which is the best form of mental
healing? There is no best form for all diseases and all persons. For
example, it matters not how new associational systems are formed