i have read recently, within a short period of each other, two books that stand in an odd relation, and illustrate the two ways of dealing with the same truth. the first was mrs. eddy’s science and health, and the other a very interesting collection of medical and ecclesiastical opinion called medicine and the church. it is edited by mr. geoffrey rhodes, and published by kegan paul. of the first work, the christian science bible, my recollections are somewhat wild and whirling. my most vivid impression is of one appalling passage to the effect that the continued perusal of this book through the crisis of an illness had always been followed by recovery. the idea of reading any book “through the crisis of an illness” is rather alarming. but i incline to agree that anyone who could read science and health through the crisis of an illness must be made of an adamant which no malady could dissolve. nevertheless, it is a mistake to oppose christian science on the impossibility or even the improbability of its cures. there is always this tendency for normal men to attack abnormalities on the wrong ground; their arguments are as wrong as their antagonism is right. thus the only sensible argument against female suffrage is that, with her social and domestic powers, woman is as strong as man. but silly people will attack female suffrage on the ground that she is weaker than man. or, again, the only sensible argument against socialism is that every man ought to have private property. but the wretched anti-socialists will give themselves away by trying to maintain that only a few people ought to have property, and even that only in the shape of monstrous american trusts. in the same way, there is great danger that the modern world may give battle to mrs. eddy upon the wrong terrain, and give her the opportunity (or, rather, her more clear-headed lieutenants) of claiming some popular success. there is such a thing as spiritual healing. no one has ever doubted it except one dingy generation of materialists in chimney-pot hats. if we seem to stand with the materialists, and mrs. eddy seems to stand for the healing, she will have a chance of success. a man whose toothache has left off will think with gratitude of the healer, and with some indifference of the scientist explaining the difference between functional and organic toothaches. i will grant what mrs. eddy does to people’s bodies. it is what she does to their souls that i object to.
mrs. eddy summarizes the substance of her creed in the characteristic sentence: “but in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of hope must be cast beyond the veil of matter into the shekinah into which jesus has passed before us.” now personally i should prefer to sow the anchor of hope in the furrows of primeval earth; or to fill the anchor to the brim with the wine of human passion; or to urge the anchor of hope to a gallop with the spurs of moral energy; or simply to pluck the anchor, petal by petal, or spell it out letter by letter. but whatever slightly entangled metaphor we take to express our meaning, the essential difference between mrs. eddy’s creed and mine is that she anchors in the air, while i put an anchor where the groping race of men have generally put it, in the ground. and this very fact, that we have always thought of hope under so rooted and realistic a figure, is a good working example of how the popular religious sense of mankind has always flowed in the opposite direction to christian science. it has flowed from spirit to flesh, and not from flesh to spirit. hope has not been thought of as something light and fanciful, but as something wrought in iron and fixed in rock.
in short, the first and last blunder of christian science is that it is a religion claiming to be purely spiritual. now, being purely spiritual is opposed to the very essence of religion. all religions, high and low, true and false, have always had one enemy, which is the purely spiritual. faith-healing has existed from the beginning of the world; but faith-healing without a material act or sacrament—never. it may be the ancient priest, curing with holy water, or the modern doctor curing with coloured water. in either case you cannot do without the water. it may be the upper religion with its bread and wine, or the under religion with its eye of newt and toe of frog: in both cases what is essential is the right materials. savages may invoke their demons over the dying, but they do something else as well. to do them justice, they dance round the dying, or yell, or do something with their bodies. the quakers (i mean the really admirable, old-fashioned quakers) were far more ritualistic than any ritualists. the only difference between a ritualist curate and a quaker was that the quaker wore his queer vestments all the time. the peculiar people do without doctors; but they do not do without oil. they are not so peculiar as all that.
the book which mr. geoffrey rhodes has edited is just what was wanted for the fixing of these facts of flesh and spirit. when i was a boy, people used to talk about something which they called the quarrel between religion and science. it would be very tedious to recount the quarrel now; the rough upshot of it was something like this: that some traditions too old to be traced came in vague conflict with some theories much too new to be tested. many things three thousand years old had forgotten their reason for existing; many things a few years old had not yet discovered theirs. to this day this remains roughly true of all the relations between science and religion. the truths of religion are unprovable; the facts of science are unproved.
it really looks just now as if a reconciliation would be made between religion and science, a reconciliation well embodied in mr. rhodes’s work. i will not any longer dispute the divine mission of mrs. eddy. i think she was supernaturally sent on earth to reconcile all the parsons and all the doctors in a healthy hatred of herself. here is the reconciliation of science and religion; you will find it in medicine and the church. in this interesting book all the clerics become as medical as they can, and all the doctors become as clerical as they can, with the one honourable object of keeping out the healer. the chaplain sits on one side of the bed and the physician on the other, while the healer hovers around, baffled and furious. and they do well; for there really is a great link between them. it is the link of the union of flesh and spirit, which the heresy of the healer blasphemes. the priest may have taken his spirit with a little flesh, or the doctor his flesh with a little spirit; but the union was essential to both. with the religious there might be much prayer and a little oil; with the scientific there might be much oil (castor oil) and precious little prayer. but no religion disowned sacraments and no doctors disowned sympathy. and they are right to combine together against the great and horrible heresy—the horrible heresy that there can be such a thing as a purely spiritual religion.
