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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/19051-8.txt b/19051-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..348a48c --- /dev/null +++ b/19051-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10102 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern Religious Cults and Movements, by +Gaius Glenn Atkins + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Modern Religious Cults and Movements + +Author: Gaius Glenn Atkins + +Release Date: August 15, 2006 [EBook #19051] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS CULTS *** + + + + +Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Graeme Mackreth and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +Modern Religious Cults and Movements + + + +Works by + +Gaius Glenn Atkins + +_Modern Religious Cults and Movements_ + +Dr. Atkins has written a noteworthy and valuable book dealing with the +new cults some of which have been much to the fore for a couple of +decades past, such as: Faith Healing; Christian Science; New Thought; +Theosophy and Spiritualism, etc. $2.50 + +_The Undiscovered Country_ + +Dr. Atkins' work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation, +polished diction and forceful phrasing. A firm grasp of the elemental +truths of Christian belief together with an unusual ability to interpret +mundane experiences in terms of spiritual reality. $1.50 + +_Jerusalem: Past and Present_ + +"One of the books that will help to relieve us of the restless craving +for excitement, and to make clear that we can read history truly only as +we read it as 'His Story'--and that we attain our best only as the hope +of the soul is realized by citizenship in 'the City of God.'"--_Baptist +World._ $1.25 + +_Pilgrims of the Lonely Road_ + +"A very unusual group of studies of the great mystics, and shows real +insight into the deeper experience of the religious life."--_Christian +Work._ $2.00 + +_A Rendezvous with Life_ + +"Life is represented as a journey, with various 'inns' along the way +such as Day's End, Week's End, Month's End, Year's End--all suggestive +of certain experiences and duties." Paper, 25 cts. + + + + +Modern Religious Cults and Movements + +By + +GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D., L.H.D. + +_Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Mich. + +Author of "Pilgrims of the Lonely Road," "The Undiscovered Country," +etc._ + +New York Chicago + +Fleming H. Revell Company + +London and Edinburgh + +Copyright, 1923, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY + +New York: 158 Fifth Avenue +Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. +London: 21 Paternoster Square +Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street + +_To E.M.C._ + +_Whose constant friendship through changing years has been like the fire +upon his hearthstone, a glowing gift and a grateful memory_ + + + + +Introduction + + +The last thirty years, though as dates go this is only an approximation, +have witnessed a marked development of religious cults and movements +largely outside the lines of historic Catholicism and Protestantism. One +of these cults is strongly organized and has for twenty years grown more +rapidly in proportion than most of the Christian communions. The +influence of others, more loosely organized, is far reaching. Some of +them attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science +and philosophy, and, generally, they represent the free movement of what +one may call the creative religious consciousness of our time. + +There is, of course, a great and constantly growing literature dealing +with particular cults, but there has been as yet apparently no attempt +to inquire whether there may not be a few unexpectedly simple centers +around which, in spite of their superficial differences, they really +organize themselves. + +What follows is an endeavour in these directions. It is really a very +great task and can at the best be only tentatively done. Whoever +undertakes it may well begin by confessing his own limitations. +Contemporaneous appraisals of movements upon whose tides we ourselves +are borne are subject to constant revision. One's own prejudices, no +matter how strongly one may deal with them, colour one's conclusions, +particularly in the region of religion. The really vast subject matter +also imposes its own limitations upon even the most sincere student +unless he has specialized for a lifetime in his theme; even then he +would need to ask the charity of his readers. + +Ground has been broken for such an endeavour in many different +directions. Broadly considered, William James' "Varieties of Religious +Experience" was perhaps the pioneer work. Professor James' suggestive +analyses recognize the greatly divergent forms religious experience may +take and establish their right to be taken seriously as valid facts for +the investigator. The whole tendency of organized Christianity--and +Protestantism more largely than Catholicism--has been to narrow +religious experience to accepted forms, but religion itself is impatient +of forms. It has its border-lands, shadowy regions which lie between the +acceptance of what Sabatier calls "the religions of authority" on the +one hand and the conventional types of piety or practical goodness on +the other. Those who find their religion in such regions--one might +perhaps call them the border-land people--discover the authority for +their faith in philosophies which, for the most part, have not the +sanction of the schools and the demonstration of the reality of their +faith in personal experience for which there is very little proof except +their own testimony--and their testimony itself is often confused +enough. + +But James made no attempt to relate his governing conceptions to +particular organizations and movements save in the most general way. +His fundamentals, the distinction he draws between the "once-born" and +the "twice-born," between the religion of healthy-mindedness and the +need of the sick soul, the psychological bases which he supplies for +conversation and the rarer religious experiences are immensely +illuminating, but all this is only the nebulæ out of which religions are +organized into systems; the systems still remain to be considered. + +There has been of late a new interest in Mysticism, itself a border-land +word, strangely difficult of definition yet meaning generally the +persuasion that through certain spiritual disciplines--commonly called +the mystic way--we may come into a first-hand knowledge of God and the +spiritual order, in no sense dependent upon reason or sense testimony. +Some modern movements are akin to mysticism but they cannot all be +fairly included in any history of mysticism. Neither can they be +included in any history of Christianity; some of them completely ignore +the Christian religion; some of them press less central aspects of it +out of all proportion; one of them undertakes to recast Christianity in +its own moulds but certainly gives it a quality in so dealing with it +which cannot be supported by any critical examination of the Gospels or +considered as the logical development of Christian dogma. Here are +really new adventures in religion with new gospels, new prophets and new +creeds. They need to be twice approached, once through an examination of +those things which are fundamental in religion itself, for they have +behind them the power of what one may call the religious urge, and they +will ultimately stand as they meet, with a measure of finality, those +needs of the soul of which religion has always been the expression, or +fall as they fail to meet them. But since some limitation or other in +the types of Christianity which are dominant amongst us has given them +their opportunity they must also be approached through some +consideration of the Christianity against which they have reacted. +Unsatisfied needs of the inner life have unlocked the doors through +which they have made their abundant entry. Since they also reflect, as +religion always reflects, contemporaneous movements in Philosophy, +Science, Ethics and Social Relationship, they cannot be understood +without some consideration of the forces under whose strong impact +inherited faiths have, during the last half century, been slowly +breaking down, and in answer to whose suggestions faith has been taking +a new form. + +A rewarding approach, then, to Modern Religious Cults and Movements must +necessarily move along a wide front, and a certain amount of patience +and faith is asked of the reader in the opening chapters of this book: +patience enough to follow through the discussion of general principles, +and faith enough to believe that such a discussion will in the end +contribute to the practical understanding of movements with which we are +all more or less familiar, and by which we are all more or less +affected. + +G.G.A. + +_Detroit, Michigan._ + + + + +Contents + + +I. FORMS AND BACKGROUNDS OF INHERITED CHRISTIANITY 13 + +Certain Qualities Common to All Religions--Christianity +Historically Organized Around a +Transcendent God and a Fallen Humanity--The +Incarnation; the Cross the Supreme Symbol of +Western Theology--The Catholic Belief in +the Authority of an Inerrant Church--The +Protestant Church Made Faith the Key to +Salvation--Protestantism and an Infallibly Inspired +Bible--The Strength and Weakness of +This Position--Evangelical Protestantism the +Outcome--Individual Experience of the Believer +the Keystone of Evangelical Protestantism--Readjustment +of Both Catholic and +Protestant Systems Inevitable. + +II. NEW FORCES AND OLD FAITHS 46 + +The Far-reaching Readjustments of Christian +Faith in the Last Fifty Years--The Reaction of +Evolution Upon Religion--The Reaction of +Biblical Criticism Upon Faith--The Average +Man Loses His Bearings--The New Psychology--The +Influence of Philosophy and the +Social Situation--An Age of Confusion--The +Lure of the Short Cut--Popular Education--The +Churches Lose Authority--Efforts at Reconstruction--An +Age of Doubt and a Twilight-Zone +in History--The Hunger of the +Soul and the Need for Faith--Modern Religious +Cults and Movements: Their Three +Centers About Which They Have Organized +Themselves. + +III. FAITH HEALING IN GENERAL 82 + +The Bases of Faith and Mental Healing--Cannon's +Study of Emotional Reactions--The +Two Doors--The Challenge of Hypnotism--Changed +Attention Affects Physical States--The +Power of Faith to Change Mental Attitudes--Demon +Possession--The Beginnings of +Scientific Medicine--The Attitude of the Early +and Medieval Church--Saints and Shrines--Magic, +Charms, and the King's Touch: The +Rise of the Faith Healer. + +IV. THE APPROACH TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MARY BAKER EDDY 108 + +Mesmerism--The Scientific Investigation of +Mesmerism--Mesmerism in America; Phineas +Quimby an Important Link in a Long Chain--Quimby +is Led to Define Sickness as Wrong +Belief--Quimby Develops His Theories--Mary +Baker Eddy Comes Under His Influence--Outstanding +Events of Her Life: Her +Early Girlhood--Her Education: Shaping Influences--Her +Unhappy Fortunes. She is +Cured by Quimby--An Unacknowledged Debt--She +Develops Quimby's Teachings--Begins +to Teach and to Heal--Early Phases of +Christian Science--She Writes "Science and +Health" and Completes the Organization of +Her Church. + +V. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A PHILOSOPHY 136 + +Christian Science a Philosophy, a Theology, a +Religion and a System of Healing--The +Philosophic Bases of Christian Science--It +Undertakes to Solve the Problem of Evil--Contrasted +Solutions--The Divine Mind and +Mortal Mind--The Essential Limitations of +Mrs. Eddy's System--Experience and Life--Sense-Testimony--The +Inescapable Reality of Shadowed Experience. + +VI. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A THEOLOGY 163 + +Science and Health Offered as a Key to the +Scriptures--It Ignores All Recognized Canons +of Biblical Interpretation--Its Conception of +God--Mrs. Eddy's Interpretation of Jesus +Christ--Christian Science His Second Coming--Christian +Science, the Incarnation and the +Atonement--Sin an Error of Mortal Mind--The +Sacraments Disappear--The Real Power +of Christian Science. + +VII. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A SYSTEM OF HEALING AND A RELIGION 185 + +Christian Science the Application of Philosophy +and Theology to Bodily Healing--Looseness +of Christian Science Diagnosis--The +Power of Mental Environment--Christian +Science Definition of Disease--Has a Rich +Field to Work--A Strongly-Drawn System +of Psycho-therapy--A System of Suggestion--Affected +by Our Growing Understanding +of the Range of Suggestion--Strongest in +Teaching That God Has Meaning for the +Whole of Life--Exalts the Power of Mind; +the Processes--Is Not Big Enough for the +Whole of Experience. + +VIII. NEW THOUGHT 210 + +New Thought Difficult to Define--"The Rediscovery +of the Inner Life"--Spinoza's Quest--Kant +Reaffirms the Creative Power of Mind--Utilitarianism, +Deism and Individualism--The +Reactions Against Them--New England +Transcendentalism--New Thought Takes +Form--Its Creeds--The Range of the Movement--The +Key-Words of New Thought--Its +Field of Real Usefulness--Its Gospel of Getting +On--The Limitations and Dangers of Its +Positions--Tends to Become a Universal and +Loosely-Defined Religion. + +IX. THE RETURN OF THE EAST UPON WEST. +THEOSOPHY AND KINDRED CULTS 245 + +Historic Forces Carried Early Christianity +West and Not East--The West Rediscovers +the East; the East Returns Upon the West--Chesterton's +Two Saints--Why the West +Questions the East--Pantheism and Its Problems--How +the One Becomes the Many--Evolution +and Involution--Theosophy Undertakes +to Offer Deliverance--But Becomes +Deeply Entangled Itself--The West Looks to +Personal Immortality--The East Balances the +Accounts of Life in a Series of Reincarnations--Theosophy +Produces a Distinct Type of Character--A "Tour de Force" +of the Imagination--A Bridge of Clouds--The Difficulties +of Reincarnation--Immortality Nobler, Juster and +Simpler--Pantheism at Its Best--and Its Worst. + +X. SPIRITUALISM 284 + +The Genesis of Modern Spiritualism--It +Crosses to Europe--The Beginnings of Trance-Mediumship--The +Society for Psychical Research Begins Its Work--Confronts +Difficulties--William James Enters the Field--The +Limitations of Psychical Investigation--The Society +for Psychical Research Gives Intellectual Standing to +Spiritism--The Very Small Number of Dependable +Mediums--Spiritism a Question of Testimony and +Interpretation--Possible Explanations of Spiritistic +Phenomena--Myers' Theory of Mediumship--Telepathy--Controls--The +Dilemma of Spiritism--The Influence of Spiritism--The Real +Alternative to Spiritism--The Investigations of Émile +Boirac--Geley's Conclusions--The Meaning of Spiritism for +Faith. + +XI. MINOR CULTS: THE MEANING OF THE CULTS FOR THE CHURCH 326 + +Border-land Cults--Bahaism--The Bab and +His Successors--The Temple of Unity--General +Conclusions--The Cults Are Aspects of +the Creative Religious Consciousness of the +Age--Their Parallels in the Past--The Healing +Cults Likely to be Adversely Influenced by +the Scientific Organization of Psycho-therapy--New +Thought Will Become Old Thought--Possible +Absorption of the Cults by a Widening +Historic Christianity--Christianity Influenced +by the Cults--Medical Science and the +Healing Cults--A Neglected Force--Time and +the Corrections of Truth. + + + + +I + +THE FORMS AND BACKGROUNDS OF INHERITED CHRISTIANITY + + +Chronologically the point of departure for such a study as this is the +decade from 1880 to 1890. This is only an approximation but it will do. +It was a particularly decorous decade. There was no fighting save on the +outposts of colonial empires, the little wars of Soldiers Three and +Barrack Room Ballads--too far away for their guns to be heard in the +streets of capital cities, but lending a touch of colour to newspaper +head-lines and supplying new material for rising young writers. It was +the decade of triumphant Democracy and triumphant Science and triumphant +Industrialism and, among the more open-minded, of triumphant Evolution. +Western Civilization was sure of its forces, sure of its formulæ, sure +of its future; there were here and there clouds no bigger than a man's +hand against particularly luminous horizons, but there was everywhere a +general agreement that they would be dissolved by the force of benign +development. The world seemed particularly well in hand. + +The churches generally shared this confidence. Catholicism and +Protestantism had reached a tacit working agreement as to their spheres +of influence and were even beginning to fraternize a little. The +divisive force of Protestantism seemed to have spent itself. Since +Alexander Campbell--dead now for a decade and a half--no Protestant sect +of any importance had been established. The older denominations had +achieved a distinctive finality in organization and doctrine. Evolution +and Biblical criticism were generally the storm centers of controversy +and though these controversies were severe enough they produced no +schisms in the churches themselves. A few religious leaders were urging +a more thoroughgoing social interpretation and application of the +teachings of Jesus; such as these were really looked upon with more +suspicion than the propagandists of a liberal theology. + +We see now with almost tragic clearness that, beneath the surface of the +whole interrelated order of that tranquil afternoon of the Victorian +epoch, there were forces in action working toward such a challenge of +the accepted and inherited as cultures and civilizations are asked to +meet only in the great crises of history and bound to issue, as they +have issued in far-flung battle lines, in the overthrow of ancient +orders and new alignments along every front of human interest. It will +be the task of the historians of the future who will have the necessary +material in hand to follow these immense reactions in their various +fields and they will find their real point of departure not in dates but +in the human attitudes and outlooks which then made a specious show of +being final--and were not final at all. + +Just there also is the real point of departure for a study like this. We +may date the rise of modern religious cults and movements from the last +decades of the nineteenth century, but they are really reactions not +against a time but a temper, an understanding of religion and a group of +religious validations which had been built up through an immense labour +of travailing generations and which toward the end of the last century +were in the way of being more seriously challenged than for a thousand +years (and if this seems too strong a statement the reader is asked to +wait for at least the attempted proof of it). We shall have to begin, +then, with a state of mind which for want of a better name I venture to +call the representative orthodox religious consciousness of the end of +the nineteenth century. That this consciousness is Christian is of +course assumed. It is Protestant rather than Catholic, for Protestantism +has supplied the larger number of followers to the newer religious +movements. + +To begin with, this representative religious consciousness was by no +means simple. Professor James Harvey Robinson tells us that the modern +mind is really a complex, that it contains and continues the whole of +our inheritances and can be understood only through the analysis of all +the contributive elements which have combined to make it what it is and +that the inherited elements in it far outweigh more recent +contributions. The religious mind is an equally complex and deep-rooted +inheritance and can best be approached by a consideration of the bases +of religion. + + +_Certain Qualities Common to All Religions_ + +We are but pilgrims down roads which space and time supply; we cannot +account for ourselves in terms of what we know to be less than +ourselves, nor can we face the shadow which falls deeply across the end +of our way without dreaming, at least, of that which lies beyond. +Whence? Whither? and Why? are insurgent questions; they are voices out +of the depths. A very great development of intelligence was demanded +before such questions really took definite shape, but they are implicit +in even the most rudimentary forms of religion, nor do we outgrow them +through any achievement of Science or development of Philosophy. They +become thereby, if anything, more insistent. Our widening horizons of +knowledge are always swept by a vaster circumference of mystery into +which faith must write a meaning and beyond which faith must discern a +destiny. + +Religion begins, therefore, in our need so to interpret the power +manifest in the universe[1] as to come into some satisfying relationship +therewith. It goes on to supply an answer to the dominant +questions--Whence? Whither? Why? It fulfills itself in worship and +communion with what is worshipped. Such worship has addressed itself to +vast ranges of objects, fulfilled itself in an almost unbelievable +variety of rites. And yet in every kind of worship there has been some +aspiration toward an ideal excellence and some endeavour, moreover, of +those who worship to come into a real relation with what is worshipped. +It would need a detailed treatment, here impossible, to back up so +general a statement with the facts which prove it, but the facts are +beyond dispute. It would be equally difficult to analyze the elements in +human nature which lead us to seek such communion. The essential +loneliness of the soul, our sense of divided and warring powers and the +general emotional instability of personality without fitting objects of +faith and devotion, all contribute to the incurable religiosity of human +nature. + +[Footnote 1: I have taken as a working definition of Religion a phrase +quoted by Ward Fowler in the introduction to his Gifford Lectures on +"The Religious Experience of the Roman People." "Religion is the +effective desire to be in right relationship to the power manifesting +itself in the Universe." This is only a formula but it lends itself to +vital interpretations and is a better approach to modern cults, many of +which are just that endeavour, than those definitions of religion just +now current which define it as a system of values or a process of +evaluation.] + +The value which religion has for those who hold it is perhaps as largely +tested by its power to give them a real sense of communion with God as +by any other single thing, but this by no means exhausts the value of +religion for life. All religions must, in one way or another, meet the +need of the will for guidance and the need of the ethical sense for +right standards. Religion has always had an ethical content, simple +enough to begin with as religion itself was simple. Certain things were +permitted, certain things prohibited as part of a cult. These +permissions and prohibitions are often strangely capricious, but we may +trace behind taboo and caste and the ceremonially clean and unclean an +always emerging standard of right and wrong and a fundamental +relationship between religion and ethics. Religion from the very first +felt itself to be the more august force and through its superior +authority gave direction and quality to the conduct of its devotees. It +was long enough before all this grew into Decalogues and the Sermon on +the Mount and the latter chapters of Paul's great letters to his +churches and our present system of Christian ethics, but we discover the +beginning of the lordship of religion over conduct even in the most +primitive cults. + +We shall find as we go on that this particular aspect of religion is +less marked in modern religious cults and movements than either the +quest for a new understanding of God or new answers to the three great +questions, or the longing for a more satisfying communion with God. They +accept, for the most part, the generally held standards of Christian +conduct, but even so, they are beginning to develop their own ethical +standards and to react upon the conduct of those who hold them. + +As has been intimated, however, the appeal of religion goes far deeper +than all this. If it did no more than seek to define for us the "power +not ourselves" everywhere made manifest, if it did no more than answer +the haunting questions: Whence? and Whither? and Why?, if it did no more +than offer the emotional life a satisfying object of worship and +communion with the Divine, supplying at the same time ethical standards +and guiding and strengthening the will in its endeavour after goodness, +it would have done us an immense service. But one may well wonder +whether if religion did no more than this it would have maintained +itself as it has and renew through the changing generations its +compelling appeal. More strong than any purely intellectual curiosity +as to a first cause or controlling power, more haunting than any wonder +as to the source and destiny of life, more persistent than any +loneliness of the questing soul is our dissatisfaction with ourselves, +our consciousness of tragic moral fault, our need of forgiveness and +deliverance. This longing for deliverance has taken many forms. + +Henry Osborn Taylor in a fine passage has shown us how manifold are the +roads men have travelled in their quest for salvation.[2] "For one man +shall find his peace in action, another in the rejection of action, even +in the seeming destruction of desire; another shall have peace and +freedom through intellectual inquiry, while another must obey his God or +love his God and may stand in very conscious need of divine salvation. +The adjustment sought by Confucius was very different from that which +drew the mind of Plato or led Augustine to the City of God. Often quite +different motives may inspire the reasonings which incidentally bring +men to like conclusions.... The life adjustment of the early Greek +philosophers had to do with scientific curiosity.... They were not like +Gotama seeking relief from the tedious impermanence of personal +experience any more than they were seeking to insure their own eternal +welfare in and through the love of God, the motive around which surged +the Christian yearning for salvation. Evidently every religion is a +means of adjustment or deliverance." + +[Footnote 2: "Deliverance," pp. 4 and 5.] + +Professor James in his chapter on The Sick Souls deals most suggestively +with these driving longings and all the later analyses of the psychology +of conversion begin with the stress of the divided self. The deeper +teaching of the New Testament roots itself in this soil. The literature +of confession is rich in classic illustrations of all this, told as only +St. Augustine more than a thousand years ago or Tolstoy yesterday can +tell it. No need to quote them here; they are easily accessible for +those who would find for their own longings immortal voices and be +taught with what searching self-analysis those who have come out of +darkness into light have dealt with their own sick souls. + +Every religion has in some fashion or other offered deliverance to its +devotees through sacrifice or spiritual discipline, or the assurance +that their sins were atoned for and their deliverance assured through +the sufferings of others. All this, needless to say, involves not only +the sense of sin but the whole reach of life's shadowed experiences. We +have great need to be delivered not only from our divided selves but +from the burdens and perplexities of life. Religion must offer some +explanation of the general problem of sorrow and evil; it must, above +all, justify the ways of God with men. + +Generally speaking, religion is very greatly dependent upon its power so +to interpret the hard things of life to those who bear them that they +may still believe in the Divine love and justice. The generality of +doubt is not philosophical but practical. We break with God more often +than for any other reason because we believe that He has not kept faith +with us. Some of the more strongly held modern cults have found their +opportunity in the evident deficiency of the traditional explanation of +pain and sorrow. Religion has really a strong hold on the average life +only as it meets the more shadowed side of experience with the +affirmation of an all-conquering love and justice in which we may rest. + +Broadly considered, then, the elements common to all religions are such +as these: a satisfying interpretation of the power manifest in the +universe, the need of the mind for an answer to the questions Whence? +and Whither? and Why?, the need of the emotional life for such peace as +may come from the consciousness of being in right relationship and +satisfying communion with God, the need of the will and ethical sense +for guidance, and a need including all this and something beside for +spiritual deliverance. The representative religious consciousness of the +end of the nineteenth century in which we find our point of departure +for the religious reactions of the last generation naturally included +all this, but implicitly rather than explicitly. The intellectually +curious were more concerned with science and political economies than +the nature or genesis of religion, while the truly devout, who are not +generally given to the critical analysis of their faith, accepted it as +a Divine revelation needing no accounting for outside their Bible. +Moreover such things as these were not then and never can be held +abstractly. They were articulate in creeds and organized in churches +and invested with the august sanction of authority, and mediated through +old, old processes of religious development. + + +_Christianity Historically Organized Around the Conception of a +Transcendent God and a Fallen Humanity_ + +For in its historic development religion has naturally taken distinctly +divergent forms, conditioned by race, environment, the action and +reaction of massed experience and by the temper and insight of a few +supremely great religious leaders. But centrally, the whole development +of any religion has been controlled by its conception of God and, in the +main, three different conceptions of God give colour and character to +the outstanding historic religions. Pantheistic religions have thought +of God as just the whole of all that is; they widen the universe to the +measure of the Divine, or narrow the Divine to the operations of the +universe. Pantheism saturates its whole vague content with a mystical +quality of thought, and colours what it sees with its own emotions. The +religions of the Divine Immanence conceive God as pervading and +sustaining all that is and revealing Himself thereby, though not +necessarily confined therein. The religions of the Divine Transcendence +have believed in a God who is apart from all that is, who neither begins +nor ends in His universe, and from whom we are profoundly separated not +only by our littlenesses but by our sin. + +All this is a bare statement of what is almost infinitely richer as it +has been felt and proclaimed by the devout and we shall see as we go on +how the newer religious movements take also their colour and character +from a new emphasis upon the nature of God, or else a return to +understandings of Him and feelings about Him which have been lost out in +the development of Christianity. + +Historically Christian theology, particularly in the West, has centered +around the conception of a Transcendent God. As far as doctrine goes +Christianity took over a great inheritance from the Jew, for arrestingly +enough the Jew, though he belongs to the East, had never anything in +common with Eastern Pantheism. On the contrary we find his prophets and +lawgivers battling with all their force against such aspects of +Pantheism as they found about them. The God of the Old Testament is +always immeasurably above those who worshipped Him in righteousness and +power; He is their God and they are His chosen people, but there is +never any identification of their will with His except in the rare +moments of their perfect obedience. + +True enough, through the insight of the prophets and particularly the +experience of psalmists, this conception of the Apart-God became +increasingly rich in the persuasion of His unfailing care for His +children. None the less, the Hebrew God is a Transcendent God and +Christianity inherits from that. Christianity took over what Judaism +refused--Jesus Christ and His Gospel. But out of the immeasurable wealth +of His teaching apostolic thinking naturally appropriated and made most +of what was nearest in line with the prophets and the lawgivers of their +race. Judaism refused Christ but the Twelve Apostles were Jews and the +greatest of the group--St. Paul--was a Jewish Rabbi before he became a +Christian teacher. He had been nurtured and matured in the schools of +his people and though he was reborn, in renunciations and obediences +distinctly Christian, there were in his very soul inherited rigidities +of form in conformity to which he recast his faith. + +More distinctly than he himself could ever have known, he particularized +the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Doubtless his own experience was the deeper +directing force in all this. Theologies always, to begin with, are the +molten outpouring of some transforming experience and they are always, +to begin with, fluid and glowing. + +Such glowing experiences as these are hard to communicate; they, too, +soon harden down and we inherit, as cold and rigid form, what was to +begin with the flaming outcome of experience. St. Paul's own struggle +and the bitterness of a divided self which issued in his conversion +naturally gave content to all his after teaching. He worked out his +system strangely apart from the other group of disciples; he had +probably never heard a word of Christ's teaching directly from Christ's +lips; he naturally fell back, therefore, upon his Jewish inheritance and +widened that system of sacrifices and atonements until he found therein +not only a place for the Cross but the necessity for it. He made much, +therefore, of the sense of alienation from God, of sin and human +helplessness, of the need and possibility of redemption. + + +_The Incarnation as the Bridge Between God and Man; the Cross as the +Instrument of Man's Redemption. The Cross the Supreme Symbol of Western +Theology_ + +Here, then, are the two speculative backgrounds of historic +Christianity,--God's apartness from man in an inconceivable immensity of +lonely goodness, man's alienation from God in a helpless fallen estate. +For the bridging of the gulf between God and His world Christianity +offers the incarnation; for the saving of man from his lost estate +Christianity offers the Cross. The incarnation is the reëntry of God +into a world from which, indeed, according to the Christian way of +thinking, He has never been entirely separate, but from which He has, +none the less, been so remote that if ever it were to be rescued from +its ruined condition there was needed a new revelation of God in +humanity; and the Atonement is just the saving operation of God thus +incarnated. + +Eastern Christianity has made most of the incarnation. The great Greek +theologies were built around that. They exhausted the resources of a +language particularly fitted for subtle definition in their endeavour to +explain the mystery of it, and, after more than a century of bitter +debate about the nature and person of Christ, contented themselves with +affirming the reality both of the human and divine in His nature, +neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance, nor indeed +making clear in any truly comprehensible way the truth which they so +sought to define, or the faith to which they so passionately held. But +though their keen dialectic broke down under the burden they laid upon +it, they did, nevertheless, keep alive just that confidence in God as +one come into human life and sharing it and using it, without which +there would have been in all the faith and thinking of the West for more +than a thousand years an unbridged and unbridgeable gulf between God and +man. + +Indeed, when we turn back again to the great Greek symbols with that +conception of the immanence of God which the truer insights of our own +time have done so much to supply, we find these old forms and phrases +unexpectedly hospitable to our own interpretations. If the Western +Church had been more strongly influenced by the philosophical insight of +the early Eastern Church, Western Christendom might have been saved from +a good deal of that theological hardness from which great numbers are +just now reacting. + +But Western Christendom took the Cross for the central symbol of its +faith. What would have happened to Western Christendom without Augustine +we do not know, and it is idle to try to guess, but Europe in its +religious thinking followed for a thousand years the direction he gave +it. His theology is only the travail of his soul, glowing and molten. +His Confessions reveal to us more clearly than any other record we have +Paganism becoming Christian. In the travail of his spirit we see +something vaster than his own conversion, we see the formulation of new +spiritual experiences, the birth of new spiritual relationships, the +growth of new moral orders and consecrations. He bridges for us the +passages between Paganism and Christianity. He reveals what rebirth +meant for men to whom it was no convention but an agonizing recasting of +both the inner and outer life. He shows us what it meant to put aside +the inheritances and relationships of an immemorial order and to stand +as a little child untaught, undisciplined and unperfect in the presence +of the new. The spiritual attitude which Augustine attained was to be +for long the dominant spiritual attitude of Europe, was to govern +medieval conceptions, inspire medieval actions, colour with its flame +the mystic brooding of the medieval mind. + +In the end the sovereignty of God became for Augustine supreme and over +against this he set with strong finality man's hopeless fallen state. He +was doubtless in debt to St. Paul for these governing conceptions but +they took new character as they passed through the alembic of his own +experience. "The one pervading thought of the Greek fathers concerning +the redemptive work of Christ is that men are thereby brought into unity +with God. They do not hesitate to designate this unity to be as a +deification ... they dwell on the idea that we become partakers of the +Divine nature."[3] The emphasis here is not so much upon sin to be +atoned for or punishment to be avoided, as reconciliation to be +achieved. + +[Footnote 3: Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," p. 162.] + +After Augustine the interpretations of the Cross take a new direction. +Now men are thereby not so much to be made partakers of the divine +nature as to be saved from hell. The explanations of the way in which +this salvation is really achieved change with the changing centuries but +through shifting theologies there is one constant. All men are lost and +foredoomed to an eternal punishment from which they are saved only in +that Christ suffered for them and they, through their faith and +obedience, have availed themselves of His vicarious death. The varying +theological interpretations are themselves greatly significant as if +here were something whose meanings no single explanation could exalt, +something to be felt rather than understood. The Cross so seen is the +symbol at once of love and need, of moral defeat and moral discipline, +of suffering helplessness and overcoming goodness. We cannot overstate +the influence of this faith upon the better part of Western +civilization. + +It has kept us greatly humble, purged us of our pride and thrown us back +in a helplessness which is, after all, the true secret of our strength, +upon the saving mercy of God. The story of it, simply told, has moved +the hard or bitter or the careless as nothing else can do. Its +assurances of deliverance have given new hope to the hopeless and a +power not their own to the powerless. It has exalted as the very message +of God the patient enduring of unmerited suffering; it has taught us how +there is no deliverance save as the good suffer for the bad and the +strong put their strength at the service of the weak; it has taught us +that the greatest sin is the sin against love and the really enduring +victories for any better cause are won only as through the appeal of a +much enduring unselfishness new tempers are created and new forces are +released. Nor is there any sign yet that its empire has begun to come to +an end. + + +_The Catholic Church Offered Deliverance in Obedience to the Authority +of an Inerrant Church_ + +Nevertheless the preaching of the Cross has not commonly taken such +forms as these; it has been rather the appeal of the Church to the +individual to escape his sinful and hopeless estate either through an +obedient self-identification with the Church's discipline and an +unquestioning acceptance of the Church's authority, or else through an +intellectual acceptance of the scheme of redemption and a moral +surrender to it. Here are really the two lines of approach through the +one or the other of which Christianity has been made real to the +individual from the time of St. Paul till our own time. During the early +formative period of the Church it was a matter between the individual +and his God. So much we read in and between the lines of the Pauline +Epistles. As far as any later time can accurately recast the thought and +method of a far earlier time evangelical Protestant theology fairly +interprets St. Paul. Faith--a big enough word, standing for both +intellectual acceptance and a kind of mystic receptivity to the love and +goodness and justice of God revealed in the Cross of Christ--is the key +to salvation and the condition of Christian character. It is also that +through which religion becomes real to the individual. But since all +this lays upon the individual a burden hard enough to be borne (as we +shall see when we come back to Protestantism itself) the Church, as her +organization became more definite and her authority more strongly +established, took the responsibility of the whole matter upon herself. +She herself would become responsible for the outcome if only they were +teachable and obedient. + +The Catholic Church offered to its communicants an assured security, the +proof of which was not in the fluctuating states of their own souls but +in the august authority of the Church to which they belonged. As long, +therefore, as they remained in obedient communion with their Church +their souls were secure. The Church offered them its confessional for +their unburdening and its absolutions for their assurance, its +sacraments for their strengthening and its penances for their discipline +and restoration. It took from them in spiritual regions and maybe in +other regions too, the responsibility for the conduct of their own lives +and asked of the faithful only that they believe and obey. The Church, +as it were, "stepped down" religion to humanity. It did all this with a +marvellous understanding of human nature and in answer to necessities +which were, to begin with, essential to the discipline of childlike +peoples who would otherwise have been brought face to face with truths +too great for them, or dismissed to a freedom for which they were not +ready. + +It was and is a marvellous system; there has never been anything like it +and if it should wholly fail from amongst us there will never be +anything like it again. And yet we see that all this vast spiritual +edifice, like the arches of its own great cathedrals, locks up upon a +single keystone. The keystone of the arch of Catholic certainty is the +acceptance of the authority of the Church conditioned by belief in the +divine character of that authority. If anything should shake the +Catholic's belief in the authority of his Church and the efficacy of her +sacraments then he is left strangely unsheltered. Strongly articulated +as this system is, it has not been untouched by time and change. To +continue our figure, one great wing of the medieval structure fell away +in the Protestant Reformation and what was left, though extensive and +solid enough, is still like its great cathedrals--yielding to time and +change. The impressive force and unity of contemporaneous Catholicism +may lead us perhaps to underestimate the number of those in the Catholic +line who, having for one reason or another lost faith in their Church, +are now open to the appeal of the newer movements. For example, the +largest non-Catholic religious group of Poles in Detroit are +Russellites. There are on good authority between three and four thousand +of them. + + +_The Protestant Church Made Faith the Key to Salvation with Conversion +the Test for the Individual of the Reality of His Religious Experience_ + +If religion has been made real to the Catholic through the mediation of +his Church, Protestantism, seeking to recreate the apostolic Church, has +made the reality of religion a matter between the individual and his +God. And yet Protestantism has never dared commit itself to so simple a +phrasing of religion as this, nor to go on without authorities of its +own. Protestantism generally has substituted for the inclusive authority +of the Catholic Church the authority of its own creeds and fundamentally +the authority of the Bible. As far as creeds go Protestantism carried +over the content of Latin Christianity more largely than we have +generally recognized. Luther was in direct line with Augustine as +Augustine was in direct line with St. Paul, and Luther's fundamental +doctrine--justification by faith--was not so much a rewriting of ancient +creeds as a new way of validating their meaning for the individual. +Faith, in our common use of the term, has hardened down into an +intellectual acceptance of Protestant theologies, but certainly for St. +Paul and probably for Luther it was far more vital than this and far +more simple. It was rather a resting upon a delivering power, the +assurance of whose desire and willingness to deliver was found in the +New Testament. It was an end to struggle, a spiritual victory won +through surrender. + +The Latin Catholic system had come to impose upon such tempers as +Luther's an unendurable amount of strain; it was too complex, too +demanding, and it failed to carry with it necessary elements of mental +and spiritual consent. (St. Paul had the same experience with his own +Judaism.) What Luther sought was a peace-bringing rightness with God. He +was typically and creatively one of William James' "divided souls" and +he found the solution for his fears, his struggles and his doubts in +simply taking for granted that a fight which he was not able to win for +himself had been won for him in the transaction on the Cross. He had +nothing, therefore, to do but to accept the peace thus made possible and +thereafter to be spiritually at rest. + +Now since the whole of the meaning of the Cross for Christianity from +St. Paul until our own time is involved in this bare statement and since +our theologies have never been able to explain this whole great matter +in any doctrinal form which has secured universal consent, we must +simply fall back upon the statement of the fact and recognize that here +is something to be defined in terms of experience and not of doctrine. +The validating experience has come generally to be known as conversion, +and conversion has played a great part in evangelical Protestantism ever +since the Reformation. It has become, indeed, the one way in which +religion has been made real to most members of evangelical churches. So +sweeping a statement must be somewhat qualified, for conversion is far +older than Luther;[4] it is not confined to Protestantism and the +Protestant churches themselves have not agreed in their emphasis upon +it. Yet we are probably on safe ground in saying that religion has +become real to the average member of the average Protestant Church more +distinctly through conversion than anything else. + +[Footnote 4: But rather in the discipline of the Mystic as an enrichment +of the spiritual life than as a door to the Communion of the Church.] + +Conversion has of late come up for a pretty thoroughgoing examination by +the psychologists, and their conclusions are so generally familiar as +to need no restatement here. William James, in a rather informal +paragraph quoted from one of his letters, states the psychologist's +point of view more simply and vividly than either he or his disciples +have defined their position in their more formal works. "In the case of +conversion I am quite willing to believe that a new truth may be +supernaturally revealed to a subject when he really asks, but I am sure +that in many cases of conversion it is less a new truth than a new power +gained over life by a truth always known. It is a case of the conflict +of two self-systems in a personality up to that time heterogeneously +divided, but in which, after the conversion crisis, the higher loves and +powers come definitely to gain the upper hand and expel the forces which +up to that time had kept them down to the position of mere grumblers and +protesters and agents of remorse and discontent. This broader view will +cover an enormous number of cases psychologically and leaves all the +religious importance to the result which it has on any other theory."[5] + +[Footnote 5: Letters of William James, Vol. II, p. 57.] + +In Luther, Augustine and St. Paul, and a great fellowship beside, this +stress of the divided self was both immediate and intense. Such as these +through the consciousness of very real fault--and this is true of +Augustine and St. Paul--or through a rare spiritual sensitiveness and an +unusual force of aspiration--and this is true of many others--did not +need any conviction of sin urged upon them from the outside. They had +conviction enough of their own. But all these have been men and women +apart, intensely devout by nature, committed by temperament to great +travail of soul and concerned, above all, for their own spiritual +deliverance. But their spiritual sensitiveness is by no means universal, +their sense of struggle not a normal experience for another type of +personality. The demand, therefore, that all religious experience be +cast in their particular mould, and that religion be made real to every +one through the same travail of soul in which it was made real to them, +carries with it two very great dangers: first, that some semblance of +struggle should be created which does not come vitally out of +experience; and second, that the resultant peace should be artificial +rather than true, and therefore, should not only quickly lose its force +but really result in reactions which would leave the soul of the one so +misled, or better perhaps, so mishandled, emptier of any real sense of +the reality of religion than to begin with. + + +_Protestantism Found Its Authority in an Infallibly Inspired Bible_ + +Now this is too largely what has happened in evangelical Protestantism. +The "twice-born" have been set up as the standard for us all; they have +demanded of their disciples the same experience as those through which +they themselves have passed. Since this type of religious experience has +always been the more ardent and vivid, since the churches in which least +has been made of it have generally tended to fall away into routine and +some want of real power, we have had, particularly since Jonathan +Edwards in America and the Wesleys in England, a recurrent insistence +upon it as the orthodox type of religious experience. Partly through +inheritance and partly in answer to its own genius Protestantism has +built up a system of theology tending to reproduce the sequence of +conviction of sin, aspiration, repentance, and conversion by doctrinal +pressure from the outside. The foundations of it all are in the New +Testament and somewhat in the Old, but what has been built upon these +foundations has been either too extended or too one-sided. In order to +include in one general sense of condemnation strong enough to create an +adequate desire for salvation, all sorts and conditions of people, +theology has not only charged us up with our own sins which are always a +sad enough account, but it has charged us up with ancestral and imputed +sins. + +This line of theology has been far too rigid, far too insistent upon +what one may call the facts of theology, and far too blind to the facts +of life. It has made much of sin in the abstract and sometimes far too +little of concrete sin; it has made more of human depravity than social +justice; it has failed to make allowance for varieties of temper and +condition; it is partly responsible for the widespread reaction of the +cults and movements of our own time. + +Since so strongly an articulate system as this needed something to +sustain it, Protestantism has constantly supported itself in the +authority of the Old and New Testaments. It displaced one authority by +another, the authority of the Church by the authority of the Book, and +in order to secure for this authority an ultimate and unquestioned power +it affirmed as the beginning and the end of its use of the Scriptures +their infallibility. The growth of Protestant teaching about the Bible +has necessarily been complicated but we must recognize that Protestant +theology and Protestant tradition have given the Bible what one may call +read-in values. + +At any rate after affirming the infallibility of the text Protestantism +has turned back to the text for the proof of its teaching and so built +up its really very great interrelated system in which, as has already +been said, the power of religion over the life of its followers and the +reality of religion in the experiences of its followers locked up on +just such things as these: First, the experiences of conversions; +second, conversion secured through the processes of Protestant +indoctrination, backed up by the fervent appeal of the Protestant +ministry and the pressure of Protestant Church life; and third, all this +supported by an appeal to the authority of the Bible with a proof-text +for every statement. + +All this is, of course, to deal coldly and analytically with something +which, as it has worked out in religious life, has been neither cold nor +analytical. Underneath it all have been great necessities of the soul +and issuing out of it all have been aspirations and devoutnesses and +spiritual victories and new understandings of God and a wealth of love +and goodness which are a part of the imperishable treasures of humanity +for three centuries. This faith and experience have voiced themselves +in moving hymns, built themselves into rare and continuing fellowships, +gone abroad in missionary passion, spent themselves for a better world +and looked unafraid even into the face of death, sure of life and peace +beyond. But behind the great realities of our inherited religious life +one may discover assumptions and processes less sure. + + +_The Strength and Weakness of This Position_ + +Once more, this inherited faith in the Bible and the systems which have +grown out of it have been conditioned by scientific and philosophic +understandings. The Protestant doctrine of the infallibility of the +Bible assumed its authority not only in the region of religion but in +science and history as well. The inherited theologies really went out of +their way to give the incidental the same value as the essential. There +was no place in them for growth, correction, further revelation. This +statement may be challenged, it certainly needs to be qualified, for +when the time for adjustment and the need of adjustment really did come +the process of adjustment began to be carried through, but only at very +great cost and only really by slowly building new foundations under the +old. In fact the new is not in many ways the old at all, though this is +to anticipate. + +It is directly to the point here that the whole scheme of religion as it +has come down to us on the Protestant side till within the last fifty +years was at once compactly interwrought, strongly supported and +unexpectedly vulnerable. The integrity of any one part of its line +depended upon the integrity of every other part; its gospel went back +to the Fall of Man and depended, therefore, upon the Biblical theory of +the Creation and subsequent human history. If anything should challenge +the scientific or historical accuracy of the book of Genesis, the +doctrine of original sin would have either to be discarded or recast. If +the doctrine of original sin were discarded or recast, the accepted +interpretations of the Atonement went with it. With these changed or +weakened the evangelical appeal must either be given new character or +lose force. A system which began with the Fall on one side went on to +heaven and hell on the other and even heaven and hell were more +dependent upon ancient conceptions of the physical structure of the +world and the skies above it than the Church was willing to recognize. +The doctrine of eternal punishment particularly was open to ethical +challenge. + + +_Evangelical Protestantism the Outcome of the Whole Process_ + +Of course all this is rather an extreme statement of the situation fifty +years ago. The churches did not all agree in insisting upon a +conversion; some evangelic churches were beginning to place their +emphasis upon Christian nurture; they sought what is secured for the +emotionally twice-born through guided growth and a larger dependence +upon normal spiritual conditions, though they were at least one with +their brethren in believing that those who come into Christian +discipleship must in the end be greatly changed and conscious of the +change; they too must possess as an assurance of the reality of their +religious life a sense of peace and spiritual well-being. + +The high Anglican Church approached the Latin Catholic Church in its +insistence upon sacramental regeneration. This wing of the Church +believed and believes still that baptism truly administered and the Holy +Communion also administered in proper form and accepted in due obedience +by priests belonging to some true succession, possess a mystic saving +power. Just why all this should be so they are perhaps not able to +explain to the satisfaction of any one save those who, for one reason or +another, believe it already. But those who cannot understand +sacramentarianism may dismiss it far too easily, for though there be +here danger of a mechanical formulism, the sacraments themselves may +become part of a spiritual discipline through which the lives of men and +women are so profoundly changed as in the most clear case of conversion, +manifesting often a spiritual beauty not to be found in any other +conception of Christian discipleship. Our differences here are not so +great as we suppose them. + +There have always been liberal reactions within the Church herself, +tending either toward relaxation of discipline or the more rational and +simple statements of doctrine. What has been so far said would not be +true of Unitarianism and Universalism in the last century. But these +movements have been somehow wanting in driving power, and so, when all +these qualifications are made, evangelical Protestantism has resulted in +a pretty clearly recognizable type. The representative members of the +representative evangelical churches all had a religious experience; some +of them had been converted after much waiting at the anxious seat, or +long kneeling at the altar rail; others of them had been brought through +Christian teaching to the confession of their faith, but all of them +were thereby reborn. They were the product of a theology which taught +them their lost estate, offered them for their acceptance a mediatorial +and atoning Christ, assured them that through their faith their +salvation would be assured, and counselled them to look to their own +inner lives for the issue of all this in a distinct sense of spiritual +peace and well-being. If they doubted or questioned they were answered +with proof-texts; for their spiritual sustenance they were given the +services of their churches where preaching was generally central, and +exhorted to grow in grace and knowledge through prayer and much reading +of their Bible. + + +_The Individual Experience of the Believer the Keystone of Evangelical +Protestantism. Its Openness to Disturbing Forces_ + +Now fine and good as all this was it was, as the event proved, not big +enough to answer all the needs of the soul, nor strong enough to meet +the challenge of forces which were a half century ago shaping themselves +toward the almost entire recasting of great regions of human thought. It +was, to begin with, unexpectedly weak in itself. Evangelical +Protestantism, as has been noted, throws upon the members of Protestant +churches a larger burden of individual responsibility than does the +Catholic Church. The typical evangelical Protestant has had little to +sustain him in his religious life save his sense of reconciliation with +God, from whom possibly he never vitally thought himself to have been +estranged, and a consequent spiritual peace. + +His church promises him nothing except teaching, inspiration, +comradeship, an occasion for the confession of his faith and some +opportunity for service. His ministers are only such as he; they may +exhort but they dare not absolve. He is greatly dependent, then, for his +sense of the reality of religion upon his own spiritual states. If he is +spiritually sensitive and not too much troubled by doubt, if he +possesses a considerable capacity for religious understanding, if his +Bible is still for him the authoritative word of God, if his church +meets his normal religious needs with a reasonable degree of adequacy, +if he is resolute in purpose and if he has no excessively trying +experiences in the face of which his faith breaks down, and if the cares +of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, or the strain of poverty do +not too much distract him (and this is a long and formidable list of +ifs) then he is faithful in his church relationships and personally +devout. He grows in grace and knowledge and the outcome of it all is a +religious character admirable in manifold ways, steadfast and truthful +in good works. + + * * * * * + +The fact that in spite of all hindrances the Protestant churches do go +on, registering from decade to decade a varying statistical growth with +a strongly organized life and a great body of communicants who find in +the religious life thus secured to them the true secret of interior +peace and their true source of power, is itself a testimony to the +massive reality of the whole system. And yet the keystone of the great +structure is just the individual experience of the individual believer, +conditioned upon his longing for deliverance and his personal assurance +that he has found, through his faith in his church's gospel, what he +seeks. + +If anything should shake the Protestant's confidence in his creed or his +Bible, or if his own inner experiences should somehow fail in their +sense of sustaining reality, then all the structure of his religion +begins to weaken. + +If one may use and press a suggestive figure, here is a religious +structure very much like Gothic architecture; its converging arches of +faith and knowledge lock up upon their keystones and the thrust of the +whole great structure has been met and conquered by flying buttresses. +In other words, sustaining forces of accredited beliefs about science, +history and human nature have been a necessary part of the entire system +and the temple of faith thus sustained may be weakened either through +some failure in the keystone of it which is inner experience, or the +flying buttresses of it which are these accepted systems of science, +history, philosophy and psychology. + + +_Readjustment of Both Catholic and Protestant Systems Inevitable_ + +Out of such elements as these, then, through such inheritances and +disciplines the representative religious consciousness of American +Protestantism of the end of the nineteenth century had been created. It +rooted itself in elements common to all religion, it inherited +practically the whole content of the Old Testament, it invested Hebraic +systems of sacrifice with typical meanings and Jewish prophecy with a +mystic authority. It was in debt to St. Paul and Augustine for its +theology. Its cosmogony was 4,000 years old and practically uninfluenced +by modern science, or else at odds with it. It was uncritical in its +acceptance of the supernatural and trained on the whole to find its main +line of evidence for the reality of religion in the supernatural. It +made more of the scheme of deliverance which St. Paul found in the +Crucifixion of Jesus than the ethics of the Gospels. It was mystic in +its emphasis upon an inner testimony to the realities it offered. For +the Protestant it locked up unexpectedly upon the infallible authority +of the Bible and for the Catholic upon the inerrancy of the Church. It +was out of the current of the modern temper in science and philosophy +generally. Its conceptions of the probable fate of the world were Jewish +and of the future life were medieval, and perhaps the strangest thing in +it all was the general unconsciousness of its dependence upon +assumptions open to challenge at almost every point and the process of +profound readjustment upon the threshold of which it stood. + +It is almost impossible to disentangle the action of the two sets of +strain which have within the last half century been brought to bear upon +it. Each has reacted upon the other. Perhaps the best thing to do is to +consider the forces which for the last two generations have been +challenging and reshaping inherited faiths, and then to consider the +outcome of it all in the outstanding religious attitudes of our own +time. + + + + +II + +NEW FORCES AND OLD FAITHS + + +Within the last fifty years particularly the fundamentals of the +Christian faith have not only come up for reëxamination but have been +compelled to adapt themselves to facts and forces which have gone +farther toward recasting them than anything for a millennium and a half +before. The Reformation went deep but it did not go to the bottom. There +are differences enough in all reason between Protestantism and +Catholicism, but their identities are deeper still. The world of Martin +Luther and John Calvin was not essentially different in its outlook upon +life from the world of Augustine and Athanasius. The world of Jonathan +Edwards was much the same as the world of John Calvin and the world of +1850 apparently much the same as the world of Jonathan Edwards. There +was, of course, an immense difference in the mechanism with which men +were working but an unexpectedly small difference in their ruling ideas. + + +_The Readjustments of Christian Faith More Far-reaching in the Last +Fifty Years Than for a Thousand Years Before; Science Releases the +Challenging Forces_ + +We should not, of course, underestimate the contribution of the +Reformation to the breaking up of the old order. It left the theologies +more substantially unchanged than Protestantism has usually supposed, +but it did mark the rise of changed attitudes toward authority. The +reformers themselves did not accept without protest the spirit they +released. They imposed new authorities and obediences upon their +churches; they distrusted individual initiative in spiritual things and +the more democratic forms of church organization. John Calvin sought in +his Institutes to vindicate the law-abiding character of his new gospel; +Luther turned bitterly against the German peasants in their demand for a +most moderate measure of social justice; the Anglican leaders exiled the +Pilgrims; the Puritan drove the Quaker out of Boston through an +instinctive distrust of inward illumination as a safe guide for faith +and religious enthusiasm as a sound basis for a new commonwealth. But +the spirit was out of the bottle and could not be put back. + +The right of the individual to make his own religious inquiries and +reach his own religious conclusions was little in evidence for almost +two hundred years after the Reformation, partly because the reactions of +the post-Reformation period made the faithful generally content to rest +in what had already been secured, partly because traditional authority +was still strong, and very greatly because there was neither in history, +philosophy nor science new material upon which the mind might exercise +itself. We may take 1859, almost exactly two hundred years after the +final readjustments of the Reformation period, as the point of departure +for the forces which have so greatly modified our outlook upon our +world and our understanding of ourselves; not that the date is +clean-cut, for we see now how many things had already begun to change +before Darwin and the Origin of Species. + +Darwin's great achievement is to have suggested the formula in which +science and history have alike been restated. He had no thought at all +that what he was doing would reach so far or change so much. He simply +supposed himself, through patient and exhaustive study, to have +accounted for the rich variety of life without the supposition of a +special creation for each form. But the time was ripe and longing for +what he supplied and his hypothesis was quickly taken and applied in +almost every field of thought. Nor does it greatly matter that Darwinism +has been and may be still greatly modified. We have come under the spell +of evolution. Our universe is no longer a static thing; it is growing +and changing. Our imaginations are impressed by long sequences of +change, each one of them minute in itself but in the mass capable of +accounting for immense transformations. Darwin's initiative released the +scientific temper which has been the outstanding characteristic of our +own age. The physicist, the chemist and the biologist re-related their +discoveries in the light of his governing principle and supplied an +immense body of fact for further consideration. Geology was reborn, the +records of the rocks came to have a new meaning, every broken fossil +form became a word, maybe a paragraph, for the retelling of the past of +the earth. + +Astronomy supplied cosmic backgrounds for terrestrial evolution and +Physics became a kind of court of appeal for both. The physicist +proclaimed the conservation of energy, reduced seeming solidities to +underlying force and resolved force itself into ultimate and tenuous +unities. The processes thus discovered and related seemed to be +self-sufficient. No need to bring in anything from the outside; unbroken +law, unfailing sequence were everywhere in evidence. Where knowledge +failed speculation bridged the gap. One might begin with a nebula and go +on in unbroken sequence to Plato or Shakespeare without asking for +either material, law or force which was not in the nebula to begin with. +Man himself took his own place in the majestic procession; he, too, was +simply the culmination of a long ascent, with the roots of his being +more deeply in the dust than he had ever dreamed and compelled to +confess himself akin to what he had aforetime scorned. + + +_The Reaction of Evolution Upon Religion_ + +All our old chronologies became incidental in a range of time before +which even imagination grew dizzy. We found fragments of the skulls of +our ancestors in ancient glacial drifts and the traditional 6,000 years +since creation hardly showed on the dial upon which Geology recorded its +conclusions. There is no need to follow in detail how all this reacted +upon religion. The accepted religious scheme of things was an +intricately interlocking system irresistible in its logic as long as the +system remained unchallenged in its crucial points. If these should +begin to be doubted then the Christian appeal would have lost, for the +time at least, a most considerable measure of its force. The inner peace +which we have already seen to be the keystone of the Protestant arch +grew in part out of the sense of a universal condemnation from which the +believer was happily saved; this in turn was conditioned by the +unquestioned acceptance of the Genesis narrative. We can see clearly +enough now that Christianity, and Protestant Christianity especially, +really depended upon something deeper than all this. Still for the time +being all these things were locked up together and once the accepted +foundations of theology began to be questioned far-reaching adjustments +were inevitable and the time of readjustment was bound to be marked by +great restlessness and confusion. + +The evolutionary hypothesis profoundly affected man's thought about +himself. It challenged even more sharply his thought about God. Atheism, +materialism and agnosticism are an old, old trinity, but they had up to +our own time been at the mercy of more positive attitudes through their +inability to really answer those insurgent questions: Whence? Whither? +and Why? Creation had plainly enough demanded a creator. When Napoleon +stilled a group of debating officers in Egypt by pointing with a +Napoleonic gesture to the stars and saying, "Gentlemen, who made all +these?" his answer had been final. Paley's old-fashioned turnip-faced +watch with its analogies in the mechanism of creation had supplied an +irresistible argument for a creation according to design and a designing +creator. But now all this was changed. If Napoleon could have ridden +out from his august tomb, reassembled his officers from the dust of +their battlefields and resumed the old debate, the officers would have +been apparently in the position to answer--"Sire, they made themselves." +Our universe seemed to be sufficient unto itself. + +We have reacted against all this and rediscovered God, if indeed we had +ever lost Him, but this ought not to blind those who have accomplished +the great transition to the confusion of faith which followed the +popularization of the great scientific generalizations, nor ought it to +blind us to the fact that much of this confusion still persists. +Christian theism was more sharply challenged by materialism and +agnosticism than by a frankly confessed atheism. Materialism was the +more aggressive; it built up its own great system, posited matter and +force as the ultimate realities, and then showed to its own satisfaction +how everything that is is just the result of their action and +interaction. Nor did materialism pause upon the threshold of the soul +itself. Consciousness, so conceived, was a by-product of the higher +organization of matter, and we ourselves a spray flung up out of the +infinite ocean of being to sparkle for a moment in the light and then +fall back again into the depths out of which we had been borne. + +Those who so defined us made us bond-servants of matter and force from +birth to death though they drew back a little from the consequences of +their own creeds and sought to save a place for moral freedom and +responsibility and a defensible altruism. It is doubtful if they +succeeded. Materialism affected greatly the practical conduct of life. +It offered its own characteristic values; possession and pleasure became +inevitably enough the end of action, and action itself, directed toward +such ends, became the main business of life. Science offered so +fascinating a field for thought as to absorb the general intellectual +energy of the generation under the spell of it; the practical +application of science to mechanism and industry with the consequent +increase in luxury and convenience, absorbed the force of practical men. + +It naturally went hard with religion in a world so preoccupied. Its +foundations were assailed, its premises questioned, its conclusions +denied, its interests challenged. The fact that religion came through it +at all is a testimony both to the unconquerable force of faith and the +unquenchable need of the soul for something greater than the scientific +gospel revealed or the achievements of science supplied. + + +_The Reaction of Biblical Criticism Upon Faith_ + +The first front along which the older faith met the impact of new forces +was scientific; the second drive was at a more narrow but, as far as +religion goes, an even more strategic front. The Bible had to submit to +those processes of inquiry and criticism which had so greatly altered +the scientific outlook. The Old and New Testaments, as has been said, +supplied really the basal authority for the whole Protestant order, and +speaking merely as a historian one is well within the facts when one +says that even before the enlightenment of the last two generations the +traditional way of thinking about the Bible had not proved satisfactory. +The more free-minded were conscious of its contradictions; they could +not reconcile its earlier and later moral idealisms; they found in it as +much to perplex as to help them. Some of them, therefore, disowned it +altogether and because it was tied up in one bundle with religion, as +they knew religion, they disowned religion at the same time. Others who +accepted its authority but were unsatisfied with current interpretations +of it sought escape in allegorical uses of it. (We shall find this to be +one of the distinct elements in Christian Science.) But after all it did +answer the insistent questions, Whence? and Whither? and Why? as nothing +else answered them. Therefore, in spite of challenge and derelict faith +and capricious interpretations and forced harmonies it still held its +own. Directly science began to offer its own answers to Whence? and +Whither? and Why? curiosity found an alternative. Science had its own +book of genesis, its own hypothesis as to the creation of man, its own +conclusions as to his ascent. These had a marvellously emancipating and +stimulating power; they opened, as has been said, vast horizons; they +affected philosophy; they gave a new content to poetry, for the poet +heard in the silences of the night: + + "Æonian music measuring out + The steps of Time--the shocks of Chance-- + The blows of Death." + +The challenge of science to the book of Genesis specifically and to the +miraculous narratives with which both the Old and the New Testaments are +veined more generally, doubtless stimulated Biblical criticism, but the +time was ripe for that also. The beginnings of it antedate the +scientific Renaissance, but the freer spirit of the period offered +criticism its opportunity, the scientific temper supplied the method and +the work began. + +Inherited faith has been more directly affected by Biblical criticism +than by the result of scientific investigation and the generalizations +based thereon. The Bible had been the average man's authority in science +and history as well as faith. That statement naturally needs some +qualification, for before evolution took the field it was possible not +only to reconcile a fair knowledge of the natural sciences with the +Bible, but even, as in the argument for design, to make them +contributory to Bible teaching. But evolution changed all that and it +was really through the impact of the more sweeping scientific +conclusions upon his Bible that the average man felt their shock upon +his faith. If he had been asked merely to harmonize the genesis of the +new science with the genesis of the Old Testament he would have had +enough to occupy his attention, though perhaps he might have managed it. +The massive mind of Gladstone accomplished just that to its own entire +satisfaction. + +But the matter went deeper. A wealth of slowly accumulated knowledge was +brought to bear upon the Scriptures and a critical acumen began to +follow these old narratives to their sources. There is no need here to +follow through the results in detail. They[6] were seen to have been +drawn from many sources, in some cases so put together that the joints +and seams were plainly discernible. One wonders how they had so long +escaped observation. The Bible was seen to contain contributory elements +from general ancient cultures; its cosmogony the generally accepted +cosmogony of the time and the region; its codes akin to other and older +codes. It contained fragments of old songs and the old lore of the +common folk. It was seen to record indisputably long processes of moral +growth and spiritual insight. Its prophets spoke out of their time and +for their time. It was plainly enough no longer an infallible dictation +to writers who were only the automatic pens of God, it was a growth +rooted deep in the soil out of which it grew and the souls of those who +created it. The fibres of its main roots went off into the darkness of a +culture too long lost ever to be quite completely understood. It was no +longer ultimate science or unchallenged history. + +[Footnote 6: The Old Testament narratives particularly. The results of +New Testament criticism have not yet fully reached the popular mind.] + +We have come far enough now to see that nothing really worth while has +been lost in this process of re-interpretation, and much has been +gained. If, as the French say in one of their luminous proverbs, to +understand is to pardon, to understand is also to be delivered from +doubts and forced apologies and misleading harmonies and the necessity +of defending the indefensible. In our use of the Bible, as in every +other region of life, the truth has made us free. It possesses +still--the Bible--the truth and revelation and meaning for life it +always possessed. We are gradually realizing this and gaining in the +realization. But the Bible has been compelled to meet the challenge of +an immensely expanded scientific and historical knowledge. We have had +to test its supposed authority as to beginnings by Astronomy, Geology +and Biology; we have had to test its history by the methods and +conclusions of modern historical investigation. The element of the +supernatural running through both the Old and New Testaments has been +compelled to take into account that emphasis upon law and ordered +process which is, perhaps more than any other single thing, the +contribution of science to the discipline of contemporaneous thought. + + +_The Average Man Loses His Bearings_ + +The whole process has been difficult and unsettling. There was and is +still a want of finality in the conclusions of Biblical scholars. It +needed and needs still more study than the average man is able to give +to understand their conclusions; it needed and it needs still a deal of +patient, hard, clear-visioned thinking to win from the newer +interpretations of the Bible that understanding and acceptance of its +value which went with the inherited faith. The more liberal-minded +religious teachers doubtless very greatly overestimate the penetration +of popular thought already accomplished, by what seems to them a +familiar commonplace. The New Testament is still, even for the scholar, +a challenging problem. Conclusions are being bitterly contested and +where the specialist is himself in doubt the average man is naturally in +utter confusion. The more conservative communions neither accept nor +teach the results of the higher criticism, and so it reaches the body of +their communicants only as rumour and a half-understood menace to the +truth. + +Religion is naturally the most conservative thing in the world and even +when we think ourselves to have utterly changed our point of view +something deeper than mere intellectual acceptance protests and will not +be dismissed. We pathetically cling to that to which we, at the same +time, say good-bye. The average man somewhat affected by the modern +scientific spirit is greatly perplexed by the miraculous elements in the +Bible and yet he still believes the Bible the word of God with an +authority nothing else possesses. In fact, by a contradiction easy +enough to understand, what puzzles him most seems to him the clearest +evidence of the supernatural character of the narrative itself. His +religion is not so much the interpretation of what he does understand as +the explanation of what he does not understand. If he gives up the +supernatural his faith goes with it, and yet the other side of him--the +scientifically tempered side--balks at the supernatural. + +It is hard to know what to do with such a temper. Indeed, just this +confused temper of believing and doubting, with miracles for the storm +center, has offered a rich field for those interpretations of the +miraculous, particularly in the New Testament, in terms of faith and +mental healing, to which Christian Science and New Thought are so much +given. We may conclude in a sentence by saying that since the +infallibility of the Bible was one of the flying buttresses which upheld +the inherited structure of religion, those changes and confusions which +have grown out of two generations of Biblical criticism have greatly +affected the popular faith. + + +_The New Psychology Both a Constructive and Disturbing Influence_ + +A third influence tending to break up the stability of the old order has +been the new psychology. So general a statement as this needs also to be +qualified, for, suggestively enough, the new psychology has not so much +preceded as followed the modern multiplication of what, using James' +phrase, we may call the "Varieties of Religious Experience." It has +been, in part, a widening of our conclusions as to the mind and its +processes to make room for the puzzling play of personality which has +revealed itself in many of these experiences. Hypnotism necessarily +antedated the interest of psychology in the hypnotic state; it compelled +psychology to take account of it and for the explaining of hypnotism +psychology has been compelled to make a new study of personality and its +more obscure states. The psychologists have been far more hospitable to +the phenomena of mental healing than have the faculties of medicine. +They took them seriously before the average doctor would even admit that +they existed. Their study led them to a pretty thoroughgoing +consideration of the power of suggestion upon bodily states, and +eventually to formulate, as they have been able, both the laws of +suggestion and the secret of its power. Telepathy and psychic phenomena +generally have also offered a rich field to the student of the abnormal +and psychology has broadened its investigations to include all these +conditions. That is to say, the border-land phenomena of consciousness +as stressed and manifested in the more bizarre cults have really +supplied the material upon which the new psychology has been working, +and the psychologist to-day is seriously trying to explain a good many +things which his predecessors, with their hard and fast analyses of the +mind and its laws, refused to take seriously. + +They concede that a complete psychology must have a place in it for the +abnormal as well as the normal, and for the exceptional as well as for +the staid and universally accepted. Those who have been fathering new +religions and seeking to make the abnormal normal have been quick to +avail themselves of the suggestions and permissions in the new +psychology. Once we have crossed the old and clearly defined frontiers, +almost anything seems possible. Personality, we are now taught, is +complex, far-reaching, and is really, like a floating iceberg, more +largely below the sea level of consciousness than above it. How far it +extends and what connections it makes in these its hidden depths, no one +of us may know. Normal consciousness, to change the figure, is just one +brilliantly illuminated center in a world of shadow deepening into +darkness. The light grows more murky, the shadows more insistent, as we +pass down, or out, or back from that illumined center. We cannot tell +how much of the shadow is really a part of us, nor do we dare to be +dogmatic about what may, or may not, there be taking place. + +Indeed, we may fill the shadows with almost anything which caprice or +desire may suggest. Our curiously inventive minds have always loved to +fill in our ignorances with their creations. We formerly had the +shadowed backgrounds of the universe to populate with the creatures of +our fear or fancy, but now, strangely enough, since science has let in +its light upon the universe psychology has given us the subconscious as +a region not yet subdued to law or shot through with light. And the +prophets of new cults and border-land movements have taken advantage of +this. "Since there is," they say in substance, "so much in life of which +we are not really conscious, and since there are hints within us of +strange powers, how can we set limits to what we may either be or do, +and may not one man's caprice be as reasonable as another man's reason?" + +The popularization of the new psychology has thus created a soil finely +receptive to the unusual. Without understanding what has been +accomplished in the way of investigation, and with little accurate +knowledge of what has actually been tested out, there is amongst us a +widespread feeling that almost anything is possible. Here also we may +end in a sentence by saying that present-day psychology with its wide +sweep of law, its recognition of the abnormal, its acceptance of and +insistence upon the power of suggestion, its recognition of the +subconscious and its tendency to assign thereto a great force of +personal action, has broken down old certainties and given a free field +to imagination. It has, more positively, taught us how to apply the laws +of mental action to the more fruitful conduct of life, and so supplied +the basis for the cults which make much of efficiency and +self-development. It has also lent new meaning to religion all along the +line. + + +_The Influence of Philosophy and the Social Situation_ + +How far contemporaneous philosophy has affected inherited faith or +supplied a basis for new religious development, is more difficult to +say. Beyond debate philosophic materialism has greatly influenced the +religious attitude of multitudes of people just as the reactions against +it have supplied the basis for new religious movements. Pragmatism, +affirming that whatever works is true, has tended to supply a +philosophic justification for whatever seems to work, whether it be true +or not, and it has beside tended to give us a world where little islands +of understandings have taken, as it were, the place of a continuous +continent of truth. The tendencies of the leaders of new cults have been +to take the material which science and psychology have supplied and +build them into philosophies of their own; they have not generally been +able or willing to test themselves by the conclusions of more +disciplined thinkers. + +New Thought has undoubtedly been affected by the older +idealisms--Berkeley's for example--while James and Royce have supplied +congenial material. The movements are generally selective. New Thought +uses James' applied psychology and possibly Royce's Absolute, but does +not consistently confine itself to any one system. Philosophy also has +been itself of late working in a pretty rarified region. Its problems +have not been the problems of the common mind. It has been trying to +find out how we know, to relate the inner and the outer world, and in +general to account for things which the average man takes for granted, +and in the understanding of which he is more hindered than helped by the +current philosophy of the schools. It takes philosophy a good while to +reach the man in the street, and even then its conclusions have to be +much popularized and made specific before they mean much for him. We +shall know better fifty years from now what philosophy is doing for +religion and life than we know to-day. There are, however, as has been +said, aspects of philosophy which religion generally is beginning to +take into account. + +The failure of Christianity to create for itself a distinctly Christian +environment has also had much to do with dissolving old religious +stabilities. Strongly felt social injustices are releasing forces of +discontent and creating a fertile soil for revolutionary experiment, +though it must be said that modern religious cults and movements have +not gained so much from this particular form of discontent as have those +movements which look toward radical social readjustment. But the whole +situation has created a shaken state of public opinion. The fierceness +of modern competition, industrially and economically, finally carried +through to the tragic competition of a world war, has put our tempers on +edge. The extremes of wealth and poverty and the baffling fluctuations +in modern industry have brought the existing order into disrepute. The +very great number of the socially unfit and the grievous number of +social misfits, along with crime and poverty and the deposit of human +sediment in our cities, not only trouble men of good will but create a +human element easily misled. Such conditions as these are in such +painful contrast with the ideals of the Gospel, the spirit of +Christianity and even the potential productive force of modern society +as to lead many to believe that something is radically wrong. Many are +persuaded that Christianity as now organized and led is socially +sterile; they have withdrawn themselves from the church; many of them +have become its mordant critics; the more extreme of them have disowned +religion as well as its organized form, and the violently radical would +dethrone any conception of the Divine and take the word God out of our +vocabulary. This extreme group has not for the most part associated +itself with the new religious movement, but here at least has been a +disintegrating force. + + +_An Age of Confusion_ + +In such ways as these, then, the accepted religious order identified +with historic Catholicism and Protestantism has in the last fifty years +been greatly altered. Science, Biblical criticism, psychology and +philosophy, and social unrest have all had their share in making people +impatient of the inherited order, or doubtful or defiant of it. We have +been asked to relate our old creeds and confidences to new insights and +understandings. The old answers to the questions Whence? and Whither? +and Why? have been challenged by new answers; our horizons have been +pushed back in every direction and a strange sense of mystery both in +personality and the external order has perplexed and stimulated us. +Along with all this and in no little way growing out of it, has gone +impatience of discipline and an undue haste to gain the various goods of +life. + +Evolution misled us, to begin with. If the longing for deliverance be +one of the driving forces in religious life, then the vaster scientific +conclusions of the latter part of the nineteenth century offered a new +definition of deliverance. It was not, after all, so much in the travail +of the soul as in a serene and effortless self-commitment to a power, +not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, that we were to be saved. +We had only to push out upon tides which asked of us neither rudder nor +oar, to be brought to our appointed havens. How greatly we have been +disillusioned in all this and how bitterly we have been taught that life +is not so much a drifting with the tide as making brave headway against +it, we all know well enough to-day. Somewhere back of a vast deal in +these modern religious cults and movements, is the smug optimism, now +taking one form and now another, which was the misleading bequest of +the nineteenth century to the twentieth. + +The great scientific discoveries and their application to the mechanism +of life led the nineteenth century to believe that nothing was +impossible. Everything we touched became plastic beneath our touch save +possibly ourselves; there seemed to be no limit to what man might do and +he consequently assumed that there was no limit to what he might become. +He disassociated his hopes from both his disciplines and experiences; +everything seemed not only possible but easily possible. A general +restlessness of temper, due in part to the breaking up of the inherited +order, in part to the ferment of new ideas and in part to a general +relaxing of discipline, began to manifest itself. + +The demoralizing influence of migratory populations ought not to be +overlooked in this connection. In all the Western nations there has been +an outstanding growth of industrial city populations due to changing +economic conditions. The steadying influences of old environments have +been lost, the influence of the new environment is too stimulating at +its best and demoralizing at its worst. Our cities are not kind to home +life; too often they do not supply a proper physical setting for it. The +specialization of hard driven industries takes the creative joy out of +work and leads to an excess of highly commercialized pleasure. The +result is the modern city worker, never living long enough in one place +to create for himself a normal social environment, always anxious about +his economic future, restless, too largely alternating between +strenuous work and highly coloured pleasure and much open, through +temperament and circumstance, to the appeal of whatever promises him a +new experience or a new freedom. + + +_The Lure of the Short Cut_ + +Dean Inge in a recent study of the contribution of the Greek temper to +religion has drawn a strong, though deeply shadowed picture of the +disorganization of modern life through such influences as these. "The +industrial revolution has generated a new type of barbarism, with no +roots in the past. For the second time in the history of Western Europe, +continuity is in danger of being lost. A generation is growing up, not +uneducated, but educated in a system which has little connection with +European culture in its historical development. The Classics are not +taught; the Bible is not taught; history is not taught to any effect. +What is even more serious, there are no social traditions. The modern +townsman is _déraciné_: he has forgotten the habits and sentiments of +the village from which his forefathers came. An unnatural and unhealthy +mode of life, cut off from the sweet and humanizing influences of +nature, has produced an unnatural and unhealthy mentality, to which we +shall find no parallels in the past. Its chief characteristic is +profound secularity or materialism. The typical town artisan has no +religion and no superstitions; he has no ideals beyond the visible and +tangible world of senses."[7] + +[Footnote 7: "The Legacy of Greece," p. 38.] + +Writing as an Englishman Dean Inge did not note the equally unsettling +influence of migratory races. The European peasant in Detroit or Chicago +or New York is still more _déraciné_. He has not only left the soil in +whose culture his ancestors had been established for generations, he has +left the tradition and the discipline which have made him what he is. +The necessary readjustments are immensely difficult. For the first +generation they are largely a dumb puzzle, or a dull, aching +homesickness or a gray laborious life whose outcome must be often +strangely different from their dreams, but for the second generation the +whole experience is a heady adventure in freedom not easy to analyze +though social workers generally are agreed that the children of the +immigrant, belonging neither to the old nor the new, are a disturbing +element in American life. A city like Detroit, in which this is being +written, where both movements combine, the American country and village +dweller coming to a highly specialized industrial center and the +European immigrant to an entirely new environment, illustrates the +complex issue of the whole process. + +It is just to note that the Catholic immigrant, finding in his Church +the one homelike thing, is often a better Catholic in America than he +was at home. A Protestant writer without accurate information would not +dare to generalize on the religious dislocation of the second Catholic +generation. But there must be a very great loss. The large non-churched +elements in our population must be in part due to Catholic +disintegration as they are certainly due to Protestant disintegration. +And new movements find their opportunity in this whole group. In +general, society, through such influences, has grown impatient of +discipline, scornful of old methods, contemptuous of experience and +strangely unwilling to pay the price of the best. The more unstable have +surrendered themselves to the lure of the short cut; they are persuaded +that there are quick and easy roads to regions of well-being which had +before been reached only through labour and discipline and much travail +of body, mind and soul. + + +_Popular Education Has Done Little to Correct Current Confusions_ + +Nor has the very great extension of popular education really done much +to correct this; it seems rather to intensify it, for education shared +and shares still the temper of the time. Our education has been more +successful generally in opening vistas than in creating an understanding +of the laws of life and the meaning of experience; it has given us a +love of speculation without properly trained minds; it has furnished us +with the catch words of science and philosophy but has not supplied, in +the region of philosophy particularly, the corresponding philosophic +temper. It has, above all, been fruitful in unjustified self-confidence, +particularly here in America. We have confused a great devotion to +higher education and the widespread taking of its courses with the solid +fruition of it in mental discipline. America particularly has furnished +for a long time now an unusual opportunity for bizarre and capricious +movements. Nothing overtaxes the credulity of considerable elements in +our population. Whatever makes a spacious show of philosophy is sure to +find followers and almost any self-confident prophet has been able to +win disciples, no matter to what extremes he goes. + +This has not been equally true of older civilizations with a more +clearly defined culture or a more searching social discipline. Something +must be lacking in the education of a people in which all this is so +markedly possible. The play of mass psychology (one does not quite dare +to call it mob psychology) also enters into the situation. Democracy +naturally makes much of the verdict of majorities. Any movement which +gains a considerable number of adherents is pretty sure to win the +respect of the people who have been taught to judge a cause by the +number of those who can be persuaded to adopt it. This generally +unstable temper, superficial, restless, unduly optimistic, open to +suggestion and wanting in the solid force of great tradition has joined +with the recasting of Science, Theology, Psychology and Philosophy, to +open the door for the entrance of new religions, and in general, to so +unsettle the popular mind as to make almost anything possible. + + +_The Churches Lose Authority_ + +In the field of religion certain well-defined consequences have either +followed or accompanied the whole process. There has been, to begin +with, a loosening of church ties. The extent of all this has been +somewhat covered up by the reasonable growth of the historic churches. +In spite of all the difficulties which they have been called upon to +face, the statistics generally have been reassuring. The churches are +attended in the aggregate by great numbers of people who are untroubled +by doubts. Such as these have little sympathy with the more restless or +troubled, and little patience with those who try to understand the +restless and troubled; they do not share the forebodings of those who +look with a measure of apprehension upon the future of Christianity. As +far as they recognize disturbing facts at all they are very much like +Carlyle who, when told that Christianity was upon its last legs, said, +"What of that? Christianity has always been upon its last legs." And +perhaps their simple faith and hope are more to the point than many +opposing attitudes. The churches have grown faster than the population, +or at least they had at the last census. More than that, there has been +a marked increase in church activity. The churches are better organized; +they are learning the secret of coöperation; they are reaching out in +more directions and all of them, even the more democratic, are more hard +driven from the top. + +The result of all this has been a great show of action, though it is +difficult now to say whether the real results of this multiplied +activity have been commensurate in spiritual force and ethical fruitage +with the intensity of their organized life. (The writer thinks not.) But +through all this we discern, nevertheless, a marked weakening of +authority as far as the Church goes and a general loosening of ties; +though the churches in the regions of finance and organization drive +harder than they used to drive, in the matter of creed and conduct they +are driving with an easy rein. Denominational loyalties are relaxed; +there is much changing from one denomination to another and within the +denominations and individual churches there is, of course, a substantial +proportion of membership which is only nominal. + + +_Efforts at Reconstruction Within the Church_ + +There are those who view with apprehension the whole future of religion. +They believe that the foundations of the great deep are breaking beneath +us, that Christianity must be profoundly recast before it can go on +prevailingly, and they are reaching in one direction and another for +constructive changes, but all this within the frontiers of historic +Christianity and the Church. They want church unity but they still want +a church; they want a new theology but still a theology; they want new +applications of religion but still substantially the old religion. There +was more of this during the war than just now. Such a book as Orchard's +"Future of Religion," perhaps the most thoughtful analysis of conditions +given us for a long time, was born of the war itself and already many of +its anticipations seem to miss the point. Such expectations of wholesale +religious reconstruction leave out of account the essential conservatism +of human nature, a conservatism more marked in religion than anywhere +else. + +There is also a strong and telling group which is seeking so to recast +and interpret inherited faiths as to make them more consonant to modern +needs and more hospitable to new understandings. Such as these have +accepted gladly the tested conclusions of science, the results of +Biblical criticism and the revealing suggestion of both psychology and +philosophy; they have sought to disentangle the essential from the +unessential, the enduring from the transient. They have found in science +not the foe but the friend of religion. Those intimations of unfailing +force, those resolutions of the manifold phases of action and reality +toward which science is reaching have seemed to them a discovery of the +very presence and method of God, and they have found in just such +regions as these new material for their faith. They have dealt +reverently with the old creeds, for they have seen that the forms which +Christianity has taken through the centuries have grown out of enduring +experiences and needs never to be outgrown, and that their finality is +the finality of the deep things of the soul itself. They have been able, +therefore, to make new truth tributary to old faith and to interpret the +central affirmations of Christianity in terms of present-day facts. They +have sought to share their conclusions with others and they have really +been able to carry Christianity through the transitional period of the +last fifty years and continue it open-minded, strongly established, +reverent and enriched rather than impoverished. + +What they have done has been doubly hard, once through the sheer +difficulty of the task itself, and once through the hostile and too +often abusive temper with which they and their endeavours have been +opposed. None the less, they have saved for Christendom a reasonable +faith. Science has of late gone half-way to meet them. It is rather +painfully revising a good many of its earlier conclusions and on the +whole walking rather humbly just now before its God, recognizing that +the last word has not yet really been said about much of anything. + + +_An Age of Doubt and a Twilight-Zone in History_ + +But the apparently unchanged traditions of the older forms of faith and +the relatively strong position of the Church must not blind us to the +generally disorganized condition of religion to-day. There is much in +evidence a body of doubt which clouds the outlook of multitudes upon +religion generally. Beyond debate a kind of eclipse of faith began to +draw across the Western world so early as the middle of the last +century. The militant skepticism of the brilliant group of younger poets +who sang their defiances in the first two decades of the nineteenth +century to a world which professed itself duly shocked, is wholly +different from the sadness with which the more mature singers of two +generations later announce their questioning and their disillusionment. +The difference is just the difference between Shelley and Matthew +Arnold. There is a philosophic depth in this later music which the +former wholly lacked. Arnold speaks for his time when he announces +himself as standing between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to +be born. A profound disillusionment expressed itself in great ranges of +later nineteenth century literature and confirmed the more sensitive and +despairing in a positive pessimism, strangely contrasted to the +self-assertive temper of the science and industry of the period. It +would need a pretty careful analysis to follow all this to its roots. +Something of it no doubt was due to the inability of poet and +philosopher to reconcile their new understanding of life and the +universe with the old religious forms but more of it was likely due to +some deep exhaustion of spiritual force, an exhaustion which has from +time to time marked transitional periods in the development of cultures +and civilizations. + +There have always been twilight zones in history, times in which the +force of the old had spent itself and nothing new had come to take its +place. We are beginning to see now that we too have been passing through +a twilight zone whose contrasts are all the more dramatic through the +more than tropic swiftness with which the high lights of the Victorian +period darkened into the distractions and disillusionments of our own +time. The best one can say is that there was on the part of the more +sensitive a widespread anticipation of all this, as if the chill of a +coming shadow had fallen first of all upon them, and beyond debate, not +a little of the doubt which has been so marked a feature of the last two +generations in literature generally, and in the attitude of a great +number of people toward religion, has been due to just this. + + +_The Hunger of the Soul and the Need for Faith Persist_ + +And yet, since religion is so inextinguishable a thing, changing forces +and attitudes have still left untouched the hunger of the soul and the +need of men for faith. Indeed the very restlessness of the time, the +breaking up of the old orders, the failure of the old certainties, has, +if anything, deepened the demand for religious reality and there has +been in all directions a marked turning to whatever offered itself as a +plausible substitute for the old, and above all a turning to those +religions which in quite clearly defined ways promise to demonstrate the +reality of religion through some sensible or tangible experience. If +religion will only work miracles and attest itself by some sign or other +which he who runs may read there is waiting for it an eager +constituency. We shall find as we go on how true this really is, for the +modern religious cult which has gained the largest number of followers +offers the most clearly defined signs and wonders. + +If religion cures your disease and you are twice persuaded, once that +you really are cured and once that religion has done it, then you have +something concrete enough to satisfy anybody. Or if, perplexed by death +and with no faith strong enough to pierce that veil through a persuasion +of the necessity of immortality established in the very nature of +things, you are offered a demonstration of immortality through the +voices and presences of the discarnate, then, once more, you have +something concrete enough, if only you were sure of it, to settle every +doubt. And finally, if the accepted religions are too concrete for you +and if you desire a rather vague and poetic approach to religion made +venerable by the centuries and appealingly picturesque through the +personalities of those who present it, you have in some adaptation of +oriental faith to occidental needs a novel and interesting approach to +the nebulous reality which passes in the Eastern mind for God, an +approach which demands no very great discipline and leaves a wide margin +for the play of caprice or imagination. + + +_Modern Religious Cults and Movements Find Their Opportunity in the +Whole Situation. The Three Centers About Which They Have Organized +Themselves_ + +There has been, then, as the outcome of the complex of forces which we +have been considering, a new approach to religion distinctive in our own +time and in general taking three directions determined by that against +which it has reacted, or perhaps more positively by the varying +character of what it seeks. A pretty careful analysis of modern +religious cults and movements shows that they have organized themselves, +in action and reaction, around three centers definitely related to three +outstanding deficiencies of inherited faith. I say deficiencies, though +that is of course to beg the question. We saw earlier in this study how +religion everywhere and always grows out of some of the few central and +unexpectedly simple, though always supremely great, needs and how the +force of any religion waxes or wanes as it meets these needs. Religion +is real to the generality of us as it justifies the ways of God to man +and reveals the love and justice of God in the whole of personal +experience. Religion is always, therefore, greatly dependent upon its +power to reconcile the more shadowed side of experience with the Divine +love and power and goodness. It is hard to believe in a Providence whose +dealings with us seem neither just nor loving. Faith breaks down more +often in the region of trying personal experience than anywhere else. + +All this is as old as the book of Job but it is none the less true +because it is old. + +The accepted theology which explained sin and sorrow in terms of the +fall of man and covered each individual case with a blanket indictment +justified by the condemnation of the whole of humanity has lost its +force. It depended, to begin with, on a tradition of human beginnings +which has not borne examination, and it was beside, in spite of all the +efforts to defend it, profoundly unethical. Calvinistic theology, +moreover, made a difficult matter worse by assuming for every individual +a predestined fate reaching beyond death itself which a man was +powerless to escape. Those chapters in the long story of theology which +record the turning and groping of minds--and souls--enmeshed in this web +of their own weaving and more deeply entangled still in the challenging +experiences of life itself are among the most pathetic and arresting +in the whole story of human thought. We ought to recognize more clearly +than we have generally done and confess more frankly that our inherited +explanations of the problems of pain and sorrow have been markedly +unsatisfactory and have greatly contributed to the justifiable reaction +against them. + +One group of modern religious cults and movements, then, has found its +opportunity just here. Christian Science and kindred cults are just an +attempt to reconcile the love and goodness of God with pain, sickness, +sorrow, and to a lesser degree with sin. How they do this remains to be +seen, but the force of their appeal depends upon the fact that a very +considerable and constantly growing number of people believe that they +have really done it. Such cults as these have also found a place for the +New Testament tradition of healing; they have also appealed strongly to +those who seek a natural or a pseudo-natural explanation for the +miraculous elements in religion generally. They have been expectedly +reinforced by the feeling for the Bible which strongly persists among +those who are not able to find in the inherited Protestant position that +real help in the Bible which they had been taught they should there +find, and who are not, on the other hand, sufficiently acquainted with +the newer interpretations of it to find therein a resolution for their +doubts and a vital support for their faith. Finally, Christian Science +and kindred cults offer a demonstration of the reality of religion in +health and happiness, and generally, in a very tangible way of living. +Here, then, is the first region in which we find a point of departure +for modern religious cults and movements. + +Spiritualism organizes itself around another center. Religion generally +demands and offers a faith in immortality. We are not concerned here +with the grounds which various religions have supplied for this faith +or the arguments by which they have supported it. Generally speaking, +any religion loses ground as it fails to convince its adherents of +immortality, or justify their longings therefor. Any religion supplying +clear and indisputable proof of immortality will command a strong +following and any seeming demonstration of immortality not particularly +associated with this or that religious form will organize about itself a +group of followers who will naturally give up pretty much everything +else and center their entire interests upon the methods by which +immortality is thus supposed to be demonstrated. Now modern Spiritualism +comes in just here. It professes to offer a sure proof of immortality to +an age which is just scientific enough to demand something corresponding +to scientific proof for the support of its faith and not scientific +enough to accept all the implications of science, or to submit to its +discipline. Theosophy and kindred cults are generally a quest for +deliverance along other than accepted Christian lines; they substitute +self-redemption for Christian atonement, and deliverance through +mystical disciplines for that forgiveness of sin and assurance of +salvation in which Christianity has found its peace. + +There is, of course, a vast deal of action and reaction between the +newer movements themselves and between the new faith and the old. There +are elements common to all religions; there are frontiers where all +religions meet and somewhat merge; at some point or other almost every +faith touches its contrary or becomes uncertain and shifts its emphasis. +Religion is always dependent upon changing tempers and very greatly +upon varying personalities; it is always in flux, impatient of +definitions and refusing the rigid boundary lines within which we +attempt to confine it. Though it be clearly possible, therefore, to find +three distinct points of departure for the whole of the border-land +cults and religions, there is running through them all a certain unity +of driving force. They are in general a quest for a new type of +religious reality; they are largely due to certain marked inadequacies +of the more accepted religious teachings and to the want of the more +accepted religious experiences to satisfy certain types. They have come +to light in our own time through the failure of authority in both +Catholicism and Protestantism, through the failure of the accepted +understandings of the Bible to satisfy those who are still persuaded +that it has a real message and through the reaction of the modern spirit +upon religious attitudes. They owe much to the deficiency of the +traditional explanation of sin, sorrow and suffering; they owe something +to the failure of Christianity to create a Christian environment; and +they owe not a little to the natural longing for some positive assurance +of life after death, as well as to the quest of the soul for deliverance +and its longing for a satisfying communion with God. And they are +reinforced in every direction by the restless and unsettled temper of a +time subject to great changes of habit and outlook through the breaking +up of old industrial and social orders and the impact of new forces +driving in from every direction. + +We shall need to relate these conditioning causes more definitely to the +various cults and movements as we go on to study them, but here at least +are the backgrounds against which they must be studied and the lines of +testing down which they must be followed. We shall begin in our more +detailed study of these movements with the modern religious quest for +health and healing. But even here we shall find it worth while to trace +broadly the history of faith and mental healing. + + + + +III + +FAITH HEALING IN GENERAL + + +Those cults which are either founded upon faith healing or involve it +have a long ancestry. George Barton Cutten's very suggestive book[8] +makes that clear enough and supplies an informing mass of detail. +Medical Science and Psychology have been slow to take into account the +facts thus submitted, but they have of late made amends for their +somewhat unaccountable delay, and we have now reached certain +conclusions about which there is little controversy except, indeed, as +to the range of their application. Beneath all faith healing and kindred +phenomena there are three pretty clearly defined bases. First, the +action or reaction of mind upon body; second, the control of mental +attitudes by the complex of faith; and, as an interrelated third, the +control of the lower nerve centers by suggestion. + +[Footnote 8: "Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing."] + + +_The Bases of Faith and Mental Healing_ + +There is an almost baffling interplay of what one may call these three +controlling principles, and the exhaustive discussion of the whole +subject demands the knowledge of the specialist. But we do know, to +begin with, that just as there are demonstrated bodily approaches to +both the mental and spiritual aspects of life, so there are equally +undeniable mental and even spiritual approaches to physical conditions. +We have here to fall back upon facts rather than upon a definite +knowledge of what happens in the shadowy border-land across which the +mind takes over and organizes and acts upon what is presented to it by +the afferent nervous system. Nothing, for example, could be really more +profound than the difference between waves of compression and +rarefaction transmitted through the luminiferous ether and the +translation of their impact into light. Somewhere between the retina of +the eye, with its magic web of sensitive nerve ends, and the proper +registering and transforming regions of the brain something happens +about which Science can say no final word. + +What happens in the case of light is equally true of sound and tactual +sensation. That vivid and happy consciousness of well-being which we +call health is just the translation of normal balances, pressures and +functionings in the mechanism of the body into an entirely different +order of phenomena. Health is a word of manifold meaning and if its +foundations are established in the harmonious coöperation of physical +processes, its superstructure rises through mental attitudes into what, +for want of a more clearly defined word, we call spiritual states. Two +orders meet and merge within us. Above a world of idea, insight, desire +and subordination of means to ends, the whole driven by the will and +saturated with emotion, a world which has its contacts with the unseen +and eternal and derives its strength from the truly immaterial; below a +world of material and forces in subjection to the laws of physics and +chemistry and involved in the processes of the conservation and +transformation of physical energy, and consciousness the clearing-house +for the whole. + + +_Cannon's Study of Emotional Reactions Upon Physical States_ + +This interplay of body and mind has of late been made the subject of +careful and long continued experimentation with a special reference to +the reactions of strong emotion upon bodily states, particularly as +registered in chemical changes. These experiments have been carried on +with an almost incredible patience and attention to detail under the +most difficult circumstances, and their conclusions seem final. +Professor Walter B. Cannon of Harvard University has recently put the +result of such investigation at our service in a most interesting +way.[9] (It ought to be said, however, that a similar series of +experiments repeated at the laboratories of the University of Chicago +failed to produce the same results.) + +[Footnote 9: "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage," quoted +without page references.] + +Strong emotion affects almost every physical region, modifies almost +every physical function. The normal secretion of digestive fluids is +greatly increased by hunger (though here, of course, hunger itself may +have a physical basis) and also by what the investigator calls sham +feeding--food, that is, taken by an animal and so deflected as not to +pass into the digestive tract at all stimulates the gastric flow quite +as much as if it were actually received into the stomach. On the other +hand unhappy emotional disturbance greatly retards the digestive +processes. Pain, for example, results in pronounced inhibitions of the +secretion of gastric juice while happy emotional states produce +naturally the opposite effect. Pain is often accompanied by nausea, +indeed the nausea of a sick headache may be only secondary, induced by a +pain springing from quite another source than retarded digestion. + +Professor Cannon's experiments are most interesting as he traces the +variations of the flow of adrenal secretion induced by emotion and then +retraces the effect of the chemical changes so produced upon bodily and +mental states. The secretion of adrenin[10] is greatly increased by pain +or excitement. The percentage of blood sugar is also greatly increased +by the same causes. The heaviness of fatigue is due, as we know, to +poisonous uneliminated by-products resulting from long continued or +over-taxing exertion of any sort. Under the influence of fatigue the +power of the muscles to respond to any kind of stimulus is greatly +reduced. (It is interesting to note, however, that muscular fibre +detached from the living organism and mechanically stretched and relaxed +shows after a period the same decrease in contractability under +stimulation.) On the other hand any increase in adrenal secretion +results in renewed sensitiveness to stimulation, that is by an increased +power of the muscle to respond. Falling blood pressures diminish +proportionately the power of muscular response. Rising blood pressure is +effective "in largely restoring in fatigued structures their normal +irritability" and an increase of adrenin seems to raise blood pressure +by driving the blood from the interior regions of the body "into the +skeleton muscles which have to meet, by extra action, the urgent demands +of struggle or escape." + +[Footnote 10: I follow Cannon in the form of this word.] + +Adrenin is of real use in counteracting the effects of fatigue or in +enabling the body to respond to some unusual call for effort. The +coagulation of the blood is also affected by the same agent, that is, it +coagulates very much more rapidly.[11] Coagulation is also hastened by +heightened emotion; a wound does not bleed so freely when the wounded +one is angry or excited. A soldier, then, in the stress of combat is not +only rendered insensible to fatigue and capable of abnormal activity, +but his wounds are really not so dangerous as they would otherwise be. +There are here suggestions of elemental conditions having to do with +struggle and survival, conditions which play their very great part in +the contests of life. + +[Footnote 11: Cannon thinks, however, that this effect is produced +indirectly.] + +Emotions set free, as has been said, larger percentages of sugar which +are immediately utilized by the muscles in heightened or fatiguing +effort. All these experiments point very clearly to reservoirs of power, +both physical and mental, upon which we may draw in times of stress and +under emotional excitement.[12] Such emotionally induced chemical +actions and reactions as have been indicated release these stored +energies, render us for the time being unconscious of fatigue and even +guard us against the too rapid exhaustion of vital power. Whatever +heightens emotion, therefore, modifies the very chemical structure of +the body. + +[Footnote 12: Excessive emotional reactions upon bodily states may +explain, as Cannon suggests, the more obscure phenomena of religious +frenzy such as the ceremonial dances of savages, the "Danse Macabre" of +the Middle Ages, the feats of the whirling dervishes, the jumping and +shouting of revivalism; also, maybe, the modern jazz.] + + +_The Two Doors_ + +There are other changes as well. The breath is quickened, the lungs are +expanded, waste products are very much more rapidly eliminated and so in +answer to summoning states of the soul the body as a whole readjusts +itself in marvellous subtle forms, mobilizing all its forces for the +contests which the emotion anticipates, or indeed which the emotion +itself calls out. And if all this seems unduly technical it is only to +bear out with something like a scientific accuracy the statements made a +little earlier that two orders meet and merge within us and that the +reactions of our loves, our fears, or our longings upon our bodily +processes may be stated in terms of the test tube and the chemist's +scale. + +Such changes as are thus registered react in turn upon mental +attitudes. Fatigue produces mental depression. An accumulation of +uneliminated waste darkens all our horizons; irritability of mind and +soul attend physical irritability; any unhappy modification in the +balance of the physical registers automatically an equally unhappy +modification in the balance of the psychic. Most of us, as we come to +know ourselves better, recognize marked alterations even in spiritual +states which we are taught to refer to physical condition, but just as +truly altered spiritual conditions produce altered physical states. +There is an endless give and take and there are, therefore, two doors of +approach to our pains, wearinesses and sicknesses. + + +_The Challenge of Hypnotism_ + +Medicine, surgery and hygiene as at present organized largely approach +personal well-being from the physical side. They have for their support +a body of fact and a record of accomplishment which cannot be put out of +court without sheer intellectual stultification. Modern medicine has +been so massively successful in dealing with disease on the basis of a +philosophy which makes everything, or nearly everything, of the body and +nothing or next to nothing of the mind, that medicine was in danger of +becoming more sheerly materialistic than almost any other of our +sciences; Physics and Chemistry had their backgrounds in which they +recognized the interplay of realities too great for their formulæ and +forces too subtle for their most sensitive instruments. But medicine was +almost in the way of forgetting all this when it was compelled--and +that for its own good--to take account of an entirely different set of +forces. + +This was, to begin with, as far as the modern scientific approach is +concerned, first made clearly apparent in Hypnotism. Hypnotism seems to +be such a modification of normal mental conditions under the power of +commanding suggestion as really for the time being to focus +consciousness and mental action generally in one suggested line. A new +set of inhibitions and permissions are thus imposed upon normal +consciousness. Attention is withdrawn from the usual frontiers (if one +may use the word) to which, consciously or subconsciously, it has always +been directed and centered upon one single thing.[13] + +[Footnote 13: Sidis defines Hypnosis as the disassociation of the +superior and inferior nerve centers. They commonly work in perfect +harmony, their blended unity forming one conscious personality. "In +hypnosis the two systems or nervous centers are disassociated, the +superior centers and the upper consciousness are inhibited or better cut +off, split off from the rest of the nervous system with its organic +consciousness, which is thus laid bare, open to the influence of +external stimuli or suggestions.... In hypnotic trance ... we have +direct access to man's organic consciousness and through it to organic +life itself."... If we broaden this last sentence to include not only +organic consciousness but the deeper strata of personality in which not +only individual but perhaps racial experience is bedded, we have the key +to a vast range of obscure phenomena. Sidis believes that "strong +permanent impressions or suggestions made on the reflex organic +consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their functional +disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic structure" +and this in a sentence is probably what lies behind all faith and mental +healing.--"The Psychology of Suggestion," pp. 69 and 70.] + +The hypnotized person becomes, therefore, unconscious of any reporting +agencies outside the field of his abnormally focused attention. Normal +conditions of pain or pleasure cease for the time to become real. +Attention has been forced entirely out of normal channels and given a +new direction. Then we discover, strangely enough, that though those +messages of the afferent nerves cease to have any effect upon the +subject, the imaginings of the subject carried back along outgoing lines +produce the most unexpected results in physical states. If a postage +stamp be placed upon the hand of the hypnotized subject and he be told +that the stamp is a mustard plaster, the stamp reddens the skin and +presently raises a blister. In other words, heightened and intensified +expectant attention is able to produce the same results as an irritating +agency.[14] + +[Footnote 14: Experiments by Krafft-Ebing and Forel. To be taken with +caution. See Jacoby, "Suggestion and Psycho-Therapy," p. 153.] + + +_Changed Attention Affects Physical States_ + +We are concerned here chiefly with the fact and it is a fact capable of +far-reaching application. Of course the nature and extent of the changes +thus produced are the battlegrounds of the two schools. Medical Science +is quite willing to admit that while functional action may thus be +modified no real organic changes can be produced. There is a border-land +so much still in shadow that no final word can be said about the whole +matter, but it is incontestably true that modifications of attention +have a reflex in the modification of physical states. + +A pain which is not registered does not, for the time being at least, +exist, and if the attention can either through hypnotism or by a +persistent mental discipline be withdrawn from disturbing physical +reports, then the conditions which produce them will at least be left to +correct themselves without interference from consciousness and since the +whole tendency of disturbed physical organism is to correct itself, the +whole process probably goes on more quickly as it certainly goes on with +less discomfort if attention is withdrawn.[15] The assumption of health +is a tremendous health-giving force and if the condition to be remedied +is really due to a mental complex which needs only some strong exertion +of the will or readjustment of attitude to change, then marvellous +results may follow changed mental and spiritual states. The apparently +dumb may speak, the apparently paralyzed rise from their beds, the +shell-shocked pull themselves together and those under the bondage of +their fears and their pains be set free. There are so many illustrations +of all this that the fact itself is not in debate. + +[Footnote 15: Organic changes (the storm center of the controversy) may +possibly be induced through a better general physical tone. Such changes +would not be directly due to suggestion but to processes released by +suggestion. Organic change may certainly be checked and the effect of it +overcome by increased resistance. So much conservative physicians admit. +How far reconstruction thus induced may go is a question for the +specialist.] + + +_The Power of Faith to Change Mental Attitudes_ + +Now since mental attitudes so react upon bodily states, whatever +strongly controls mental attitudes becomes a very great factor in +mental healing. There is a long line of testimony that what may be +called the complex of faith does just this with unique power, for faith +implies supernatural intervention. If there be anywhere an +all-prevailing power whose word is law and we could really be persuaded +that such a power had really intervened--even if it actually had not--on +our behalf and brought its supernatural resource to bear upon our +troubled case, then we should have a confidence more potent in the +immediate transformation of mental attitudes than anything else we could +possibly conceive. If we really believed such a power were ready to help +us, if we as vividly expected its immediate help, then we might +anticipate the utmost possible therapeutic reaction of mind upon body. A +faith so called into action should produce arresting results, and this +as a matter of investigation is true. + +In following through the theories of faith healing we may take here +either of two lines. The devout may assert a direct divine +interposition. God is. He has the power and the will; all things are +plastic to His touch; He asks only faith and, given faith enough, the +thing is done and there is no explaining it. Those who believe this are +not inclined to reason about it; in fact it is beyond reason save as +reason posits a God who is equal to such a process and an order in which +such results can be secured. This is rather an achievement of faith than +reason but the Christian Church generally has held such a faith--a faith +sustained by the testimony which favours it and unaffected by the +testimony which challenges it. The scientific temper which seeks +economy in all its explanations and asks only for a cause sufficient for +the effect and which is, moreover, constantly trying to relate the +unknown to the known, takes another line and finds in faith healing just +one more illustration of the power of mind over body. This does not +exclude God but it discovers Him in resident forces and finds in law the +revelation of His method. The conclusions, then, to which we are +generally coming may not only be reconciled with a devout faith, they +may, when followed through, enrich faith; but they do subdue the whole +great matter to a sequence of cause and effect and they are gradually +finding a satisfactory explanation for what has heretofore been deeply +involved in mystery. + +Just as Hypnotism, through the very dramatic abnormality of it, in +altering the sensitiveness of those physical tracts from which attention +is withdrawn or in producing physical effects through suggestive +focusing, has helped us to understand the part which attention plays in +the flux of physical states, so our later studies of the subconscious +help us here. We do know that a great deal may really take place in +personality of which consciousness takes no account. Consciousness in +its most active phases is alert, purposeful and preoccupied with the +immediate concern of the moment. Consciousness heeds commands and takes +account of such conditions as strongly assert themselves, but does not +in its full drive take much account of suggestion unless the suggestion +possesses unusual force. Suggestions usually need leisurely turning over +in the mind and the mind commonly refers them--often without knowing +it--to those regions of mental action which lie beneath the threshold of +strongly focused consciousness. + +But suggestion does not thereby cease to work. It starts processes all +its own which go on till they are worked through. After a longer or +shorter period of incubation the outcome of suggestion is lifted into +the light of consciousness, often to produce results all the more +striking because we cannot explain them to ourselves or any one else. +All this does not withdraw such phenomena from the realm of law; it only +clothes them with the mystery of the unknown and extends the fields in +which they may operate. Proper suggestion let fall into these unknown +depths or improper suggestion as well, becomes an incalculable force in +shaping the ends of life. We have here, then, well attested truths or +laws--it is difficult to know what to call them--which help us to +understand the bases of faith healing or mental healing by suggestion. +Now directly we turn to such records as remain to us we find that such +forces as these have been in action from the very beginning. All disease +was in early times referred generally to spirit possession. If only the +evil spirit could be exorcised the patient would get well and the priest +was, of course, the proper person to undertake this. Religion and +medicine were, therefore, most intimately united to begin with and +healing most intimately associated with magic. The first priests were +doctors and the first doctors were priests and what they did as priests +and what they did as doctors were alike unreasonable and capricious. +The priest and his church have very unwillingly surrendered the very +great hold over the faithful which this early association of medicine +and religion made possible. Any order or institution which can approach +or control humanity through the longing of the sick for health, has an +immense and unfailing empire. + + +_Demon Possession the Earliest Explanation of Disease_ + +There are, says Cutten, three fairly well defined periods in the history +of Medicine. The first, beginning as far back as anything human begins +and coming down to the end of the second century; the second, ending +with the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries; and the third from perhaps +the sixteenth century on. The second period, he adds, was by far the +most sterile and stationary of the three "largely due to the prohibitive +attitude of the Church. The science of Medicine, then, is almost wholly +the result of the investigations and study of the last period. This +means that medicine is one of the youngest of the sciences, while from +the very nature of the case it is one of the oldest of the arts." + +Demon possession was, as has been said, the earliest explanation of +disease. This would naturally be true of a time almost wholly wanting in +any conception either of law or any relation of cause and effect beyond +the most limited regions of experience. Since the only cause of which +man had any real knowledge was his own effort he peopled his world with +forces more or less like himself, except that they were invisible, who +operated practically the whole of natural phenomena. There was a spirit +for every place and every happening; spirits for fields and hearths, +thresholds and springs. Some of them were friendly, some of them +naturally unfriendly, but they were everywhere in existence, everywhere +in action and naturally if they were unfriendly they would from time to +time and in various most curious ways get into the body itself and there +do any amount of mischief. + +The priest-doctor's task, therefore, was to get them out. He might scare +them out, or scold them out, or pray them out, or trick them out. He +would use his medicine as much to make the place of their temporary +abode uncomfortable for the demon as remedial for the patient and, +indeed, the curious and loathsome things which have been used for +medicines might well disgust even a malevolent demon. One thing stands +out very clearly and that is that whatever the medicine did or left +undone, it worked through its influence upon the mind of the patient and +not through any real medicinal value. + + +_The Beginnings of Scientific Medicine_ + +Of course along with all this would go a kind of esoteric wisdom which +was part of the stock in trade of the healer. There were charms, +incantations and magic of every conceivable sort. The medicine man of +uncivilized or even half-civilized peoples really makes medicine for the +mind rather than the body. There were, however, gleams of scientific +light through all this murky region. The Egyptians knew something of +anatomy though they made a most capricious use of it and there must have +been some knowledge of hygienic methods; the prohibitions of Leviticus, +for example, and of the Jewish law generally for which the Jew must have +been, as far as medical science is concerned, somewhat in debt to the +Egyptian and the Chaldean, really have sound hygienic reasons behind +them. The Greeks began with demons but they ended with something which +approached true science. + +The real contribution of Greece, however, seems to have been on the +positive rather than the negative side. They made much of health as an +end in itself, had gods and goddesses of physical well-being. The Greek +had constantly held before him such an ideal of physical excellence as +had never before been approached and has never since been equalled. He +seems to have been abstemious in eating; he practiced the most strenuous +physical exercises; he lived a wholesome outdoor life, and so created a +civilization in which health very largely took care of itself. An +examination of what records remain to us hardly sustains the accepted +opinion that the Greeks had made substantial advances along purely +scientific lines,[16] but at any rate as far as medicine goes, there is +little to choose between the Greece of the fourth century before Christ +and the Europe of the sixteenth century after, save that the life of the +Greek was far more normal, temperate and hygienic and the mind of the +Greek more open, sane and balanced. + +[Footnote 16: Probably too strong a statement. For an opposite view +strongly supported by a scholar's research see Singer's article in "The +Legacy of Greece" (Oxford Press), p. 201.] + +Plato anticipated conclusions which we are just beginning to reach when +he said, "the office of the physician extends equally to the +purification of mind and body. To neglect the one is to expose the other +to evident peril. It is not only the body which, by sound constitution, +strengthens the soul, but the well regulated soul, by its authoritative +power, maintains the body in perfect health." Whether the best classic +civilization made, consciously, its own this very noble insight of +Plato, the best classic civilization did secure the sound mind and the +sound body to an extent which puts a far later and far more complex +civilization to shame. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Greek to +this whole great subject was his passion for bodily well-being and his +marvellous adaptation of his habits and type of life to that end. + +He did, moreover, separate religion, magic and medicine to some +appreciable extent and he gave us at least the beginnings of a medical +profession, approaching medicine from the scientific rather than the +religious or traditional point of view. Even though his science was a +poor enough thing, his doctors were none the less doctors and the +medical profession to-day is entirely within its right when it goes back +to Hippocrates for the fathering of it. + + +_The Attitude of the Early and Medieval Church_ + +Christianity changed all this and on the whole for the worse. And yet +that statement ought to be immediately qualified, for Christianity did +bring with it a very great compassion for suffering, a very great +willingness to help the sick and the needy. The Gospels are inextricably +interwoven with accounts of the healing power of the founder of +Christianity. All the later attitude of Christianity toward disease must +be considered in the light of this fact. We owe to Christianity the +first real hospitals, the first really compassionate and unselfish care +for the sick and impulses which, as they have finally worked out, have +had more to do with giving quality and direction to medicine and +particularly in investing the whole practice of medicine with its true +atmosphere than any other single force. + +And yet all this has been a long, long time coming true and for almost +1,500 years the Church and its authorities were a hindrance rather than +a help and that for two or three outstanding reasons. Christianity, to +begin with, sadly underestimated physical values in its overinsistence +upon spiritual values. The body was at best but the tabernacle of the +soul and the soul being the chief concern, whatever happened to the body +was of little importance. The body was not only underestimated, it was +scorned and abused, starved and scourged; it was the seat of unholy +influences and impulses; its natural longings were at the best under +suspicion, at the worst under absolute condemnation. Christianity, +speaking through the Church, took immense care for its spiritual +hygiene, though even here it went wrong because it forgot Plato's noble +word, but it failed utterly in physical hygiene. + +Then again sickness and suffering were for the Church but the manifest +punishment of some sin known or concealed. To interfere, therefore, was +in some way to defeat the justice of God. Pestilences were inscrutable +providences; they were the wrath of God made manifest. In the face of so +stupendous a calamity anything man might do was not only futile but +impertinent. + +By a strange contradiction early and medieval Christianity, while making +little of the body, nevertheless strongly opposed any study of anatomy +which depended upon post-mortems or dissection. This probably because of +their belief in the resurrection of the body. Any mutilation of the body +after death would be a real handicap in the day of resurrection. But +behind all this, equally real though intangible, was the desire of the +Church to have the whole of life under its own direct control. It +instinctively feared methods of thought or processes of investigation +not directly a part of its own imperial administration of life. Some +subtle distrust of the human reason went along with all this. As a +result the Church, in the main, threw herself against the more +independent processes of scientific thought, sought to subdue all the +facts of life to her creeds and understandings and so became a real +hindrance to any pursuit of truth or any investigation of fact which lay +outside the region of theological control. How largely all this retarded +growth and knowledge and the extension of human well-being it is +difficult to say, but the fact itself is well established. + + +_Saints and Shrines_ + +For one thing early Christianity continued the belief in demoniac +possession. By one of those accidents which greatly influence history +the belief in demon possession was strongly held in Palestine in the +time of Christ and the Gospel narratives reflect all this in ways upon +which it is not necessary to enlarge. The Gospels themselves lent their +mighty sanction to this persuasion and there was nothing in the temper +of the Church for more than a thousand years afterward to greatly modify +it. Indeed the temper of the Church rather strengthened it. Origen +believed that demons produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the +air and pestilences. They hover concealed in clouds in the lower +atmosphere and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen +offered them as gods. + +According to St. Augustine all diseases of Christians are to be ascribed +to these demons and the church fathers generally agreed with these two, +the greatest of them all. It was, therefore, sinful to do anything but +trust to the intercession of the saints. The objection of the Church to +dissection which is, of course, the indispensable basis for any real +knowledge of anatomy was very slowly worn down. The story of Andreas +Vesalius whom Andrew White calls the founder of the modern science of +anatomy is at once fascinating and illuminating. He pursued his studies +under incredible difficulties and perhaps could never have carried them +through without the protection of Charles V whose physician he was. He +was finally driven out, a wanderer in quest of truth, was shipwrecked +on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and in the prime of his life and +strength "he was lost to the world." But he had, none the less, won his +fight and the opposition of the Church to the scientific study of +anatomy was gradually withdrawn. But every marked advance in medical +science had really to fight the battle over again. The Sorbonne +condemned inoculation, vaccination had slowly to fight its way and even +the discovery of anesthetic, perhaps the greatest single blessing ever +given surgery, met with no little theological obstruction. It is only +fair to say in this connection that so stupid a conservatism has been by +no means the sole possession of the Church and the clergy. Medicine has +been upon occasion almost as conservative and the difficulties which Sir +Joseph Lister encountered in his endeavour to win the London hospitals +for asepsis and anti-sepsis were quite as bitter. The difficulties were +of a piece with the opposition of the Church to scientific advancement. +After all a conservatism of this sort is a matter of temperament rather +than creed or class. + +But if the Church was strangely slow to give place to medicine and +surgery, the Church sought, through agencies and methods of its own, to +cure disease. It is impossible to follow through in detail the long +story though it all bears upon the line we are following through its +massive testimony to the power of mind over body. Since the Church +believed in demon possession it sought to cure by exorcism and there are +in the ritual of the Church, as the ritual has finally taken form, +offices growing out of this long, long battle against evil spirits which +have now little suggestion of their original purpose. The sign of the +Cross was supposed to have commanding power, the invocation of the +triune deity had its own virtue, the very breathing of the priest was +supposed to influence the evil spirit and he fled defeated from the +touch of holy water. + +The Church possessed, as was everywhere then believed, not only a +prevailing power over demons, but a supernatural power all her own for +the healing of disease. This power was associated with saints and relics +and shrines. During the lifetime of the saint this power was exercised +through direct saintly interposition. After the death of the saint it +was continued in some relic which he left behind him, or some shrine +with which he had been particularly associated. There grew up gradually +a kind of "division of labour among the saints in the Middle Ages." Each +saint had its own peculiar power over some bodily region or over some +particular disease. And so the faithful were guarded by a legion of +protecting influences against everything from coughs to sudden death. +There is almost an unimaginable range of relics. Parts of the true Cross +possessed supreme value. St. Louis of France was brought back almost +from death to life by the touch of the sacred wood. The bones and hairs +of saints, rings which they had worn and all such things as these had +value and to prove that the value was not resident in the relic but in +the faith with which the relic was approached we have reported bones of +saints possessing well authenticated healing value, later proved to have +been the bones not of men but of animals. There have been sacred springs +and consecrated waters almost without number. They will still show you +in Canterbury Cathedral stones worn by the feet of countless pilgrims +seeking at the shrine of Thomas à Becket a healing to the reality of +which those who wore away those stones bore testimony in a variety of +gifts which made the shrine of à Becket at one time one of the treasure +houses of Christendom. + +"The two shrines at present best known are those of Lourdes in France +and Ste. Anne de Beaupré in the Province of Quebec. Lourdes owes its +reputed healing power to a belief in a vision of the Virgin received +there during the last century. Over 300,000 persons visit there each +year." Charcot, it is worth noting, had confidence enough not in the +shrine but in the healing power of faith to send fifty or sixty patients +to Lourdes every year. His patients were, of course, the mentally and +nervously unbalanced. The French government supervises the sanitary +conditions at Lourdes and a committee of doctors have undertaken some +examination of the diseased who visit the shrine for the guidance of +their profession. Ste. Anne de Beaupré owes its fame to certain wrist +bones of the mother of Christ. + + +_Magic, Charms, and the King's Touch: The Rise of the Faith Healer_ + +Religious faith is not always necessary--any faith will do. Charms, +amulets, talismans have all played their part in this long compelling +story. The various metals, gems, stones and curious and capricious +combinations of pretty much every imaginable thing have all been so +used. Birth girdles worn by women in childbirth eased their pain. A +circular piece of copper guarded against cholera. A coral was a good +guard against the evil eye and sail-cloth from a shipwrecked vessel tied +to the right arm was a preventive as well as a cure for epilepsy. There +is almost no end to such instances. The list of charms and incantations +is quite as curious. There are forms of words which will cure insomnia +and indeed, if one may trust current observation, forms of words not +primarily so intended may still induce sleepfulness. + +The history of the king's touch as particularly helpful in epilepsy and +scrofula, though useful also for the healing of various diseases, is +especially interesting. This practice apparently began with Edward the +Confessor in England and St. Louis in France and was due to the faith of +those who came to be touched and healed in the divine right and lonely +power of the king. It is significant that the practice began with these +two for they, more than any kings of their time or most kings since, +were really men of rare and saintly character. Curiously but naturally +enough the English have denied any real power in this region to French +kings and the French have claimed a monopoly for their own sovereigns. +The belief in the king's touch persisted long and seems toward the end +to have had no connection with the character of the monarch, for +Charles II did more in this line than any one who ever sat on an English +throne. During the whole of his reign he touched upward of 100,000 +people. Andrew White adds that "it is instructive to note, however, that +while in no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula and so +many cures vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of the +disease." + +Along with the king's touch went the king's gift--a piece of gold--and +the drain upon the royal treasury was so considerable that after the +reign of Elizabeth the size of the coin was reduced. Special coins were +minted for the king's use in that office and these touching pieces are +still in existence. William III refused to take this particular power +seriously. "God give you better health and more sense," he said as he +once touched a patient. In this particular instance the honest +skepticism of the king was outweighed by the faith of the suppliant. We +are assured that the person was cured. The royal touch was discontinued +after the death of Queen Anne. + +The list of healers began early and is by no means ended now. The power +of the healer was sometimes associated with his official station in the +Church, sometimes due to his saintly character and often enough only to +a personal influence, the fact of which is well enough established, +though there can be in the nature of things no finality in the estimate +of his real efficacy. George Fox performed some cures; John Wesley also. +In the seventeenth century one Valentine Greatrakes seems to have been +the center of such excitements and reported healings as Alexander Dowie +and others in our own time and it is finally through the healer rather +than the saint or the king or shrine or relic that we approach the +renaissance of mental and faith healing in our own time. + + + + +IV + +THE APPROACH TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MARY BAKER EDDY + + +There is, however, another stage in this long line of development which +needs to be considered since it supplies a double point of departure; +once for the most outstanding healing cult in our time--Christian +Science--and once for the greatly enlarged use of suggestion in modern +medical practice, and that is mesmerism and "animal magnetism." + + +_Mesmerism a Point of Departure for Modern Healing Cults_ + +Paracelsus[17] may be taken as a starting point just here. He is known +in the history of medicine "for the impetus he gave to the development +of pharmaceutical chemistry, but he was also the author of a visionary +and theosophic system of philosophy." He believed in the influence of +the stars upon men, but he enlarged upon the old astrologic faiths. "He +believed the human body was endowed with a double magnetism, one portion +attracted to itself the planets and was nourished by them, the result of +which was the mental powers, the other portion attracted and +disintegrated the elements, from which process resulted the body." His +world, therefore, was a world of competitive attractions. He believed +the well had an influence over the sick through magnetism and used the +magnet in his practice. + +[Footnote 17: A German-Swiss physician and alchemist, b. 1493, d. 1541. +These quotations, partly from authorities on faith healing and partly +from the history of Spiritualism, illustrate the underground connection +in this whole region.] + +"This dual theory of magnetic cures, that of the magnetic influence of +men on men and of the magnet on man, was prevalent for over a century." +"It is, then, upon these ideas--the radiation from all things, but +especially the stars, magnets and human bodies, of a force which would +act in all things else, and which was in each case directed by the +indwelling spirit, together with the conception of a perpetual contact +between reciprocal and opposing forces--that the mysticism of the +seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly depends."[18] + +[Footnote 18: Podmore, "Modern Spiritualism," Vol. I, p. 45. I am in +debt also to Cutten for general information and some quoted paragraphs.] + +These ideas were adopted by a group of men who are now only names for +us. The phenomena of magnetism fascinated them and supplied them +analogies. There is, they thought, an all-prevailing magnetic influence +which binds together not only celestial and terrestrial bodies, but all +living things. Life and death were for them simply the registry of the +ebbing and flowing of these immaterial tides and they ended by +conceiving a vital fluid which could be communicated from person to +person and in the communication of which the sick could be healed--the +driftwood of their lore has come down to us on the tides of time; we +still speak of magnetic personalities--and they sought in various ways +to control and communicate these mysterious forces. + +One of them invented steel plates which he applied to the body as a cure +for disease. He taught his system to Mesmer who made, however, one +marked advance upon the technique of his predecessors and gave his name +to his methods; he produced his results through physical contacts and +passes. But he shared with his predecessors and stated with that compact +clearness of which the French language is so capable even when dealing +with obscure matters, that there is a "fluid so universally diffused and +connected as to leave nowhere any void, whose subtlety is beyond any +comparison and which by its nature is capable of receiving, propagating +and communicating all impressions of movement.... This reciprocal action +is subject to mechanical laws at present unknown."[19] This fluid in its +action governs the earth and stars and human action. + +[Footnote 19: Price's "Historique de facts relatifs du Magnétisme +Animal," quoted by Podmore.] + +He originated the phrase "Animal Magnetism" and was, though he did not +know it, the originator of hypnotism; until well within our own time +mesmerism was the accepted name for this whole complex group of +phenomena. The medical faculties examined his claims but were not +willing to approve them, but this made no difference in Mesmer's +popularity. He had so great a following as to be unable to deal with +them personally. He deputed his powers to assistants, arranged a most +elaborate apparatus and surrounded his whole procedure with a dramatic +setting of stained glass, mirrored and scented rooms and mysterious +music. The result of it all naturally, as far as his patients were +concerned, was marked excitements and hysterias. They had often to be +put into padded rooms. And yet the result of all this murky confusion +was said to be numbers of marked cures. He was investigated by the +French government and two commissions presented their reports, neither +of which was favourable. Imagination, not magnetism, they said, +accounted for the results. His popularity wore away markedly when he +undertook to explain his method and reveal his secrets. He left Paris in +1815 and lapsed into obscurity. + + +_The Scientific Investigation of Mesmerism in France_ + +As has been said, there are two lines of development growing out of +Mesmer and his methods. Ten years after Mesmer left Paris Alexandre +Bertrand pointed out that after the elimination of errors due to fraud +or mal-observation, the results which Mesmer and his associates had +produced were due not to animal magnetism, but to expectation induced by +suggestion and intensified by the peculiar setting which Mesmer had +contrived for his so-called treatments. The schools of medicine were +slow to follow out Bertrand's discovery and it was not until something +like twenty years later, through the studies of Braid, that hypnotism +began to be taken seriously. + +But once the matter was brought broadly before them, the doctors began +to follow it through. Charcot, in the Salpêtriére, used hypnotic +suggestion for the correction of abnormal mental and nervous states. The +psychologists took up the matter and hypnotic suggestion has come to be +not only a legitimate subject for the investigation of the student and +an accepted method in correction of abnormal mental states, but as it +were a window through which we are beginning to see deeply into +unsuspected depths and intricacies of personality. + +Modern faith healing cults, however, have not come to us down this line, +though the studies of Bertrand, Braid, Charcot, Du Bois and their +associates supply the interpretative principles for any real +understanding of them. Mesmerism naturally appealed to the type of mind +most easily attracted by the bizarre and the mysterious. There are +always amongst us the credulous and curious who find little enough +either to awe or inspire them in the broad sweep of law, or in such +facts as lie open to the light of reason. Such as these are impatient of +discipline, eager to free themselves from the sequence of cause and +effect; they are impressed by the occult powers and seek short cuts to +health, or goodness, or wisdom. They delight to build up, out of their +own inner consciousness, systems which have little contact with reality +and which, through their very tenuousness, are as incapable of disproof +as through their disengagement from normal experience they are capable +of verification. They are the people of what the alienist calls the +"idée fixe." Everything for them centers about one idea; they have one +key and one only to the marvellous complexity of life. Such a temper as +this naturally disassociates them from reality and makes them +contemptuous of contradictory experiences. + + +_Mesmerism is Carried to America; Phineas Quimby an Important Link in a +Long Chain_ + +America has been far too rich in such a temper as this and it was never +more so than in the forties and the fifties of the last century. +Mesmerism crossed the ocean and while Braid and later Bernheim and +Charcot were following it through on sound, psychological lines and +bringing to bear upon it great insight and scientific discipline, it +fell here into the hands of charlatans and adventurers. Phineas +Parkhurst Quimby, best known for his connection with Mary Baker Eddy, +hardly deserves the name of charlatan, though he was dangerously near +being just that. He belonged to the border-land regions in thought and +propaganda and he did give to the whole complex movement which we have +been considering a direction which has played a relatively great part in +its later development. He had a shrewd mind which ranged over wide +regions; he is a pretty typical example of the half-disciplined, +forceful and original personality which has played so large a part in +American life. The New England of his time--Quimby was born in New +Hampshire and spent his life in Maine--was giving itself whole-heartedly +to a mysticism bounded on the one side (its higher and more +representative side) by Emerson and the transcendentalists and on the +other by healers, prophets of strange creeds and dreamers of Utopias. +Phrenology, mind reading, animal magnetism, clairvoyance, all had their +prophets. + +Quimby belongs to this succession. His education was meagre, he did not +even know how to spell according to the dictionary or punctuate +according to the grammar.[20] He had his own peculiar use of words--a +use by which Mary Baker Eddy was doubtless greatly influenced. He had +marked mechanical ability and a real passion for facts. He was an +original thinker, little in debt to books for his ideas though he was +undoubtedly influenced by the temper of his environment to which +reference has already been made. He had a speculative, but not a trained +interest in religion and dealt freely with the orthodoxy of his time +constrained by no loyalty to the accepted faith and no critical +knowledge of its content. "Truth" and "Science" were characteristic +words for him and he shared his speculations and conclusions freely with +his disciples. + +[Footnote 20: What is here said of Quimby is condensed from Dresser's +"The Quimby Manuscripts."] + + +_Quimby is Led to Define Sickness as Wrong Belief_ + +In his early thirties he was supposed to be dying of consumption and +suffered much from excessive medication. He recovered through an +emotional crisis but does not seem to have followed out the possible +suggestion of his recovery. He turned instead to mesmerism and travelled +about with one Lucius Burkmer over whom he had strong hypnotic +influence. When hypnotized Burkmer (or Burkman) claimed the power to +look as through a window into the bodies of Quimby's patients and +discover, often with illuminating detail, their condition; a good many +reputed cures followed. The testimonials to these cures and to the +strange powers of Burkmer are themselves an arresting testimony to the +lengths people go in the face of what they do not understand. "I have +good reason to believe that he can discern the internal structure of an +animal body and if there be anything morbid or defective therein detect +and explain it.... He can go from point to point without passing through +intermediate space. He passes from Belfast [Maine] to Washington or from +the earth to the moon ... swifter than light, by a single act of +volition."[21] + +[Footnote 21: "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 38.] + +Quimby had too alert an intelligence to rest content with the merely +occult. He came to believe that Burkmer only saw what the patient +thought, could do no more than describe the patient's idea of his own +state, or else report the "common allopathic belief about the disease in +question," and the cure, he was persuaded, was not in the medicine +prescribed but in "the confidence of the doctor or medium." (Note that +Quimby here associates the cures produced by the medical faculty and his +own cures in one sweeping generalization.) What he was really dealing +with then was "belief." It might be the belief of the doctor or the +patient or the belief of his friends--but sickness was only "belief." +This also was a sweeping generalization but it becomes intelligible as +we follow the process by which Quimby reached his conclusions and it +helps us to understand the significance of Belief as one of the key +words of Christian Science. Quimby was led to identify sickness and +wrong beliefs through this analysis of mesmeric diagnosis and health and +right belief through his own experiences as a healer. He had no training +to help him to an understanding of the real facts which lay behind the +belief in sickness. He became a skillful diagnostician of states of mind +and a healer of such diseases as could be so treated. But he knew, +scientifically, no more of what lay behind it all than a ploughman may +know of what lies beneath the furrows he turns. + + +_Quimby Develops His Theories_ + +Mrs. Eddy took over the catch-words of his system and its loose +assumptions, and a reasonably careful comparison of the Quimby +manuscripts and "Science and Health" shows not only Mrs. Eddy's +fundamental and never honestly acknowledged and finally categorically +denied indebtedness to Quimby, but the confusion which Quimby's rather +striking and original philosophy suffered at her hands. Beginning with +his persuasion that health and sickness are phases of belief Quimby +discarded mesmerism altogether and addressed himself to the minds of his +patients. He had doubtless a keen intuitive knowledge of human nature +and its morbid fancies and he was dealing generally with neurotic +temperaments over which he exercised a strong and helpful power of +suggestion. His explanation of disease--that it is a wrong +belief--becomes grotesque enough when he comes down to detail. This, for +example, is his diagnosis of Bronchitis--"You listen or eat this belief +or wisdom [evidently that Bronchitis is real] as you would eat your +meals. It sets rather hard upon your stomach; this disturbs the error of +your body and a cloud appears in the sky.... The elements of the body of +your belief are shaken, earth is lit up by the fire of your error, the +heat rises, the heaven or mind grows dark ... the lightning of hot +flashes shoot to all parts of the solar system of your belief. At last +the winds or chills strike the earth or surface of the body, a cold +clammy sensation passes over you. This changes the heat into a sort of +watery substance which works its way into the channels and pores to the +head and stomach."[22] + +[Footnote 22: "Quimby Manuscripts," p. 118.] + +This is Quimby at his worst but beneath it is the germ of the method and +philosophy which have attained so luxurious a growth--the explaining, +that is, of disease in terms of wrong belief. Inevitably in the +elaboration of all this Quimby reached out to include religion and +theology and even created his own distinctive metaphysics. He +distinguished between the mind and spirit; he must of course discover in +personality a power superior to fluctuating mental attitudes. He called +his system a science since he was trying to reduce it to a system and +discover its laws. He found a parallel to what he was doing in the +narratives of healing in the Christian Gospels and claimed Christ as the +founder of his science.[23] + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, p. 185.] + +All belief opposed to his was "error"; "Truth" was naturally opposed to +error. He subordinates the testimony of the senses to the necessities of +his system; he defines God variously as Wisdom, as Truth, possibly as +Principle though his use of the word Principle is far more intelligible +than Mrs. Eddy's.[24] He increasingly identifies his system and the +teachings of Jesus and ends by calling it "Christian Science."[25] + +[Footnote 24: "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 309.] + +[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 388.] + +In substance in the more than 400 closely printed pages of the Quimby +manuscripts as now edited we discover either the substance or the +suggestion of all that Mrs. Eddy later elaborated. Now all this, +confused as it is, brings us to the threshold of a distinct advance in +mental and faith healing. + + +_Mary Baker Eddy Comes Under Quimby's Influence_ + +Practically faith and mental healing had depended, till Quimby took it +up, upon persons or objects. The saint or the healer worked through +personal contact; the shrine must be visited, the relic be touched. Such +a system was naturally dependent upon accidents of person or place; it +would not be widely extended nor continued nor made the basis of +self-treatment. But if what lay behind the whole complex group of +phenomena could be systematized and given real power of popular appeal +through its association with religion it would possess a kind of +continuing independence, conditioned only by the willingness of people +to be persuaded of the truth of its philosophy or to answer to its +religious appeal. It would then become a mental and spiritual +discipline to be written into books and taught by the initiated. As far +as it could be associated with religion it would become the basis of a +cult and it would have an immense field. + +All difficult or chronic or obscure illnesses would offer an opportunity +to its propagandists, and the necessary obscurities and irrationalities +of such a system would simply be, for the minds to which it would +naturally appeal, added elements of power. Any system which has sickness +for its field and credulity for its reinforcement and a specious show of +half truth for its philosophic form and religion to give its sanction +and authority is assured, to begin with, of a really great following. +Its very weaknesses will be its strength. It will work best as it is +neither clear nor simple--though it must make a show of being both. And +if, in addition, there is somewhere at the heart of it force and truth +enough to produce a certain number of cures it will go on. What it fails +to do will be forgotten or ignored in the face of what it really does +do. + +Now Quimby, through his own native force and such a combination of +circumstances as occurs only once in long periods of time, stood upon +the threshold of just such a revolution in the history of faith and +mental healing as this. He anticipated the method and supplied the +material, but he either did not or could not popularize it. He was not +selfish enough to monopolize it, not shrewd enough to commercialize it, +and, maybe, not fanatic enough to make it a cult. He was more interested +in his own speculations than in making converts and without one of those +accidents which become turning points in a movement nothing would have +probably come of his work save its somewhat vague and loose continuance +in the thought and teaching of a small group. (It is doubtful if New +Thought, which as we shall see grew out of his work through his +association with the Dressers, would have come to much without the +stimulus of Christian Science against which it reacted.) Some one was +needed to give the whole nebulous system organization and driving force +and above all to make a cult of it. + + +_Outstanding Events of Her Life: Her Early Girlhood_ + +Mary Baker Eddy did just this and Christian Science is the result. It is +idle to calculate the vanished alternatives of life but in all +probability she never would have done it without Quimby. She and her +followers would do far better to honestly recognize this indebtedness. +It would now make little difference with either the position of their +leader or the force of their system but it would take a pretty keen +weapon out of the hands of their critics and give them the added +strength which thoroughgoing honesty always gives to any cause. There +is, on the other hand, little likelihood that Quimby's persuasions would +ever have carried beyond the man himself if he had not found in Mrs. +Eddy so creative a disciple. + +The outstanding facts of Mary Baker Eddy's life are too well known to +need much retelling here. The story of her life and the history of +Christian Science as told by Georgine Milmine in _McClure's Magazine_ +during the years of 1907-8 is final. It is based upon thorough +investigation, original documents and an exhaustive analysis of facts. +The facts brought out in the various litigations in which Mrs. Eddy and +the church have been involved confirm both the statements and +conclusions of this really distinctive work. The official life by Sibyl +Wilbur (whose real name seems to be O'Brien) is so coloured as to be +substantially undependable. It touches lightly or omits altogether those +passages in Mrs. Eddy's life which do not fit in with the picture which +Mrs. Eddy herself and the church desire to be perpetuated. + +Mrs. Eddy was descended from a shrewd, industrious and strongly +characterized New England stock. Her father was strongly set in his +ways, narrow and intense in his religious faith. Mary Baker was a +nervous, high-strung girl, unusually attractive in personal appearance, +proud, precocious, self-conscious, masterful. She was subject to +hysterical attacks which issued in states of almost suspended animation. +Her family feared these attacks and to prevent them humoured her in +every way. In due time she joined the Tilton Congregational Church. She +says herself that she was twelve years old at the time, but the records +of the church make her seventeen. The range of her education is debated. +Mrs. Eddy herself claims a rather ambitious curriculum. "My father," she +says, "was taught to believe that my brain was too large for my body and +so kept me out of school, but I gained book knowledge with far less +labour than is usually requisite. At ten years of age I was familiar +with Lindley Murray's Grammar, as with the Westminster Catechism and +the latter I had to repeat every Sunday. My favourite studies were +Natural Philosophy, logic and moral science. From my brother Albert I +received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. After +my discovery of Christian Science most of the knowledge I gleaned from +school books vanished like a dream. Learning was so illumined that +grammar was eclipsed. Etymology was divine history, voicing the idea of +God in man's origin and signification. Syntax was spiritual order and +unity. Prosody the song of angels and no earthly or inglorious +theme."[26] + +[Footnote 26: "Retrospection and Introspection," 1909.] + + +_Her Education: Shaping Influences_ + +It is not fair to apply critical methods to one who confesses that most +of the knowledge she had gleaned from school books vanished like a +dream, but there is much in Mrs. Eddy's writing to bear out her +statement. Those who knew her as a girl report her as irregular in +attendance upon school, inattentive during its sessions and far from +knowing either Greek or Latin or Hebrew. "According to these schoolmates +Mary Baker completed her education when she had finished Smith's Grammar +and reached Long Division in Arithmetic." The official biography makes +much of an intellectual friendship between the Rev. Enoch Corser, then +pastor of the Tilton Congregational Church, and Mary Baker. "They +discussed subjects too deep to be attractive to other members of the +family. Walking up and down in the garden, this fine old-school +clergyman and the young poetess as she was coming to be called, threshed +out the old philosophic speculations without rancour or irritation."[27] + +[Footnote 27: "The Life of Mary Baker Eddy," Sibyl Wilbur, 4th edition. +Christian Science Publishing Company.] + +There is little reason to doubt her real interest in the pretty rigid +Calvinistic theology of her time. Indeed, we could not understand her +final line of religious development without taking that into +consideration. Milmine suggests other forces which would naturally have +influenced a sensitive and curious girl; for example, the current +interest in animal magnetism, a subject which dominated certain aspects +of her thinking to the end. Milmine suggests also that she may have been +considerably influenced by the peculiar beliefs of the Shakers who had a +colony near Tilton. The Shakers regarded Ann Lee, their founder, as the +female principle of God and greater than Christ. They prayed always to +"Our Father and Mother which art in heaven." They called Ann Lee the +woman of the Apocalypse, the God-anointed woman. For her followers she +was Mother Ann, as Mary Baker was later Mother Eddy. Ann Lee declared +that she had the gift of healing. The Shakers also made much of a +spiritual illumination which had the right of way over the testimony of +the senses. The Shakers called their establishment the Church of Christ +and the original foundation the Mother Church. The Shakers forbade +audible prayer and enjoined celibacy. There are parallels enough here to +sustain Milmine's contention that Mary Baker was at least largely +influenced by suggestions from her peculiar group of neighbours. + + +_Her Unhappy Fortunes. She is Cured by Quimby. An Unacknowledged Debt_ + +Mary Baker married George Washington Glover at the age of twenty-two. +She was soon left a widow and her only son was born after his father's +death. The story of the years which follow is unhappy. She was poor, +dependent upon relatives whose patience she tried and whose hospitality +was from time to time exhausted. Her attacks of hysteria continued and +grew more violent. Her father sometimes rocked her to sleep like a +child. The Tiltons built a cradle for her which is one of the traditions +of this unhappy period of her life. She tried mesmerism and clairvoyance +and heard rappings at night. + +She married again, this time a Dr. Daniel Patterson, a travelling +dentist. He never made a success of anything. They were miserably poor +and his marriage was no more successful than most of his other +enterprises. He was captured, though as a civilian, during the Civil War +and spent one or two years in a southern prison. Futile efforts were +made at a reconciliation and in 1873 Mrs. Patterson obtained a divorce +on the grounds of desertion. Meanwhile she had been separated from her +son, of whom she afterward saw so little that he grew up, married and +made his own way entirely apart from his mother. + +In 1861 Mrs. Patterson's physical condition was so desperate that she +appealed to Quimby. Her husband had had some interest in homeopathy and +she was doubtless influenced by the then peculiar theories of the +homeopathic school. (Indeed she claimed to be a homeopathic practitioner +without a diploma.) She had had experience enough with drugs to make her +impatient and suspicious of current methods of orthodox medication. +Under Quimby's treatment she was physically reborn and apparently +spiritually as well. It is necessary to dwell upon all these well-known +details to understand what follows and the directions which her mind now +took. Milmine's analysis is here penetrating and conclusive. She had +always been in revolt against her environment. Her marriages had been +unhappy; motherhood had brought her nothing; she had been poor and +dependent; her strong will and self-assertive personality had been +turned back upon herself. + +She had found no satisfaction in the rigid theologies of the time. She +had sought help from accepted religion and religion had had nothing to +give her. We have to read between the lines and especially to evaluate +all this period in the light of "Science and Health" itself to +reconstruct the movement of her inner life, but beyond a doubt her +thought had played about the almost tragic discrepancy between her own +experiences and the love and goodness of God. She had known pain and +unhappiness in acute forms and had found nothing in what she had been +taught ample enough to resolve her doubts or establish her faith. + +She found in Quimby's philosophy a leading which she eagerly followed. +Now for the first time she is really set free from herself. A truer +sense of dramatic values would have led Mrs. Eddy herself to have made +more of the unhappy period which began to come to an end with her visit +to Quimby and would lead her disciples now to acknowledge it more +honestly. It is a strong background against which to set what follows +and give colour by contrast to her later life. The twice-born from Saul +of Tarsus to John Bunyan have dwelt much upon their sins and sorrows, +seeking thereby more greatly to exalt the grace of God by which they had +been saved. Mary Baker Eddy came strongly to be persuaded that she had +saved herself and consequently not only greatly underestimated her debt +to Quimby, but emptied her own experiences of dramatic contrasts to make +them, as she supposed, more consistent, and her disciples have followed +her. + +As a matter of fact, though her life as a whole is not an outstanding +asset for Christian Science and is likely to grow less so, one must +recognize the force of a conviction which changed the neurotic Mrs. +Patterson of the fifties and sixties into the masterful and successful +woman of the eighties and nineties. She belongs also to the fellowship +of the twice-born and instead of minimizing the change those who seek to +understand her, as well as those who seek to exalt her, would do well to +make more of it. She did that herself to begin with. No master ever had +for a time a more grateful disciple. She haunted Quimby's house, read +his manuscripts, wrote letters for the paper, "dropped into verse" and +through her extravagance "brought ridicule upon Quimby and herself." + +Quimby died in 1866, accompanied to his last resting place by a tribute +in verse from his grateful pupil. Mrs. Eddy had at the time apparently +no thought of continuing his work except in a most modest way. She wrote +Julius Dresser who had come under Quimby's influence, suggesting that he +would step forward into the place vacated. "I believe you would do a +vast amount of good and are more capable of occupying his place than any +other I know of."[28] She asked Dresser's help in recovering from a fall +which she had just had on the ice and which had so injured her, as she +supposed, to make her the helpless cripple that she was before she met +Quimby. This fall is worth dwelling upon for a bit, for it really marks +a turning place in Mrs. Eddy's life. In her letter to Dresser she says +that the physician attending "said I have taken the last step I ever +should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone and will walk."[29] +Sometime later in a letter to the _Boston Post_ Mrs. Eddy said, "We +recovered in a moment of time from a severe accident considered fatal by +the regular physicians." There is a considerable difference between two +days and a moment of time and the expression of a determination to walk +in the Dresser letter and the testimony to an instantaneous cure in the +_Boston Post_ letter. Dr. Cushing, the physician who attended Mrs. Eddy +at the time, gives still a third account. He treated her, he says, over +a period of almost two weeks and left her practically recovered. He also +attended her in a professional capacity still later and offers all this +in a sworn statement on the basis of his record books. There is a very +considerable advantage in a philosophy which makes thought the only +reality, for, given changing thought and a complacent recollection, +facts may easily become either plastic or wholly negligible. + +[Footnote 28: "A History of the New Thought Movement," Dresser, p. 110.] + +[Footnote 29: _Ibid._] + + +_She Develops Quimby's Teachings Along Lines of Her Own_ + +The real significance of this much debated but otherwise unimportant +episode is that it seems to have thrown Mrs. Eddy upon her own +resources, for now that Quimby was dead she begins to develop what she +had received from him through both experience and teaching along lines +of her own. She had found a formula for the resolution of problems, both +physical and mental, which had hag-ridden her for years. She had a +natural mental keenness, a speculative mind, a practical shrewdness (the +gift of her New England ancestors) and an ample field. The theology, the +medical science and indeed the philosophy or psychology of the New +England of the sixties contributed strongly, through their limitations, +to the growth of bizarre systems which had in them elements of truth. We +shall need to come back to this again in any evaluation of Christian +Science as a whole, but we cannot understand the rapid development of +the movement of which Christian Science was just one aspect without +taking all this into consideration. + +Medicine itself has been greatly revolutionized within the last fifty +years. While Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy was finding her unhappy +way through border-land regions into a cloudy light, Louis Pasteur, +sitting, in the phrase of Huxley, "as humbly as a little child before +the facts of life," was making those investigations in bacteriology +which were to be, in some ways, the greatest contribution of the +nineteenth century to the well-being of humanity. He was following +patiently the action of microscopic organisms, especially in their +relation to health, discovering the secret of contagion and infection, +outlining methods of defense against the attacks of these invisible +armies, finding the true basis for inoculation, extending its operation, +robbing hospitals of their terrors and surrounding surgery with +safeguards heretofore undreamt of, literally performing miracles (in his +control of swine plague and the like), and for the want of another +subject preparing to experiment upon himself for the prevention of +hydrophobia, and in doing it all in the most simple and humble way, +naively unconscious of his own fame and living from first to last in a +noble and comparative poverty which contrasts dramatically with the +material well-being for which Mrs. Eddy was so eager. Nothing of this +had ever come into Mrs. Eddy's field or those whom she addressed. With +all the aid which the modern physician has at his control, diagnosis is +still a difficult matter, physicians confess it themselves. There is +still, with all the resource of modern medical science, a residuum of +hopeless and obscure cases which baffle the physician. That residuum was +very much larger fifty years ago than it is now. + + +_She Begins to Teach and to Heal_ + +The typical Protestant religious experience, as we have seen, was not +great enough to contain all the facts of life. The molten passion of an +earlier Calvinism had hardened down into rigidities which exalted the +power of God at the cost of human helplessness. There was no adequate +recognition among the devout of the sweep of law. Everything that +happened was a special Providence and it was hard enough to fit the +trying facts of life into an understanding of Divine Love when there was +apparently so much in life in opposition to Divine Love. + +A very great deal of the ferment of the time was just the endeavour to +find some way out of all this and the group of which Mrs. Eddy was a +part were really the first to try to find their way out except as roads +of escape which were, on the whole, not ample enough had been sought by +the theological liberalism of the time of which Unitarianism was the +most respectable and accepted form. There are, as has been said, curious +underground connections through all this region. We find homeopathy, +spiritualism, transcendentalism, theological liberalism and faith +healing all tied up in one bundle. + +The line which Mrs. Eddy now came to follow is, on the whole, clear +enough. She becomes in her turn teacher and healer, giving her own +impress and colour to what she called the science she taught, claiming +it more and more as her own and not only forgetting, but denying as she +went on, her indebtedness to any one else. The whole thing gradually +became in her mind a distinct revelation for which the ages had been +waiting and this revelation theory is really the key to the +contradictions and positive dishonesties which underlie the authorized +account of the genesis of Christian Science. She associated herself with +one of the more promising of her pupils who announced himself as Dr. +Kennedy, with Mrs. Eddy somewhat in the background. Kennedy was the +agent, Mrs. Eddy supplied him with the material of what was a mixed +method of teaching and healing. She had always been desperately poor; +now for the first time she had a respectable bank account. + +There were corresponding changes in her personality and even her +physique. She began to give lessons, safeguarding her instructions from +the very first in such ways as to make them uncommonly profitable. Her +pupils paid $100 for the course and agreed also to give her a percentage +of the income from their practice. In the course of litigation which +afterward follows, the courts pronounced that they did not find in her +course of instruction anything which could be "in any way of value in +fitting the defendant as a competent and successful practitioner of any +intelligible art or method of healing the sick." The court, therefore, +was of the opinion that "consideration for the agreement had wholly +failed." In a sense the court was mistaken. Mrs. Eddy was giving her +disciples something which, whether it fitted them to be competent and +successful practitioners of any intelligible art or method of healing +the sick, or no, was of great financial advantage both to them and to +their teacher. She afterward raised her tuition fee to $300 and stated +that God had shown her in multitudinous ways the wisdom of this +decision. + + +_Early Phases of Christian Science_ + +Everything was, to begin with, a matter of personal relationship between +Mrs. Eddy and her students. They constitute a closely related group, the +pupils themselves extravagant in their gratitude to their teacher. There +were, of course, schisms, jealousies, recriminations, litigation, but +none the less, the movement went on. The first attempt at organization +was made at Lynn in 1875. A hall was rented, meetings were held in the +evening, the society was known as the "Christian Scientists" and as an +organization Christian Science came into the world. The first edition of +"Science and Health" was also published in 1875. There was difficulty in +finding a publisher; those who assisted Mrs. Eddy financially were +losers in the enterprise. They were never reimbursed, though "Science +and Health" afterward became the most remunerative single publication in +the world. Two years later Mrs. Glover (for after her divorce from +Patterson she had taken her earlier married name) married Gilbert Eddy +and so took the name by which she is best known to the world. + +There is much in this period of Mrs. Eddy's life to indicate that she +had not yet reached an inner serenity of faith. She was never able to +free herself from a perverted belief in animal magnetism or mesmerism +which showed itself in fear rather than faith. She believed herself +persecuted and if she did not believe in witchcraft she believed in +something curiously like it. Indeed, to Mrs. Eddy belonged the rather +curious distinction of having instigated the last trial for witchcraft +in the United States and with a fitting sense of historic propriety she +staged it at Salem. The judge dismissed the case, saying that it was not +within the power of the Court to control the defendant's mind. The case +was appealed, the appeal waived and the whole matter rests as a curious +instance in the records of the Salem court. + +Mrs. Eddy does not appear as the plaintiff in the case. The complainant +is one of her students, but Mrs. Eddy was behind the complaint, the real +reason for which is apparently that the defendant had refused to pay +tuition and royalty on his practice and was interfering with the work of +the group of which Mrs. Eddy was leader. The incident has value only as +showing the lengths to which the mind may be led once it has detached +itself from the steadying influences of experience-tested reality. It is +interesting also to note that in one way and another Mrs. Eddy and her +church have been involved in more litigation than any other religious +teacher or religious movement of the time. + + +_She Writes "Science and Health" and Completes the Organization of Her +Church_ + +Nothing apparently came of the first tentative organization in 1875. The +first incorporated Church of Christ Scientist was chartered in 1879 with +twenty-six charter members and Boston as its seat. Meetings of this +church were held, to begin with, in Lynn and Boston, but Lynn was not +friendly to the new enterprise and the Boston group became the center of +further growth. Mrs. Eddy left Lynn finally in 1882 and during all the +next period the history of Christian Science is the history of the +Mother Church in Boston and of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. +Mrs. Eddy suffered no dissent, her pupils either followed or left her. +She was the controlling force in the whole movement. She began to +surround herself with a certain mystery and delighted in theatrical +effects. She had written and rewritten "Science and Health" until it +began to take final form. The _Journal of Christian Science_ became the +official organ of Mrs. Eddy's movement as "Science and Health" was its +gospel. + +The movement reached beyond Boston and New England and invaded the West. +It was now so outstanding as to create general public interest. The +churches began to take notice of it and indeed, whatever has been for +the last twenty years characteristic of Christian Science was then +actively in action. What follows is the familiar story of Mrs. Eddy's +own personal movements, her withdrawal to Concord, her growing +detachment from the movement which she nevertheless ruled with an iron +hand, the final organization of the church itself along lines wholly +dictated by its leader, the deepening of public interest in the movement +itself, Mrs. Eddy's removal from Concord to Newton and her death. She +left behind her the strongest and most driving organization built up by +any religious leader of her time. Of all those, who since the Wesleys +have inaugurated and carried through a distinct religious movement, only +Alexander Campbell is in the same class with Mrs. Eddy and Campbell had +behind him the traditional force of the Protestantism to which he gave +only a slightly new direction and colouring. Mrs. Eddy's contributions +are far more distinct and radical. + +We need, then, to turn from her life, upon whose lights and shadows, +inconsistencies and intricacies, we have touched all too lightly, to +seek in "Science and Health" and the later development of Christian +Science at once the secret of the power of the movement and its +significance for our time. + + + + +V + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A PHILOSOPHY + + +Christian science has a considerable group of authorized publications +and a well-conducted department of publicity. Its public propaganda is +carried on by means of occasional lectures, always extremely well +advertised and through its reading rooms and periodicals. Its +unadvertised propaganda is carried on, naturally, by its adherents. +Every instance of obscure or protracted illness offers it an opportunity +and such opportunities are by no means neglected. But the supreme +authority in Christian Science is Mary Baker Eddy's work "Science and +Health." This is read at every Sunday service and is the basis of all +lectures and explanatory advertisements. In general its exponents do not +substantially depart from the teachings of its book, nor, such is the +discipline of the cult, do they dare to. There are doubtless such +modifications of its more extreme and impossible contentions as every +religion of authority experiences. Christian Science cannot remain +unaffected by discussion and the larger movements of thought. But it has +not as yet markedly departed from the doctrines of its founder and must +thereby be judged. + +The book in its final form represents a considerable evolution. The +comparison of successive editions reveals an astonishing amount of +matter which has been discarded, although there has been no real +modification of its fundamental principles. References to malicious +animal magnetism which fill a large place in the earlier editions, are +almost wholly wanting in the last, and there has been a decided progress +toward a relative simplicity of statements. The book is doubtless much +in debt to Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser, Mr. Wiggins, who brought to the +revision of Mrs. Eddy's writings a conscientious fidelity. One needs to +stand a good ways back from the book itself in order at all to get any +balanced view of its philosophy but, so seen, its fundamentals are +almost unexpectedly simple. + + +_Christian Science a Philosophy, a Theology, a Religion and a System of +Healing; General Conditions Which Have Lent it Power_ + +Christian Science is offered as a philosophy, a theology, a religion and +a method for the practical conduct of life and it needs to be considered +under each of these four heads. It demands also for any proper +understanding of it the backgrounds of Mrs. Eddy's peculiar temperament +and checkered history. It is a growth. For her fundamentals Mrs. Eddy +is, beyond reasonable debate, in debt to Quimby and in some ways +Quimby's original insights have suffered at her hands. None the less, in +its final form "Science and Health" is what Mrs. Eddy has made it and it +is what it is because she was what she was. She shared with her own +generation an absorbing interest in fundamental theological problems. +She inherited a religion which has reduced the whole of life to rigid +and on the whole too narrow theological formulæ. She was not able to fit +her experience into the formula which her faith supplied and yet, on the +other hand, her faith exercised a controlling influence over her life. +She was in a small and pathetic way a kind of nineteenth century Job +grappling with the old, old question given sin and, above all, pain and +suffering to find God. She could not adjust either Divine love or a just +Divine sovereignty to what she herself had been called upon to bear. A +natural tendency toward the occult and the desperate willingness of the +hopelessly sick to try anything which promises a cure, led her in many +directions. So much her biography explains. + +Quimby was the first teacher she found whose system seemed to offer any +key at all to the intellectual and spiritual puzzle in which she found +herself and when his system seemed to be proved for her by her recovery +from a chronic abnormal state, she thereafter followed and elaborated +what he suggested. Here a certain natural shrewdness and ingenuity of +mind stood her in good stead. She was helped by her own ignorances and +limitations. If she had been a trained thinker, familiar with a wide +range of philosophic speculation, she would never have dared write so +dogmatically; if she had been a great philosopher with the philosopher's +inclusive vision, she would never have dared build so much on +foundations so narrow. + +Mrs. Eddy was, unconsciously to herself, a type. She thought and felt +for multitudes of perplexed people unable to reconcile the more trying +experiences of life with what faith they had in the love and goodness of +God, unable on the other side to find the love and goodness of God in +the wide sweep of law and the orderly sequence of cause and effect, and +incapable under any circumstances of the patient analysis needed to +trace to all their sources the threads of their strangely mingled webs +of life; impressionable folk under the spell of words; speculative; at +once credulous and skeptical; intellectually alert enough to want to do +their own thinking and not intellectually disciplined enough to do it +well; persuaded that the Bible has both a message and authority and +unable to find in their traditional interpretation of it either a +satisfying message or an adequately directing authority; impatient of +discipline and pathetically eager for some short cut to happiness and +well-being. In a very signal way Mrs. Eddy has spoken and written for +this type particularly in American life. Her very style a liability as +it is, when tested by either logic or the accepted standards of good +writing, has, nevertheless, been an asset with those who have made her +their prophetess. + +The secret of Mrs. Eddy's power and the power of her system after her is +most largely in her essential intellectual and spiritual kinship with +such a temper and intellectual status as this, but she possessed also a +real measure of creative capacity, a marked reach of speculative power, +rare shrewdness and a masterful temper. Mrs. Eddy believed herself to +have found her system in the Old and New Testaments--but she did not. +She gradually built it up out of the suggestions which had been given +her to begin with; she gave it colour and direction from her own +experiences; she proved it to her own satisfaction in the healings which +seemed to result from it, then fitted it all as best she could into the +framework of her inherited Christian faith and read its meanings back +into the Scriptures. It is a pseudo-philosophy pseudo-Christianized (if +one may use the word) by a curious combination of ingenuity, devotion, +main strength and even awkwardness. And though Christian Science is +carrying on to-day as a religion rather than as either a philosophy or a +system of healing, it will stand or fall on the intellectual side as a +philosophy and not as a religion. + + +_The Philosophic Bases of Christian Science_ + +It is professedly an idealistic monism based on carefully selected facts +and depending for its proof upon certain results in the experience of +those who accept it. An idealism because there is for Mrs. Eddy no +reality save in mind, a monism because there is for Mrs. Eddy only one +reality and that is God. For a definition of God she offers only +synonyms and affirmations though here perhaps she follows only the usual +procedure of theology. God is divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, +Spirit, Mind--and all these capitalized, for it makes a vast difference +in the philosophy of Christian Science whether such familiar words as +these are spelled with a capital letter or not. It would be possible +from Mrs. Eddy's own words to pretty effectually prove what has been +more than once claimed: that Christian Science does not offer a personal +God, but all our terminology in this region is necessarily somewhat +loose, though hers is excessively so. Some of her definitions of God are +as personal as the Westminster Catechism or the Thirty-nine Articles. +The writer believes, however, after such dispassionate consideration of +the philosophy of Christian Science as he is able to give, that it would +make absolutely no difference in its philosophic basis whether God were +conceived as a person or not. If the God of Christian Science be taken +merely as the exaltation of an abstract idealism or a philosophic +Absolute everything would be secured which is otherwise secured. + +Up to a certain point Christian Science marches with other idealistic +systems. From Plato down we have had philosophers a plenty, who have +sought to build for us a universe whose only realities are mind and its +attributes, or perhaps more technically, consciousness and its content. +It is truly a difficult enough matter to relate the world without and +the world within, once we begin thinking about it (though happily and in +the practical conduct of life this is not so hard as the philosophers +make out, otherwise we should be in a hopeless state), and it is natural +enough for one type of mind to simplify the problem by making the world +within the only world. Nor have there been wanting those who have sought +to reduce everything to a single reality whether matter or mind, and +ever since we have had theology at all a perplexed humanity has been +seeking to reconcile the goodness and the power of God with the sin and +sorrow of our troubled world. + +But Christian Science parts company soon enough with this great +fellowship of dreamers and philosophers and takes its own line. It +affirms consciousness and its content to be the only reality; it affirms +the divine Mind to be the ultimate and all-conditioning reality; it +affirms love and goodness to be the ultimate qualities of the divine +Mind, but it meets the problem of sin and evil by denying them any +reality at all. (Here it is in more or less accord with certain forms of +mysticism.) But even as Christian Science cuts this Gordian knot it +creates for itself another set of difficulties and involves itself in +those contradictions which will eventually be the undoing of it as a +philosophy. + + +_It Undertakes to Solve the Problem of Evil. Contrasted Solutions_ + +What Christian Science is seeking is an ideal order with a content of +unqualified good and it secures this by denying the reality of every +aspect of experience which either challenges or contradicts its own +idealism. What is distinctive, then, in Christian Science is not its +affirmations but its denials. All systems of philosophic idealism face +practically the same problem and offer various solutions. They most +commonly resolve evil of every sort--and evil is here used in so wide a +way as to include sin and pain and sorrow--into an ultimate good. + +Evil is thus an "unripe good," one stage in a process of evolution +which, when it has had its perfect and all-transforming way, will reveal +both moral and physical evil to have been no evil at all but simply +aspects of life, trying enough at the time and puzzling enough when +taken by themselves, but having their own distinct and contributory +value when considered in their relation to the final whole. Such an +approach as this does not in any wise diminish for the individual either +the reality of pain or the unhappy consequences of sin, but it does ask +him to judge the wisdom and love of God not by their passing phases but +by their outcome in the wealth and worth of character. + +Robert Browning sang this sturdily through a long generation riding down +its difficulties by the sheer force of an unconquerable optimism and +subduing argument to lyric passion. + + "The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; + What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; + On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. + + "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence + For the fullness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? + Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? + Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?" + +Others affirm the self-limitation of God.[30] In His respect for that +human freedom which is the basis of self-regulated personal action and +therefore an essential condition of character, He arrests Himself, as it +were, upon the threshold of human personality and commits His children +to a moral struggle justifying the inevitable incidents of moral defeat +by the greatness of the ends to be attained. A vast deal of what we call +evil--broadening evil to include not only moral defeat but also pain--is +either a consequence or a by-product of what Henry Churchill King calls +the fight for character. Such a solution as this is consistent with the +love of God and the moral order; whether it is consistent with a +thoroughgoing monism or not is another question. William James doubted +it and so frankly adopted Pluralism--which is perhaps just a way of +saying that we cannot reconcile the contending forces in our world order +with one over-all-controlling power--as his solution of the problem. + +[Footnote 30: Walker, for example, in his extremely suggestive Spiritual +Monism and Christian Theism.] + +Josiah Royce has valiantly maintained, through long and subtle argument, +the goodness of the whole despite the evil of the incidental. "All +finite life is a struggle with evil. Yet from the final point of view +the Whole is good. The Temporal Order contains at no one moment anything +that can satisfy. Yet the Eternal Order is perfect. We have all sinned, +and come short of the glory of God. Yet in just our life, viewed in its +entirety, the glory of God is completely manifest. These hard sayings +are the deepest expressions of the essence of true religion."[31] He +finds the root of evil in the dissatisfaction of the finite will--a +dissatisfaction which on the other hand is the secret of the eventual +triumph of good. + +[Footnote 31: "The World and the Individual," Royce, Vol. II, Chap. +9--passim.] + +We suffer also through our involution with "the interests and ideals of +vast realms of other conscious and finite lives whose dissatisfactions +become part of each individual man's life when the man concerned cannot +at present see how or why his own ideals are such as to make these +dissatisfactions his fate." We suffer also through our associations with +nature, none the less "this very presence of evil in the temporal order +is the condition of the perfection of the eternal order." He dismisses +definitely, in an argument still to be quoted, the conclusion of the +mystic that an "experience of evil is an experience of unreality ... an +illusion, a dream, a deceit" and concludes: "In brief, then, nowhere in +Time is perfection to be found. Our comfort lies in the knowledge of the +Eternal. Strengthened by that knowledge, we can win the most enduring of +temporal joys, the consciousness that makes us delight to share the +world's grave glories and to take part in its divine sorrows,--sure that +these sorrows are the means of the eternal triumph, and that these +glories are the treasures of the house of God. When once this comfort +comes home to us, we can run and not be weary, and walk and not faint. +For our temporal life is the very expression of the eternal triumph." + +One may gravely question whether philosophy has ever so completely made +out its case as Professor Royce thinks. He is affirming as the reasoned +conclusion of philosophy what is rather a faith than a demonstration, +but none the less, all honest thinking has hitherto been brave enough to +recognize the reality of evil and to test the power of God and His love +and goodness not by the actuality of present pain, or the confusion of +present sin, but rather by the power which He offers us of growing +through pain to health or else so bearing pain as to make it a real +contribution to character and of so rising above sin as to make +penitence and confession and the struggle for good and the achievement +of it also a contribution to character. So St. Paul assures us that all +things work together for good for those that love God. "The +willingness," says Hocking, "to confront every evil, in ourselves and +outside ourselves, with the blunt, factual conscience of Science; +willingness to pay the full causal price for the removal of the blemish; +this kind of integrity can never be dispensed with in any optimistic +program."[32] + +[Footnote 32: "The Meaning of God in Human Experience," p. 175.] + +Sir Henry Jones takes the same line. "The first requisite for the +solution of the contradiction between the demand of religion for the +perfection of God, and therefore the final and complete victory of the +good in the other, is the honest admission that the contradiction is +there, and inevitable; though possibly, like other contradictions, it is +there only to be solved."[33] + +[Footnote 33: "A Faith that Enquires," p. 45.] + + +_The Divine Mind and Mortal Mind_ + +Christian Science solves this problem, as has been said, by denying the +reality of evil, but since we have an abundance of testimony to pain and +sickness, Mrs. Eddy goes a step farther. She denies the reality of the +testimony of the senses wherever pain and sickness are concerned.[34] +(Mrs. Eddy's denial of the reality of sin is hardly parallel to her +denial of the reality of physical ills.) And here the word comes in +which is made to carry a heavier load than any one poor word was ever +burdened with before. All that is involved in the recognition of +physical ills and indeed all that is involved in the recognition of the +material side of existence is error. (Once fairly on her road Mrs. Eddy +makes a clean sweep of whatever stands in her way.) What one may call +the whole shadowed side of experience is not only ignored, it is denied +and yet before it can be explained away it has to be explained. It is, +in brief, for Mrs. Eddy and her followers the creation of mortal mind. +Mortal mind, she says, "is nothing claiming to be something; mythology; +error creating other errors; a suppositional material sense; ... that +which neither exists in science nor can be recognized by the spiritual +sense; sin; sickness; death."[35] + +[Footnote 34: "Science and Health," last edition, pp. 108, 120, 293, +488.] + +[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, p. 591.] + +Mortal mind is that side of us which accepts our entanglement in the +facts and forces of the world order and upon mortal mind so vaguely +conceived Mrs. Eddy throws the whole burden of responsibility for all +the unhappy aspects of experience and conditioning circumstances. She +gives it a surprising range of creative power. It has created +everything Mrs. Eddy does not like or believe in. In other words, there +is not one reality but two, one the reality of well-being, the other the +reality of unhappiness and suffering, but according to Mrs. Eddy the +first reality is the only real reality, the second is an unreal reality +which we ourselves create through false beliefs and which we may escape +at any moment by simply shifting the center of our creative idealism. +Mrs. Eddy makes what she means by mortal mind reasonably clear through +endless repetition and some analysis, but she never for a moment +accounts for its existence. It is no creation of what she calls the +divine Mind; indeed she says in substance that God is not conscious of +it at all; it lies entirely outside the range of His knowledge. (Page +243.) + +God is Good. Since He is good He cannot have created nor be responsible +for, nor even recognize pain, sorrow or suffering. "The Divine Mind +cannot suffer" (page 108, also page 335), "is not responsible for +physical and moral disasters" (page 119). God did not create matter (the +Father mind is not the father of matter) (page 257), for matter means +pain and death, nor do such things as these belong in any way to the +order of the Divine Mind. They have no admitted reality in Mrs. Eddy's +scheme of a true idealism. Man is "God's spiritual idea" and since he +belongs by right to an order in which there is neither sin nor sorrow +nor death, such things as these have no reality for him save as he +admits them. What really admits them is mortal mind, the agent of +another system of Belief in which humanity has in some way, which is +never really explained, become entangled, and we may apparently escape +from the one order to the other simply by a change in our beliefs. For +all the shadowed side of life has reality only as we accept or believe +in it; directly we cease to believe in it or deny it it ceases to be. + +It is, as near as one can make out, a myth, an illusion, whose +beginnings are lost in obscurity and which, for the want of the +revelation vouchsafed through her, has been continued from age to age by +the untaught or the misled. For example, Arsenic is not a poison, so we +are told again and again. It is only a poison because people think it +is;[36] it began to be a poison only because people thought it was, it +continues to be a poison only because the majority of people think it is +now and, such is the subtle and far-reaching influence of mind upon +mind, it will continue to be a poison as long as any one continues to +believe it to be. Directly we all believe that Arsenic is not a poison +it will be no poison. Poisons, that is, are the creation of mortal mind. +Pain is pain only through the same mistaken belief in the reality of it. +"By universal consent mortal belief has constituted itself a law to bind +mortals to sickness, sin and death." And so on at great length and +almost endless repetition. + +[Footnote 36: Page 178.] + + +_The Essential Limitations of Mrs. Eddy's System_ + +Since matter conditions us who were born to be unconditioned and since +matter is apparently the root of so many ills, the seat of so many +pains, matter goes with the rest. Mrs. Eddy is not always consistent in +her consideration of matter; sometimes she confines herself to saying +that there is neither sensation nor life in matter--which may be true +enough save as matter both affords the material for sensation and +conditions its forms, which is an immense qualification,--but again and +again she calls matter an illusion. Consistently the laws of physics and +chemistry should disappear with the laws of hygiene and medicine, but +Mrs. Eddy does not go so far as that though it would be difficult to +find a logical stopping place once you have taken this line. Mortal mind +is apparently the source of all these illusions. + +Mrs. Eddy's disposal of matter, along with her constant return to its +misleading mastery in experience is an outstanding aspect of her book. +The writer is inclined to believe that Mrs. Eddy's formula: "There is +... no matter in life and no life in matter," is an echo of Tyndall's +famous utterance--made about the time she was working with her +system--that he found "in matter the promise and potency of all life." +There is surprisingly little reference in "Science and Health" to +philosophic or scientific sources. Cutter's physiology is quoted in some +editions--an old textbook which the writer remembers to have found among +his mother's school books. There are a few references to popular +astronomy, but in general for Mrs. Eddy modern science does not exist +except in the most general way as the erroneous expression of error and +always with a small "s" as against the capital "S" of her own system. +Nor does she show any knowledge of other philosophic idealisms nor any +acquaintance with any solution of the problems she was facing save the +commonplaces of evangelical orthodoxy. "Science and Health" knows +nothing also of any medical science save the empirical methods of the +medical science of 1860 and 1870. + +But she cannot have been wholly uninfluenced--being a woman of an alert +mind--by the controversy which, in the seventies and eighties, was +raging about a pretty crass and literal materialism, and her writings +probably reflect--with a good deal of indirection--that controversy. +Here is a possible key to a good many things which are otherwise +puzzling enough. She is, in her own fashion, the defender of an +idealistic interpretation of reality and experience. Now all idealistic +systems have had to dispose of matter in some way. In general idealists +find in matter only the reflection in consciousness of the material +which sense experience supplies, and since the raw material is in every +way so different from the mental reflection, the idealist may defend his +position plausibly in assuming matter to be, in its phenomenal aspects, +really the creation of thought. But he must account for the persistency +of it and the consistency of experience so conditioned. He does this by +assuming the whole interrelated order to be held, as it were, in +solution, in some larger system of thought which really supplies for us +our environment and if he be both devout and consistent he calls this +the thought God.[37] In this way he solves his problem--at least to his +own satisfaction--and even supplies a basis for Theistic faith. But he +does not deny the working reality of his so-called material experiences +nor does he, like Mrs. Eddy, accept one aspect of this experience and +deny the other. This is philosophically impossible. + +[Footnote 37: So Royce in "The World and the Individual."] + +A thoroughgoing theistic monism must find in matter some aspect or other +of the self-revelation of God. It may be hard pressed to discover just +how the psychical is "stepped down" to the physical. (That is the +essential difficulty in all Creationism.) But something must be assumed +to get a going concern in any department of thought and there is much in +that resolution of matter into force and force into always more tenuous +and imponderable forms--which is the tendency of modern science--to +render this assumption less difficult to the rational imagination than +perhaps any other we are asked to make. When the final elements in +matter have become electrons and the electron is conceived as a strain +in a magnetic field and thus the + + "Cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, + The solemn temples, the great globe itself, + Yea, all which is inherent," + +become the projection into sensibly apprehended form of the flux of an +infinite and eternal energy, it is not hard to define that energy in +terms of a divine will. Indeed it is hard not to do just that. But there +is no place in such a resolution as this for the conclusions of "Science +and Health." + +Or we may accept in one form or another a dualism in which the +practical mind is generally content to rest. According to this point of +view we have to do with a reality which may be known under two aspects. +It is the chemical action and interaction of elements--and the mind +which measures and combines them; it is the physical action and +interaction of force--and the mind which directs the process. +Biologically "the living creature gives an account of itself in two +ways. It can know itself as something extended and intricately built up, +burning away, moving, throbbing; it can also know itself as the seat of +sensation, perceptions, feelings, wishes, thoughts. But there is not one +process, thinking, and another process, cerebral metabolism (vital +processes in nerve-cells); there is a psycho-physical life--a reality +which we know under two aspects. Cerebral control and mental activity +are, on this view, different aspects of one natural occurrence. What we +have to do with is the unified life of a psycho-physical being, a +body-mind or mind-body."[38] In short there is no philosophy or science +outside the covers of her own book to which Mrs. Eddy may turn for +support and though this does not prove the case against her--she might +be right and the whole disciplined thought of her time be wrong--this +latter supposition is so improbable as to rule it out of court. + +[Footnote 38: J.A. Thomson, "The Outline of Science," p. 548.] + +The materialism against which she contends has ceased to exist. The +matter which she denies does not exist in the sense of her denial. There +was, even when she was writing, a line of which she was apparently +wholly ignorant which has since been immensely developed, and of all +this there is naturally no reflection at all in her work. It is more +hopelessly out of touch with the laborious and strongly established +conclusions of modern thought in every field than the first chapters of +Genesis for there one may, at least, substitute the science of to-day +for the science of 3,000 years ago and still retain the enduring +insights of the faith then voiced, but there is no possible +accommodation of "Science and Health" to either the science or the +philosophy of the twentieth century. It must be left to a consistent +Christian Scientist to reconcile his gospel with the freer movements of +the world of which he is still a citizen--though perhaps this also might +be urged against a deal of contemporaneous Christian faith--but it is +all an arresting testimony to the power of the human mind to organize +itself in compartments between which there is no communication. + + +_Experience and Life_ + +Beyond all this is the fact of which "Science and Health" takes no +account--the conditioning of conscious life and working experience by +its material environment however conceived. This is true of every phase +of life and all our later emphasis upon the power of the mind in one +direction and another to escape this conditioning scarcely affects the +massive reality of it. Christian Science makes no attempt at all to +escape this--save in the region of physical health--or else it provides +an alibi in the phrase, "I have not demonstrated in that region yet." +But it does not thus escape the limitation imposed upon us all and if +we may dare for a moment to be dogmatic, it never will. At the best we +live in a give and take and if, through discipline and widening +knowledge, we may push back a little the frontiers which limit us, and +assert the supremacy of soul over the material with which it is so +intimately associated, we do even this slowly and at great cost and +always in conformity with the laws of the matter we master. + +There is a body of evidence here which can no more be ignored than +gravitation, and we best dispose of association of personality with the +material fabric of the body and the world of which it is a part, not by +denying their mutual interdependence but by discovering therein the laws +and methods of an infinite wisdom. Here are ministries through which we +come to consciousness of ourselves, here are materials upon which we +exercise our power, here are realities which hold us fast to normal and +intelligible lives, here are masters whose rule is kind and servants +whose obediences empower us. They condition our happinesses as well as +our unhappinesses and supply for us the strings of that harp of the +senses upon which the music of life is played. Life really gains its +spiritual content through the action and interaction of the aspiring +self upon its environment--whether that environment be intimate as the +protest of a disturbed bodily cell or remote as Orion and the +Pleiades.[39] The very words which Mrs. Eddy uses would be idle if this +were not so and though a thoroughgoing defender of her system may read +into its lines a permission for all this, the fundamentals of her system +deny it. + +[Footnote 39: "And I am inclined to think that the error of forgetting +that spirit in order to be real or that principles, whether of morality, +religion or knowledge, must be exemplified in temporal facts, is a no +less disastrous error than that of the sciences which have not learned +that the natural, when all the meaning of it is set free, blossoms into +the spiritual like the tree into flower. Religion and philosophy and +science also have yet to learn more fully that all which can possibly +concern man, occupy his intelligence or engage his will, lies at the +point of intersection of the natural and spiritual."--"A Faith that +Enquires," p. 27.] + +Christian Science breaks down both philosophically and practically just +here. It is none the less a dualism because it denies that it is. It +confronts not one but two ranges of reality; it gains nothing by making +mortal mind the villain in the play. It is compelled to admit the +existence of the reality which it denies, even in the fact of denying +it. What we deny exists for us--we could not otherwise deny it. Royce +has put all this clearly, strongly, finally. "The mystic first denies +that evil is real. He is asked why, then, evil seems to exist. He +replies that this is our finite error. The finite error itself hereupon +becomes, as the source of all our woes, an evil. But no evil is real, +hence no error can be real, hence we do not really err even if we +suppose that evil is real. Here we return to our starting point and +could only hope to escape by asserting that it is an error to assert +that we really err or that we really believe error to be real, and with +a process thus begun there is indeed no end, nor at any stage in this +process is there consistency."[40] All this is subtle enough, but if we +are to make our world by thinking and unthinking it, all this is +unescapably true. + +[Footnote 40: "The World and the Individual," Vol. II, p. 394.] + +When, moreover, you have reduced one range of experience to illusion +there is absolutely nothing to save the rest. If evil is error and error +evil and the belief that evil is an illusion is itself an illusion what +is there to guarantee the reality of good? The sword with which Mrs. +Eddy cut the knot of the problem of evil is two-edged. If the optimist +denies evil for the sake of good and points for proof to the solid +coherency of the happier side of life, the pessimist may as justly deny +good for the sake of evil and point for proof to the solid coherency of +the sadder side of life; he will have no trouble in finding his facts. +If sickness is a dream then health is a dream as well. Once we have +taken illusion for a guide there is no stopping until everything is +illusion. The Eastern mystic who went this road long before Mrs. Eddy +and who thought it through with a searching subtleness of which she was +incapable, reached the only logical conclusion. All experience is +illusion, entire detachment from action is the only wisdom, and +absorption in an unconscious something which only escapes being nothing +is our appointed destiny: + + "We are such stuff + As dreams are made of, + And our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + + +_Sense-Testimony Cannot Be Accepted for Health and Denied for Sickness_ + +Christian Science, then, is not monism, it is rather a dualism; it +confronts not one but two ranges of reality and it is compelled to admit +the existence of the reality which it denies, even the fact of denying +it, for it is a philosophical axiom that what we deny exists for us--we +could not otherwise deny it. Denial is the recognition of reality just +as much as affirmation. To repeat, it is this continuous interwoven +process of trying to reconcile the one-sided idealism of Christian +Science with the necessity of its argument and the facts of life which +gives to "Science and Health" what one may call its strangely bifocal +character, though indeed this is a somewhat misleading figure. One has +the same experience in reading the book that one has in trying to read +through glasses which are out of focus; you are always just seeing and +just missing because Mrs. Eddy herself is always just seeing and just +missing a really great truth. + +This fundamental inconsistency penetrates the whole system even down to +its practical applications. Christian Science denies the testimony of +the senses as to sickness and yet accepts them as to health. It goes +further than this, it accepts the testimony of the senses of other +people--physicians, for example, in accepting their diagnosis. The +edition of "Science and Health" published in 1918 offers in chapter +eighteen a hundred pages of testimonials sent in by those who have in +various ways been helped by their faith. These letters are shot through +and through with a recognition of the testimony of the senses which no +explanation can possibly explain away. "I was afflicted with a fibroid +tumour which weighed not less than fifty pounds, attended by a +continuous hemorrhage for eleven years." If the senses have any language +at all, this is their language. A growth cannot be known as a fibroid +tumour without sense testimony, nor its weight estimated without sense +testimony, nor a continuous hemorrhage be recorded, or its cessation +known without sense testimony, nor can epilepsy be diagnosed, nor +bilious attacks recognized without sense testimony. On page 606 a +grateful disciple bears witness to the healing of a broken arm, +testimony to said healing being demonstrated by a visit to a physician's +office "where they were experimenting with an X-ray machine. The doctor +pointed out the place as being slightly thicker at that part, like a +piece of steel that had been welded." In other words, Christian Science +cannot make out its case without the recognition of the veracity of a +sense testimony, whose truth its philosophy denies. + +Mrs. Eddy seems to dismiss all this in one brief paragraph. "Is a man +sick if the material senses indicate that he is in good health? No, for +matter can make no conditions for man. And is he well if the senses say +he is sick? Yes, he is well in Science, in which health is normal and +disease is abnormal."[41] If Mrs. Eddy and her followers believe so +specious a statement as that, to set them free from an inconsistency +which is central in their whole contention, they are welcome to their +belief, but the inconsistency still remains. You can go far by using +words in a Pickwickian sense but there is a limit. A consistent idealism +is philosophically possible, but it must be a far more inclusive and +deeply reasoned idealism than Christian Science. The most thoroughgoing +idealisms have accepted the testimony of the senses as a part of the +necessary conduct of life as now conditioned. Anything else would reduce +us to unspeakable confusion, empty experience of its content, dissolve +all the contacts of life and halt us in our tracks for we cannot take a +step safely without the testimony of the senses and any scheme of things +which seeks to distinguish between the varying validities of sense +testimony, accepting only the evidence of the senses for health and +well-being and denying the dependability of whatever else they register, +is simply an immense caprice which breaks down under any examination. + +[Footnote 41: Page 120. It is only fair to say that Mrs. Eddy is +hampered by her own want of clear statement. The phrase (so often used +in "Science and Health") "in Science" is probably in her mind equivalent +to "in the ideal order" and if Mrs. Eddy had clearly seen and clearly +stated what she is groping for: that the whole shadowed side of life +belongs to our present world of divided powers and warring forces and +unfinished enterprises, that God has something better for His children +toward which we are being led through the discipline of experience and +that we may therefore seek to conceive and affirm this ideal order and +become its citizens in body, mind and soul, she would have escaped a +perfect web of contradiction and been in line not only with the great +philosophies but with historic Christian faith. But then Christian +Science would not be Christian Science.] + + +_The Inescapable Reality of Shadowed Experience_ + +Evil does not cease to be because it is denied. The acceptance of sense +testimony is just as necessary in the region of pain and sickness as in +driving a motorcar down a crowded street and the hypothesis of a +misleading mortal mind, instead of explaining everything, demands itself +an explanation. What Mrs. Eddy calls mortal mind is only the registry of +the dearly bought experience of the race. We began only with the power +to feel, to struggle, to will and to think. We have been blind enough +and stupid enough but we are, after all, not unteachable and out of our +experience and our reflections we have created the whole splendid and +dependable body of human knowledge. What we know about pain is itself +the outcome of all the suffering of our kind. We began with no developed +philosophy nor any presuppositions about anything. Experience reflects +encompassing realities which we are able to escape only as we make their +laws our ministers. We did not give fire the power to burn, we +discovered that only in the school of the touch of flame. We did not +give edged steel the power to cut, we found that out through death and +bleeding wounds. We did not give to poisons their deadly power, our +attitude toward them is simply the outcome of our experience with them. + +Conditioned as we are by those laws and forces with which this present +existence of ours is in innumerable ways inextricably interwoven, our +tested and sifted beliefs are only the outcome of an action and +interaction of recipient or creative personality upon its environment +old as human consciousness, and if in all this we have become persuaded +of pain and suffering and shadowed experience, it is only because these +are as real as any elements in experience can possibly be. To attempt +to write them out or deny them out or juggle them out in any kind of way +save in bravely meeting them and humbly being taught by them and in the +full resource of disciplined power getting free from them by removing +the causes which create them, is to cheat ourselves with words, lose +ourselves in shadows which we mistake for light and even if in some +regions we seem to succeed it is only at the cost of what is more bitter +than pain and more deadly than wounds--the loss of mental and spiritual +integrity. This is a price too great to pay for any mere healing. + + + + +VI + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A THEOLOGY + + +"Science and Health" is offered, among other things, as a key to the +Scriptures, and along with her interpretation of both the Old and the +New Testaments in terms of her peculiar philosophy Mrs. Eddy rewrites +the great articles of the Christian creeds. A careful student of Mrs. +Eddy's mental processes is able in this region to understand them better +than she understood them herself. She had, to begin with, an inherited +reverence for the Bible as an authority for life and she shared with +multitudes of others a difficulty to which reference has already been +more than once made. For what one may call the typical Protestant +consciousness the Bible is the final revelation of God, governing, if +only we can come to understand it, both our faith and our conduct of +life, but the want of a true understanding of it and, above all, the +burdening of it with an inherited tradition has clouded its light for +multitudes of devout souls. + + +_Science and Health Offered as a Key to the Scriptures_ + +Such as these have been almost pathetically eager to accept any +interpretation, no matter how capricious, which seemed to read an +intelligible meaning into its difficult passages, or reconcile its +contradictions, or make it a more practical guide in the conduct of +life. Any cult or theory, therefore, which can seem to secure for itself +the authority of the Bible has obtained directly an immense +reinforcement in its appeal to the devout and the perplexed, and Mrs. +Eddy has taken full advantage of this. Her book is veined with Scripture +references; two of her chapters are expositions of Biblical books +(Genesis and Revelation); and other chapters deal with great doctrines +of the Church. + + +_It Ignores All Recognized Canons of Biblical Interpretation. +Illustrations_ + +Mrs. Eddy naturally sought the authority for her philosophy between the +covers of the Scriptures. Beyond debate her teachings have carried much +farther than they otherwise would, in that she claims for them a +Scriptural basis, and they must be examined in that light. Now there are +certain sound and universally recognized rules governing the scholarly +approach to the Old and New Testaments. Words must be taken in their +plain sense; they must be understood in their relation to their context. +A book is to be studied also in the light of its history; the time and +place and purpose of its composition, as far as these are known, must be +considered; no changes made in the text save through critical +emendation, nor any translations offered not supported by accepted +texts, nor any liberties be taken with grammatical constructions. By +such plain tests as these Mrs. Eddy's use of the Scriptures will not +bear examination. She violates all recognized canons of Biblical +interpretation on almost every page.[42] + +[Footnote 42: This is a brief--and a Christian Scientist may protest--a +summary dismissal of the claim of "Science and Health" to be a "key to +the Scriptures." But nothing is gained--save of the unnecessary +lengthening of this chapter--in going into a detailed examination of her +method and conclusions. She has insight, imagination, boundless +allegorical resource, but the whole Bible beneath her touch becomes a +plastic material to be subdued to her peculiar purpose by omissions, +read-in meanings and the substantial and constant disregard of plain +meanings. To the student the whole matter is important only as revealing +the confusion of the popular mind which receives such a method as +authoritative.] + +Her method is wholly allegorical and the results achieved are +conditioned only by the ingenuity of the commentator. It would require a +body of citation from the pages of "Science and Health," not possible +here, to follow through Mrs. Eddy's peculiar exegesis. One needs only to +open the book at random for outstanding illustrations. For example, +Genesis 1:6, "And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the +waters and let it divide the waters from the waters." The word +"firmament" has its own well established connotation gathered from a +careful study of all its uses. We can no more understand the earlier +chapters of Genesis without an understanding of Hebrew cosmogony than we +can understand Dante without a knowledge of medieval cosmogony. But, +given this knowledge which is the common possession of all sound +scholarship, we can at least understand what the passage means, even +though we have long left behind us the naïve conception of the vaulted +skies to which it refers. + +All this is a commonplace not worth repeating at the cost of the white +paper upon which it is printed, save as the ignoring of it leads to such +an interpretation of the passage as that which Mrs. Eddy offers: +"spiritual understanding by which human conception material mind is +separated from Truth is the firmament. The Divine Mind, not matter, +creates all identities and they are forms of Mind, the ideas of Spirit +apparent only as Mind, never as mindless matter nor the so-called +material senses" (page 505). Comment is not only difficult but +impossible in the face of a method like this. If such an interpretation +were an exception it might seem the unfair use of a hypercritical temper +to quote this particular expression of Mrs. Eddy's mind. But her whole +treatment of Scripture suffers from the same method. + +Everything means something else. The Ark is "the idea, or reflection of +truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle." Babel is +"self-destroying error"; baptism is "submergence in Spirit"; Canaan is +"a sensuous belief"; Dan (Jacob's son) is "animal magnetism"; the dove +is "a symbol of divine Science"; the earth is "a type of eternity and +immortality"; the river Euphrates is "divine Science encompassing the +universe and man"; evening "the mistiness of mortal thought"; flesh "an +error, a physical belief"; Ham (Noah's son) is "corporeal belief"; +Jerusalem "mortal belief and knowledge obtained from the five corporeal +senses"; night, "darkness; doubt; fear"; a Pharisee, "corporeal and +sensuous belief"; river is "a channel of thought"; a rock is "a +spiritual foundation"; sheep are "innocence"; a sword "the idea of +Truth."[43] + +[Footnote 43: Glossary, p. 579--passim.] + +Mrs. Eddy does not hesitate to make such textual modifications of +passages as suit her purpose and even when she is not dealing with her +texts in such ways as these, she is constantly citing for her proofs +passages which cannot by any recognized canon of interpretation possibly +be made to mean what she says they mean. Beneath her touch simple things +become vague, the Psalms lose their haunting beauty, even the Lord's +Prayer takes a form which we may reverently believe the author of it +would not recognize. + + "Our Father: Mother God, all harmonious, Adorable One, Thy kingdom + is come; Thou art ever present. Enable us to know--as in heaven, so + on earth--God is omnipotent, supreme. Give us grace for to-day; + feed the famished affections; and love is reflected in love; and + God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, + disease and death. For God is Infinite, all Power, all Life, Truth, + Love, over all and All." + + +_Its Conception of God_ + +It was quite as inevitable that she should undertake to fit her +speculations into the fabric of the theology in which she and most of +her followers had been trained, as that she should try to secure for her +speculation the weight of the authority of the Bible. She would have to +take for her point of departure the centrality of Christ, the +outstanding Christian doctrines, markedly the Incarnation and the +Atonement and she would need somehow to dispose of the Sacraments. All +this is inevitably implied in the persistent designation of her whole +system as a Christian system. + +The chapter headings in "Science and Health" and the sequence of +chapters are the key to the movement of her mind; they are determined by +her association of interests. Marriage is on the same level with Prayer, +Atonement and the Eucharist, and Animal Magnetism with Science, Theology +and Medicine. It is hard to know where to begin in so confused a region. +She is handicapped, to begin with, by the rigidity of her idealism and +actually by her limitation both of the power and personality of God. +This statement would probably be as sharply contradicted by Mrs. Eddy's +apologists as anything in this study, but it is not hastily made. +Philosophically He is for Mrs. Eddy only an exalted ideality into +relation with which we may think ourselves by a change in our system of +belief. Actually, as we shall see, this conception yields to emotional +and devotional needs--it is bound to--but in theory it is unyielding. + +Now the accepted Christian conception of God is entirely different. Both +the Old and New Testaments conceive a God who is lovingly and justly +conscious of all our need, who is constantly drawing near to us in +manifold appeals and approaches and who has, above all, in the +Incarnation made a supreme and saving approach to humanity. He is no +more rigid than love is rigid; His attitude toward us, His children, +changes as the attitude of a father toward the changing tempers of a +child. Now all this may be true or it may be only the dream of our +strangely sensitive personalities, but whether it be true or not, it is +the Christian conception and any denial of this or any radically +different substitution for it cannot call itself Christian save as it +writes into the word Christian connotations to which it has heretofore +been utterly strange. + + +_Mrs. Eddy's Interpretation of Jesus Christ_ + +Mrs. Eddy begins, therefore, with the handicap of a philosophy which can +be adjusted to Christian theology only through fundamental modifications +of that theology. It is hard to systematize the result. Mrs. Eddy +distinguishes between Jesus and Christ. Her conception of Jesus is +reasonably clear whether it be historically true or not, but her +conception of the Christ is vague and fluctuating. Jesus was apparently +the first Christian Scientist, anticipating, though not completely, its +philosophy and demonstrating its practices. His teachings are so +interpreted as to be made to yield a Christian Science content. When He +urged the commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" what He +really meant was, "Thou shalt have no belief of Life as mortal; thou +shalt not know evil, for there is one Life."[44] "He proved by His deeds +that Christian Science destroys sickness, sin and death. Our Master +taught no mere theory, doctrine or belief; it was the divine Principle +of all real being which He taught and practiced."[45] "He taught His +followers the healing power of Truth and Love"[46] and "the proofs of +Truth, Life and Love which Jesus gave by casting out error and healing +the sick, completed His earthly mission."[47] "The truth taught by Jesus +the elders scoffed at because it demanded more than they were willing to +practice."[48] They, therefore, crucified Him and He seemed to die, but +He did not. Apparently He was not dead when He was entombed and His +three days in the tomb gave Him "a refuge from His foes, a place in +which to solve the great problem of being." In other words He +demonstrated His own healing in the tomb. "He met and mastered, on the +basis of Christian Science, the power of mind over matter, all the +claims of medicine, surgery and hygiene. He took no drugs to allay +inflammation; He did not depend upon food or pure air to resuscitate +wasted energies; He did not require the skill of a surgeon to heal the +torn palms and bind up the wounded side and lacerated feet, that He +might use those hands to remove the napkin and winding sheet and that He +might employ His feet as before."[49] + +[Footnote 44: Page 19. All citations from last edition.] + +[Footnote 45: Page 26.] + +[Footnote 46: Page 31.] + +[Footnote 47: Page 41.] + +[Footnote 48: Page 41.] + +[Footnote 49: Page 44.] + +"His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while He was hidden in the +sepulchre, whereas He was alive, demonstrating within the narrow tomb +the power of the spirit to overrule mortal, material sense." His +ascension was a final demonstration in which He "rose above the physical +knowledge of His disciples and the material senses saw Him no more." He +attained this perfection of demonstration only gradually and He left +behind Him an incomplete revelation which was to wait for its full +illumination for the coming of Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science. Perhaps +more justly He left behind Him, according to Mrs. Eddy and her +followers, a body of teaching which could not be clearly understood +until she came to complete the revelation. At any rate, Christian +Science is really His second coming. + + +_Christian Science His Second Coming_ + +In an advertisement printed in the New York _Tribune_ on January 23, +1921, Augusta E. Stetson says: "Christ in Christian Science is come to +the understanding of those who looked for His reappearing." And if +certain sentences which follow mean anything, they mean that, in the +thought of Mrs. Eddy's followers, she completes what Jesus began and +fulfills the prophecy of His reappearing. "Her earthly experience runs +parallel with that of her Master; understood in a small degree only by +the few who faintly see and accept the truth, she stood during her +earthly mission and now stands on the mount of spiritual illumination +toward whose heights no feet but those of the blessed Master have so +directly toiled, first in agony and finally, like Jesus Christ the +masculine representative of the Fatherhood of God, she as the feminine +representative of the motherhood of God, will appear in triumphant +demonstration of divine power and glory as the combined ideal man in +God's image and likeness." + +And, indeed, there are not wanting intimations in "Science and Health" +which give to Mrs. Eddy a certainty in this region which Jesus Himself +did not possess. He falters where she firmly trod. No need to dwell +upon the significant omissions which such an interpretation of the +historic Jesus as this demands. The immensely laborious and painstaking +scholarship which has sought, perplexedly enough it must be confessed, +to discover behind the Gospel narratives the fundamental facts and +realities of His life, is entirely ignored. Mrs. Eddy has no place for +the social aspects of the teachings of Christ, indeed His whole system +of ethic could be "blacked out"; as far as her teaching is concerned it +would make absolutely no difference. + +Mrs. Eddy distinguishes, in theory at least though there is no +consistency in her use of terms, between Jesus and the Christ. "Jesus is +the human man, and Christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of +Jesus, the Christ" (page 473). "Jesus is the name of the man who, more +than all other men, has presented Christ, the true idea of God, healing +the sick and the sinning and destroying the power of death" (page 473). +"In an age of ecclesiastical despotism, Jesus introduced the teaching +and practice of Christianity ... but to reach His example and test its +unerring Science according to His rule, ... a better understanding of +God as divine Principle, Love, rather than personality or the man Jesus, +is required" (page 473). + +It is difficult enough to know just what this means, but as one stands +far enough back from it all it seems to reduce Jesus historically to the +first outstanding Christian Science teacher and healer. "Jesus +established what He said by demonstration, thus making His acts of +higher importance than His words. He proved what He taught. This is the +Science of Christianity. Jesus _proved_ the Principle, which heals the +sick and casts out error, to be divine" (page 473). He is, therefore, +historically of chiefest value as the demonstrator of Christian Science, +the full philosophy of which apparently awaited a later revelation. + +"Christ is the ideal Truth, that comes to heal sickness and sin through +Christian Science, and attributes all power to God" (page 473). "He +unveiled the Christ, the spiritual idea of divine Love" (page 38). The +Christ of Christian Science, then, is an ideal Truth, a spiritual idea, +apparently an abstraction. But Mrs. Eddy is not consistent in her use of +these two names. On one page Christ is "the spiritual idea of divine +Love"; on the next page "we need Christ and Him crucified" (page 39), +though how an ideal truth or a spiritual idea could possibly be +crucified we are not told. In many of her passages Mrs. Eddy uses the +familiar phrase, Jesus Christ, in apparently its ordinary connotations. + + +_The Incarnation: Christian Theology and Christian Science Belong Really +to Different Regions_ + +The Incarnation is disposed of in the same vague way. "Those instructed +in Christian Science have reached the glorious perception that God is +the only author of man. The virgin mother conceived this idea of God and +gave to her ideal the name of Jesus."[50] "The illumination of Mary's +spiritual sense put to silence material law and its order of generation, +and brought forth her child by the revelation of Truth. The Holy Ghost, +or divine Spirit, overshadowed the pure sense of the Virgin-mother with +the full recognition that being is Spirit."[51] "Jesus was the offspring +of Mary's self-conscious communion with God."[52] Now all this is +neither honest supernaturalism nor the honest acceptance of the normal +methods of birth. It is certainly not the equivalent of the Gospel +account whether the Gospel account be accepted or rejected. To use a +phrase which has come into use since "Science and Health" was written, +this is a "smoke screen" under cover of which Mrs. Eddy escapes the +necessity of either accepting or denying the testimony of the Gospels. + +[Footnote 50: Page 29.] + +[Footnote 51: Page 29.] + +[Footnote 52: Page 30.] + +Something of this, one must confess, one may find in not a little +religious teaching old and new, but it is doubtful if there is anywhere +so outstanding an instance of what one may call the smoke screen method +in the consideration of the Incarnation, as in the passages just quoted. +As a matter of fact all this is simply the attempt to fit the idealistic +dualism, which is the real philosophic basis of Christian Science and +which, in so far as it is capable of explanation at all, can be as +easily explained in two pages as two hundred, into the theology in which +Mrs. Eddy was nurtured and which was a background common to both herself +and her disciples. Christian Science would carry far less weight in the +race it is running if it frankly cut itself clear of a theology with +which it has fundamentally no affinity. This indoctrination of an +idealistic dualism with a content of Christian theology probably +heightens the appeal of the system to those who are most at home in a +new faith as they discover there the familiar phrases of their older +faith, but it weakens the fundamental Christian Science apologetic. I +think, however, we ought justly to recognize this as simply an +inevitable aspect in the transition of Christian Science from the +orthodox faith and experience of historic Christianity to a faith and +experience of its own. + +Seen as a curious half-truth development made possible by a whole group +of forces in action at the end of the nineteenth century, Christian +Science is reasonably intelligible, but as a system of doctrine built +upon the hitherto accepted bases of Christian fact and teaching, it is +not intelligible at all and the long controversy between the Christian +theologian and the Christian Science lecturer would best be ended by +recognizing that they have so little in common as to make attack and +counter-attack a movement in two different dimensions. The one thing +which they have in common is a certain set of words and phrases, but +these words and phrases have such entirely different meanings on the one +side and the other as to make the use of them hopelessly misleading. + + +_The Atonement. The Cross of Christian Science and the Cross of +Theology_ + +There are passing references to the Cross in "Science and Health," but +the word is used generally in a figurative and sentimental way. Mrs. +Eddy's cross is simply the pain of being misunderstood and criticised in +the preaching and practice of Christian Science, though indeed the Cross +of Jesus was also the outcome of hostilities and misunderstandings and a +final and terribly fierce method of criticism. One feels that mainly she +is thinking of her own cross as a misunderstood and abused woman and for +such suggestion she prefers the Cup as a figure to the Cross. As for the +Atonement "every pang of repentance and suffering, every effort for +reform, every good thought and deed will help us to understand Jesus' +Atonement for sin and aid its efficacy."[53] "Wisdom and Love require +many sacrifices of self to save us from sin." All this seems to be in +line with the moral theory of the atonement until we see that in such a +line as this there is no recognition of the fact that again and again we +suffer and that largely for others, and when she adds that "Its [the +atonement] scientific explanation is that suffering is an error of +sinful sense which Truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and +suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love" (page 23), those +passages cancel one another, for if suffering be "an error of sinful +sense" it is hard to see how any pang of it can help us to understand +Jesus' atonement unless His suffering be also "an error of sinful +sense," and this is to reduce the atonement to a like error. + +[Footnote 53: Page 19.] + +In another connection Mrs. Eddy finds the efficacy of the Crucifixion +"in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind." +But this turns out to be nothing more than that the Crucifixion offers +Christ a needed opportunity for the instruction of His disciples to +triumph over the grave. But since in another connection we are told He +never died at all (chapter Atonement and Eucharist, paragraph "Jesus in +the tomb") even this dissolves into unreality. Moreover the "eternal +Christ in His spiritual selfhood never suffered."[54] Whichever road she +takes here Mrs. Eddy reaches an impasse. It ought to be said, in justice +to Mrs. Eddy, that her treatment of the atonement reflects the +difficulty she found in the theology in which she had been trained as a +girl and that there are many true insights in her contentions. She was +at least seeking a vital and constructive interpretation and doubtless +her observations, confused as they are, have been for her followers a +real way out of a real difficulty. Here, as in so many other regions, +"Science and Health" is best understood by its backgrounds. + +[Footnote 54: A curious and far-off echo of early Docetism which also in +its own way reduced Christ's suffering to a simple seeming to suffer.] + +As a matter of fact there is in Christian Science absolutely no soil in +which to plant the Cross as the Cross is understood in Christian +theology. There is no place in Christian Science for vicarious +atonement, whether by God or man; there is little place in Christian +Science for redemptive suffering; there is a rather narrow region in +which suffering may be considered as instructive, a guide, perhaps, to +lead us out of unhappy or shadowed regions into the regions of physical +and, maybe, spiritual and moral well-being, and to quench the love of +sin.[55] Mrs. Eddy sometimes speaks of Christ as the Saviour but if her +system be pressed to a logical conclusion she must empty the word of all +the associations which it has hitherto had and make it simply the +equivalent of a teacher or demonstrator. + +[Footnote 55: Page 36. But this is to recognize the reality of +suffering. Mrs. Eddy is here on the threshold of a great truth--that +suffering is an aspect of education--but she goes no further.] + + +_Sin an Error of Mortal Mind_ + +Sin along with sickness and death are the projections of mortal error, +the creations of mortal mind; sin, sickness and death are to be +classified as effects of error. Christ came "to destroy the belief of +sin." All this is to root sin simply in the mind. No intimation at all +here of the part which a perverted will may play in the entanglements of +life; no intimation of the immense force of the emotional side of life; +no intimation here of the immense part which sheer selfishness plays. +Mrs. Eddy's sin is far too simple. There is, once more, a sound reason +for that. Mrs. Eddy is twice-born, if you will, but the struggle from +which she finally emerged with whatever measure of victory she attained +was not fought out with conscience as the field of battle, or in the +final reconciliation of a divided self finding unity and peace on some +high level. + +If Mrs. Eddy's true struggle was of the soul and not of complaining +nerves she has left no record of it anywhere. It was rather the reaction +of a speculative mind against the New England theology. Her experience +is strangely remote from the experience of Saul of Tarsus, or Augustine, +or John Bunyan. This is not to deny that in the practical outcome of +Christian Science as evidenced in the life of its adherents there is not +a very real power of helpful moral adjustment, but the secret of that +must be sought in something else than either its philosophy or its +theology. Christian theologians themselves have been by no means agreed +as to what sin really is. Under their touch it became too often a +theological abstraction rather than entanglement of personality caught +in manifold urgencies and pulled this way and that by competing forces +battling in the will and flaming in passion and desire. But a sin which +has no reality save through a mistaken belief in its existence is +certainly as far from the fact of a world like ours as is a sin which is +only one factor in a scheme of redemption. + +But at any rate, if sin have no reality except our mistaken persuasion +that it be true and if we are delivered from it directly we cease to +believe in it and affirm in the stead of it the reality of love and +goodness, then while there may be in such a faith as this both the need +and possibility of the recasting of our personal lives, there is in it +neither need nor possibility of the Christian doctrine of the atonement. +Naturally since man is incapable of sin, sickness and death, he is +unfallen, nor is "his capacity or freedom to sin any part of the divine +plan." "A mortal sinner is not God's man. Mortals are the counterfeits +of immortals; they are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil +which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo" (page +475). + +Here also is an echo from an early time and a far-off land. It is not +likely that Mrs. Eddy ever heard of Mani or Manicheeism, or knew to what +a travail of soul St. Augustine was reduced when he fought his way +through just a kindred line of teaching which, to save God from any +contact with or responsibility for evil, affirmed our dual genesis and +made us on one side children of darkness and on the other the children +of light, without ever really trying to achieve in a single personality +any reconciliation of two natures drawn from two entirely different +sources. Nor does Mrs. Eddy know that one Eusebius, finding much +evidence of this faith in the Christianity of the fourth century, +dismissed it briefly enough as "an insane heresy." Heresy it certainly +was for all those who were fighting their way out of their paganism into +an ordered Christian faith and whether it be insane or no, it is of all +the explanations which have been offered for the presence of evil in a +world supposedly ruled by the love and goodness of God, the one which +will least bear examination. It has been dead and buried these thousand +years. + +We may deny, if we are so minded, any freedom of the will at all, so +involving ourselves in an inevitable sequence of cause and effect as to +make us also simply weather-vanes driven east or west by winds of +inheritance and environment which we have no power to deflect and to +which we can only choose to respond. But to deny us the freedom to sin +and so to shut us up to a determinism of goodness is no more in accord +with the facts than to deny us the power to be good and shut us up to a +determinism of sin. If we are free at all we are free in all directions. + + +_The Sacraments Disappear. Mrs. Eddy's Theology a Reaction from the +Rigid Evangelicism of Her Youth_ + +"Science and Health" deals in the same radical way with the sacraments. +Nothing at all, apparently, is made of baptism save that Mrs. Eddy says +our baptism is a purification from all error. In her account of the Last +Supper the cup is mostly dwelt upon and that only as showing forth the +bitter experience of Jesus. The bread "is the great truth of spiritual +being, healing the sick" and the breaking of it the "explaining" it to +others. More is made of what is called the last spiritual breakfast with +the Disciples by Lake Galilee than of the Last Supper in the upper room. +"This spiritual meeting with our Lord in the dawn of a new light is the +morning meal which Christian Scientists commemorate" (page 35). "Our +bread," she says, "which cometh down from heaven, is Truth; our wine, +the inspiration of Love" (page 35). All this is of a piece with the +general allegorical use of the Old and New Testaments in "Science and +Health," but it is a marked departure from the sacrament of the Lord's +Supper even in the simple memorial way in which it is kept by +non-liturgical churches. + +Mrs. Eddy's theology, then, is in part a reaction from the hard phrasing +of the evangelical doctrines in which she was trained and it is indeed +in part a reaching out toward the interpretation of these doctrines in +terms of life and experience, but as a theology it is extraordinarily +loose and even though the familiar phrases of Protestant and Catholic +faiths are employed, what is left is wholly out of the current of the +main movement of Christian theology heretofore. The central articles of +the historic creeds practically disappear under Mrs. Eddy's treatment. + +Here, then, is a philosophy which will not bear examination, a use of +Scripture which can possibly have no standing in any scholarly +fellowship, and a theology which empties the central Christian doctrines +of the great meanings which have heretofore been associated with them. +And yet in spite of all this, Christian Science gets on and commends +itself to so considerable a number of really sincere people as to make +it evident enough that it must have some kind of appealing and +sustaining power. Where, then, is the hiding of its power? Partly, of +course, in its spaciousness. There are times when a half-truth has a +power which the whole truth does not seem to possess. Half truths can be +accepted unqualifiedly; they are capable of a more direct appeal and if +they be skillfully directed toward needs and perplexities they are +always sure of an acceptance; they make things too simple, that is one +secret of their hold upon us. This, of course, is more largely true +among the spiritually undisciplined and the mentally untrained, but even +the wisest folk find it easier upon occasion to accept a half truth +which promises an easy satisfaction or deliverance than a whole truth +which needs to be wrestled with and may be agonized over before it +brings us into some better estate. + + +_The Real Power of Christian Science is in Neither Its Philosophy Nor +Its Theology_ + +We have already seen what predisposing influences there were in the +breaking down of what we have called the accepted validations of +historic Christianity--due, as we have seen also, to many contributing +causes--to offer unusual opportunity to any new movement which promised +deliverance. But one must seek the conditions which have made possible +so many strange cults and movements in America, not only in the +breakdown of the historic faiths, but also in the state of popular +education. Democracy tends, among other things, to lead us to value a +movement by the number of people whom it is able to attract. We are, +somehow, persuaded that once a majority has accepted anything, what they +have accepted must be true and right. Even a strong minority always +commands respect. Any movement, therefore, which succeeds in attracting +a considerable number of followers is bound to attract others also, just +because it has already attracted so many. One has only to listen to the +current comment on Christian Science to feel that this is a real factor +in its growth. + +Democracy believes in education, but has not commonly the patience to +make education thoroughgoing. Its education is very much more likely to +be a practical or propaganda education than such training as creates +the analytical temper and supplies those massive backgrounds by which +the departures of a day are always to be tested. In America particularly +there is an outstanding want of background. It needs history, +philosophy, economic understanding and a wealth of racial experience to +give to any people either the power to quickly discriminate between the +truth and the half-truth, or to carry itself with poise through a +transitional period. But one may not dispose of the distinct hold of +Christian Science upon its followers by such generalizations. The real +inwardness of no religion can ever be known from its theology. A sincere +devotion may attend a most deficient theology and we need to be +charitable in judging the forms which other people's faith takes. What +seems unreasonable to one may seem quite right to another and whatever +carries a sincere faith deepening into a positive spiritual experience +accomplishes for the moment its purpose. These studies of Christian +Science are severe--for one must deal with it as honestly as he knows +how--but the writer does not mean that they should fail in a due +recognition of the spiritual sincerity of Christian Scientists. We must +therefore go in to what is most nearly vitally central in the system to +find the real secret of its powers. It continues and grows as a system +of healing and a religion. + + + + +VII + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A SYSTEM OF HEALING AND A RELIGION + + +Christian Science practice is the application of its philosophy and +theology to bodily healing. This is really the end toward which the +whole system is directed. "Science and Health" is an exposition of Mrs. +Eddy's system as a healing force. Her philosophy and theology are +incidental, or--if that is not a fair statement--they both condition and +are conditioned by her system of healing. There is hardly a page in her +book without its reference to sickness and health. Her statements are +consequently always involved and one needs to stand quite back from them +to follow their outline. Here, as elsewhere, one may read deeply and +indirectly between the lines attitudes and beliefs against which she is +reacting. Her reactions against the environment of her girlhood and +early womanhood affect her point of view so distinctly that without the +recognition of this a good deal of what she says is a puzzle without a +key. + + +_Christian Science the Application of Philosophy and Theology to Bodily +Healing_ + +She had been taught, among other things, that sickness is a punishment +for sin. One may safely assume this for the theology of her formative +period fell back upon this general statement in its attempt to reconcile +individual suffering and special providence. One ought not justly to say +that Mrs. Eddy ever categorically affirms that she had been taught this, +or as categorically denies the truth of it, but there are statements--as +for example page 366--which seem to imply that she is arguing against +this and directing her practitioners how to meet and overcome it. This +perhaps accounts for the rather difficult and wavering treatment of sin +and sickness in a connection where logically sickness alone should be +considered. + +Mrs. Eddy would not naturally have thus associated sin and sickness had +they not been associated for her in earlier teaching and yet, as has +been said, all this is implicit rather than explicit. The key to a great +deal in "Science and Health" is not in what the author says, but in the +reader's power to discover behind her statements what she is "writing +down." Her system is both denial and affirmation. In the popular +interpretation of it quite as much is made of denial and the recognition +of error as of its more positive aspects, but in the book there is a +pretty constant interweaving of both the denial of evil and the +affirmation of well-being. + +There is a sound element of wisdom in many of her injunctions, but more +needed perhaps fifty years ago than now. We must remember constantly +that Mrs. Eddy is writing against the backgrounds of a somber theology, +a medical practice which relied very greatly on the use of drugs which +was at the same time limited in its materia medica and too largely +experimental in its practice. She was writing before the day of the +trained nurse with her efficient poise. The atmosphere of a sick room is +not naturally cheerful and generally both the medical procedure and the +spiritual comfort of the sick room of the fifties and sixties did very +little to lighten depression. When, therefore, Mrs. Eddy urges, as she +does, an atmosphere of confidence and sympathy she is directly in the +right direction. + + +_Looseness of Christian Science Diagnosis_ + +As we pass beyond these things which are now commonplace, what she says +is not so simple. It is difficult to say how far the healing which +attends upon Christian Science is in her thought the result of Divine +Power immediately in exercise, and how far it is the outcome of +disciplines due to the acceptance of her theology and philosophy. It is +hard also to distinguish between the part the healer plays and the +contribution of the subject. There is no logical place in Christian +Science practice for physical diagnosis. "Physicians examine the pulse, +tongue, lungs, to discover the condition of matter, when in fact all is +Mind. The body is the substratum of mortal mind, and this so-called mind +must finally yield to the mandate of immortal Mind" (page 370). + +The result of this in practice is that the Christian Science healer +accepts either the diagnosis of the medical schools, reported +second-hand or else the patient's own statement of his condition. +Needless to say there is room for very great looseness of diagnosis in +such a practice as this. The actuality of sickness must be recognized +neither directly nor indirectly. The sickness must not be thought or +talked. Here also, as far as the patient is concerned, is a procedure of +undebated value. It all comes back, as we shall see presently, to +suggestion, but any procedure which frees the patient from depressing +suggestion and substitutes therefor an encouraging suggestion is in the +right direction. At the same time those who are not Christian Scientists +would rather stubbornly believe that somebody must recognize the fact of +sickness or else we cannot begin to set in action the machinery for +curing it, even if that machinery be Christian Science itself, and we do +not change this rather stubborn fact by covering sickness with the blank +designation Error. Even the error is real for the time being.[56] + +[Footnote 56: The writer once received an unexpected sidelight on the +practice of the Christian Science healer in this connection. He once +enjoyed the friendship of a Christian Science healer with whom he often +played golf. He called this healer up one morning to make an +appointment. His voice was not recognized over the telephone and he was +mistaken for a patient. The reply came back in professional tones--"And +what error are you suffering from this morning?" When he answered that +his own particular error was his persuasion that he could play golf the +telephone atmosphere was immediately changed.] + +The results of fear are constantly dwelt upon and this too is in the +right direction. Much is made of the creative power of mind in that it +imparts purity, health and beauty (page 371). When Mrs. Eddy says on +page 373 that disease is expressed not so much by the lips as in the +functions of the body she is making one of those concessions to common +sense which she makes over and over again, but when she attempts to +explain how erroneous or--as one may venture to call it--diseased belief +expresses itself in bodily function one is reminded of Quimby. +Temperature, for example, is wholly mental. Mrs. Eddy's reason for +believing this is apparently because "the body when bereft of mortal +mind at first cools and afterward it is resolved into its primitive +mortal elements." "Mortal Mind produces animal heat and then expels it +through the abandonment of a belief or increases it to the point of +self-destruction" (page 374). Fever is a mental state. Destroy fear and +you end fever. + +In all this there is a profound ignorance of the real causes of fever +which helps us to understand the marked deficiencies of the whole +system. There is nowhere any recognition of the body as an instrument +for the transformation and conservation and release of energy real as a +dynamo. There is nowhere any recognition of the commonplaces of modern +medical science in the tracing of germ infections. True enough, medical +science had hardly more than begun when "Science and Health" was first +written to redefine fevers in terms of germ infection and the consequent +disorganization of the balance of physical functionings, and the +oxidation of waste materials real as fire on a hearth, but that is no +reason why such ignorance should be continued from generation to +generation. + + +_The Power of Mental Environment_ + +In general, Christian Science practice as indicated in "Science and +Health" is a strange mingling of the true, the assumed and the false; +its assumptions are backed up by selected illustrations and all that +challenges it is ignored. Disease is unreal because Mind is not sick and +matter cannot be (page 393). But Mind is "the only I, or Us, divine +Principle, ... Life, Truth, Love; Deity, which outlines but is not +outlined" (page 591). In other words Mind is an ideal affirmation which +Mrs. Eddy assumes to underlie human experience and possibly to reveal +itself through human experience, and it certainly does not follow that +while an ideal affirmation is not sick, a human being involved in the +necessary relationships of our present material existence may not be. +Mrs. Eddy never clearly distinguishes between what a speculative mind +may affirm and actual experience report. Her dialectic is a constant +wrestling with reality in a range of statement which involves her in +many contradictions. She recognizes what she denies and denies what she +recognizes and, in a lawyer's phrase, constantly changes the venue. + +But through and behind it all is an intelligible method. Confidence is +to be reëstablished, fear is allayed, the sufferer from error led to +commit himself to healing forces. These healing forces are not +consistently defined. Sometimes they are the "power of the mind to +sustain the body" (page 417); sometimes "the power of Christian Science" +(page 412), or "the power of Truth" (page 420) or divine Spirit, or her +book itself. "Continue to read and the book will become the physician, +allaying the tremor which Truth often brings to error when destroying +it" (page 422). + +Mrs. Eddy sometimes anticipates in a vague way the reaction of thought +and emotion upon physiological function to which Cannon has given such +careful attention, but her definite statements are strangely inadequate. +"What I term _chemicalization_ is the upheaval produced when immortal +Truth is destroying erroneous mortal belief. Mental chemicalization +brings sin and sickness to the surface, forcing impurities to pass away, +as is the case with a fermenting fluid" (page 401).[57] She recognizes +the limits of Christian Science practice when she advises her followers +to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to +the fingers of a surgeon until the advancing age admits the efficacy and +supremacy of mind (page 401). + +[Footnote 57: Compare "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 118.] + +Great care is to be taken as to the patient's mental environment. Mrs. +Eddy's constant emphasis upon this explains the excessive separatist +nature of Christian Science. More than almost any other of its cults it +separates its followers from those who do not belong to the cult. They +cannot, naturally, attend churches in which the reality of disease is +recognized; they must have their own nurses as well as their own +healers; in certain regions they must confine their reading to their own +literature; their children must be educated, on their religious side, in +their own cult schools and they cannot consistently associate themselves +with remedial movements which assume another philosophy as their basis. +It is difficult for a detached observer to see how a consistent +Christian Scientist reconciles the general conclusions of a modern +scientific education with the presuppositions of his cult. That he does +this is one more testimony to a power which indeed is exercised in many +other fields than the field of Christian Science to keep in the +practical conduct of life many of our governing conceptions in different +and apparently water-tight compartments. + + +_Christian Science Defines Disease as a Belief Which if Treated as an +Error Will Disappear_ + +The answer to such a line of criticism is, of course, in the familiar +Christian Science phrase that perfect demonstration has not yet been +achieved in the regions in which the Christian Scientist appears to be +inconsistent. But beyond this is the rather stubborn fact that in some +of these regions demonstration never will be realized; Christian Science +is confined to the field in which suggestion may operate. Mrs. Eddy is +most specific about diseases, concerning which the medical practice of +her time was most concerned and in the light of later medical science +most ignorant--fever, inflammation, indigestion, scrofula, consumption +and the like. These are all beliefs and if treated as error they will +disappear. Even death is a dream which mind can master, though this +doubtless is only Mrs. Eddy's way of affirming immortality. She hardly +means to say that death is not a fact which practically has to be +reckoned with in ways more final and unescapable than any other fact in +life. As Dr. Campbell Morgan once said: "If you have the misfortune to +imagine that you are dead, they will bury you." + +Mrs. Eddy concludes her chapter on Christian Science Practice with an +allegory which she calls a mental court case, the suggestion of which is +to be found in one of the Quimby manuscripts.[58] Since this manuscript +is dated 1862 it anticipates Mrs. Eddy by almost thirteen years. The +setting is like the trial of Faithful and Christian in the town of +Vanity Fair as recorded in Bunyan's "Pilgrim Progress." Doubtless +memories of Mrs. Eddy's reading of that deathless allegory are +reproduced in this particular passage which the author is inclined to +believe she wrote with more pleasure than anything else ever turned out +by her too facile pen. Personal Sense is the plaintiff, Mortal Man the +defendant, False Belief the attorney for Personal Sense, Mortal Minds, +Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, Hypnotism, Envy, Greed and +Ingratitude constitute the Jury. The court room is filled with +interested spectators and Judge Medicine is on the bench. The case is +going strongly against the prisoner and he is likely to expire on the +spot when Christian Science is allowed to speak as counsel for the +defense. He appeals in the name of the plaintiff to the Supreme Court of +Spirit, secures from the jury of the spiritual senses a verdict of "Not +Guilty" and with the dismissal of the case the chapter on Christian +Science Practice ends. + +[Footnote 58: "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 172.] + + +_Christian Science Has a Rich Field to Work_ + +Now what can finally be said of the whole matter? In general, two +things. Recognizing the force and reality of psycho-therapy Christian +Science gets its power as a healing system from the great number of +people who are open to its appeal and the shrewd combination of elements +in the appeal itself. In spite of our great advance in medical knowledge +and practice and in spite of the results of an improved hygiene there +remains in society at large a very great deposit of physical ill-being +sometimes acute, sometimes chronic, sometimes clearly defined, sometimes +vague, badly treated cases, hopeless cases and a great reach of cases +which are due rather to disturbed mental and moral states than to +ascertainable physical causes. Illness has its border-land region as +well as thought and the border-land faiths make their foremost appeal to +those who, for one reason or another, live in border-land physical +states. + +And, to repeat, the number of those who belong to this group is +unexpectedly large. Naturally such as these grasp at anything which +offers help; they supply to the manufacturer of cure-all drugs their +clientele; they fill printed pages with testimonials of marvellous cures +achieved where the regular medical faculty had been helpless; they crowd +about every faith healer; they are the comrades of the pilgrims to +Lourdes and Ste. Anne de Beaupré; they belong to the fellowship of those +who, in the Middle Ages, haunted shrines and sought out relics and asked +to be touched by kings. We discover their forebears in the pages of the +Gospels and as far back as any records go we see this long, pathetic +procession of the hopeless or the handicapped seeking help. And again +and again they get it, for we have also seen that, given faith enough +either in a saint or a shrine or a system, psycho-therapy with certain +subjects and in certain cases does heal. But this type of healing +depends upon no one philosophy or no single force except indeed those +obscure forces which are released by suggestion. + +While this was being written certain evangelistic faith healers in the +city of Detroit were sending out broadsides of testimonials to their +healings, as definite in detail as the testimonials in "Science and +Health," or the _Christian Science Journal_, and yet the basal +principles by which these men have claimed to work are as different from +the basal principles of Christian Science as east is from west. While +this is being revised Coué, the apostle of suggestion according to the +Nancy school, is besieged in New York by those who have been led to hope +for healing through the success of his method. Whether the relic be true +or false does not matter if only the relic be believed in. + + +_One of the Most Strongly-Drawn Systems of Psycho-therapy Ever Offered_ + +Now Christian Science is one of the most strongly drawn +psycho-therapeutic agencies ever offered. Most faith healing systems +heretofore have depended upon some place, some thing, some healer. Here +is a system capable of the widest dissemination and dependent only upon +a book and its interpreters. It universalizes what has heretofore, for +one reason or another, been localized. It is shrewdly organized, as far +as propaganda goes, and effectively directed. It is widely advertised by +its friends--and its critics. Its temples, for beauty and dignity, put +to shame most Protestant churches. Its rituals combine in an unusual way +the simple and the dramatic. It is so fortunately situated as to be able +to keep finance--which is a trying element in Protestant Church life--in +the background. Its followers have that apostolic fervour which attaches +to movements sure of their divine commission and not yet much worn by +time. It possesses distinctly one of Sir Henry Jones' hall-marks of +religion. "It impassions the spirit of its disciples and adds +consequence to the things it sanctions or condemns." + +It draws upon deeply established Christian reverences and faiths. It +secures for its authority the persistent but perplexed faith in the +Bible which the average Protestant inherits and for those who believe in +it the force of this authority is no wise weakened by the fact that by +every sound canon of Biblical interpretation it is illicit. Its very +dogmatism is an asset. It could not do its work if it were less sure. +The confusions of the systems which try the critically minded are a +contribution to the devout who find in them an added opportunity for +faith. Its experience meetings create enthusiasm and confidence. It is, +in short, more than any one of the movements we are here considering, a +clearly defined cult whose intensities, limitations and mystic +assurances all combine to produce among its disciples the temper most +favourable to suggestion and it locks up on its force as a system of +healing. + +An accurate analysis of what it actually accomplishes would require an +immense and probably impossible labour--a knowledge of each case, an +accurate diagnosis when even for the trained diagnostician the thing is +difficult enough, and the following up of all reported cases. The +medical faculty would probably have done better to have taken such +movements as these more seriously and to have brought to them a trained +investigation which, except in the case of Lourdes, has never even been +attempted. Doubtless there is looseness and inconsistency in the whole +system. Almost any one who has had a practical observation of the +working of Christian Science has knowledge enough not only of looseness +and inconsistency but of what seems to the non-Christian Science mind +positive untruth. Something, however, must always be allowed here for +the way in which the mind acts under excitement and for the way in which +delusion deludes. All this combines to make any final judgment in this +region difficult, but there still remains, after all qualification, an +arresting solidity of achievement. Christian Science does work, +especially with the self-absorbed, the neurotic and those who have +needed, above all, for their physical deliverance, a new access to faith +and courage. Christian Science practitioners have also an unusual +opportunity in what may be called moral rehabilitation with physical +consequences. The physician has a better chance with the bodies of his +patients than with their souls; the minister a better chance with the +spiritual needs of his parishioners than with their bodies and habits; +the Christian Science practitioner to an unusual extent has the whole of +life under his control and it ought in all fairness to be conceded that +this power is helpfully employed. + +The very discipline of Christian Science is itself a therapeutic. There +are really a good many things which become non-existent directly you +begin to act as if they did not exist. An atmosphere in which no one +refers to his ailment and every one to his well-being is a therapeutic +atmosphere. Psychologists have taught us that if we go through the +motions of being happy we are likely to have an access of happiness; if +we go through the motions of being unhappy we have an access of misery. +If we go through the motions of being well, very often we achieve a +sound measure of health. + + +_But it is Fundamentally a System of Suggestion_ + +All this has been so strongly dwelt upon of late as to make any extended +consideration of it unnecessary here, as indeed any extended +consideration is impossible for any one save a specialist. What we are +more concerned with is the way in which the discipline and philosophy of +Christian Science produce their results. The answer to this question is +as plain as anything can be in our present state of knowledge, for +essentially, as a healing force, Christian Science stands or falls with +the therapeutic power of suggestion. It is a strongly drawn system of +psycho-therapy because it is a strongly drawn system of suggestion. Its +suggestion involves assumptions which are sometimes philosophy, +sometimes theology, and more commonly a baffling interplay of the two. + +But the outcome of it all is the practical persuasion on the part of the +patient that he is not sick and does not need so much to get well as to +demonstrate that he is well, and that in this demonstration he has an +absolute force on his side. To this end the whole body of affirmation, +persuasion, assumption, suggestion and technique of Christian Science is +directed. As one tries to analyze these separate elements they are, +taken singly, inconsistent, often unverifiable and often enough, by any +tests at all save the tests of Christian Science, positively untrue. But +as Mrs. Eddy has combined them and as they are applied in practice they +do possess an undeniable power. They are not dependent, as has been +said, fundamentally upon persons or things or places. Here is a coherent +system, the force of which may be felt when it is not understood and it +bears upon the perplexed or the impressionable with very great power. It +would be appreciably weakened if any one of its constituent elements +were taken out of it. But fundamentally it can do no more than any other +system of suggestion, unquestionably accepted, can do. + + +_It is Bound to be Affected by Our Growing Understanding of the Ranges +of Suggestion_ + +A deal of water has gone under the bridge since Mary Baker Eddy began +her work. What was then almost wholly involved in mystery is now +beginning to be reduced to law. The psychology of suggestion is by no +means clear as yet, nor are the students of it agreed in their +conclusions, but we do know enough about the complex character of +consciousness, the actuality of the subconscious and the reaction of +strongly held attitudes upon bodily states to be in the way, generally, +of freeing this whole great matter from the priest, the healer, the +charlatan or the prophet of strange cults and referring it hereafter for +direction and employment to its proper agents--the physician, the expert +in disordered mental conditions and the instructed spiritual adviser. + +It is now generally agreed that suggestion, however induced, may +positively affect bodily function. If it is a wrong suggestion its +effects are hurtful, right suggestion its effects are helpful. Now since +a vast range of physical maladjustments--and this may be broadened to +include nervous maladjustments as well--is functional, suggestive +therapeutics have a far-reaching and distinct field. When Christian +Science or any other healing cult reports cures in this field, those +cures, if verified by sufficient testimony, may be accepted as +accomplished. Those who have accomplished them may take what credit they +will for their own agency in the matter, but for all that the cure is no +testimony at all to the truth or falsity of their system. It proves only +that those helped have believed it. + +The matter of organic healing is more difficult. Medical Science does +not generally admit the possibility of organic change through +suggestion. There may be, however, a real difference of opinion as to +whether a particular trouble is functional or organic. Here is a +border-land not so much of fact as of diagnosis. A cure may be reported +as of an organic trouble when the basal diagnosis was wrong and it was +only functional, but the body possesses undoubtedly the power of +correcting or at least of limiting organic disease. Tuberculosis is an +organic disease but it is again and again limited and finally overcome +without the knowledge of the subject. Post-mortem examinations may +reveal scars in the lungs and so reflect processes only thus brought to +light. + +Whatever serves general physical well-being may greatly help the body in +eliminating disease and securing a going measure of physical health. In +such indirect ways as these suggestion may, therefore, while not acting +directly upon diseased organism, contribute most distinctly to arrest +organic disease. Thoughtful physicians are ready to concede this and +thus open a door for a measure of organic healing which technically +their science denies. A very revealing light has been let in upon this +whole region by hypnotism. Some of the students of hypnotism are +inclined to go as far as to admit organic change under hypnotic +suggestion. "Strong, persistent impressions or suggestions made on the +reflex organic consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their +functional disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic +structures."[59] + +[Footnote 59: Sidis, "The Psychology of Suggestion," p. 70.] + +Christian Science, then, as a healing agency has a great field for there +are always folk enough to heal. It has a method, a discipline highly +effective in producing changed mental and spiritual states and, +strangely enough, it is all the more effective because it is so narrowly +true. Those to whom it makes its appeal are, for the most part, not +capable of analyzing through to their sources its fundamental +inveracities, nor would they be inclined to do that if they were able. +Its vagueness and its spacious rhetoric really give it power. It does +produce results and probably one case of physical betterment has a +prevailing power which a chapter of criticisms cannot overcome and, more +than that, one case of physical betterment may screen a dozen in which +nothing happened at all. + +For Christian Science has in this region two alibis which can always be +brought into action, the most perfect ever devised. If it fails to cure +it is either because the one who was not cured lacked faith, or because +of the erroneous belief of some one else. A system which believes that +the toxic effect of poisons depends upon the vote of the majority in +that arsenic will cease to be a poison when everybody ceases to think of +it as a poison and will be a poison as long as anybody believes it is, +is perfectly safe even if it should fail to cure a case of arsenical +poison, for until facts and experience cease to weigh at all there will +always be some one somewhere believing that arsenic is a poison and that +one will be the scapegoat for the system. + + +_As a Religion it is Strongest in Teaching That God Has Meaning for the +Whole of Life_ + +Christian Science is, however, more than a system of mental +therapeutics, it is also a religion and due allowance must be made in +any just appraisal of it for the way in which it has made religion real +to many for whom religion had ceased to have a working reality. It needs +to be said on one side that a good deal of Christian Science religion is +really taking the Ark of God to battle, using religion, that is, for +comfort, material prosperity, health and just such tangible things. But +Christian Science meets a demand of the time also just here. Our own +age, deeply entangled in material satisfactions, has no mind to postpone +the satisfactions of religion to a future life. The monk and, indeed, +the generality of the devout in the medieval Church sought in +self-limited earthly joy a proper discipline for the soul and a state in +contrast to which the felicities for which they paid so great a price +should be the more welcome. The devout of Mary Baker Eddy's time, though +inclined to find in material well-being a plain mark of divine favour, +none the less accepted sickness and sorrow as from the hand of God and +prayed that with a meek and lowly heart they might endure this fatherly +correction and, having learned obedience by the things they suffered, +have a place amongst those who, through faith and patience, inherit His +presence. + +But our own time is not so eager to inherit promises as to enter into +possession. A religion which does not demonstrate itself in actual +well-being is under suspicion. The social passion now much in evidence +among the churches grows out of this as well as the many cults which +seek the proof of the love of God in health, happiness and prosperity. +And indeed all this is natural and right enough. If religion be real the +fruits of it should be manifest, though whether these are the more +significant and enduring fruits of the spirit may be questioned. A +religion which demonstrates itself in motor-cars and generous incomes +and more than comfortable raiment may be real enough to those who +profess it, but its reality is not quite the reality of the religion of +the Sermon on the Mount. + +Christian Science is in line with a distinct contemporaneous demand to +demonstrate God's love in about the terms of Jacob's famous vow at +Bethel--"If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, +and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that I come again +to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God." This is a +far cry from the noble protestation of Job which sounds still across the +years: "Though he slay me, still will I trust in him." + +And yet the more sensitive and richly endowed among the followers of +Mary Baker Eddy have found in Christian Science other values than these. +They have passed, by a sort of saving instinct, beyond its +contradictions and half-truths to what is centrally best in the whole +system. God, that is, has a meaning for life not hereafter but now, not +in creeds but in experience, not alone in hard disciplinary ways, but in +loving and intimate and helpful ways. True enough, this is no monopoly +of Christian Science; Christianity holds this truth in fee simple. But +unfortunately, in ways which it is perfectly possible to trace, the +great emphases of Christianity have in the past been too largely shifted +from this. + +There has been and still is in most Protestant churches too much +reticence about the meaning of God for the individual life and maybe too +great hesitation in really using to the full the proffer of divine +power. The accepted understandings of the place of pain and suffering in +life have been, as it were, a barrier between the perplexed and their +God; His love has not, somehow, seemed sufficiently at the service of +men, and though Christian Science secures the unchallenged supremacy of +the love of God by emptying it of great ranges of moral meaning and +shutting away therefrom all the shadowed side of life, it has probably +justified the love of God to multitudes who have, for one reason and +another, heretofore questioned it and they have discovered in this +new-found sense of God's love and presence, a reality and wealth of +religious experience which they had never known before. + + +_It Exalts the Power of Mind But Ignores Too Largely the Processes by +Which Mind Realizes Its Ideals_ + +There is also in Christian Science practice and philosophy the +apprehension of a real truth which New Thought formulates much more +clearly. Mind is creative. (Not alone mind with a capital "M" but our +own every-day, human, small "m" mind.) The trouble is that Christian +Science hopelessly short-circuits the creative process. Our human world +is finally what we make it through our insight, our understanding and +above all by our sense of values, but the actual achievement of changed +purposes in a changed world is a process whose immensity is not even so +much as hinted at in "Science and Health." Christian Science too largely +ignores and seems commonly to deny the whole disciplinary side of life +with its inevitable accompaniment of failure, fault and pain. Pain is no +delusion; pain is the sign of something gone wrong in the great business +of normal physical life. Nor is sin only an unreality which "seems real +to human erring belief"; sin is a sign that something has gone wrong in +the struggle for a normal, disciplined, moral life. Nor is the whole +body of evil simply a shadow to be dismissed as easily as one turns +one's back upon some darkness and faces toward the light; evil is the +sign of something gone wrong, or something not yet attained in the +massive progress of a humanity which combines in itself so many +discordant elements, which has so long a way to go and so much to learn +and so many things to conquer as it struggles upward toward a happier +state. + +Christian Science cannot in the end be true to the great facts of +experience, which have a power beyond the force of any assertion to +countervail, unless it is false to Mary Baker Eddy's philosophy, nor can +it be true to its philosophy without impoverishing moral and spiritual +endeavour. It is hard to find a place in the system--taken rigidly--for +sympathy or tenderness or the richest of human qualities, or for those +elements of wealth in character contributed by pain bravely borne or +sorrow uncomplainingly accepted. There is little place in Christian +Science for the Beatitudes and less still for that fine courage which is +itself the one assured victory which the hard beset may win on any field +of battle. The writer believes that while this severe judgment is +justified by "Science and Health," it is not justified by the practical +outcome of the cult in the lives of many of its disciples. They are in +devotion and kindness the equal of many in the Church and superior to +some. Their loyalty to their Church rebukes a good deal of orthodox +easy-going. All of which proves at least that life is bigger than our +theories about it and in the end subdues those who would make the best +of it, to communities of experience and understanding in which we are +all strangely kin. For, after all, unpleasant things cannot be thought +out; they must be fought out and dug out and lived out. The whole +redemptive force of society in thoroughgoing and far-reaching ways must +be brought to bear upon the very sources of all the evil side of life, +and the bare philosophy of Christian Science is not equal to this task. + + +_Is Not Big Enough for the Whole of Experience_ + +It is doubtful if Christian Science has ever made an appreciable change +in the mortality statistics of any city and yet if the Public Health +Department were to permit for forty-eight hours the milk or water supply +of a city to be polluted, statistics would disclose that within ten +days. This is only an illustration but it does illustrate. We must work +if we are to dig up the roots of evil things and get a better growth in +their stead and anything which attempts to substitute for this a denial +of the reality of the evil, a mystical religious attitude and a mere +formula of faith, no matter how oft repeated or how sincerely accepted, +or indeed no matter how efficacious in certain selected regions among +certain selected groups, is on the whole not a contribution to human +well-being. + +Very likely Mrs. Eddy's followers in the practical conduct of their +lives are already recognizing this and gradually, and maybe +unconsciously, adapting themselves to it. There are already signs of +certain processes of conformity to the necessities of experience; these +are likely to go farther. If Christian Science follows the history of +such movements in the past, it will, after having made its own distinct +assertion of whatever measure of truth it contains, be gradually swept +back into the main current of religion and practice. It will maintain a +nominal distinctness, but in the general conduct of life it will lose +its more outstanding characteristics and become largely a distinction +without a difference. Milmine, in her thoughtful criticism of Christian +Science at the end of her history says that the future of Christian +Science stands or falls with psycho-therapy. + +That is true only on the one side. As far as Christian Science has true +religious insights and approaches it will go on in spite of what happens +to psycho-therapy, though there is enough in psycho-therapy to assure +its future within well-defined regions if that were all. Something +bigger than psycho-therapy will finally judge and dismiss Christian +Science to its own place--life and experience will do that--and it is +safe to say that in the end Christian Science will have to come to terms +with a truth bigger than its own, with a body of experience which cannot +be dealt with on the selective process of taking what you want and +denying the rest, and more than that, it will have to come to terms with +the whole great matter of an intellectual, moral and spiritual struggle +governed by law and conditioned by the vaster world of which we are a +part. This is not to deny that Christian Science and allied teachings +have made contributions of real value to our common problem. It is only +to affirm that here is something not big enough for the whole either of +truth or experience. + + + + +VIII + +NEW THOUGHT + + +New Thought has been defined as "an attitude of mind, not a cult." It is +really both. It is necessary to include it in this study because it is a +cult; it is hard justly to appraise it because it is an attitude of +mind. Attitudes of mind are as elusive as the play of light on running +water. We can estimate their force and direction only as we have an +understanding of the main currents of thought by which they are carried +along and as far as New Thought goes these main currents are far older +than the cult itself. + + +_New Thought Difficult to Define; "An Attitude of Mind, Not a Cult"_ + +New Thought has never had an apostolic succession or a rigid discipline +or a centralized organic form. This has given to it a baffling looseness +in every direction, but has, on the other hand, given it a pervasive +quality which Christian Science does not possess. It has a vast and +diffuse literature and so merges into the general movement of +contemporaneous thought as to make it difficult to find anywhere a +distinct demarcation of channels. + +New Thought is either a theology with a philosophic basis or a +philosophy with a theological bias. It is centrally and quite distinctly +an attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science +and philosophy, a reaction against old theologies and perhaps a kind of +nebula out of which future theologies will be organized. For a great +theology is always the systematic organization of a complex of forces, a +massive structure wrought through the years by manifold builders +subduing a rich variety of material to their purposes. + +The teaching of the Scriptures, old traditions, the needs of worship and +organization, political and social circumstances, changing moral ideals, +the trend of philosophies and sciences, the challenge of schisms and +heresies, the sanctifying power of blind custom and the mystical +authority of the Church itself all combine to make a theology. Once a +great theology is so constituted it possesses an immense power over +life. It shapes character and ideals and gives direction to faith, +orders effort and so becomes, as it were, a mould into which souls and +societies are cast. + +Theologies may be changed, in fact they are always in the way of being +changed, but they yield slowly to transforming forces. Nothing is so +persistent as organized faith and yet the very strength of a great +theology is always its weakness. It is never really anything else than a +crystallization of past forces. The experiences which voice themselves +in theology have cooled and hardened down; the philosophy which is +implicit in theology is past philosophy; the science implicit in +theology is senescent science. + +There is always in evidence, then, in the regions of theology a +disturbing pressure occasioned by the reaction of contemporaneous +movements in science and philosophy and understandings of life generally +upon these old and solidly established inherited forms. Currents of +thought are always, as it were, running past the great formulæ since +thought is free and formulæ are rigid, and then returning upon them. +From time to time this movement gathers great force. The old has been +rigid so long, the new is so insistent that the conflict between them +fills an age with its clamour, stresses souls to its travail, breaks +down ancient forms without immediately building up their equivalent, and +contributes uncertainties and restlessnesses everywhere in evidence. + +Now this is exactly what has been happening in the region of religion in +the last thirty years. An inherited order, strongly fashioned and +organized and long essentially unchanged, has been compelled to take +account of the forces about it. Certainly theology is not so static as +an earlier paragraph would seem to indicate, none the less the great +theological centralities do possess an immense power of resistance. We +have already seen how little Protestantism had changed since the +Reformation until it met the full impact of modern science and +philosophy. We have had really until our own time and still largely +continue a theology with the Creation story of the ancient Hebrews, the +outlook upon life of the age of the Apostles, the philosophy of the +Greek fathers, St. Augustine's conception of human nature and the +expectation of the end of the world and the issues of history of the +Jewish apocalypse given a Christian interpretation. + +True enough, there are in all this precious and timeless qualities but +there is also through all the fabric of our formulated faith the +interweaving of such understandings as those who shaped our creeds had, +of law and history and truth. Any far-reaching change, then, in +philosophy or science was bound to profoundly affect religion and even +forty years ago far-reaching modifications of the old order were +overdue. + +New Thought is just one outcome of the tremendous impact of +contemporaneous thought upon our inherited theology; a detached fragment +or rather group of fragments, for even as a cult New Thought, as has +been said, is loosely organized and its varying parts have in common +only a common drift. Yet that drift is significant for it has beneath it +the immense force of a philosophy which has been gathering head for more +than a century. It is to this, therefore, that we ought to address +ourselves for any understanding of the changed outlook upon life which +is carried, as it were, from the surface of profounder tides. + + +_"The Rediscovery of the Inner Life"_ + +Josiah Royce dismisses the whole of philosophy from Spinoza to Kant in +one single pregnant phrase. He calls it "the rediscovery of the inner +life." It is along this line that modern philosophy and religion +approach each other. Religion has always been the setting forth of the +inner life in terms of its relationship to God and the proofs of the +reality of religion have always been found in the experiences of the +soul. The mystic particularly made everything of the inner life; he +lived only in its realities. For the sake of its enrichment and its +empowerment he subjected himself to rigorous disciplines. Its +revelations were to him all sufficient, for having found God therein he +asked for nothing beside. + +Wherein, then, is this new mysticism, or better, this new cult of the +inner life different from the old? It is not easy to answer that +question in a paragraph, though it is easy to feel the answer in any +comparison of the great classics of mysticism--which are mostly +spiritual autobiographies--and New Thought literature. To turn from St. +Augustine to Dresser, or from St. Theresa to Trine is to change +spiritual and intellectual climates. There is in the modern literature +little reflection of such spiritual struggle as fills the great +Confessions with the agony of embattled souls, nor any resolution of +such struggle into the peace of a soul "fully awake as regards God but +wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect of +herself." This testimony of St. Theresa is illuminating as a contrasting +background for New Thought. There the soul is very much awake, both as +regards things of this world and in respect of herself. + +These new cults of the inner life are far more self-conscious than the +old and far more self-analytical. They seek to discern the laws in +answer to which they act and utilize those laws in the practical conduct +of life. They are always either appealing to underlying philosophies or +else trying to make a philosophy of their own. Mysticism made +everything of God and nothing of itself. It plotted its mystic way but +knew nothing of psychology. New Thought seeks to discover in psychology +a road to God. The centers of mysticism were emotional; the centers of +New Thought are intellectual. All these cults are far more akin to +Gnosticism than mysticism, though they are saved, yet not wholly, from +the lawlessness of Gnosticism by a pretty constant return to the +outstanding conclusions of science and philosophy. + + +_Spinoza's Quest_ + +Now if we seek to discover the real genesis of the movement and trace +its development we would better begin, so deep are the roots of things, +with Spinoza rather than Quimby. Here the deeper currents, upon the +surface of which New Thought moves, take their rise and here also we +return to Royce's phrase--"the rediscovery of the inner life"--and the +philosopher who inaugurated the philosophic quest for just this +discovery. + +Spinoza was one of the last of the mystics and the first of the modern +philosophers. He shared with the mystics of an earlier time a consuming +sense of the futility of life save as life perfected itself in +contemplations of an eternal excellency and communion with something far +greater than itself. "After experience had taught me," he says (and this +is quoted from Royce's "Spirit of Modern Philosophy"), "that all the +usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile, seeing that none +of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good +or bad except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally +resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good which would +affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else, whether there +might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me +to enjoy continuous, supreme and unending happiness." + +Now there is in all this a strangely modern note--dissatisfaction with +what is offered by the commonplace and the accepted, a great emphasis +upon the mind as the key to the readjustments of life, a quest for some +single formula which would offer "continuous, supreme and unending +happiness." This is exactly what Mary Baker Eddy and all the other +perplexed and bodily broken "seekers" who gathered about Quimby were +really wanting and this is what, for one reason or another, the +proffered religious experiences of their time failed to secure them. +"This was, then," to quote Royce, "the beginning of Spinoza's Pilgrim's +Progress." (As indeed it is the beginning of every Pilgrim's Progress.) +"But now, for what distinguishes him from other mystics and makes him a +philosopher and not a mere exhorter, he has his religious passion, he +must reflect upon it ... the philosopher must justify his faith." + +We have no need here to follow Spinoza along all the way, difficult and +misty enough, by which he sought to justify his faith. The outstanding +fact is enough. He is a mystic who reasons his way through where the +elder mystic has felt his way through, and the goal which he finally +reaches, though it be the goal which the earlier mystics had found by +other roads,--the loss of self in God--is none the less such an +achievement of reason as Spinoza was able to compass. + + +_Kant Reaffirms the Creative Power of Mind_ + +So this polisher of lenses bequeathed to the century which followed him +its greatest inheritance and set for it its greatest task: the inner +life as the supreme concern of the philosopher and the discovery of its +laws and the interpretations of its realities the supreme task of +philosophy. Those who continued his work began far enough, apparently, +from the point where he left off and went a road strangely remote from +his. Having taken the inner life for their study they sought to lay bare +its very foundations. Nowadays, if we are so minded, we dictate to +machines which write our words curiously enough in shallow lines upon +wax cylinders and when the cylinders are full shave off the fragile +record and begin again. + +This is what the eighteenth century did for the mind. It reduced it to a +virgin surface, it affirmed the reality of nothing except the +impressions thereupon registered by what sense supplied. We owe to +experience and to experience only "all that vast store which the busy +and boundless fancy of man has painted on it [the white paper of the +mind] with an almost endless variety." We have nothing with which to +begin but sensation; we have nothing to go on with but reflection. +"These two, namely external, material things as the objects of +sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of +reflection, are the only originals from whence all our ideas take their +beginnings."[60] Such things as these are perhaps enough to begin with, +but they are not enough to go on with as our thinkers soon enough +discover. Some way must be found to relate the material thus supplied +and to build it up into a glowing, continuous, reasonable and conscious +inner life. + +[Footnote 60: Locke, "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding."] + +So in turn the philosophers laboured at their problem. They made much +not only of reflection but of association; they found a place for memory +and imagination; they discovered that we may as truly define experience +in terms of ideas as of sensation; they discovered finally that by no +possible process even of the most ingenious reasoning can you get the +full wealth of life out of a mind which was nothing more to begin with +than a piece of white paper, any more than you can get Hamlet (if we may +suppose Shakespeare to have used a dictaphone) out of a wax cylinder, a +needle and a diaphragm. + +So Kant ended what Spinoza began, by reaffirming the creative power of +the mind itself. It does far more than passively receive, it interprets, +organizes, contributes, creates. True enough, it is not an unconditioned +creator, it has laws of its own in obedience to which it finds both its +freedom and its power. It must take the material which experience +supplies and yet, in its higher ranges, in the regions of conduct and +faith, that is, where conscience has become the guide and the +necessities of the soul the law, we do possess the power in +enfranchising obediences and splendid adventures of faith to make a +world rich in goodness, power and peace. And here, once more, there is a +strangely modern note. Life is a pilgrim's progress. We are set out to +discover "whether there might be some real good, the discovery and +attainment of which would enable us to enjoy continuous, supreme and +unending happiness." And we do possess the power within ourselves, if +only we may discover the controlling laws and release effective forces, +to come at least a stage nearer our goal. All this makes for that +exaltation of the creative self which is so marked a characteristic of +present-day attitudes and which is perhaps the distinctive affirmation +of New Thought. + + +_Utilitarianism, Deism and Individualism the Practical Outcome of a +Great Movement_ + +But it needed time for all this to work itself out. The philosophic +basis for it had been supplied but it is a far cry from philosophy to +the practical conduct of life. Kant's transcendental philosophy needed a +deal of working over before it became practicable for the man in the +street. And to begin with what was deepest in the philosophy of the +Enlightenment led in unexpected directions. "While the practical +tendencies of all speculative thought inevitably appear in the opinions +and customs of a general public far removed from their sources, it is +particularly true of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, that its +influences had no small part in shaping the popular point of view +concerning the moral, religious and political convictions of that +age."[61] Utilitarianism, Deism and Individualism were, says Hibben, the +popular and practical outcome of the whole movement,--Utilitarianism in +Ethics, Deism in Religion, Individualism in Politics. These three +growths--and they have borne a deal of bitter fruit in the last one +hundred years--grow out of one soil. In general they are due to Locke's +sensationalism, Hume's skepticism, a new emphasis upon reason as opposed +to revelation and the self-sufficiency of the individual. If conscious +life is nothing but sensation worked over and built up, then pleasurable +sensations are the best we can aspire to, happiness is the end of the +quest. So Utilitarianism defined goodness in terms of happiness and gave +to conduct generally a grasping, greedy quality for which we have paid +over and over again in the disappointments and disillusionments of an +age, which, supposing itself to have discovered the true secret of +well-being, found too much of its seeming happiness only Dead Sea fruit. + +[Footnote 61: Hibben, "The Philosophy of the Enlightenment," p. 253.] + + +_They Bear a Bitter Fruit: the Reactions Against Them_ + +Deism in its reaction against Religion as merely revelation and in its +endeavour to find a rational basis for faith set God apart from His +world, detached, unheeding and offering no real recourse to a travailing +humanity between whom and Himself it built a rigid fabric of impersonal +law. The Individualism of the eighteenth century was partly a reaction +against old despotisms of Church and State--and a Declaration of +Independence. It was in part a pride of accomplishment and a new +affirmation of the self-sufficiency of the questing reason. There was in +it also a sound recognition of the worth of personality of which the +world then stood in need and which has since supplied a foundation for a +saving passion for education and human well-being. But Individualism as +practically applied by the first three-quarters of the nineteenth +century--unexpectedly reinforced as it was by aspects of +Darwinism--stressed the right of the strong and the doom of the weak. It +made competition the law of economic development, the survival of the +fittest the goal of a life of struggle. + +Consciously or unconsciously the politics, industry and religion of the +nineteenth century were greatly influenced by these outstanding +conceptions. No need to say how utterly they have broken down. They have +made for the deepening strife of classes and of nations, they have +essentially defeated the bright promise of a time which seemed to have +more to hope for than almost any other great period of history. + +And yet they were never unchallenged. They were challenged by the +essential spirit of Christianity; they were challenged by the poets who +found that they could shape no songs out of such stuff as this; they +were challenged by philosophers who sought to build for themselves and +for us a world more free and true; they were challenged by a group of +great novelists who created out of the wealth of their imagination +characters and situations in which love and human worth had their way +in spite of a thousand obstacles. They were challenged by prophets of a +better world, the Ruskins and Carlyles who soundly rated the ethics of +selfishness and the political economies of competition and the politics +of self-assertion and who stirred deeply the more sensitive of their +time. And finally they were challenged, and here we begin to approach +again the genesis of New Thought, by a philosophic movement which found +its point of departure in certain great aspects of earlier thinking +which had been much obscured by the difficult forms in which it had been +stated: the supremacy, that is, of the soul over all its surroundings. + +Now this return to what we may call the creative and controlling power +of spiritual forces is the key to the modern approach to life. We do not +understand, it may be, the meaning of our own terms. Spirit is a vague +enough word but we do know that the initiative is with desire and +purpose and understanding. These are positive and masterful; they are by +no means free; they are conditioned by the vaster order of which they +are a part, none the less our human world is plastic to their touch and +our material world as well. Carlyle has chanted all this gustily enough +but there is kindling truth in his stormy music. "Thus, like some wild +flaming, wild thundering train of heaven's artillery does this +mysterious mankind thunder and flame in long-drawn, quick succeeding +grandeur through the unknown deep. Earth's mountains are levelled and +her seas filled up in our passage. Can the earth which is but dead in a +vision resist spirits which have reality and are alive?" + + +_New England Transcendentalism. Quimby Again and the Dressers_ + +Curiously enough this quotation from a book which nowadays nobody likely +reads save perhaps in some college course on early Victorian literature, +brings us within sight of the beginnings of New Thought. A little group +of English and American thinkers, part philosophers, part poets, part +rebels against the established order, anticipated trained students in +their return upon the higher and more positive side of an older +philosophy. They made much of the inner life, its powers and its +possibilities; they affirmed the creative power of the soul; they +conceived life to lie plastic to the touch of vision and desire; they +thought themselves to be standing upon the threshold of a new world. +They were impatient of discipline; they dreamed impossible things and +gave their dreams the authority of reality. They were hard enough to +understand and they sorely tried practical plodding folk, but they +kindled their time and released forces which are yet in action. + +New England, through a group of adventurous thinkers of whom Emerson was +the most distinguished, responded strongly to Transcendentalism. Another +group, as has been said, responded strongly to mesmerism and spiritism, +which were also a part of the ferment of the time in which Christian +Science and New Thought (I use New Thought here in the technical sense) +find their source. And finally, Quimby, who is a rather unexpectedly +important link in a long chain,--important, that is, to the student of +modern cults--reacted against mesmerism, felt and thought his way toward +some understanding of the force of suggestion in abnormal states, +applied his conclusion to faith and mental healing and gathered about +him--as has been said before--a little group of disciples who have +between them released far-reaching movements. + +Mrs. Eddy and the Dressers were the outstanding members of this little +group of disciples. Mrs. Eddy soon dissociated herself from the others +and she supplied in "Science and Health" a distinctive philosophy to her +movement. She organized it into a church; she imposed upon it a +distinctive discipline. No little of the power of Christian Science is +due to this narrow rigidity which is itself the projection of the +personality of Mary Baker Eddy. But Christian Science did not carry with +it the whole of the group which had come under Quimby's influence, nor +indeed all of those who came under Mary Baker Eddy's influence. There +was during all the formative period of these modern cults a perpetual +process of schism. + +We have as a result, then, two divergent movements related in +underground ways, though as marked in difference as in resemblance, both +of them beginning about the same time, both of them reactions against +accepted religious forces and validations, both of them with a marked +therapeutic content, both of them adventures in the conduct of life. + +In the summary which follows I am in debt to Dresser's recent "History +of the New Thought Movement." The name New Thought was chosen as the +title of a little magazine devoted to mental healing, published in 1894 +in Melrose, Mass. "The term became current in Boston through the +organization of the Metaphysical Club in 1895. About the same time it +was used by Mr. C.P. Patterson in his magazine _Mind_ and in the title +of two of his books." Other names were suggested--in England, Higher +Thought; in Boston, Higher Life; in New York the little group was for a +time known as the Circle of Divine Ministry; in the west the movement +was known as Divine Science or Practical Christianity. There were groups +also which called themselves the Home of Truth or the Society of Silent +Unity. + + +_New Thought Takes Form_ + +New Thought, as has been said, lacks the definite direction which +Christian Science has always had. Its organizations have grown up +quietly, more or less irregularly and have had always a shifting +character. "The first New Thought Society with a regular leader and +organization in Boston was the Church of the Higher Life established in +1894."[62] The Metaphysical Club was an outgrowth of the New Thought +group in Boston. Dresser gives a list of the original members, chiefly +significant through the presence among them of some of Quimby's +disciples and others whose books have since held a high place in New +Thought literature. There were manifest connections between the +movement and liberal (particularly Unitarian) theology. + +[Footnote 62: All citations in this section are from Dresser's "History +of New Thought," unless otherwise indicated.] + +The first New Thought convention was held in Boston in 1899 (there had +been earlier conventions of the Disciples of Divine Science--a related +movement--in western cities) and the second in New York City in 1900. +The New York convention was the first to make any general statement of +the "purposes" of the League. We find on the New York program one Swami +Abhedananda, lecturer on the Vedanta philosophy. Here is an early +indication of the return of Eastern religions upon the West which is +also one of the marked characteristics of the religious development of +our time. We do not need to follow through in detail the list of +successive conventions with their topics and their speakers. The group +is not so large but that the same names reappear. There are marked +attempts in the earlier conventions to associate leaders in recognized +schools of philosophy and theology with the movement. One does not +discover this tendency in the later convention lists. + +The local groups throughout the country have had varying fortunes. They +have from time to time changed their names and naturally their leaders. +The west has responded perhaps more strongly than the Atlantic seaboard. +The movement is particularly strong on the Pacific Coast. There are no +available statistics and generalizations are of doubtful value. The +Cincinnati and Kansas City groups are offered by Dresser as typical +organizations, but they seem on the whole to be exceptional rather than +typical. The strength of the New Thought movement is not in its +organization but in its influence. "In England as in America interest +was aroused by Christian Science, then came a gradual reaction and the +establishment of independent branches of the movement." "It is +difficult," says Dresser, "to obtain information pertaining to the +influence of New Thought literature in foreign languages." The more +significant New Thought books, however, have been variously translated +and widely sold. New Thought leaders sometimes advise their disciples to +retain their old church associations and the movement has naturally +tended to merge in religious liberalism generally and to become only an +aspect of the manifold religious gropings of a troubled time. + +In the Constitution and By-Laws of the New Thought Alliance, published +in 1916, the purposes of the society are "to teach the infinitude of the +Supreme One, Divinity of Man and his Infinite possibilities through the +creative power of constructive thinking and obedience to the voice of +the Indwelling Presence which is our source of Inspiration, Power, +Health and Prosperity." We discover here the same tendency toward the +deification of capital letters which we have already noted in Christian +Science. + + +_Its Creeds_ + +In 1917 the International New Thought Alliance went further than at any +other time before in the direction of a creed and set forth the +following series of affirmations: "We affirm the freedom of each soul +as to choice and as to belief, and would not, by the adoption of any +declaration of principles, limit such freedom. The essence of the New +Thought is Truth, and each individual must be loyal to the Truth he +sees. The windows of his soul must be kept open at each moment for the +higher light, and his mind must be always hospitable to each new +inspiration. + +"We affirm the Good. This is supreme, universal and everlasting. Man is +made in the image of the Good, and evil and pain are but the tests and +correctives that appear when his thought does not reflect the full glory +of this image. + +"We affirm health, which is man's divine inheritance. Man's body is his +holy temple. Every function of it, every cell of it, is intelligent, and +is shaped, ruled, repaired, and controlled by mind. He whose body is +full of light is full of health. Spiritual healing has existed among all +races in all times. It has now become a part of the higher science and +art of living the life more abundant. + +"We affirm the divine supply. He who serves God and man in the full +understanding of the law of compensation shall not lack. Within us are +unused resources of energy and power. He who lives with his whole being, +and thus expresses fullness, shall reap fullness in return. He who gives +himself, he who knows, and acts in his highest knowledge, he who trusts +in the divine return, has learned the law of success. + +"We affirm the teaching of Christ that the Kingdom of Heaven is within +us, that we are one with the Father, that we should judge not, that we +should love one another, that we should heal the sick, that we should +return good for evil, that we should minister to others, and that we +should be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. These are not +only ideals, but practical, every-day working principles. + +"We affirm the new thought of God as Universal Love, Life, Truth, and +Joy, in whom we live, move and have our being, and by whom we are held +together; that His mind is our mind now, that realizing our oneness with +Him means love, truth, peace, health and plenty, not only in our own +lives but in the giving out of these fruits of the Spirit to others. + +"We affirm these things, not as a profession, but practice, not in one +day of the week, but in every hour and minute of every day, sleeping and +waking, not in the ministry of the few, but in a service that includes +the democracy of all, not in words alone, but in the innermost thoughts +of the heart expressed in living the life. 'By their fruits ye shall +know them.' + +"We affirm Heaven here and now, the life everlasting that becomes +conscious immortality, the communion of mind with mind throughout the +universe of thought, the nothingness of all error and negation, +including death, the variety of unity that produces the individual +expressions of the One-Life, and the quickened realization of the +indwelling God in each soul that is making a new heaven and a new +earth." + +We discover in this creed a more distinct recognition of ideals and +truths which inherited Christianity supplied than in the earlier +statements of purpose. In the annual address of the President there is +distinct reference to the relation of the New Thought gospel to the +churches. "I am asked often: What is the relation of this movement to +the Church? This is not a new religion. It is not an institution seeking +to build itself up for the mere sake of the institution. We do not ask +anybody to leave the church. We ask them to become better members of +their churches than before. New Thought is designed to make people +better and more efficient in whatever relation of life they may find +themselves. In other words: 'New Thought teaches men and women only the +old common-sense doctrine of self-reliance and belief in the integrity +of the universe and of one's own soul. It dignifies and ennobles manhood +and womanhood.' The main idea on which Christianity is founded is that +of communion with God, that of worshipping God in spirit and in truth. +This is the very corner-stone of those modern movements that recognize +men and women as the living temples of the God within.... I predict that +this new interpretation and new understanding will become universal in +the new age which is now dawning." + +A further paragraph, however, reveals the synthetic character of the +movement. "It is the realization in practical affairs of the teachings +not only of the Nazarene, but of every other great religious teacher +since the world began; for in their essence these teachings are +fundamentally alike; and the New Thought and other new spiritual +movements are but the efforts to apply, in our relations one with +another, these simple and sublime truths." + + +_The Range of the Movement_ + +I have quoted at length from these programs, affirmations and this one +address to indicate the range of the movement as it has found official +expression. We must look, however, to the literature of the movement as +a whole for a full understanding of its reach and influence. The +literature in general falls into three classes: (1) books concerned +mostly about healing; (2) books which instruct as to character, +spiritual states and fullness of life; (3) what one may call success +books which apply New Thought to business and the practical conduct of +life. The lines of demarcation between these three types of books is, of +course, not clear and there is a material which is common to all of +them, but the distinction thus suggested is real. + +As a principle of healing New Thought differs from Christian Science in +almost the whole range of its assumptions. It does not deny the reality +of matter, not the reality of suffering, nor does it distinguish, as +does Christian Science, between the Divine Mind and the mortal mind. +There are, according to New Thought, healing forces which may be trusted +to do their remedial work in us, if only we surrender ourselves to them +and let them have their way. There is nothing in New Thought which quite +corresponds to the "demonstration" of Christian Science. It would seem +to an impartial observer that Christian Science asks of its disciples +an intensity of positive effort which New Thought does not demand. +Dresser, for example, believes all suffering to be the result of +struggle. Directly we cease to struggle we cease to suffer, provided, of +course, that our cessation is in the direction of relaxation and a trust +in a higher power. In some regions, however, Christian Science and New +Thought as therapeutic agents work along the same line, but where +Christian Science denies New Thought ignores. Here New Thought makes +more use of psychological laws; it follows James generally in its +psychology, as it follows Emerson in its thought of the over-soul, +though in this region Emerson's detached serenity of faith is given body +in an insistence upon the divine immanence for which New Thought is in +debt to the suggestions and analogies of modern science. + +New Thought makes much of the shifting of attention and its disciplines +are rather the disciplines of the mystic than the disciplines of the +Christian Scientist. It seeks in substance to ascertain the laws of mind +in action and then, through the utilization of this knowledge, to secure +health, happiness and prosperity. It makes much, of course, of the +centrality of mind both in well-being and pain. It hardly goes so far as +to say that pain is an error in belief, but it does say that pain is a +matter of consciousness and that as we are masters of consciousness we +are masters of pain. It believes in thought transference and absent +treatment, but it is perhaps more conservative in the cases which it is +willing to undertake than Christian Science and recognizes the +limitations of the healer. + + +_The Key-Words of New Thought_ + +Its key-words are Harmony, Realization, Affirmation and Poise. Just here +New Thought is a strangely interwoven web. It makes much of "vibration" +and "friction." It is evidently under the spell of the wave theory of +light and heat. It is most dependable in its analysis and application of +laws of mental action, most undependable in trying to account for the +relation of mind to body and in its explanation of the physical +phenomena of disease. Fatigue, for example, "is evidently due to the +calling of power into a new direction. It [evidently the power] comes +into contact with dense matter, with an uncultivated portion of the +being, physical as well as mental, and meeting with resistance friction +of some sort is the natural result." One has only to compare a statement +like that with Cannon's careful study of bodily changes under emotional +states, to see the difference between speculation controlled by analogy +and the illuminating experimental methods of modern science. + +When Dresser adds that "we shall eliminate disease not by fighting it, +not by studying its causes, or doctoring its physical effects, but by +seeing the wisdom of the better way," he is on dangerous ground, for if +we are not to study the causes of disease but to take as our guide the +serene generalizations of a speculative mind we are shutting in our +faces one of the doors by which we enter into that knowledge of the mind +of God, of which New Thought makes so much. How shall we know the mind +of God except as we ask endless patient and careful questions of every +revelation of the divine method, whether in sickness or health? + +New Thought, however, takes a far more constructive view of suffering +than Christian Science. For New Thought suffering is at least +disciplinary and instructive: it compels reflection: it brings us to a +knowledge of the law. It is certainly, therefore, just and it may be +kind. Indeed, New Thought occasionally goes so far as to say that +suffering is also a revelation of love and must be so accepted and +entertained. Its general conclusions in this region are far more safe +than its insistence upon vibration and friction and its spacious +technicalities. + +When Dresser says that there is a difference "between ignoring a +trouble, between neglecting to take proper care of ourselves and that +wise direction of thought which in no way hinders while it most surely +helps to remedy our ills," he is on perfectly safe ground. When he adds +that there is a strong reason for believing that "there is a simple, +natural way out of every trouble, that kind nature, which is another +name for an omniscient God, is ever ready to do her utmost for us" he is +speaking with a wise and direct helpfulness, though here as generally +New Thought errs on the side of too great a simplification. There is a +way out of every trouble but it is not always simple, it is often +laborious and challenging. We have accomplished marvels in the matter of +tropical sanitation but the way out has been anything but simple. It has +involved experimentations which cost the lives of physicians who offered +themselves for humanity as nobly as any soldier on any battlefield; it +involved the sweat of hard driven labour digging drainage ditches, the +rebuilding of the foundations of cities and a thousand cares and +safeguards. If New Thought wishes to dismiss such a process as this with +the single adjective "simple" it may do as it pleases, but this is not +simplicity as the dictionary defines it. + + +_Its Field of Real Usefulness_ + +All that way of thinking of which New Thought is just one aspect is +fatally open to criticism just here. It ignores the immense travail of +humanity in its laborious pilgrimage toward better things and it is far +too ready to proclaim short-cuts to great goals when there never have +been and never will be any short-cuts in life. None the less, trust and +quietness of mind and soul and utter openness to healing, saving forces +are immense healing agents and in its emphasis thereupon New Thought has +recalled us to that which in the very intensity of life's battles we are +in the way of forgetting. And beyond doubt, in that obscure range of +diseases which are due to the want of balanced life--to worry, fear, +self-absorption and over-strain--the methods of New Thought have a +distinct value. + +In general, as one follows the history and literature of New Thought one +finds that, though it began with a group more interested in healing than +anything else, healing has come to play a progressively less important +part in the development of the movement and the larger part of its +literature deals with what one might call perhaps the laws of mental +and spiritual hygiene. The principles implicit in New Thought as a +healing cult carry of their own weight into other regions. It is +important enough to get well--that goes without saying--but it is more +important to keep well. Good health on the whole is a kind of +by-product. We suffer as distinctly from spiritual and mental +maladjustments as from physical. We suffer also from the sense of +inadequacy, the sense, that is, of a burdening disproportion between our +own powers and the challenge of life. New Thought has addressed itself +increasingly to such states and problems as this. Here it ceases to be a +cult or a method of healing and has become a most considerable influence +and here also it in general takes the direction of and is identified +with what is truest in the Christian religion, what is sanest and most +clear visioned in present-day thinking. The typical books just here are +Trine's "In Tune with the Infinite" and a similar literature. + + +_Its Gospel of Getting On_ + +Another application of New Thought is in the direction of personal +efficiency. There is a considerable literature in this region. It does +not specifically call itself New Thought but it is saturated with the +New Thought fundamentals and has distinctly the New Thought outlook. +Marden is the most popular and prolific writer in this connection and +the titles of his books are suggestive--"Keeping Fit," "Selling Things," +"The Victorious Attitude," "Training for Efficiency," "Getting On," +"Self-Investment," "Be Good to Yourself," "He Can Who Thinks He Can," +"Character," "Opportunity," "An Iron Will." Something like this has, of +course, been done before but the modern efficiency literature moves +along a wider front than earlier books and makes a fuller use of the new +psychology. All this literature dwells strongly upon the driving power +of a self-assertive personality strongly controlled by will, single +visioned and master of its own powers. It suggests lines of approach by +which other people's wills can be overcome, their interest aroused or +their coöperation secured. + +Quotation is almost impossible--there is such an abundance of material +and much of it is commonplace. It takes a deal of padding to make +shelves of books out of the familiar and generally accepted truisms +which are the "Sermon on the Mount" and the "Beatitudes" of this gospel +of personal efficiency. Keep fit, keep at it, assert yourself, never +admit the possibility of failure, study your own strength and weakness +and the strength and weakness of your competitor and success is yours. +Look persistently on the bright side of every situation, refuse to dwell +on the dark side, recognize no realities but harmony, health, beauty and +success. + +It is only just to say that success is generously defined and the +disciples of this New Thought are asked also to live in the finer +senses--the recognition of beauty and friendship and goodness, that +is--but on the whole the ideal character so defined is a buoyant +optimist who sells his goods, succeeds in his plans and has his own way +with the world. It is the apotheosis of what James called "The Religion +of Healthy-Mindedness"; it all fits easily into the dominant temper of +our time and seems to reconcile that serving of two masters, God and +Getting On, which a lonely teacher long ago thought quite impossible. + +Naturally such a movement has a great following of disciples who +doubtless "have their reward." So alluring a gospel is sure to have its +own border-land prophets and one only has to study the advertisements in +the more generally read magazines to see to what an extent all sorts of +short-cuts to success of every sort are being offered, and how generally +all these advertisements lock up upon two or three principles which +revolve around self-assertion as a center and getting-on as a creed. It +would be idle to underestimate the influence of all this or, indeed, to +cry down the usefulness of it. There is doubtless a tonic quality in +these applications of New Thought principles of which despondent, +hesitating and wrongly self-conscious people stand greatly in need. + + +_The Limitations and Dangers of Its Positions_ + +But there is very great danger in it all of minimizing the difficulties +which really lie in the way of the successful conduct of life, +difficulties which are not eliminated because they are denied. And there +is above all the very great danger of making far too little of that +patient and laborious discipline which is the only sound foundation upon +which real power can possibly be established. There is everywhere here +an invitation to the superficial and, above all, there is everywhere +here a tendency toward the creation of a type of character by no means +so admirable in the actual outcome of it as it seems to be in the +glowing pages of these prophets of success. Self-assertion is after all +a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us +into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to +give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less +mischievous, though it wear the garment of sunny cheerfulness and +proclaim an unconquerable optimism. + +But at any rate New Thought, in one form or another, has penetrated +deeply the whole fabric of the modern outlook upon life. A just +appraisal of it is not easy and requires a careful analysis and +balancing of tendencies and forces. We recognize at once an immense +divergence from our inherited forms of religious faith. New Thought is +an interweaving of such psychological tendencies as we have already +traced with the implications and analogies of modern science. The God of +New Thought is an immanent God, never clearly defined; indeed it is +possible to argue from many representative utterances that the God of +New Thought is not personal at all but rather an all-pervading force, a +driving energy which we may discover both in ourselves and in the world +about us and to which conforming we are, with little effort on our own +part, carried as upon some strong, compelling tide. + +The main business of life, therefore, is to discover the direction of +these forces and the laws of their operation, and as far as possible to +conform both character and conduct, through obedience to such laws, into +a triumphant partnership with such a master force--a kind of conquering +self-surrender to a power not ourselves and yet which we may not know +apart from ourselves, which makes not supremely for righteousness +(righteousness is a word not often discovered in New Thought literature) +but for harmony, happiness and success. + + +_It Greatly Modifies Orthodox Theology_ + +Such a general statement as this must, of course, be qualified. Even the +most devout whose faith and character have alike been fashioned by an +inherited religion in which the personality of God is centrally +affirmed, find their own thought about God fluctuating. So great a thing +as faith in God must always have its lights and shadows and its changing +moods. In our moments of deeper devotion and surer insight the sense of +a supreme personal reality and a vital communion therewith is most clear +and strong; then there is some ebbing of our own powers of apprehension +and we seem to be in the grip of impersonal law and at the mercy of +forces which have no concern for our own personal values. New Thought +naturally reflects all this and adds thereto uncertainties of its own. +There are passages enough in New Thought literature which recognize the +personality of God just as there are passages enough which seem to +reduce Him to power and principle and the secret of such discrepancies +is not perhaps in the creeds of New Thought, but in the varying +attitudes of its priests and prophets. One may say, then, that the God +of New Thought is always immanent, always force and law and sometimes +intimate and personal. However this force may be defined, it carries +those who commit themselves to it toward definite goals of well-being. +The New Thought of to-day reflects the optimistic note of the scientific +evolution of a generation ago. It is not exactly "God's in His heaven, +all's right with the world," but it is the affirmation of streams of +tendency whose unfailing direction is toward happiness and success. + +If an element of struggle be implied in the particular sort of salvation +which New Thought preaches, it is not at least clearly brought out. +There has been amongst us of late a new and a very dearly bought +recognition of the element of struggle which seems to be implicit in all +life. The optimistic evolutionary philosophy in which New Thought roots +itself is on the whole justified neither by history nor the insight of +those who have been most rich in spiritual understanding, nor, indeed, +by the outcome of that philosophy in our own time. The happy confidence +that we do not need to struggle, but rather to commit ourselves to +forces which make automatically for happiness and well-being, has only +involved us more deeply in a struggle where in some ways the smug +happiness and well-being of representative New Thought literature seem +more remote than ever. + +This elimination of the element of moral struggle and the need for +deliverance which has so greatly coloured the older theologies gives a +distinct character to New Thought theology. There is no place in it for +a scheme of redemption; there is no place in it for atonement, save as +atonement may be conceived as a vicarious sharing of suffering incident +to all struggle for better things; there is no place in it for the old +anthropologies of Christian theology. It has on the whole little to say +about sin. Says Allen, in a very thoughtful short article on New Thought +in Hastings' "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics," "New Thought +excludes such doctrines as the duality of man and God, miracles in the +accepted sense, the forgiveness of sins and priestly mediation. It seeks +to interpret the world and nature as science has recorded them, but also +to convey their finer and esoteric meanings to the human understanding. +The fundamental purpose of religion and science is the same--namely, the +discovery of truth." "New Thought does not teach the moral depravity of +man. Such thoughts demoralize and weaken the individual. Miracles, in +the accepted sense, New Thought does not conceive as possible in a +universe of law. The only miracles are phenomena not understood, but +nevertheless the result of law. It applies the pragmatic test to every +religion and philosophy. Are you true? What do you give to a man to +carry to his daily task?" "New Thought recognizes no authority save the +voice of the soul speaking to each individual. Every soul can interpret +aright the oracles of truth." + + +_Tends to Become a Universal and Loosely-Defined Religion_ + +Worship becomes, therefore, contemplation rather than adoration, and a +vast deal of the liturgical material which Christianity specifically has +heretofore supplied becomes useless for this cult. Christian hymnology +would need much editing before it would serve New Thought purposes; the +whole conception of prayer would need to be altered. Naturally, then, on +its more distinctly religious side New Thought is at once fluctuating +and incomplete. It is the proclamation, to quote one of its spokesmen, +of a robust individualism and, in the individual, mind is supreme. Right +thinking is the key to right living. New Thought affirms the limitless +possibilities of the individual. Here perhaps it is more loose in its +thinking than in any other region. It makes free use of the word +"infinite" and surrounds itself with an atmosphere of boundless hope as +alluring as it is vague. + +The interest of New Thought is most largely in the present tenses of +life; its future in an eternal progress which should, of course, imply +immortality. New Thought is hospitable to truth from whatever source +derived. It is particularly hospitable to the suggestions of oriental +religions and, as far as it has taken form as a distinct religious +movement, it is becoming more and more markedly a kind of syncretism, a +putting together of religious elements drawn from widely universal +sources and it patently seeks nothing less than a universal religious +fellowship in which the values of all true faith are recognized and +which is to be under the control of what science has to say about the +world without and psychology of the world within. In a sentence New +Thought is an outstanding aspect of the unconquerably religious in human +nature, seeking to subdue to its own ends and inform with its own spirit +the new material which science, psychology and comparative religion have +put at our service in the last two generations. + +If New Thought diverges from the accepted Christian theology in many +ways, it runs parallel in other regions with what is enduringly true in +the Gospels, and it runs parallel also with not a little of that +endeavour after theological reconstruction which is loosely known as the +New Theology. We are generally under a compulsion to reconstruct our +creeds and adapt our religious thinking to whatever is true about us in +our understanding of our world and its history and its mechanism and the +laws of our own lives. Theology must take account of a creative +evolution and a humanity which has struggled upward from far-off +beginnings along a far-flung front and the findings of Science and the +intimations of Psychology. + +It will need a deal of pioneering to find roads through these new +regions and such adventurous souls as seek new paths, with a daring +disregard for ancient landmarks and a true passion to find religious +meanings in new facts and forces, are really serving us all. There is +the danger, however, that in the very freedom of their speculation they +may be too impatient of old experiences and hallowed certainties, for +these old experiences themselves are deeply rooted and testify to +realities which we may be compelled to let in by the window, once we +have put them out at the door. + + + + +IX + +THE RETURN OF THE EAST UPON THE WEST + +THEOSOPHY AND KINDRED CULTS + + +_Historic Forces Carried Early Christianity West and Not East. The +Far-Reaching Results of This Process_ + +Christianity in its beginning belonged neither to the East nor the West; +it was born where they met and its subsequent development was greatly +governed by the direction of the dominant tides of historical +development. But from the beginning of the Christian era the main +currents of human action flowed West and they carried Christianity with +them. It is, therefore, outstandingly an occidental development. This is +not to minimize the influence of the East in the earlier phases of +Christianity. There was doubtless a measure of give and take, some +blowing of the winds of the spirit in changing directions across vast +regions and a confused time, which carried the germinal forces from one +religion to another. But in the main, Christianity, to use Gardner's +fine phrase, was baptized into the forms and forces of the West. I say +in the main, for Asia Minor was in the time of St. Paul the meeting +place of manifold religions and his first Gentile converts brought with +them into their new faith a very great deal of what their old faiths had +made them. + +There was, generally, in the Apostolic world a very great longing for a +spiritual deliverance and a mystic temper which easily took over and +transformed those elements in Christianity which lent themselves to +mystic interpretations. Something of this we discover in the Pauline +Epistles themselves; Paul's use of the word "mystery" shows how he +adapted his teaching to the understanding of those to whom he addressed +himself. To quote Gardner: "In the growth and spread of popular +superstition, if we may call them by so harsh a name, we may well +discern a gradual preparation for Christianity.... These religions stand +toward Christianity, to continue my biological comparison, as the wings +of a penguin stand toward those of an eagle, and it is surely no slight +on Christianity to say that it met the blind longings of a pagan nation +and showed them a path toward which they had, for long generations, been +trying to find their way. The religious needs which were very +imperfectly met by the initiations and ceremonies and prayers of the +cults of the pagan saving deities found a complete and perfect +satisfaction from faith in an exalted Christ."[63] + +[Footnote 63: "The Growth of Christianity," Gardner, p. 136. For fuller +treatment with suggestive detail see Fraser "The Golden Bough," chapter +37.] + +Christianity could not do this really very great thing without at the +same time being affected by that which it, in a measure, took over and +completed. The influence of Asia upon Christianity is, therefore, a +very real influence. One can only wonder what would have happened had +the course of empire been East instead of West. Christianity might then +have been carried into India and China and through long centuries been +given so distinctly an oriental content as to have taken on a character +radically different from its Western form. But this did not happen. To +follow Gardner's figure still farther, it was baptized into Greek +philosophy and Roman imperialism and the power of the nascent nations of +western Europe, and into the medieval spirit, and so we have become its +heirs. More than that, the East took its own way, uninfluenced by the +West, until two entirely different types of culture, civilization, +religion and approach to reality had been developed, as far apart as the +East is from the West, and each, until almost our own time, +substantially uninfluenced by the other. + + +_The West Rediscovers the East; the East Returns Upon the West_ + +Given the contacts of the modern world this massive isolation of +cultures could not continue. The East and the West were bound to meet +and religion was bound to be affected by their meeting. Western +Christianity has for more than a hundred years now been sending its +missionaries to the Orient and oriental religions are beginning to send +their missionaries to the West. More justly the return of the East upon +the West is not so much in a missionary propaganda, though there is a +measure of that, as in a more subtle indoctrination of Western +speculation by the fascination and mystery of the Eastern cults. It is +not possible to follow this process in detail but it has gone on long +enough now for us to begin to see the outcome of it and to appraise its +force. It began with New Thought. One discovers oriental names on the +programs of New Thought conventions; the Vedanta Philosophy was +expounded by East Indian speakers at the Greenacre conference in Maine +in the late nineties; B.F. Mills was lecturing on Oriental Scriptures in +1907; and a lecture on the Vedanta Philosophy appears on the program of +the second convention of the International Metaphysical League held in +New York City in the year 1900. The New Thought movement in England +naturally reflected the same tendency to look for light to Eastern +speculation even more markedly than the American movement. + +All this was natural enough because New Thought, once divorced from +inherited Christianity and committed to pure speculation about the +sources and meanings of life, was sure to find out that the Orient had +been doing just this for a thousand years. Two things happened. First, +New Thought welcomed Eastern teachers to its conventions in the hope of +receiving thereby some measure of enlightenment, and second, many of +these seekers, finding that the East had a wealth of speculation +compared with which the West is poor indeed, took over the Eastern cults +bodily, gave themselves up to their study and became their ardent +devotees and missionaries. + +Generalizations are always dangerous and though the East has, until the +West began to exploit it, remained practically unchanged, the West has +changed so often that whatever one may say about it must immediately be +qualified. But, on the whole, Eastern and Western life are organized +around utterly different centers. The West in its present phase is +predominantly scientific. Our laboratories are perhaps the +distinguishing hall-mark of our civilization. We are always asking +questions of the outside world; we are hungry for facts; we are always +seeking to discover the law and direction of physical force; we have +taken small account, comparatively, of our own inner states, but we have +taken immense account of the universe of which we are a part and the +forces which play around us. Our realities are what we touch and see. We +have given to our sight an immense increase of searching power through +the microscope and telescope, but we are slow to venture beyond what +they reveal to us. We have increased the sensitiveness of our touch +through the instruments of our laboratories. We have organs to sensibly +register the vibrations of an etheric force and even to weigh light. But +we are slow to recognize any range of reality not thus revealed to us. + +We have gained in such ways a really illuminating understanding of the +physical universe; we have formulated its laws, chronicled its sequence +and made it in a marvellous way the instrument of our material +well-being. If we have speculated at all it has been rather in the +direction of the ultimate nature of matter and force, as these have +supplied us material for speculation, than in any other direction. We +have been generally and soundly suspicious of conclusions which cannot +be verified by the scientific method, and so have built about ourselves +restraining limitations of thought which we are wholesomely unwilling to +pass. We have found our real joy in action rather than meditation. Our +scientific achievements have supplied material for our restless energy +and our restless energy has urged us on to new achievement. + +True enough, there has been of late signs of a changing temper. We are +beginning to discover that science has marked limitations; there are +ranges of reality of which our laboratories can make no possible report +which we are beginning to take into account. But in a large way the +matured Western outlook upon life has been conditioned by the scientific +interpretation of the universe. + + +_Chesterton's Two Saints_ + +The East has taken an entirely different line; its laboratories have +been the laboratories of the soul. The East has had little concern about +outside things; it has had an immense concern for its own inner life. +The East has made little attempt to master outer forces; it has been +generally content to let them have their way with it, realizing, maybe, +that after all what the outside world can do for the inner life is +negligible compared with what the soul can do for itself. Race and +climate and the sequence of history have all conspired to produce this +temper. The history of the East is a strange combination of drive and +quiescence; its more vigorous races have had their periods of conquest +and fierce mastery, but sooner or later what they have conquered has +conquered them and they have accepted, with a kind of inevitable +fatalism, the pressure of forces which they were powerless to subdue to +their own weakening purposes. They have populated their lands to the +limit and accepted the poverty which a dense population without +scientific resource, on a poor soil and in a trying climate, inevitably +engenders. The more helpless have fallen back upon fate and accepted +with a pathetic resignation their hard estate, asking only to be freed +from the weariness of it. "It is better," says an Eastern proverb, "to +sit than to stand, it is better to lie than to sit, it is better to +sleep than to lie, and death is the best of all." + +There is an immensity of weariness and disillusionment in such an +interpretation of life, which needs no comment. But the Eastern mind is +subtle and speculative, possessing a peculiar penetrating power; and, +for the want of any other field in which to act, it turned in upon +itself. + +Chesterton has both hit and missed the immense difference between the +East and the West in one of his brilliant paragraphs.[64] "No two ideals +could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and +a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every +point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist +saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has +them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious +body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The medieval saint's +body is wasted to crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There +cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced +symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are +extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real +divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist +is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards; the Christian is staring +with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we +shall find some interesting things." + +[Footnote 64: "Orthodoxy," p. 243.] + +But to follow Chesterton's own method, the saint with the open eyes may +still be blind while the saint with his eyes shut may really see a vast +deal, and the East has seen much. Whether what it sees be true or not, +is another matter, but there is no denying the range of his conjecture. +The Eastern saint has sought to answer for himself and in his own way +those compelling questions which lie behind all religion--Whence? and +Whither? and Why? He, too, has sought to come into right relations with +the power which manifests itself in the universe and he has sought, with +an intensity of effort to which the West is strange, for a real +communion with the power he has discovered. And above all, he has sought +deliverance. + + +_Why the West Questions the East_ + +He has not been so conscious of the need of forgiveness, since +forgiveness plays no great part in his understanding of the sequences of +life, but he is anxious enough to be set free from pain and weariness +and at his best he has traced the relation of moral cause and effect far +more analytically than his Western brother. He has, indeed, introduced +greatly speculative elements in his balancing of life's accounts, but +the West has done that also, for the accounts of life persistently +refuse to be balanced unless something beyond ordinary experience is +taken into account. The longing of the East for deliverance has, on the +whole, however, been less theological and more simple than the longing +of the West. The West has been led to turn to the East for teaching and +deliverance through a combination of forces. I have noticed already the +very direct way in which New Thought, once committed to free speculation +about life and God, found congenial guidance in the Eastern cults, but +other elements enter. The West has begun to share something of the +disillusionment of the East; so many things which promised to deliver us +have seemingly failed us. Our sciences have immeasurably enlarged our +knowledge and increased our power; they have added to our material +well-being; they have worked their miracles for us; but they have +brought us neither peace nor true happiness. They have instead added +their own disturbances to our other perplexities and they have +ultimately simply extended the frontiers of the mysterious and given a +new and vaster quality to our problems. + +Our democracies and our humanitarian movements have shown us that the +keys both to liberty and progress are still in human nature and not in +forms of organization and government. As our civilizations have grown +older and particularly as they have wasted themselves in war, some +shadow of the age-old weariness of the East has begun to fall across our +Western world. We have also reacted strongly against materialism in +thought and life; we have begun to see, as has been said, how the need +and force of personality have the right to assert themselves against the +dominance of things. We are beginning to recognize the right of religion +and philosophy to suggest terms to science, and all these tendencies +have combined to produce a considerable group of people who, having +found, for one reason or another, no real satisfaction in their +inherited Christianity, have welcomed the Eastern solution of the +problems of life, or else have positively turned to the East in the hope +of discovering what Western Christianity has not been able to give them. +One should add also that the pure love of speculation which is one of +the phases of modern thought has made an opening in the West for the +East. If unlimited speculation is the main business of life, the East +has certainly everything to offer us, and for warning, as we shall +presently see, as well as for guidance. + + +_Pantheism and Its Problems_ + +The older Eastern religions are, to begin with, Pantheistic. We have +seen how religion generally in its development takes form and content +from its governing conception of God. We have seen also that there are +three governing conceptions of God: He is conceived as Transcendent or +Immanent, or else He is simply identified with the range and force of +the universe. Pantheism is generally the creation of brooding wonder and +uncritical thought; Pantheism feels rather than thinks; it accepts +rather than seeks to explain. It may be devout enough but its devotion +is passive rather than active. Pantheism is never scientific in the +accepted sense of that term; it has little concern for law; it explains +by personalizing the forces with which it has to deal; it is akin to the +temper which finds some animating spirit in all natural phenomena. The +flow of waters, the growth of things, the drift of clouds across the sky +are all, for Pantheism, simply the revelation of the action of some +indwelling spirit or other, without which they could neither exist nor +go on. + +At its worst Pantheism issues in a grotesque mythology and an +inconceivable multiplication of divinity; the gods in the Hindu Pantheon +are numbered by the thousands. At its best Pantheism issues in a kind of +mystic poetry and creates a devotee sensitive as Tagore to the fugitive +gleams of beauty through the murk of things, voicing his prayers and +insights in rare phrases which are, on the whole, in arresting contrast +to the actuality of life about him. Western devotion has been caught by +the mystic and poetical character of Pantheism and is, on the whole, +strangely blind to its actual outcome in the life of its devotees. + +We all feel the suggestion of it in certain of our tempers. If we should +take out of much of our finest poetry suggestions akin to the +suggestions of Pantheism at its best, we should leave even Western +poetry strangely poor, and we have beside, particularly in the +contemplation of rare natural beauty, a feeling of kinship with the +spirit which clothes itself in dawn and twilight, or speaks through the +rhythmic beat of sea waves, or lifts itself against the skyline in far +blue mountain summits, which helps us to understand this old, old faith. +And if modern cults had done nothing more than appropriate the poetry of +Pantheism they would have lent only a touch of oriental colour to the +somberness of Western life. + +But Theosophy and kindred cults have gone farther, since Pantheism +itself must go farther. Directly you have identified creation and the +creative power so intimately as Pantheism does, then you are under +bonds, if you have any curiosity at all or any speculative force, to try +to explain the ways in which a God, who is just to begin with all that +there is, has managed to reveal Himself in such an infinitude of minute +and sometimes ungodlike ways. So Pantheism has its own scheme, not of +creation, for there is no place in Pantheism for creation, but rather of +emanation. Eastern thought substitutes for the cosmogony of the Old +Testament which simply carries the world back to a creative God and +seeks to go no farther, and for the methods of Western science which +carries creation back to ultimate force and is unable to go any farther, +an entirely different system. + + +_How the One Becomes the Many_ + +A paragraph in Mrs. Besant's "The Ancient Wisdom" (page 41) may help us +here. "Coming forth from the depths of the One Existence, from the One +beyond all thought and all speech, a Logos, by imposing on Himself a +limit, circumscribing voluntarily the range of His own Being, becomes +the manifested God, and tracing the limiting sphere of His activity thus +outlines the area of His universe. Within that sphere the universe is +born, is evolved, and dies; it lives, it moves, it has its being in Him; +its matter is His emanation; its forces and energies are currents of His +life; He is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, +all-evolving; He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, +its centre and circumference; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, +it breathes in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything and +everything in Him. Thus have the Sages of the Ancient Wisdom taught us +of the beginning of the manifested worlds." + +It is not, of course, fair to say that here is something entirely +different from the line of Western scientific and philosophic thought or +wholly alien to elements in modern Christianity.[65] The real problem of +modern Theism is to connect what science discovers with what faith +assumes. The broader generalization of science resolves action and +existence into the unities of an underlying and self-conserving force +which grows more and more subtle and tenuous as we follow it from +molecules to atoms, from atoms to eons and electrons, and even discern +beneath these something more impalpable than themselves, and there must +be some way in which a creative power conceived by faith in terms of +personality has released the forces which have built themselves into the +universe. The difference is, however, that Christian Theism refuses +completely to identify God and His universe. + +[Footnote 65: Indeed this is a better commentary on the prologue to the +Gospel of John and certain passages of Colossians than most of the +orthodox theologies, and the self-limitation of God is the key to the +moral freedom of the individual.] + +There is, after all, a profound distinction between creating and +becoming. Theosophy undertakes to explain for us how "the One beyond all +thought and all speech" has become us and our universe. It attempts also +to provide a way by which we, who are entangled, to our pain and sorrow, +in the web of things thus woven, may escape from it and lose ourselves +again in the One. It takes the wheel for its symbol in more senses than +one. Everything is a turning and returning and we ourselves are bound +upon the wheel, carried down or up and finally to be set free, only by +the acceptance of a certain discipline of life. + +Theosophy, then, is both speculative and practical. Its speculations +take an immense range necessarily; it is no simple thing to follow the +One from the depths of His hidden existence to our earth-born lives and +the forces which flow about them. Only an expert deeply versed in +Eastern literature would be able to say whether Mrs. Besant follows her +Eastern masters faithfully in reporting their conclusions, but she has +plainly availed herself of many of the terms and suggestions of modern +science in interpreting them to us. If one could use a figure borrowed +from electricity, the One is "stepped-down" through a series of planes +and manifestations. Theosophy makes much of sevens--no use to ask +why--and bridges the gulf between ultimate and present realities by a +series of seven planes in which what is coarsest in the plane above +becomes the germ of what is finest in the plane beneath. Even so, the +One does not directly touch even the highest of these seven planes. +(Theosophy is, first of all, a study in descents and not in ascents; +ascent comes later.) There are between the One and the topmost plane +three emanations (but perhaps we would better let Mrs. Besant speak to +us herself): "The self-unfolding of the Logos in a threefold form: the +first Logos the root of all being, from Him the second manifesting the +two aspects of life and form, then the third Logos, the universal mind, +that in which all archetypically exists, the source of beings, the fount +of fashioning energies."[66] + +[Footnote 66: "The Ancient Wisdom," p. 41.] + + +_Evolution and Involution_ + +It would seem to the uninitiated that all this is a kind of smoke-screen +of words to conceal our real ignorance of what we can never know and +really have no need to know. It is evidently just an attempt to bridge +the abyss between the immaterial and the material. If Theosophy wishes +to bridge this abyss with conjecture, well and good, but its conjectures +really leave us more deeply perplexed than we should be if we frankly +recognized and accepted the limitations of our ignorance. Once within +sight of the topmost of her seven planes, Mrs. Besant goes on a little +more definitely though she confesses "of what occurs on the two higher +planes of the universe, the seventh and the sixth, we can form but the +haziest conception." Each plane has what she calls its own "spirit +matter"; this spirit matter becomes coarser as we descend; each plane is +an emanation from the plane above it and the spirit matter of each plane +winds one more veil around those emanations of the immaterial One in +whom or which the whole process took its beginning. + +Theosophy does not speak of evolution as it attempts to account for our +material world, it speaks of involution. Here it reverses what is most +distinctive in modern Western religious thought as far as modern Western +religious thought has accepted evolution. For us evolution, if we seek +to give it a Theistic content, is God making manifest, in the vast +ascent of form and existence, an always fuller revelation of Himself. +Our familiar phrase "the self-revelation of God" posits a power which +can never for a moment be contained in all that is, but which may always +be more clearly known as we follow His creative record from stage to +ascending stage. A grass blade is a richer revelation than a crystal, a +bird than a grass blade; personality is almost infinitely richer than +the lower forms, some personalities are more perfectly the instruments +of the divine self-revelation than others, and Christian faith accepts +in Jesus Christ the supreme self-revelation of God in terms of human +experience. + + +_Theosophy Undertakes to Offer Deliverance to the Entangled Soul_ + +But Theosophy reverses all this. As the One comes down from emanation to +emanation and from plane to plane He is always more deeply entangled in +the veil of things, until on our last and lowest plane He is seven times +enwrapped and smothered. We must not, however, confuse this last and +lowest plane with our little world, or even our universe; these are but +sensible aspects of it and they are really the manifestation of the +deeply enwrapped Divine trying to struggle up and out again and so +building our realities about us and eventually bringing us, with all our +conscious powers, into being. (Here the theosophist has more in common +with the evolutionist than one or two of the preceding paragraphs would +seem to indicate.) If we follow the figure of the wheel our present +plane, the last and lowest of them all, is really the turning point of +the wheel; now it begins to turn back upon that from which it descended, +and according to Theosophy our practical human task is so to avail +ourselves of its upward movement as to be carried back with it toward +the high planes of perfect being. + +Theosophy undertakes to account for personality as it accounts for our +sensible universe and along much the same line of speculation. Just as +the whole physical plane on which our world exists has really somewhere +deep wrapped up within it some emanation of the One from whom everything +flows out, so our true selves, which have really come down from the One +and should thence return, are wrapped up so deeply as also to be near +lost and smothered with, nevertheless, the power to get themselves +unwrapped. Our wrappings are our bodies, but we do not begin to +understand Theosophy if we think of body in the ordinary sense; our +physical body is only one and that the coarsest of the seven veils, for +there are seven here also, in which the true soul is enmeshed. We have +really seven bodies and we are not any one of them though each of them +is useful and each one of them puts us in touch with a certain order of +existence. Some of these bodies are mortal, others of them belong to the +truly enduring order. + +Now we are lost here unless we recognize the profound difference between +all our usual ways of thinking or talking and the wisdom of Theosophy. +Theosophy begins at the top and comes down, at least until it reaches +our present world; it also begins at the inside and works out. We think +of our physical bodies as the instruments, on one side at least, through +which the physical world communicates with us, but for the theosophist +they are only instruments through which we communicate with the world. +Not quite so, however, for Theosophy recognizes the give and take of +experience. The soul may slip out of the physical body in sleep and +it--our physical body--is at the best a stupid, imprisoning, misleading +sort of a husk which has its practical uses but ought by no means to be +taken too seriously.[67] Its coarse matter may be refined by discipline +and diet and apparently the physical body of a vegetarian is a finer +instrument than the physical body of one who feeds on the flesh of +animals. + +[Footnote 67: For a striking modern phrasing of this see Edward +Carpenter's Free Verse "The Stupid Old Body."] + + +_But Becomes Deeply Entangled Itself_ + +The physical body has also an etheric double which duplicates in a more +subtle way the constitution of the physical body. This is the vehicle of +the life force, whatever that means. The physical body and its double +are in a rough way the vehicles of the give and take of physical +existence, but for the experiences of pain and pleasure and for the +dwelling place of the passions, desires and emotions, we have an astral +body. Here the theosophist makes much use of vibrations and colours, and +apparently our changing play of emotion is reflected in a play of colour +which puts the chameleon to shame and makes us in our most excited +moment rivals of the rainbow itself. The astral body shows upon occasion +browns, dark reds and greens and their combinations, lit from time to +time with flashes of scarlet. Our better feelings reveal themselves in +finer colours; rose indicates love, blue, religious feeling, yellow, +intelligence, and violet, spirituality. The Theosophist believes that we +can be trained to see all this and illustrates it in coloured plates +which are, to the uninitiated, not over convincing. Beside the body of +physical existence and the astral body we possess also a mental body. +This is the seat of thought and mental action. In a sentence, maybe, the +theosophist is trying to say that we have a body for each phase of +personality through which we come into contact with the finer realities +of the ascending planes of existence, and that the matter of these +bodies is more subtly refined as we pass from mere sensation to higher +spiritual states. + +So within the astral body there is the mental body which, says Mrs. +Besant, is of finer material than the astral as the astral is finer than +the physical. This is the body which answers by its vibrations to our +changes of thought. The mental body may be refined by fitting +disciplines as it is coarsened by evil thoughts. These thoughts may +become "veritable diseases and maimings of the mental body incurable +during its period of life." These bodies we discard in due time, the +physical at death and the astral when ready to enter the heaven world. +What becomes of the mental body Mrs. Besant does not say. + +Beyond these are bodies which belong to man's timeless existence, +curiously named and obscurely defined. There is apparently a causal body +which is possibly the vehicle of will and, more involved still, a +super-spiritual body which is the reality of God deep within us, and the +carrier and vehicle of our supreme and enduring personal values. All +this is a curious enough mingling of psychology, a subtle materialism, +and unbounded speculation; it is equally beyond proof and denial, though +for the proof of it the theosophist offers the testimony of those whose +senses are so refined by peculiar disciplines as to see in and about +physical form a play of light and colour which are themselves the +revelation of mental and emotional states. We literally go about, +according to this testimony, "trailing clouds of glory" or of gloom. +While for the denial of it there is the deep-seated protest of Western +reason, that personality, complex as it is, cannot possibly be so +bafflingly complex as this. + + +_The West Accepts Suffering as a Challenge and Looks to Personal +Immortality for Victory_ + +We are, therefore, according to the theosophist, emanations from the +Divine; deeply enveiled and much enshrouded within us is a timeless and +changeless self descended from the mysterious All which lies back of all +things and under high compulsion to seek again, in some vast turning of +the wheel of Being, that from which we sprang. Theosophy becomes more +understandable in its practical reaction upon life, for this many veiled +self is deeply involved in forces and states to which it is not really +akin, and since it suffers greatly in being so involved the end of +existence is, in discipline and ascent, to be set free from the pain and +weariness of conscious existence, and to be absorbed in the changeless +peace of that ultimate reality out of which we have issued and back +again to which we are destined to go. We cannot be insensible to the +vast scope of such a speculation as this for in one form or another +there are, in all religion and in the deeper yearnings of life, elements +akin to it. + +The order of which we are a part bears hard upon the soul. No one who +meditates deeply upon the strangeness of human destiny can fail to +recognize the arresting estate of sensitive personality enmeshed in laws +and forces which drive on with so little apparent consideration for +those who are caught in the turning of their wheels, or ridden down in +their drive. Western faith has generally seen in this situation a +challenge to personality to assert its own supremacy over the impersonal +and subject its encompassing order to the high purposes of the soul. If +we are wounded in the fight we take our wounds as good soldiers; if the +forces which face us are challengingly strong we fall back upon our +deeper resources and in the end assert our own vaster powers. + +We accept the conditions of the struggle as a part of the discipline of +life and in our braver moments win from the fight itself those elements +of personal steadfastness which, matured in character, give moral +meaning to the endeavour, and though we anticipate an ultimate release +and blessed compensation for the present travail of our souls, we find +that release and those compensations in a personal immortality which +attends the termination of the individual life in the present order, and +continues that life conscious, free and triumphant in an immortal order, +and even there we ask neither to be released from effort nor denied +progress. We challenge the fortunes of the Unknown in the poet's phrase, +and seek "other heights in other lives, God willing." + + +_The East Balances the Accounts of Life in a Series of Reincarnations_ + +But just as the East casts the glamour of its speculation over the +processes by which we have come to be where and what we are, so it casts +the glamour of its speculation over the process of our release. The +West stakes everything on the issue of one individual life even if death +ends it, or else it assumes a conscious continuity of life rich in +memory and persistent in individuality in whatever progress lies beyond +the grave. Those whom Dante saw ascending from terrace to terrace of the +Mount of Purgation were in all stages continuously and truly themselves. +They knew the faults for which they made atonement and looked back with +unclouded vision along all the stages by which they had climbed. The +East makes little of the continuity of individual life and everything of +the sequence of individual lives. It offers for the solution of our +problem of ultimate destiny and also for its solution of the problem of +pain and sorrow and manifest inequality in human states, two simple and +unescapable laws--the law of moral consequence and the law of +reincarnation. The East and the West both believe that "whatsoever a man +soweth that shall he also reap" but the West believes he gathers his +harvests of pain or punishment in a continuity of conscious existence, +the vaster part of which is lived beyond death, with no rebirth and with +no travelling again the light or shadowed ways of earth and time. The +Christian West believes also in redemption which is just that sharing of +God in the process which makes faith and repentance definite and saving +elements in the struggle of the soul. + +The East believes in a series of reincarnations, each reincarnate state +taking its character from the quality of the life before. The fact that +the doors of recollection are shut and locked between each incarnate +existence makes no difference to the East. If a man has lived well and +justly and followed his light, he will hereafter be born higher up; if +he has loved darkness because his deeds are evil, he will be born into +some low estate; he may descend into the beast or ascend into the saint. +He will pay for present injustice with future suffering-- + + "Or reach a hand through time to catch + The far-off interest of tears" + +even though he have no conscious remembrance of the faults for which he +atones, or the sorrow for which he is recompensed. If he is steadfast +through countless rebirths, the slow turning wheel will bear him higher +and higher until he begins to ascend the successive planes, discovering +in each plane for which he has fitted himself a new wealth and reality +of existence, until at last he is lost in the Infinite Existence and his +struggle is ended. + +Perhaps the word "struggle" as here used is wrong. Deliverance for the +East is not so much struggle as acquiescence. For the theosophist desire +is the master mischief maker. Desire leads us in wrong directions, +complicates our spiritual problems and thrusts us against the turn of +the wheel. We are rather, according to the theosophist, to reduce desire +to its simplest terms, thereby freeing ourselves from restlessness, +above all taking care not to hurt or embitter others. + + +_Theosophy Produces a Distinct Type of Character_ + +There is no denying that here is a faith capable of producing a +distinctive type of character. It tends at its best toward an extreme +conscientiousness and an always excessive introspection; it creates also +a vast and brooding patience. "In countries where reincarnation and +karma [the law of Cause and Effect] are taken for granted by every +peasant and labourer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of +inevitable troubles that conduces much to the calm and contentment of +ordinary life. A man overwhelmed by misfortunes rails neither against +God nor against his neighbours, but regards his troubles as the result +of his own past mistakes and ill-doings. He accepts them resignedly and +makes the best of them.... He realizes that his future lives depend on +his own exertions and that the law which brings him pain will bring him +joy just as inevitably if he sows the seed of good. Hence a certain +large patience and philosophic view of life tending directly to social +stability and to general contentment."[68] + +[Footnote 68: "The Ancient Wisdom," Besant, p. 273.] + +If such a faith as this be informed with humaneness and be deeply +tempered with the principle of sacrifice, it may, and does, result in a +distinct type of real goodness. It is possibly a good faith for helpless +and more or less despairing folk, though it likely creates many of the +evils from which it desires to escape. The very reach and subtlety and +even splendour of its speculation will make a strong appeal to minds of +a certain type. + +Two elements in the whole system doubtless account for what hold it has +upon the Western mind. It does offer, to begin with, a coherent +explanation of the problem of pain and sorrow. As we have seen more than +once in this study, Western Christianity has been deficient just here. +The accepted explanations of the shadowed side of life have not been +great enough to meet the facts. Practically every cult we have studied +has found its opportunity just here. Christian Science solves the +problem by denying the essential reality of pain and disease. New +Thought believes in an underlying and loving good to which life may be +so attuned as to bring us generally into the current of health and +happiness. Theosophy accepts pain, sorrow and all unhappy forces and +explains them as the inevitable result of wrong action either in this or +a previous existence. + + +_Theosophy a "Tour de Force" of the Imagination_ + +Christian Science saves the justice and affirms the love of God by +making Him just a God with apparently no concern for and no +participation in the shadowed side of life. New Thought saves the love +and justice of God by discovering in pain and unhappiness our lack of +harmony with Him. Theosophy meets the whole shadowed order along its +full front and explains everything in terms of compensation. Now there +is much in this to appeal to our modern temper. Directly we recognize +the scales in which the consequences of our actions are weighed as being +so sensitive that not even a thought can be thrown in the one balance +without disturbing the equilibrium, directly we recognize ourselves as +involved in a sweep of law from whose consequences there is no possible +escape, we have at least a consistent scheme in which there is room for +no evasion, and if we balance the manifold inequalities of one life by +what has been done or left undone in some previous life, we are always +able to add weight enough to the scales to make them hang level. True +enough, there is nothing to guide us here but imaginative ingenuity, but +it is always possible to imagine some fault in a previous existence +which we pay for in pain or loss or disappointment, or some good deed +done in a previous existence which accounts for our happy fortune in +this. And so justice is saved if only by a tour de force of the +imagination. (Mrs. Besant, for example, explains the untimely death of a +child as a penalty due the parents for unkindness to a child in an +earlier incarnation.) + +The speculative aspects of Theosophy also appeal to tempers which love +to dream without accepting the laborious discipline of a truly reasoned +speculation. To quote a phrase of Macaulay's quoted in turn by William +James in one of his letters, there is a type of mind "utterly wanting in +the faculty by which a demonstrated truth is distinguished from a +plausible supposition," and there has been amongst us of late a marked +increase of this type of mind. There has been up to our own time no +great amount of such speculation as this in the West. It is not native +to the occidental temper and it has been held in control by our +scientific approach to the facts of our world and our experiences +therein. We have demanded for our speculations generally the +demonstration of fact and this has heretofore held us to a rather +narrow range, but that widening of the frontiers of the possible which +has attended the new psychology with its emphasis upon the subconscious, +along with the rather baffling character of psychic phenomena, has +opened the flood gates and released a tide of speculation which goes far +beyond the proved fact and accepts no limits but its own ingenious +audacity. We have already seen how evident deficiencies in the +discipline of present-day education and the loose state of mind too much +in evidence amongst us has contributed to all this. There are everywhere +a great number of perplexed people who want to believe something and +find it far easier to believe in dreams and guesses and cloud-built +systems than in restraining facts or even the rather clearly +demonstrated realities of the moral order, and such as these have found +a wealth of material in Eastern speculation. + + +_A Bridge of Clouds_ + +In trying to appraise the truth of Theosophy we have to disentangle the +system and the needs and the seekings which lead its adherents to accept +it. These needs and seekings are, after all, near and familiar; they are +only our old questions Whence? and Whither? and Why? Theosophy is at +least the attempt to really answer some of the questions which Western +science is either content or compelled to leave unanswered. The creative +point of contact between personality and matter and force is deeply +enwrapped in mystery. Orthodox Christianity has been content to affirm +the facts of creation without asking any questions at all as to its +methods. It has affirmed the omnipotence of the Creator and has found in +His omnipotence a satisfactory resting place. God is great enough to do +what has been done and the detail of it is rather an affair for God than +man. Scientific speculation generally has gone back as far as it can go +in the resolution of its forces and laws and recognized its own +limitations, leaving the rest to the theologian and the philosopher. The +result has been a gap which has not been bridged over. Theosophy has +undertaken to bridge that gap. But, examined more carefully, one sees +that the abyss has been crossed by nothing more solid than a fabric of +cloudy speculation. True enough these speculations are ingenious and +touched with suggestive light, but they are strangely insubstantial. +After all they do absolutely nothing more than our Western affirmation +of the immanence of God in life and force and law, and our Western +thought has the advantage alike in simplicity, in scientific basis and +reverent self-restraint. + +We might as well recognize, and be done with it, that there are +questions here which in all human probability are insoluble. There are +elements of mystery in life and the universe beyond our present and +likely our future power to definitely resolve. In the end faith can do +nothing more than rest in God and accept as an aspect of life itself the +necessary limits of our position. Our organized knowledge all too +quickly brings us to regions where faith and faith alone completes the +inquiry. But on the other hand, a faith which too far outruns either in +the reach or audacity of its speculation those elements which organized +knowledge supplies and reason validates, loses itself in futilities or +else misleads us altogether. Eastern speculation is too far beyond +either ordered knowledge or right reason to be of any practical use in +the fruitful conduct of life. Believing too much does just as much harm +as believing too little. + +Theosophy's seven planes and ascending emanations and sevenfold veils +and all the rest really explain nothing. On the other hand they tempt +their faithful to take conjecture for reality; they create a credulous +and uncritical temper; they are hostile to that honest dealing with fact +which is just one condition of getting on at all. A brave confession of +ignorance is often more truly reverent than knowing too many things +which are not so. As we approach more nearly the reality of things as +they are we find them always unexpectedly simple. The burden of proof is +always upon the murky and the complex. Those who try to escape the +difficulties in which our deeper understanding of the world order and +our own personalities involve us, by taking refuge in Eastern occultism +are on the wrong line. + + +_The Difficulties of Reincarnation_ + +The same criticism holds true of Reincarnation. It is involved in +hopeless difficulties. There are apparent injustices and inequalities in +life--so much is beyond debate--but we have in general, if we are honest +enough to follow it through, the clue to even these. We are all parts +of a struggling and, we trust, ascending order, an order which on the +whole is not so greatly concerned for the individual as we are concerned +for ourselves. We are hampered by our ignorance and we are deeply +involved one with the other. The orthodox theology which blames +everything upon sin as an abstraction is not convincing, but sin as the +projection of wrong desires, through self-will, into the field of human +action is a fact to be constantly reckoned with. The individual and +social consequences of it are enormous, nor can they be confined either +to one individual or one generation. Heredity continues weakness as well +as strength. A vast deal of our bitter reaping is due to the wrong or +foolish sowing of others, though fortunately we share the good as well +as the bad. The laws of heredity will account for a vast deal in any one +generation; the laws of social action and reaction for a great deal of +the rest, and there is finally not a little for which we ourselves are +responsible. A good many of our problems ought to be approached from the +point of view of the well-being of humanity generally and not our own +individual destiny. + +We may safely trust our individual destiny to brave and unselfish +living. I ought not to test what I do or leave undone by its effect upon +me in some future reincarnation; I ought to test it by the effect which +it has now upon the world of which I am a part, upon the generation +which is to follow me and upon the quality of my own present life. True +enough, the theosophist and myself find ourselves here in substantial +agreement as to many of the things which a man ought practically to do +to secure a happier future, but I maintain that the motives just named +are far more solid and worthy motives than the camouflaged selfishness +of Theosophy, and they are certainly in far deeper accord with the +ascertained facts of life. If we recognize that the more shadowed side +of life is partly the result of social and individual development +conditioned by weakness, ignorance and sin, if we recognize that the +present reaps what the past has sown, if we recognize that we suffer for +the faults of others and that no one of us may hope to climb far until +his neighbour climbs with him, if we recognize that pain and suffering +are disciplinary, illuminating, educative, and finally, if we recognize +that we do possess the power to take all the more difficult elements in +experience and subdue them to an increased wealth of personality, we +have really all the elements in hand for the solution of the problem of +pain and sorrow in terms of action and understanding, and we do not need +a series of reincarnations to help us out. + +Reincarnation really explains, as it claims to explain, neither the +exceptional individual nor the apparently unmerited sufferings of the +individual, and it has beside inescapable difficulties of its own. It +has to parallel the course of human existence with a range of supernal +existence for which there is absolutely no proof; it has to numerically +equalize birth and death--and these are not equal in an increasing +terrestrial population--or else it has to assume, as it does of course, +on other planes a storehouse of souls from which to draw. And more than +that, it involves itself in a perfect tangle of heavenly bookkeeping. +Here is the best Mrs. Besant can do to explain the difficulties of +reincarnation. "We have seen that man during his passage to physical +death loses, one after the other, his various bodies.... These are all +disintegrated and their particles remixed with the materials of their +several planes.... At this stage, then, only the man himself is left, +the labourer who has brought his harvest home and has lived upon it till +it is all worked up into himself. The dawn of a new life begins."[69] + +[Footnote 69: "The Ancient Wisdom," p. 202--passim.] + +To condense, he now proceeds to build up for himself a new body for his +coming life on the lower mental level. "This again exactly represents +his desire nature, faithfully reproducing the qualities he evolved in +the past; ... thus the man stands fully equipped for his next +incarnation.... Meanwhile action external to himself is being taken to +provide him with a physical body suitable for the expression of his +qualities.... All this is done by certain mighty spiritual Intelligences +often spoken of as the lords of Karma because it is their function to +superintend the working out of causes continually set going by thoughts, +desires and actions. They hold the threads of destiny which each man has +woven, and guide the reincarnating man to the environment determined by +his past. The race, the nation, the family thus determined, what may be +called the mould of the physical body ... is built within the mother's +womb by the agency of an elemental, the thought of the Karmic lords +being its motive power." The difficulties which this statement evades +are enormous, its conjectures are even more enormous. + +This is the subversion of all the facts of biology and heredity to a +capricious scheme, built up just to answer a few practical +questions--Why do we differ? Why do we suffer? Why are we happy? Surely +there are far more simple and reasonable answers to these questions than +the answer of Theosophy, and the willingness of so many people to rest +in such an answer as this can prove only one of two things--the capacity +of the mind for credulity or the arresting failure of those whose +business it is to interpret life to the perplexed, to have even begun +their task. + + +_Immortality a Nobler, Juster and Simpler Balancing of Life's +Account-Book_ + +If there be a want of opportunity in our present existence for a true +balancing of the scales of justice, and if some future existence be +needed to make things right, then the Christian doctrine of immortality +has an immense advantage over the reincarnations of Theosophy. We have +no right to underestimate the difficulties of a reasonable faith in +immortality, but they are simplicity itself as compared with the +difficulties of reincarnation, for reincarnation must answer every +question which the possibility of immortality raises and answer even +more difficult questions of its own. It is far simpler to believe that +having survived the shock of death we go on with the same essential +individuality we had before death, than to believe that having survived +we are sent back again through the gates of birth and are really +reincarnated in another individuality. More than that, the Christian +belief in immortality is more ethical. The action and reaction of life +have real meaning for me only as I know and remember. No theosophic +evasion can take the force out of this. + +If I consciously connect to-day's pain with yesterday's pain with the +folly or fault of a previous existence of which I am really unconscious, +the chain has been broken and no speculative question can supply the +missing link. Very likely the accepted Christian doctrine of the +finality of life after death has given Theosophy an opportunity in the +West. Protestantism particularly has allowed absolutely no place after +death for repentance, has offered no new chance to the adventuring soul; +its Hell and its Heaven have been final states. Catholicism has eased +the strain of this with purgatory, a belief wholly without Scriptural +basis, but nevertheless evolved in answer to great necessities of life. +We need neither purgatory nor reincarnation; we need only the +recognition of what is so centrally a part of any conception of +immortality as to make one wonder why we have so greatly missed it; the +reasonable confidence, that is, that we really go on very much as we +left off here. + +If there be in a future existence--and there must be if there be a +future existence--any room for repentance born of a clearer recognition +of fault and new and holier purposes born of a clearer understanding of +the true values of life, then we shall go on in a truly moral process of +growth, availing ourselves always of the teachings of experience and +working toward the true well-being of our souls, and if the mercy and +justice of God be not the figment of our imagination those who have been +hardly dealt with here will be given new opportunity, the deficient and +the handicapped released from what weighed them down will find a new +departure, and the justices of eternity complete what time began. All +this will be accomplished not in a series of existences, separated one +from the other by abysms of forgetfulness, but in a remembered +continuity of life deepening through endless growth. If this be only +faith and speculation it is at least a far more reasonable faith and +speculation than the alternative which Theosophy offers. Theosophy is a +side issue in the real solution of the problems of life. + + +_Pantheism at Its Best--and Its Worst_ + +Finally, though this is possibly unfair, Eastern Pantheism generally +must be tested by its fruits. We ought not, if we are to deal justly +with it, to ignore its better side. The East at its best has been strong +in a type of life wanting in the West; the East has been rich in +patience and gentleness and in consideration for every kind of life, +even the ant in the dust or the beast in the jungle. The East at its +best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of +cause and effect in character far, far beyond the West; it has been +content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life. +It has willingly, for the sake of truth and goodness, subjected itself +to disciplines, some of which are admirable, others of which are +loathsome. It has at its best ventured everything for the well-being of +the soul, even when it has misconceived that well-being. It has had +little of the hard driving quality of the West. Not a little of the +teaching of Jesus fits in better with the temper and devotion of the +Orient than the competitive materialism of the Occident. It is easily +possible to pass not a little of the Gospels through the interpretation +of Eastern mysticism and find therein arresting correspondences. For +example, a little book called "At the Feet of the Master" by a young +Indian student, has in it a wealth of insight and an understanding of +the balanced conduct of life which is wanting in a good many of the +Western interpretations of life, but none the less, things must be +judged by their massed outcome and the massed outcome of Eastern +Pantheism does not commend itself. + +The larger part of the religious literature of the East is upon a +distinctly lower level than those parts of it which are brought to us by +its devotees, and when Pantheism--and the basis of all Eastern +speculation is Pantheistic--comes down from its high places and begins +practically to express itself in worship and the conduct of the crowd, +then it is such as to give us pause. What Kipling calls "the sculptured +horrors" of the carved fronts of the temples in Benares are no accident; +they are simply the logical outcome of a faith which lifts the whole to +the level of the divine and has nothing beyond to correct what is by +what ought or ought not to be. Almost inevitably Pantheistic religions +unduly exalt those powers which make for fertility of field and the +increase of life. As they do this they have on their side the elemental +forces in human nature. When we begin to make gods of what after all +must be sternly subordinated to higher things, and the East has done +this in spite of its mystics and its dreamers, then we are not only in +danger of sculpturing symbolic horrors on the fronts of our temples but +of setting up therein strange altars to strange gods who are best +worshipped by strange rites. All this, inevitably enough, has given to +Eastern worship a more than earthly character, and has invested with the +sanction of religion forces which it must always be the business of +religion to subordinate and control. + +Along with all this has gone a grotesque mythology and an inconceivable +multiplication of divinity. Since no one but an expert can hope to +understand the complexities of a faith like this, the East has developed +a priestly class which bears harder upon its devotees and at the same +time more contemptuously separates itself from them than perhaps any +priestly class in the world. If the East is to return upon the West in +substituting a refined and more or less mystic Pantheism for the sterner +forms of Western faith, we ought at least to understand what it is +which, with all its implications, is beginning to set up its altars +amongst us. No one can follow the theosophic religion of the West +without recognizing how largely Western Theosophy avails itself of +Western science and informs itself with what Christianity has given to +the West. If these were taken out of it it would be hopeless. Since, +therefore, its speculations carry us beyond reason or science, since its +solution of the problems of life is far too complex, since whatever is +good in it may be found more richly and simply in what we already +possess and since the practical outcome of it in the East itself is an +arrested civilization which has many depths but few heights, one must +inevitably conclude that Theosophy has no real meaning for those who +possess already the knowledge which we have so laboriously gained and +the faith and insight which Christianity has brought us. + + + + +X + +SPIRITUALISM + + +Practically all the newer cults are quests in one general direction but +down more or less specific roads. Christian Science and New Thought are +endeavours after health and well-being and the endeavour also to +reconcile the more shadowed experiences of life with the love and +goodness of God. Theosophy and kindred cults are quests for illumination +and spiritual deliverance along other than the accepted lines of +Christian "redemption." Spiritualism is practically the quest for the +demonstration of immortality through such physical phenomena as prove, +at least to those who are persuaded by them, the survival of discarnate +personality. + +All these movements involve in varying degrees the abnormal or the +supernormal. They imply generally another environment for personality +than the environment which the ordered world of science supplies, and +other laws than the laws of which it takes account. They are one in +affirming the mastery of the psychical over the physical. They either +affirm or imply faculties which do not depend upon the senses for their +material; they suggest a range of personality which, if the facts which +they supply are sound, demands a very considerable recasting of our +accepted beliefs about ourselves. + +Christian Science and New Thought confine themselves largely to the +present term of life, though Christian Science affirms strongly enough +that death is an error of the mortal mind. New Thought places a shifting +emphasis upon immortality. Spiritualism centers wholly upon the +phenomena of the discarnate life, upon the power of the discarnate to +communicate with us and upon our power to receive and interpret their +communications. + +Spiritualism, or Spiritism, the name its adherents prefer, is, however, +by no means so simple as this definition of it. It may be anything from +the credulity which accepts without question or analysis the trick of a +medium, to the profound speculation of Meyer or Hyslop or the new +adventures in psychology of Émile Boirac and his French associates. It +may be a cult, a philosophy or an inquiry; it may organize itself in +forms of worship and separate itself entirely from the churches. It may +reinforce the faith of those who remain in their old communions. +Spiritism has a long line of descent. The belief that the spirit may +leave the body and maintain a continued existence is very old. Mr. +Herbert Spencer finds the genesis of this belief in dreams. Since +primitive men believed themselves able, in their dreams, to wander about +while the body remained immobile and since in their dreams they met and +spoke with their dead, they conceived an immaterial existence. The +spirit of a dead man, having left the body, would still go on about its +business. They, therefore, set out food and drink upon his grave and +sacrificed his dogs, his horses or his wives to serve him in his +disembodied state. All this is familiar enough and perhaps the whole +matter began as Mr. Spencer suggested, though it by no means ends there. + +The animism which grew out of this belief characterizes a vast deal of +early religion, penetrates a vast deal of early thinking. Primitive man +lived in a world constantly under the control of either friendly or +hostile spirits and the really massive result of this faith of his is +registered in regions as remote as the capricious genders of French +nouns and the majestic strophes of the Hebrew Psalms, for the genders +are the shadowy survivals of a time when all things had their spirits, +male or female, and the Psalms voice the faith for which thunder was the +voice of God and the hail was stored in His armoury. It would take us +far beyond the scope of our present inquiry to follow down this line in +all its suggestive ramifications. Animism, medieval witchcraft and the +confused phenomena of knocks, rappings and the breaking and throwing +about of furniture and the like reported in all civilized countries for +the past two or three centuries, supply the general background for +modern Spiritualism. (The whole subject is fully treated in the first +and second chapters of Podmore.) + + +_The Genesis of Modern Spiritualism_ + +Modern Spiritualism does not, however, claim for itself so ancient an +ancestry. In 1848 mysterious knockings were heard in the family of John +D. Fox at Hydesville, N.Y. They appeared to have some purpose behind +them; the daughters of the family finally worked out a code: three raps +for yes, one for no, two for doubt, and lo, a going concern was +established. It is interesting to note that mysterious noises had been +about a century before heard in the family of the Wesleys in Epworth +Rectory, England. These noises came to be accepted quite placidly as an +aspect of the interesting domestic life of the Wesleys. It has usually +been supposed that Hattie Wesley knew more about it than she cared to +tell and, as far as the illustrious founders of Methodism were +concerned, there the matter rests. + +But the Fox sisters became professional mediums and upon these simple +beginnings a great superstructure has been built up. The modern interest +in Spiritualism thus began on its physical side and in general the +physical phenomena of Spiritualism have become more bizarre and complex +with the growth of the cult. Raps, table tiltings, movements of articles +of furniture, playing upon musical instruments, slate writing, automatic +writing, of late the Ouija Board, materialization, levitation, apparent +elongation of the medium's body, are all associated with Spiritism. It +was natural that the voice also should become a medium of communication, +though trance mediumship belongs, as we shall see, to a later stage of +development. + +Incidentally the movement created a kind of contagious hysteria which +naturally multiplied the phenomena and made detached and critical +attitudes unduly difficult. For reasons already touched upon, America +has been strongly predisposed to phases of public opinion which in their +intensity and want of balance have the generally accepted +characteristics of hysteria. Some of them have been religious, great +awakenings, revivals and the like. These in their more extreme form have +been marked by trances, shoutings and catalepsy and, more normally, by a +popular interest, strongly emotionalized, which may possess a real +religious value. Other religious movements have centered about the +second coming of Christ and the end of the world. Many of these peculiar +excitements have been political. The whole offers the psychologists a +fascinating field and awaits its historian.[70] Yet the result is always +the same. The critical faculty is for the time in abeyance; public +opinion is intolerant of contradiction; imposture is made easy and +charlatans and self-appointed prophets find a credulous following. +Movements having this genesis and history are in themselves open to +suspicion. + +[Footnote 70: Sidis has a résumé of Social Epidemics in part three of +his work on the "Psychology of Suggestion."] + + +_It Crosses to England and the Continent_ + +The American interest in Spiritualism from 1848 to 1852 belongs +distinctly to this region. The Fox sisters have been generally +discredited, but what they began carried on. In 1852 a Mrs. Hayden and a +little later a Mrs. Roberts introduced raps and table turnings to +England. There, and more particularly on the Continent, Spiritualism met +and merged with a second line of development which in turn reacted upon +American Spiritualism, and, in America, released movements on the +surface wholly unrelated to Spiritism. In France to a degree and in +Germany strongly Mesmerism lent itself to spiritistic interpretations. I +quote Podmore, who is commenting upon the trance utterances of a Mrs. +Lindquist: "It is to be noted that the ascription of these somnambulic +utterances to spirit intelligences was in the circumstances not merely +easy but almost inevitable. The entranced person was in a state +obviously differing very widely from either normal sleep or normal +wakefulness; in the waking state she herself retained no recollection of +what happened in the trance; in the trance she habitually spoke of her +waking self in the third person, as of some one else; the intelligence +which manifested in the trance obviously possessed powers of expression +and intellectual resources in some directions far greater than any +displayed by the waking subject. Add to this that the trance +intelligence habitually reflected the ideas in general and especially +the religious orthodoxy of her interlocutors; that on occasion she +showed knowledge of their thoughts and intentions which could not +apparently have been acquired by normal means; that she was, in +particular, extraordinarily skillful in diagnosing, prescribing for, and +occasionally foretelling the course of diseases in herself and +others--the proof must have seemed to the bystanders complete."[71] + +[Footnote 71: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. I, p. 77.] + + +_The Beginnings of Trance-Mediumship_ + +We have here plainly enough the beginnings of trance mediumship. It +needed only unstable personalities, capable of self-induced trance +states, so to widen all this as to supply the bases of spiritistic +faith and the material for the immensely laborious investigation of the +Society for Psychical Research. In the main, however, French interest in +Mesmerism and animal magnetism took a more scientific turn and issued in +the brilliant French studies in hypnotism. Spiritualism has made little +headway in Catholic countries. The authority of the Church is thrown so +strongly against it as to prohibit the interest of the credulous and the +penetrating minds of the southern European scientists have been more +concerned with the problems of abnormal personality than the continued +existence of the discarnate. + +The interest in Germany took another line. There was less scientific +investigation of hypnotism and trance states as abnormal modifications +of personality and far more interest in clairvoyance and spirit +existence. Men whose names carried weight accepted the spiritistic +explanation of phenomena ranging from broken flower pots to ghosts. Very +likely the German tendency toward mysticism and speculation explains +this. Jung followed Swedenborg and the mystics generally in affirming a +psychic body, but was a pioneer in associating it with the luminiferous +ether in a range of speculation which in our time supplies an +hypothetical scientific basis for the environment of the discarnate. (So +Sir Oliver Lodge.) Podmore concludes that the foundations of modern +Spiritualism were laid by the German magnetists of the first half of the +nineteenth century. + +The movement developed along these lines till 1875. Once broadly in +action it touches at one point or another the whole region of the +occult. Many spiritualists found in Theosophy, for which existence is +the endless turning of a wheel, a cycle of death and rebirth, a +pseudo-philosophic support for their belief. Spiritualism appealed +naturally to the lovers of the mystic and the unusual and it associated +itself, to a degree, with extreme liberalism in the general development +of religion. (On the whole, however, as far as religion goes, +Spiritualism has created a religion of its own.) Its advocates were +likely to be interested in phrenology, advanced social experiments, or +modification of the marriage laws. Spiritualistic phenomena themselves +became more varied and complex; trance mediumship became a profession +with a great increase of performers; slate writing was introduced and +finally materialization was achieved. All this might mean that the +spirits were growing more adept in "getting through," the mediums more +adept in technique, or else, which is more likely, that latent abnormal +aspects of personality were being brought to light through suggestion, +imitation and exercise. But no concerted effort was made by trained and +impartial observers to eliminate fraud, collect data and reach +dependable conclusions. This has been finally attempted by the Society +for Psychical Research and the results of their laborious investigations +are now at the service of the student of the occult. + + +_The Society for Psychical Research Begins Its Work_ + +The weight which attaches to the names of many English and some +American members of the Society, the carefully guarded admission of some +of them that there is in the whole region a possible residue of +phenomena which indicate communication between the living and the +discarnate and the profoundly unsettling influence of the war, really +account for the renewed interest in Spiritualism in our own time. In +1875 a few Englishmen, one of them a famous medium--Stainton +Moses--formed a Psychological Society for the investigation of +supernormal phenomena. (In general all this account of the history of +Spiritualism is greatly condensed from Podmore and Hill and the reader +is referred to their works without specific reference.) + +This first group dissolved upon the death of one of its members--though +that would seem to have been a good reason for continuing it--and in +1882 Professor (afterward Sir) William Barrett, who had already done +some experimenting and had brought hypnotism and telepathy to the notice +of the British association for the advancement of science, consulted +Stainton Moses with the view of founding a society under better auspices +and the Society for Psychical Research was organized, with Professor +Henry Sidgwick as first president. The Society undertook, according to +its own statement: + + 1. An examination of the nature and extent of any influence which + may be exerted by one mind upon another, otherwise than through the + recognized sensory channels. + + 2. The study of hypnotism and mesmerism, and an inquiry into the + alleged phenomena of clairvoyance. + + 3. A careful investigation of any reports, resting on testimony + sufficiently strong and not too remote, of apparitions coinciding + with some external event (as for instance a death) or giving + information previously unknown to the percipient, or being seen by + two or more persons independently of each other. + + 4. An inquiry into various alleged phenomena apparently + inexplicable by known laws of nature, and commonly referred by + Spiritualists to the agency of extra-human intelligences. + + 5. The collection and collation of existing materials bearing on + the history of these subjects.[72] + +[Footnote 72: "Spiritualism," Hill, p. 100.] + +They sought also "to approach these various problems without prejudice +or prepossession of any kind and in the same spirit of exact and +unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many +problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated." + +As a matter of fact the region is the most obscure which inquiry has +ever been called to enter. A noble rationality pervades the whole normal +material order, causes can be controlled, effects anticipated, laws +formulated and above all, the hypotheses of science are, if true, always +capable of a luminous and splendid verification. The disciplined +intellect moves through it all with a sense of "at-homeness" which is +itself a testimony to profound correspondences between the human mind +and the order with which, during its long, long unfolding, it has been +associated in intimacies of action and reaction too close to be +adequately set forth in words. But the mind does not rest easily in the +region which Spiritism claims for its own. + + +_The Difficulties It Confronts_ + +Of course this is to beg the whole question. The more scientifically +minded spiritualists might fairly enough answer that they are attempting +to discover the laws of the occult and reduce an anarchical system to +order, that our feeling of strangeness in these regions is only because +of our little contact with them. There are, they claim, undeveloped +aspects of personality which we have had as yet little occasion to use, +but which would, once they were fully brought into action, give us the +same sense of rapport with a super-sensible order that we now have in +our contact with the sensible order. The crux of the whole contention is +probably just here and in view of what has heretofore been accomplished +in discovering and formulating the laws of the physical universe and in +reducing an immense body of apparently unrelated facts to order, there +is doubtless possible a very great systematization of psychical +phenomena, even the most obscure. Nor may we readily set bounds to the +measure of human development. But at any rate the statement with which +this paragraph began is true. The region which the Society for Psychical +Research set out to explore is obscure and is, as yet, so far from +yielding to investigation that the investigators are not even agreed as +to their facts, let alone the conclusions to be drawn from. + +The proceedings of the Society literally fill volumes (thirty-two); it +would require a specialist to follow them through and an analysis here +impossible, rightly to evaluate them. When such careful investigators as +Hill and Podmore, dealing with the same body of fact, differ constantly +and diametrically in their conclusions, it is evident that the facts so +far collected have not cumulative force enough to establish in the +generality of disciplined minds a substantial unanimity of conviction. +There are far too many alternatives in the interpretation of the facts +and, in general, the personal equation of the investigator colours the +conclusions reached. Of course this is, in a measure, true in every +field of investigation, but it is outstandingly true in psychical +research. + + +_William James Enters the Field_ + +For some years the Society was mainly occupied with hypnotism and +thought transference, with occasional reports on "apparitions, haunted +houses, premonitions, automatic writing, crystal vision and multiple +personality." Professor William James' experiment with Mrs. Piper +carried the Society over into the field of trance mediumship. James had +a sound scientific interest in every aspect of the play of human +consciousness and was earlier than any of his contemporaries awakened to +the psychological value of abnormal mental states. He also loved fair +play. He made his first report on Mrs. Piper in 1886. He was unable, he +said, "to resist the conviction that knowledge appeared in her trances +which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes, ears +and wits.... What the source of this knowledge may be, I know not, and +have not a glimmer of explanatory suggestion to make, but from admitting +the fact of such knowledge I can see no escape." + +In a letter to Flourney dated August 9, 1908, James says of later +investigations: "It seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in +the history of automatism.... Evidently automatism is a word that covers +an extraordinary variety of fact." The reports of Mrs. Piper's sittings +fill a large place in the Society's records. Dr. Richard Hodgson and +Professor Hyslop were finally led to accept her trance utterances and +writings as spiritistic revelations. Podmore, after a most careful +analysis, concludes that "Mrs. Piper's trance utterances indicate the +possession of some supernormal power of apprehension, at least the +capacity to read the unspoken and even unconscious thoughts and emotions +of other minds."[73] He is willing to admit that if any case in the +whole history of Spiritualism points at communication with the spirits +of the dead, hers is that case, but he adds, "to other students of the +records, including the present writer, the evidence nevertheless appears +at present insufficient to justify the spiritualistic view even of a +working hypothesis." "I cannot point to a single instance in which a +precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished, of a +kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working +upon the materials provided in the hints let drop by the sitter."[74] + +[Footnote 73: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, pp. 342-343.] + +[Footnote 74: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, p. 345.] + + +_The Limitations of the Scientist in Psychical Investigation_ + +It is impossible in this study to follow through the records of the +Society. A representative group of its members, some of them men whose +names carry weight in other regions, have been led by their +investigations to adopt the spiritistic hypothesis. Significantly, +however, it is generally the scientist and not the psychologist who +commits himself most strongly to Spiritism. He is strongly impressed, as +was Sir William Crookes, by phenomena of one sort or another which do +not come under his laws, and he assigns to them causes which lie +altogether out of his field. Indeed the temper and training of the +scientist handicap him in all psychical investigations. He has only one +of two alternatives: to explain what he sees in terms of what his +laboratories have told him, or else in terms of forces with which he is +not familiar. His training in careful experimentation may fit him to +test and isolate physical phenomena, but if they cannot be explained in +terms of the forces and laws with which he is familiar his conclusions +are no more authoritative than the conclusions of any other reasonably +intelligent man. He may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to +conclusions--or conjectures--entirely outside his own province. The +element of trickery in the ordinary professional séance is +notorious.[75] The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost +without exception been duplicated by conjurers--many of whom have +mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most +unusual phenomena, such as Home's apparent ability to handle fire +unburnt and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the +performance of Indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritistic +explanation is attached. In many instances a trained conjurer would be +far more apt to detect fraud than a trained scientist. He would at least +know where to look for a probable explanation. + +[Footnote 75: Carrington, "The Psychical Phenomena of Spiritualism," pp. +6 and 7.] + + +_The Society for Psychical Research Gives Intellectual Standing to Their +Investigations_ + +If the explanations of the whole group of phenomena is not in the known +resident forces about us it is presumably in powers or aspects of +personality not yet fully known. Here the psychologist is a better +witness than the scientist and it is significant that psychologists have +been slower to accept the spiritistic hypothesis than the scientist. +Hyslop is an exception but the extent to which Hyslop has of late gone +in some of his reported utterances would seem to indicate that he has +passed far beyond the bonds of the scientific. And indeed, the whole +tendency of those who let themselves go strongly with the spiritistic +tide is exactly in this direction. It ought, however, to be said that +even these members of the S.P.R. who have become spiritistic have +generally been savingly conservative in their conclusions. + +At any rate, the work of the Society for Psychical Research has given +intellectual standing to what was before a sort of hole and corner +affair under suspicion twice: first, because of the character of those +involved, second, because of the character of what they revealed. It is +difficult for one not predisposed toward the occult and even strongly +prejudiced against it to deny in alleged spiritistic phenomena a +challenging residuum which may in the end compel far-reaching +modifications in the conclusions both of science and psychology. By one +set of tests this residuum is unexpectedly small. One of the canons of +the S.P.R. is to reject the work of any medium once convicted or +strongly suspected of fraud. There is a vast literature in this region +through whose outstanding parts the writer has for a good while now been +trying to find his way, often enough ready to quote the Pope in the Ring +and the Book. + + "I have worn through this sombre wintry day + With winter in my soul ... + Over these dismalest of documents" + +The reports of sittings cover weary pages of murky statement; the +descriptions of the discarnate life are monotonously uniform and +governed almost without exception by old, old conceptions of planes and +spheres. There is always a preponderance of the trivial--though the +advocates of spiritism claim, and the justice of this claim must be +allowed, that this is inevitable and that only through the veridical +character of the inconsequential can the consequential be established. +Moreover, the impartial student working over the records should at least +recognize the pathetic importance which those, believing themselves to +be in touch with their own dead, naturally attach to even the most +trivial instances. This sense of really being in touch, itself entirely +subjective, probably carries over ninety-nine out of every hundred who +finally become spiritists. It would be foolish to ignore the +contributive force of this sense. In one form or another it is the last +element in our recognition of our friends, and it never can be judged +externally. But on the other hand a recognition of the unwarranted +lengths to which--with lonely longing behind it--it may carry even the +best poised minds, must give us pause in accepting any conclusion thus +reached. + + +_The Very Small Number of Dependable Mediums_ + +Spiritistic literature is endlessly diffuse, but on the other hand the +more dispassionate students rest their case on an unexpectedly small +body of undiscredited evidence. Mrs. Piper, Home and Stainton Moses are +the mediums with whom the case of the S.P.R. really stands or falls. +Home was never detected in fraud and was non-professional. Sir William +Crookes' experiments in these physical phenomena were carried on with +him as medium. His work, however, was generally done for a small group +of already convinced followers and their testimony, while sincere and +generally consistent, may often have been influenced in ways of which +they themselves were not conscious. Podmore thinks them to have been +unduly suggestible and offers hallucinations as an alternative +hypothesis. Stainton Moses was respected in his private life, a teacher, +a clergyman and a private tutor. His specialties were the introduction +of a great variety of articles--apports as they are called--at his +sittings, levitation, table-tipping and automatic writing and the direct +voice. His control was known as "Imperator" and this ghostly commander +fills a large place in the S.P.R. literature. "Imperator" had a strong +homiletic instinct (remember that Moses was a clergyman) and +communicated first and last through automatic writing, a considerable +exposition of the spiritualistic creed, the larger part of which could +have been preached from any liberal pulpit with no other effect on the +hearers than to win their assent to blameless commonplaces--or, +possibly, put them to sleep. + +Mrs. Piper affords the strongest evidence of what Podmore calls "Some +supernormal power of apprehension" in the entire history of trance +mediumship. She was for years under the constant observation of a +capable group by no means unanimously sympathetic with the spiritistic +hypothesis, and has never been detected in fraud. She contributed a very +great amount of information to her sitters which she apparently could +not and did not obtain from known sources. There are no physical +phenomena in connection with her work. The records of her séances fill a +large place in the proceedings of the S.P.R. and the case for spiritism +could be more safely rested with her than any other medium. + +But the point here is that these three--Home, Moses and Mrs. +Piper--supply the larger part of material which the really trained +investigators of the last forty years are at all willing to take +seriously. If there have been only three mediums in forty years who have +commanded the general confidence--and Podmore does not feel absolutely +sure of Home--of the group whose judgment the rest of us have to depend +upon, we have a situation in which the average untrained seeker dealing +with the average medium can have no sound confidence at all. The whole +region is shot through and through with uncertainties, deceits and +alternative hypotheses. + + +_Spiritism a Question of Testimony and Interpretation_ + +It is all fundamentally a matter of testimony. We have, or we have not, +a body of fact for which we are in debt to observation. The observation +may be first hand--as in Sir Oliver Lodge's sittings where he reports +what he saw and heard. It may be second hand as the cases reported in +the larger part of the authoritative literature of psychic phenomena. +(Second hand, that is, for the authors and those who depend upon them.) +Trustworthy observation is probably more difficult here than in any +region of investigation. The whole situation is unfavourable; low lights +and high emotion, the instinctive tendency to read into the facts a +desired content even in watching them, the possibility of hallucinations +and forms of hypnosis, all combine to render human testimony unreliable +and introduce errors of observation. Nowhere can we be less sure of our +facts and even when the facts are admitted the interpretation of them +still remains, and here the room for difference is equally great. At +best we are dealing with forces not yet subdued to law, phenomena for +which normal experience supplies no parallel. It is all a region of +intimations and possible permissions, but never for a moment of +inevitable conclusions. One must go slow enough in offering any opinion +at all. The writer recognizes and accepts, to begin with, a +preponderance of dependable testimony for physical phenomena not to be +explained in terms of any force with which science is now familiar. + +In this he goes beyond Podmore who would eliminate all physical +phenomena from the problem, and fully as far as Carrington. But Sir +William Crookes never admitted entire error in this region,[76] and the +conclusions of Geley (though he cites in part Eusapia Palladino, who is +more or less discredited) point in the same direction. His studies of +materialization are so vivid as to be uncanny and his photographs a +series of documents which still await explanation.[77] There would seem +to be a possible exercise of personal force not dependent upon muscular +pull or pressure, bodily movements operating against known laws and even +the building of this mysterious force into complete or fragmentary +body-like forms. + +[Footnote 76: See Carrington, "The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism," +p. 377.] + +[Footnote 77: Geley, "From the Unconscious to the Conscious."] + +On the psychical side there is dependable evidence for information +conveyed by supernormal means across considerable spaces--possibly long +distances and the power to secure and report information not gained in +any normal way. These are bare statements capable of great +amplification. But they cover the ground. + + +_Three Possible Explanations of So-Called Spiritistic Phenomena_ + +Admitting the facts, there are three possible explanations. First, the +Daimonistic. There are, according to this theory, in the unseen +world--wherever and whatever that may be--an order of beings akin to +ourselves, either less or more highly developed, mischievous or benign. +This is an old, old belief; it has pervaded animistic religions, +fathered witchcraft, persisted in the belief of demoniac control, +enriched folk lore, filled the friendly silences of the night with +terror and haunted humanity. Now it has found its renaissance in the +full blaze of Twentieth Century Science. + +"It seems not improbable," says Sir William Barrett, "that many of the +_physical_ manifestations witnessed in a spiritualistic séance are the +product of human-like but not really human intelligence--good or bad +daimonia they may be, _elementals_ some have called them, which +aggregate round the medium; drawn from that particular plane of mental +and moral development in the unseen which corresponds to the mental and +moral plane of the medium."[78] This is, with little enough alteration, +the very point from which we set out in the remote dawn of our endeavour +to interpret the mystery of the world about us. The only difference is +that Sir William has his daimon for a tipping table and the savage had +his for a flowing spring. Sir William may be right but primitive man was +wrong. The whole trend of science heretofore has been to eliminate +capricious and isolated elements from observed phenomena and include +them in a sweep of law for whose operation the resident forces in the +universe and human personality are seen to be sufficient. The +daimonistic hypothesis has always up to this time been proved not only +unnecessary but positively misleading. It belongs to a region where +proof and disproof are equally impossible, but the weight of experience +and especially all our truer understandings of ourselves and our world, +dearly bought through the intellectual travail of our race, are against +it. To accept it is really to turn back the clock and populate the +unseen again with the creation of our fears or our fancies. It is at the +best the too easy solution of a challenging problem, at the worst an +aspect of that renaissance of superstition which is one of the strangest +characteristics of our own time. + +[Footnote 78: "On the Threshold of the Unseen," p. 113.] + +The second explanation is spiritistic. There are unseen presences but +they are the discarnate who seek in the more trivial phenomena to bring +themselves to our attention and in the more important to assure us of +their continued existence and satisfy their longing and ours in renewed +personal contacts. Given a faith in immortality, this explanation is +natural enough--even inevitable. If the discarnate still live they must +remember and desire. Death does not end affection on our side. It should +not end affection on their side. There must be, moreover, what one may +call a discarnate status--an order, that is, of relationships and +activities in which discarnate personality realizes and expresses +itself. Our racial curiosities about the state of the dead are +quenchless. Every religion has its creeds, its dreams, its assurances. +From the Nirvana of the Buddhist to the ardent paradise of the +Mohammedan, faith and longing have built their structure and peopled it +with their dead. Great ranges of literature are coloured by such +speculations. Christian hymnology is instinct with them and not a little +of our noblest poetry. We have set our hells over against our heavens +and opposed their terror to celestial splendours. Modern Spiritualism +has to head it the whole drive of such speculations as these. For if the +generality have been content to leave the solution of the very great +difficulties which any faith in immortality involves, to the +demonstrations of eventual experience, and rest in what is really the +poetry of their faith, others either more curious or more credulous seek +the testimony of the senses. Such as these naturally find what they seek +in the phenomena of trance mediumship. They believe that the discarnate +are constantly seeking to penetrate the veil between their order and +ours and avail themselves of every opportunity to recall themselves to +the memory of the incarnate. + + +_Myers' Theory of Mediumship_ + +F.W.H. Myers undertakes to describe how this may be done from the point +of view of the spirit. "Seeking then for some open avenue, it discerns +something which corresponds to a _light_--a glimmer of translucency in +the confused darkness of our material world. This 'light' indicates a +_sensitive_--a human organism so constituted that a spirit can +temporarily _inform_ or _control_ it, not necessarily interrupting the +stream of the sensitive's ordinary consciousness; perhaps using a hand +only, or perhaps, as in Mrs. Piper's case, using voice as well as hand, +and occupying all the sensitive's channels of self-manifestation." + +There are, naturally, in all this unescapable elements of speculation. +As a matter of fact anything which we may imagine about the discarnate +life may be almost unbelievably wide of the mark. Memory more than +anything else is the binding force in personality. We know ourselves to +be in the morning what we were when we went to sleep the night before, +simply because memory reassembles immediately the continuing elements of +our individual existences. More than that, we are greatly helped by our +surroundings; everything which meets us in the morning has associations +by which memory is served and, therefore, by the almost automatic +process of putting together what we remember and surrendering ourselves +to the suggestions of what we see and meet we find our places in a +waking, working world and go about our business. + +If we were to awake in a totally strange world where nothing was in any +degree at all similar to the world in which we went to sleep, we might +find ourselves so sadly puzzled as to doubt our own identity, even +though memory persisted in its identifying suggestion. And if in +addition to this we found ourselves without the contribution of physical +sensation to which we have always been used--sightless, soundless, +touchless--one can easily imagine a shock in the face of which even the +most strongly centered personality would give way. And yet such changes +as this probably only faintly indicate the adjustments which the +discarnate are called upon to meet. It is as if we were asked to argue +or to imagine from one dimension to another. + +These are difficulties, of course, which attend any conception of +immortality, but we usually escape them by refusing to follow through +what they involve and taking refuge in a free poetic imagination +sustained by faith and enriched by tradition. In the face of all this +Myers' supposition, ingenious as it is, can do no more than repeat the +more prosaic assumption which is the basis of spiritism, and that is +that the discarnate naturally desire to communicate with those whom they +have left, one hardly dares say behind them for even that simple word +introduces suppositions which may have no meaning at all, and would +naturally avail themselves of any possible opportunity. The whole +process, if it be a process, must lie in the region of suggestion. If +there be a telepathy between the living it is not impossible that there +should be a telepathy between the living and the discarnate. + + +_Telepathy: Between the Living or the Living and the Discarnate?_ + +There might be thus a kind of eager pressing of the departed against +the doors which had been shut and not quite locked behind them, taking +the form of more or less obscure suggestion to which the medium would be +sensitive and so recreate in ways at which we can only guess some hint +of the voice or presence of the discarnate. The suggestion would come +from the other side. The form in which it is given to our world would be +the contribution of the medium. As far as there is any possible +explanation of the facts of trance mediumship as a revelation from the +dead it is somewhere here. + +Telepathy between the living is fairly well enough established to make +this a not impossible hypothesis, and even materialization might be +accounted for in the same way. Sir Oliver Lodge is inclined to discover +in the luminiferous ether an environment in which discarnate personality +could function. But this is pure supposition, though others have adopted +it. Walker, for example, in his extremely suggestive work on Monism and +Christian Theism. But he suggests the ether only as a help to the +imagination in meeting the difficulties of an immortal existence--the +old Heaven and Hell having been made astronomically and geologically +impossible. But if Einstein should upset the hypothesis of the ether all +this would go the way of the Heaven and Hell of Dante. + +We cannot eliminate, however, in a supposition so vague as this the +contributive elements supplied by the friends themselves to whom the +communication is supposed to be addressed and by whom it is certainly +interpreted, for if the trance medium is open to suggestion from the +discarnate side, the medium must be equally open to suggestion from the +living, a suggestion likely to be very much stronger, more distinct, +more compelling. + +The real crux of the whole problem is the disentanglement of these +possible lines of suggestion and the assignment of them to their true +sources. We may, the writer believes, eliminate as far as their +evidential value is concerned, all physical phenomena. In doing this we +need not necessarily deny the reality of some of the physical phenomena +but the larger part of the residue which might possibly be left after +the elimination of fraud on the part of the medium and unintentional +misrepresentation on the part of the witnesses is so utterly meaningless +as to have no value at all. The only physical phenomena which can have +any direct bearing on spirit communication are the tappings and table +tippings which can by a deal of ingenuity be made to spell out a message +or answer questions yes or no. The same question as to the source of the +suggestion enters here. Even if we admit the taps to spell out a +message, we have still to decide from whom the message comes and the +messages alleged to be contributed through the voice are so much more +full and intelligible as to leave the whole question standing or falling +with the credibility of voice trance mediumship. + + +_Controls_ + +The usual machinery of a séance creates suspicion. Most mediums have +controls. Nothing is more capricious than these controls. They may be +people who really never existed at all. The genesis of Mrs. Piper's +control, Dr. Phinuit, is suggestive. "It would appear that Mrs. Piper in +1884 had visited for advice a professional clairvoyant whose leading +control claimed to be a Frenchman named Finné, or Finnett."[79] When +Mrs. Piper was later seen by William James, a French doctor had +succeeded in obtaining almost exclusive control and his name was +reported to be Phinuit. Beyond debate, as far as name goes, here is a +kind of transmuted suggestion. The Finnett of the French clairvoyant, +who may or may not have really lived, becomes the Phinuit of Mrs. Piper, +for whose existence there is apparently no testimony at all. + +[Footnote 79: Podmore's "Modern Spiritualism," Vol. II, p. 333.] + +The controls have sometimes been Indians and indeed almost any one may +appear as a control--Longfellow, for example, or Mrs. Siddons, or Bach +or Vanderbilt. In a region where disproof and proof are equally +impossible this element of capricious control is suspicious. It is much +more likely to be some obscure casting up of the medium's mind, through +lines of association of which the medium is utterly unconscious, than to +represent the personalities so named. In Raymond the control is one +Moonstone, or a little Indian girl called Freda or Feda, who speaks of +herself in the third person and who reports a great many silly things in +a very silly way. + +It is possible, of course, to say that these thus named are spirit +mediums as necessary for the transfer of suggestion from the discarnate +order as mediums seem to be in the incarnate order, and that abnormal +personalities are as much needed on one side as the other through the +abnormality of the whole process. But this is patently to beg the +question. There is room in the whole process for the trivial, even the +inconsequential. As the advocates of spiritism have urged, +identification very often turns on apparently trivial things but it is +difficult to justify the very great element of the capricious and +actually foolish which enters so largely into the records of all +sittings. It would seem as if death robbed grave personalities of their +gravity, the strong of their force and the wise of their wisdom, and +this is so hard to believe as to make us wonder whether we are not +really dealing with something which belongs to an entirely different +region and is open to an entirely different line of explanation. + +But beyond such considerations as these, which may or may not have +force, there remains the graver question still--the question of the +identification of the sources from which the intelligible residue of +communications is received. If we fall back upon suggestion there are +always two general sources of suggestion--the incarnate and the +discarnate, and among the incarnate themselves there are manifold +sources of suggestion. The sitter may be unconsciously supplying the +material which the medium is receiving, recasting and giving back again, +or the medium may be reporting what is received from other incarnate +sources than the sitter. (This, of course, when we have eliminated all +that might possibly be contributed by the medium.) + + +_The Dilemma of Spiritism_ + +Anything, therefore, which is known to the living may be the source of +the medium's information. Only those things, therefore, which are +utterly unknown to the living anywhere, which cannot possibly have been +known by the medium himself or herself, can be finally and conclusively +a testimony to communications from the dead. But unless the information +thus received is known to the living, its truth or falsity can never be +proved or disproved. This is the dilemma which spiritism is finally +brought to face and from this dilemma there is absolutely no escape. It +does not forbid the conclusions which may be drawn from a seeming +preponderance of evidence, but it does forbid absolute certainty, for, +to repeat, if the information is to be verified it must be verified by +the living, which proves that some one does possess it and may have +communicated it--if we assume such communication to be possible--to the +medium. On the other hand, if no one at all possesses the information, +then we may never be sure that it is real information, or anything else +than a creation of an excited imagination. + +There is one test here which, if it were really made under absolutely +dependable conditions, conditions, that is, in no wise open to suspicion +or misunderstanding, might be final. If a message written before death +and so sealed as to be unknown to any one save the one who wrote it, +could be correctly reported, it would have, everything else being +right, an immense force. (Though even here clairvoyance--for which, on +the whole, there is a pretty dependable evidence--might afford the true +explanation.) F.W.H. Myers left such a message as this. In January, +1891, he sent Sir Oliver Lodge a "sealed envelope, in the hope that +after his death the communication contained in the envelope would be +able to be given by means of a medium. Many different messages obtained +by a well-known medium, Madame Verrall, and coming supposedly from +Frederick Myers, led them to believe that they represented this +communication. The envelope was opened in December, 1904, and 'it was +found that there was no resemblance between its actual contents and what +was alleged by the script to be contained in it.'"[80] If there is any +authentic case of this final test being successfully maintained, the +writer does not know it. There are instances of hidden articles +discovered, but these tests by no means possess the same force of +testimony. + +[Footnote 80: Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 278.] + +We may assume, then, that we have no absolute demonstration of spirit +communication. We have only a very complex group of phenomena capable of +varying explanations. Any fair-minded student of the whole subject must +recognize that men who have had ample opportunity for first hand +investigation, not hasty in their conclusions and in some instances of +very great intellectual force, have taken an opposite view. They have +felt the testimony to be both sound and sufficient. There is an +unescapable personal equation here which probably finally determines +divergent attitudes. As has been said before, those generally who have +accepted the spiritistic explanation have been led to do so through +communications in which they discovered some personal note or touch, to +which they themselves would be hospitably susceptible and which would +have far less weight with those whose affections and previous +associations were not thus involved. This does not necessarily prove +their conclusions to have been false. Perhaps just this personal element +is necessary to give final meaning to what otherwise is so perplexing +and even contradictory. The dogmatism which shuts the door squarely in +the face of spiritism is as unreasonable, as unscientific, as the +credulity which opens the door wide and accepts everything which comes +through. + + +_The Influence of Spiritism Upon Its Adherents_ + +There are other considerations which bear more or less indirectly upon +this difficult matter, but which have their weight. In general, those +who have whole-heartedly accepted spiritism have been unable thereafter +to maintain the balanced detachment which they urge upon others. They +tend to become unduly credulous; they force their explanation beyond its +necessary limits; they tend to become persons of the idée fixe type; +they become sponsors for extravagant stories, and, in general, lead +those who are influenced by their position or name far beyond the limits +which impartial investigation, even on the part of those sympathetic, +has as yet justified. Those descriptions of the discarnate state, +moreover, which reach us through mediums are undependable. + +There is a machinery of planes and spheres and emanations and +reincarnations which is not at all peculiar to spiritism but belongs to +the fringes of the occult in every manifestation of it, which is +perpetually recurrent in modern spiritualistic literature. We are on the +frontiers of a region where the reason which steadies us in the +practical conduct of life and guides us in an order with which we are +familiar through age-old inheritances, has no value at all. Our very +terminology ceases to have any meaning. A generous creative imagination +may build for itself what cities it will of habitation, furnish them as +it desires and try to conceive, as it has power, the experiences and +progressions of the discarnate, but to invest these imaginations with +evidential accuracy is to break down all the limits between the +dependable and the undependable. + +And finally, though this is rather a commonplace observation than an +aspect of our investigation, there is little to be gained in the +necessary business of solid living by such an interweaving of the two +worlds as spiritism carries with it. One life at a time is plainly +enough all that we are equal to. Those who surrender themselves to such +conclusions and inquiries are in very great danger of being so detached +from the actualities of the present order as to become themselves errant +and eccentric spirits, finding their true interests in endless séances +and investigations which have no practical bearing upon life as it now +is. + + +_The Real Alternative to Spiritism_ + +The writer's observation of the effect of much going to mediums upon +those whom he has personally known leads him to distrust the whole +matter and possibly to react too strongly against it. A discriminating +critic has said that Spiritualism is not Spiritualism at all, but a +subtle materialism, in that it is the effort to verify the reality of +the spiritual in terms of the material. It is, therefore, just one more +unexpected aspect of the hard skepticism of the time, which trusts +nothing it cannot hear, or see, or touch. A faith which is not solidly +established in reason, which does not continue and complete in its own +regions what we know and understand, is a cloud-built faith, but a +faith, on the other hand, which refuses to adventure beyond the limits +of the senses is a faith too largely empty of any noble content. + +If the phenomena under examination, then, cannot be explained in terms +of animism and if the spiritistic hypothesis is gravely open to +question, what explanation is left? In what follows the writer has been +greatly influenced by the suggestion of the students of abnormal +personality generally, and partly by the work of certain Frenchmen who, +with French logic and brilliancy of insight, are working toward +far-reaching psychological restatements and even to recasting of the +accepted scientific understandings of matter and force. Maeterlinck says +somewhere in substance that our universe is as tightly sealed as a +sphere of steel and that whatever happens inside must be explained in +terms of its own resident forces, and, in general, the whole of science +and the weight of experience are on Maeterlinck's side. Of course this +assumes that a good many things have been put inside this sphere to +begin with. Speaking in terms of religion, this does not shut God out of +the world, but it does shut up life and experience to conformity with +their own laws and forces them to explain their phenomena in terms of +their own content. + +In a sentence, just as the resident forces of the outside world have +been heretofore sufficient, in the measure that we have been able to +discover them, to explain all the phenomena of the outside world, it is +reasonable to believe that the content of personality is sufficient to +explain all personal phenomena, whether normal or abnormal, and that it +is to ourselves and not to the discarnate that we have to look for the +explanation of the phenomena of alleged spiritism. + + +_The Investigations of Émile Boirac_ + +The men who are working along this line, particularly Geley and Émile +Boirac, by no means deny the phenomena, but they offer another solution. +Boirac, particularly, finds his point of departure in hypnotism and +suggestibility. Now here is a continuation of the line of approach and +interpretation which cleared up the whole confused matter of mesmerism. +We have already seen how the French investigators found the explanation +of what Mesmer and those who followed him have been able to accomplish, +not in magnetic influence or any such thing, but in the remarkable +changes produced in personality by exterior or autosuggestion, and just +as this was the key to the phenomena of mesmerism, it is more likely +than anything else to prove the key to the explanation of the phenomena +of spiritualism, for these are really nothing more than simply aspects +of the trance state, however induced. + +It is not necessary to follow, in this connection, Boirac's analysis of +the phenomena attendant upon the trance state, or to consider his +theories as to hypnosis itself. He believes that there are in our +personalities hidden forces which, in the normal conduct of life, are +not brought into action. They are no necessary part of our adjustment to +our working environment; on the whole they complicate rather than +simplify the business of living and they are best--though this is not +his statement but the writer's conclusion from the whole matter--they +are best left unawakened. What we are normally is the outcome of the +adjustment of personality to those creative and shaping forces in +response to which life is most happily and usefully carried on. But when +the waking self and normal self is for the moment put in abeyance and +new forces are evoked from the "vasty deep" of our souls, we are capable +of an entirely different set of manifestations. First of all, those +usually associated with the hypnotic state which do not need to be +further considered here--a great docility to suggestion, unconsciousness +to pain and the like. We have also the possibility of powers which +Boirac calls magnetoidal. "These appear to involve the intervention of +forces still unknown, distinct from those that science has so far +discovered and studied, but of a physical nature and more or less +analogous to the radiating forces of physics: light, heat, electricity, +magnetism, etc."[81] + +[Footnote 81: Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 24. Some recent +French investigations seem to indicate that this force--Myers' +Telekinesis--operating through barriers, changes the magnetic properties +of that through which it passes. Carrington, the most skeptical student +in this region, is inclined to admit its existence. See "The Physical +Phenomena of Spiritualism," p. 359.] + +Under this general head he considers Animal Magnetism, what is known +generally as mesmerism, the power, that is, to create hypnotic states in +others; the phenomena of Telepathy "comprising numerous varieties, such +as the transmission or penetration of thought, the exteriorization of +the sensitiveness, psychometry, telepathy, clairvoyance or lucidity, +etc.," and finally states "where physical matter appears to exert over +animate beings, especially human beings, an action that does not seem to +be explicable by any physical or chemical properties already known." He +believes also that there is in human beings a radiating influence +susceptible of being exercised at a distance over other animate beings +or else upon inanimate objects. He finds in trance mediumship all the +elements which enter into any hypnotic state. "The trance is produced +and developed spontaneously, without the intervention of any visible +operator, under the sole effect of the nervous and mental conditions in +which the medium is placed, and among which the _belief in spirits_ and +the expectation of their intervention would appear to play a +considerable part."[82] The italicized words "a belief in spirits" are +extremely significant. In the entranced personality there is the +suggestion, already strongly established, that whatever is experienced +during the trance will be due to spirit intervention or revelation. This +introduces the element of expectant attention. We know on the physical +side of what expectant attention is capable. It becomes a real factor in +all faith healing; it may produce, either for the better or the worse, +far-reaching changes in physical states and it is perfectly possible for +such an expectant attention once fully in action in the trance--given of +course, to begin with, the attitude and interests of the medium in a +waking state--to create all the machinery of controls, revelation and +the like, which characterize trance mediumship. + +[Footnote 82: Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 271.] + +Boirac finds, therefore, in spiritism a complex determined by certain +particular nervous and mental states into which there enter, in one form +or another, almost all the facts of abnormal psychology and he believes +that science, faithful to the principle of economy, should consider the +alleged phenomena of spiritism, until proved to the contrary, reducible +to facts of the preceding orders. He does not call the spiritistic +hypothesis impossible; he does believe it ought not to be called in +until every other explanation has been examined and found inadequate and +he is not inclined to believe that we have as yet exhausted other +possible explanations. + +One man's authority here is by no means final. F.W.H. Myers has taken +into consideration many of the facts upon which Boirac dwells and on the +whole has reached a different conclusion. But, in general, the more +deeply we advance into the region of abnormal personality and the +phenomena of hypnotic and related states, the more reason there seems to +be for believing that there are resident in human personality powers +which, if at once evoked and released, are sufficient to account for all +mediumistic revelations without assuming that they come from the +discarnate. + + +_Geley's Conclusions_ + +Geley has gone much farther in some directions here than any one else. +He is more concerned with the physical phenomena. He has a striking +series of photographs of materialization, the authenticity of which it +is difficult to doubt. He finds an ascending series in abnormal +psychology from neuropathic states to mediumship with gradations which +intensify the abnormal or the supernormal, but in which the continuity +of development is never broken. His analyses here are both keen and +suggestive and tend to confirm the conclusions of other students that we +have resident in human personality elements which are adequate to the +explanation of any phenomena which have been as yet presented. + +As far as the physical phenomena go, he cites experiments which seem to +reveal "threads of substance and rigid rods, sometimes visible, +sometimes invisible, proceeding from the fingers of the medium" and +serving as a real mechanism for the movement of distant and sometimes +quite heavy articles. He argues from this that there is a possible +exteriorization of power which may itself be governed by ideas and +believes also that such facts as this will eventually compel us to +recast our conceptions of matter and force and profoundly affect biology +and all evolutionary theories. The whole matter is necessarily obscure, +but such studies do give a new direction and a larger significance to +our whole subject matter. + +In substance the spiritistic hypothesis is inadequate; it is too simple, +too easy. We are evidently only upon the threshold of the whole subject. +All conclusions are necessarily inconclusive; there is no region in +which one has less right to be dogmatic. The bearing of it all upon +immortality seems to the writer to be not at all where the spiritists +place it. If human personality has in itself such latent powers, if +there are these extensions of a mysterious force which operate beyond +our normal mechanism, if there are contacts of consciousness deeper than +consciousness itself in which information is given and received outside +normal methods of communication, we are led to conceive that what for +want of a better name we call spirit has an unexpected range and force. +We are by no means so shut in by the walls of the material and the +sensible as we have heretofore supposed. There is a transcendence of +spirit over matter and materially imposed conditions which must give us +pause. If, in the murky ways which have been brought to our attention, +spirit can transcend matter, we have at least one more reason for +affirming its supremacy and one more suggestion of a force or a reality +which may be able to survive even the dissolution of matter itself. In +other words, here is a line of testimony, richly suggestive, though by +no means clear, to the power of the soul to make its own conditions, and +what is immortality but just this? + +The phenomena of so-called spiritism, while not as yet justifying +Spiritualism, certainly make a dogmatic materialism increasingly +different. Those of us who are as anxious for a sustaining faith in +immortality as any of our comrades in the great quest may possibly be, +but who are as yet unwilling to accept their conclusions, may +nevertheless find in this subject matter which is common both to us and +to them, the permission to believe that that which is most distinctly +ourselves possesses enduring possibilities. If it may from time to time +break through in curious ways the walls which now shut it in, may it not +in some very real way pass through the gate which Death opens and still +continue in such a richness of consciousness and identity as to organize +for itself another life beyond the grave? + + +_The Meaning of Spiritism for Faith_ + +Faith may find its permissions and witnesses in many regions. The writer +believes that faith in immortality finds an added permission in this +region also. Beyond debate, there are laws which we now but dimly +discern and possible forces which only now and again touch the coasts of +our present experience, as tides which sweep in from distant and +mysterious seas. Beyond debate, we may not confine the interplay of mind +with mind to purely physical channels, and under exceptional +circumstances effects may be produced whose causes we have not yet been +able to tabulate. Our conscious lives are rooted deeper than we dream. +They reach out in directions which we do not ourselves know. It may well +be, therefore, that they ascend to heights whose summits we do not see, +and possess a permanence independent of the body which they inhabit, or +the things of seeming sense which surround them, and it may be also that +what is now occult and perplexing and capricious may in the future +become as truly an organized science as the alchemy and the astrology of +the Middle Ages have become the chemistry and astronomy of our own time. +Beyond this one may assert the wholesome commonplace that the main +business of living is in the region of the known and the normal. It is +for our own well-being that the veil hangs dark between this world and +the next. An order in which there was constant passing and repassing +would be impossible. It would be either one thing or the other. It does +demoralize us to be always searching after the secrets of the unseen. +Might it not demoralize those who have passed through the veil to be +always trying to come back? Surely the most fitting preparation for what +awaits us hereafter is the brave conduct of life under those laws and +conditions which are the revelation of the whole solid experience of our +race. Beyond this it is difficult to go and beyond this it is not +necessary to go. + + + + +XI + +MINOR CULTS: THE MEANING OF THE CULTS FOR THE CHURCH + + +_Border-land Cults_ + +The cults which we have so far considered are the outstanding forms of +modern free religious movements, but they do not begin to exhaust the +subject matter. Even the outstanding cults have their own border-lands. +New Thought is particularly rich in variants and there are in all +American cities sporadic, distantly related and always shifting +movements--groups which gather about this or that leader, maintain +themselves for a little and then dissolve, to be recreated around other +centers with perhaps a change of personnel. The Masonic Temple in +Chicago is said to be occupied on Sundays all day long by larger or +smaller groups which may be societies for ethical culture or with some +social program or other, or for the study of Oriental religions. One +would need to attend them all and saturate himself far more deeply than +is possible for any single investigator in their creeds or their +contentions to appraise them justly. Their real significance is neither +in their organization, for they have little organization, nor in their +creed, but in their temper. They represent reaction, restlessness and +the spiritual confusion of the time. They can be explained--in part at +least--in terms of that social deracination to which reference has +already been made. They represent also an excess of individualism in the +region of religion and its border-lands. + +An examination of the church advertisement pages in the newspapers of +New York, Detroit, Chicago or San Francisco reveals their extent, their +variety and their ingenuity in finding names for themselves. On Sunday, +February 25th, the Detroit papers carried advertisements of Vedanta, +Spiritist and Spiritualist groups (the Spiritist group calls itself "The +Spirit Temple of Light and Truth"), The Ultimate Thought Society, The +First Universal Spiritual Church, The Church of Psychic Research, The +Philosophical Church of Natural Law, Unity Center, The Culture of +Isolan, Theosophy, Divine Science Center, and Lectures on Divine +Metaphysics. Their leaders advertise such themes as: The Opulent +Consciousness, The Law of Non-Attachment, Psychic Senses and +Spirituality, The Continuity of Life, The Spiritualism of Shakespeare, +The Voiceless Code of the Cosmos, The Godlikeness of Divine Metaphysics +in Business. Their themes are not more bizarre, it must be confessed, +than some of the topics announced for the orthodox churches. (Indeed the +church advertisement page in cities whose churches indulge generously in +display advertisements is not altogether reassuring reading.) But, in +general, this list which can be duplicated in almost any large city is +testimony enough to a confusion of cults and a confusion of thought. As +far as they can be classified, according to the scheme of this study, +they are variants of New Thought, Theosophy and Spiritualism. If they +were classified according to William James' "Varieties of Religious +Experience" they would be seen as mystical rather than rational, +speculative rather than practical. + +Fort Newton, who speaks of them perhaps more disrespectfully than they +deserve as "bootleggers in religion," finds in these lesser movements +generally a protest against the excessively external in the life of the +Church to-day and a testimony to the quenchless longing of the soul for +a religion which may be known and lived out in terms of an inner +experience. But this certainly is not true of all of them. + + +_Bahaism_ + +There is, however, one other larger and more coherent cult, difficult to +classify, which deserves a more extended notice. That is Bahaism, which, +as it is now taking form, is a leaven rather than a cult. It is an +attempt after spiritual unity and the reduction of religion to very +simple and inclusive forms and a challenge to the followers of religions +widely separated on the surface to be more true to what is deepest in +their faith. It has a long and stirring history and curiously enough is +drawn from Mohammedan sources. Its basal literatures are Arabic and +Persian, "so numerous and in some cases so voluminous that it would +hardly be possible for the most industrious student to read in their +entirety even those which are accessible, a half dozen of the best known +collections in Europe." + +We find its genesis, historically, in certain expectations long held by +Persian Mohammedans akin to Jewish Messianic expectations held before +and at the time of Christ. There has been, we know, a tradition of +disputed succession in Mohammedanism ever since the death of the +prophet. Persian Mohammedans believed the true successor of Mohammed to +have been unjustly deprived of his temporal supremacy and they trace a +long line of true successors whose divine right would some day be +recognized and reëstablished. Perhaps we might find a parallel here +among those Englishmen who believe that the true succession of the +English throne should be in the house of the Stuarts, or those royalists +in France who champion the descendants of one or the other former +reigning houses. But the Persian faithful have gone farther than that. +They believe that the last true successor of Mohammed who disappeared in +the tenth century never died, but is still living in a mysterious city, +surrounded by a band of faithful disciples and "that at the end of time +he will issue forth and 'fill the earth with justice after it has been +filled with iniquity.'" A parallel here would be the old stories of +Frederick Barbarossa who waits in his cave for the proper time to come +forth and reassert his imperial power. This curious Persian belief has +worked itself out in a time scheme much like the time schemes of other +Apocalyptic beliefs, the detail of which is difficult enough. + +But in substance this hidden and true successor of the prophet has had +from time to time those through whom he reveals himself to the faithful +and makes known his will, and these are known as Babs or gates; "the +gate, that is, whereby communication was reopened between the hidden one +and his faithful followers." The practical outcome of this would be that +any one who could convince Persian Mohammedans that he was the Bab or +"gate" would possess a mystic messianic authority. Such a confidence +actually established would give him an immense hold over the faithful +and make him a force to be reckoned with by the Mohammedan world. + + +_The Bab and His Successors_ + +As far as our own present interest is concerned, the movement dates from +1844 when a young Persian merchant announced himself as the Bab. If we +are to find a parallel in Christianity he was a kind of John the +Baptist, preparing the way for a greater who should come after him, but +the parallel ends quickly, for since the Mohammedan Messiah did not +appear, his herald was invested with no little of the authority and +sanctity which belonged to the hidden one himself. The career of the +first Bab was short--1844 to 1850. He was only twenty-four years old at +the time of his manifestation, thirty when he suffered martyrdom and a +prisoner during the greater part of his brief career. The practical +outcome of his propaganda was a deal of bloody fighting between +antagonistic Mohammedan factions. The movement received early that +baptism of blood which gives persistent intensity to any persecuted +movement. His followers came to regard him as a divine being. After his +execution his body was recovered, concealed for seventeen years and +finally placed in a shrine specially built for that purpose at St. Jean +d'Acre. This shrine has become the holy place of Bahaism. + +During one period of his imprisonment he had opportunity to continue his +writings, correspond with his followers and receive them. He was thus +able to give the world his message and we find in his teachings the germ +of the gospel of Bahaism. Before his death he named his successor--a +young man who had been greatly drawn to him and who seemed by his youth, +zeal and devotion to be set apart to continue his work. To this young +man the Bab sent his rings and other personal possessions, authorized +him to add to his writings and in general to inherit his influence and +continue his work. This young man was recognized with practical +unanimity by the Babis as their spiritual head. Owing to his youth and +the secluded life which he adopted, the practical conduct of the affairs +of the Babi community devolved chiefly on his elder half-brother +Baha'u'llah. What follows is a confused story of schism, rival claimants +and persecution but the sect grew through persecution and the control of +it came in 1868 into the hands of Baha'u'llah. + +During the greater part of his life Baha'u'llah was either an exile or a +prisoner. From 1868 until his death in 1892 he was confined with seventy +of his followers in the penal colony of Acca on the Mediterranean coast. +Meanwhile the faith which centered about him changed character; he was +no longer a gate or herald, he was himself a "manifestation of God" +with authority to change all earlier teaching. He really universalized +the movement. Beneath his touch religion becomes practical, ethical, +less mystic, more universal. He was possessed by a passion for universal +peace and brotherhood. He addressed letters to the crowned heads of +Europe asking them to cooperate in peace movements. It has been +suggested that the Czar of Russia was influenced thereby and that we may +thus trace back to Baha'u'llah the peace movement which preceded the +war. + +Pilgrims came and went and through their enthusiasms the movement +spread. After his death there was the renewal of disputes as to the +proper succession and consequent schisms. The power came finally into +the hands of Abdul-Baha who was kept under supervision by the Turkish +government until 1908. He was freed by the declaration of the New +Constitution and carried on thereafter with real power a worldwide +propaganda. He had an unusual and winning personality, spoke fluently in +Persian, Arabic and Turkish and more nearly than any man of his time +filled the ideal rôle of an Eastern prophet. He died in November, 1921, +and was buried on Mt. Carmel--with its memories of Elijah and +millenniums of history--his praises literally being sung by a most +catholic group of Mohammedans, Jews and Eastern Christians. + + +_The Temple of Unity_ + +Bahaism as it is held in America to-day is distilled out of the writings +and teachings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha. Naturally enough, in the +popularization of it its contradictions have been reconciled and its +subtleties disregarded. What is left fits into a variety of forms and is +in line with a great range of idealism. The twelve basic principles of +Bahaism as announced in its popular literature are: + + The Oneness of Mankind. + Independent investigations of truth. + The Foundation of all religions is one. + Religion must be the cause of unity. + Religion must be in accord with science and reason. + Equality between men and women. + Prejudice of all kinds must be forgotten. + Universal Peace. + Universal Education. + Solution of the economic problem. + An international auxiliary language. + An international tribunal. + +A program inclusive enough for any generous age. These principles are +substantiated by quotations from the writings of Abdul-Baha and the +teachings of Baha'u'llah. Many things combine to lend force to its +appeal--the courage of its martyrs, its spaciousness and yet at the same +time the attractiveness of its appeal and its suggestion of spiritual +brotherhood. Since the movement has borne a kind of messianic +expectation it adjusts itself easily to inherited Christian hopes. There +are real correspondences between its expected millennium and the +Christian millennium. + +How far its leaders, in their passion for peace and their doctrine of +non-resistance and their exaltation of the life of the spirit, are in +debt to the suggestions of Christianity itself, or how far it is a new +expression of a temper with which the Orient has always been more in +sympathy than the West, it would be difficult to say, but in some ways +Bahaism does express--or perhaps reproduces--the essential spirit of the +Gospels more faithfully than a good deal of Western Christianity as now +organized. Those members of Christian communions which are attracted to +Bahaism find in it a real hospitality to the inherited faith they take +over. It is possible, therefore, to belong to the cult and at the same +time to continue one's established religious life without any very great +violence and indeed with a possible intensification of that life. + +It is difficult, therefore, to distinguish between Bahaism as it is held +by devout groups in America, so far as ethics and ideals go, from much +that is distinctive in the Christian spirit, though the influence of +Bahaism as a whole would be to efface distinctions and especially to +take the force out of the Christian creeds. + +Chicago, or rather Wilmette, is now the center of the movement in +America and an ambitious temple is in the way of being constructed +there, the suggestion for whose architecture is taken from a temple in +Eskabad, Russia. This is to be a temple of universal religion, +symbolizing in its architecture the unities of faith and humanity. "The +temple with its nine doors will be set in the center of a circular +garden symbolizing the all-inclusive circle of God's unity; nine +pathways will lead to the nine doors and each one coming down the +pathway of his own sect or religion or trend of thought will leave at +the door the dogmas that separate and, under the dome of God's oneness, +all will become one.... At night it will be brilliantly lighted and the +light will shine forth through the tracery of the dome, a beacon of +peace and unity rising high above Lake Michigan." + +This study has led us into many curious regions and shown to what +unexpected conclusions the forces of faith or hope, once released, may +come, but surely it has revealed nothing more curious than that the old, +old controversy as to the true successor of Mohammed the prophet should +at last have issued in a universal religion and set the faithful to +building a temple of unity on the shores of Lake Michigan. + +If this work were to be complete it should include some investigation of +the rituals of the cults. They are gradually creating hymns of their +own; their public orders of service include responsive readings with +meditations on the immanence of God, the supremacy of the spiritual and +related themes. In general they dispense with the sacraments; they have +no ecclesiastical orders and hardly anything corresponding to the +Catholic priesthood or the Protestant ministry, though the Christian +Science reader has a recognized official place. They meet in +conferences; they depend largely upon addresses by their leaders. +Spiritualistic movements organize themselves around séances. They use +such halls as may be rented, hotels, their own homes; they have not +generally buildings of their own save the Christian Science temples +which are distinctive for dignity of architecture and beauty of +appointment in almost every large city. + + +_General Conclusions; the Limitations of the Writer's Method_ + +It remains only to sum up in a most general way the conclusions to which +this study may lead. There has been a process of criticism and appraisal +throughout the whole book, but there should be room at the end for some +general statements. + +The writer recognizes the limitations of his method; he has studied +faithfully the literature of the cults, but any religion is always a +vast deal more than its literature. The history of the cults does not +fully tell their story nor does any mere observation of their worship +admit the observer to the inner religious life of the worshippers. Life +always subdues its materials to its own ends, reproduces them in terms +of its own realities; there are endless individual variations, but the +outcome is massively uniform. Religion does the same thing. Its +materials are faiths and obediences and persuasions of truth and +expectations of happier states, but its ultimate creations are character +and experience, and the results in life of widely different religions +are unexpectedly similar. Both theoretically and practically the truer +understanding or the finer faith and, particularly, the higher ethical +standards should produce the richer life and this is actually so. But +real goodness is everywhere much the same; there are calendared saints +for every faith. + +There is an abundant testimony in the literature of the cults to rare +goodnesses and abundant devotion, and observation confirms these +testimonies. Something of this is doubtless due to their environment. +The Western cults themselves and the Eastern cults in the West are +contained in and influenced by the whole outcome of historic +Christianity and they naturally share its spirit. If the churches need +to remember this as they appraise the cults, the cults need also to +remember it as they appraise the churches. Multitudes of Catholics and +Protestants secure from a religion which the cults think themselves +either to have corrected or outgrown exactly what the cults secure--and +more. Such as these trust God, keep well, go happily about their +businesses and prove their faith in gracious lives. There is room for +mutual respect and a working measure of give and take on both sides. + +The writer is inclined to think the churches at present are more +teachable than the more recent religious movements. For a long +generation now the churches have been subject to searching criticism +from almost every quarter. The scientist, the sociologist, the +philosopher, the publicist, the discontented with things as they are and +the protagonist of things as they ought to be, have all taken their turn +and the Church generally, with some natural protest against being made +the scapegoat for the sins of a society arrestingly reluctant to make +the Church's gospel the law of its life, has taken account of its own +shortcomings and sought to correct them. The cults are as yet less +inclined to test themselves by that against which they have reacted. But +this is beside the point. The movements we have been studying can only +be fairly appraised as one follows through their outcome in life and +that either in detail or entirety is impossible. But it is possible to +gain from their literature a reasonable understanding of their +principles and interrelations and this the writer has sought to do. + + +_The Cults Are Aspects of the Creative Religious Consciousness of the +Age_ + +Certain conclusions are thus made evident. These movements are the +creation of the religious consciousness of the time. They are aspects of +the present tense of religion. Since religion is, among other things, +the effective desire to enter into right relationships with the power +which manifests itself in the universe there are two variants in its +content; first, our changing understanding of the power itself and +second, our changing uses of it. The first varies with our knowledge and +insight, the second with our own changing sense of personal need. Though +God be the same yesterday, to-day and forever, our understandings of Him +cannot and ought not to be the same yesterday, to-day and forever. Our +faith is modified by, for example, our scientific discoveries. When the +firmament of Hebrew cosmogony has given way to interstellar spaces and +the telescope and the spectroscope plumb the depths of the universe, +resolving nebulæ into star drifts, faith is bound to reflect the change. +The power which manifests itself in the universe becomes thereby a +vaster power, operating through a vaster sweep of law. Our changed +understandings of ourselves must be reflected in our faith and our +ethical insights as well. And because there is and ought to be no end to +these changing understandings, religion itself, which is one outcome of +them, must be plastic and changing. + +What we ask of God is equally subject to change. True enough, the old +questions--Whence? Whither? and Why? are constant. As we know ourselves +to be living in a world which is less than a speck in an immensity +wherein the birth and death of suns are ephemeral, we may rightly +distrust our own value for the vaster order. We shall, therefore, the +more insistently ask Whence? and Whither? and Why? But, none the less, +there is always a shifting emphasis of religious need. Our own time is +manifestly more concerned about well-being in the life that now is than +a happy issue in the life which is to come. Temperament also qualifies +experience. The mystic seeks conscious communion with God as an end in +itself; the practical temper asks the demonstration of the love of God +in happy material conditions. In general, action and reaction govern +this whole region. The Puritan was supremely concerned about his own +salvation and the struggle consequent thereto; his descendants were +chiefly interested in the extension of knowledge and the conquest of the +physical order and we react against this in a new return upon ourselves +and the possibilities of personality. + +Now these changing understandings of the power which manifests itself in +the universe on the one side and our own changing senses of need on the +other, give to religion a constantly fluctuating character and what is +most distinctively religious in any period must be the outcome of the +combination of these two variants. What an age asks of the God whom it +knows colours the whole of its religious life. These cults and movements +do not wholly represent the creative religious consciousness of our +time, of course; a great deal of that same creative religious +consciousness has given new quality to the organizations and orthodoxies +of the churches. But within the frontiers of historic Christianity it +has been rather the working over of the deposit of faith than an actual +adventure in the making of religion. The cults and movements have not +been thus limited. They have challenged old understandings, broken away +from the older organizations and taken their own line, using such +material as seems proper for their purpose. + +They are not wholly independent of the past; some of them have taken the +immemorial speculations of the East for their point of departure though +introducing therein a good many of the permissions or conclusions of +modern science and something of the spirit of Christianity itself. Those +taking their departure from Christianity have claimed rather to +reinterpret and modernize it than to supplant it by their own creations. +Yet when all this is recognized these cults and movements are +particularly the creation of our own time. So accepted, they reveal +strongly the persistence of religion. All these conjectures and +confidences and reachings through the shadows are just a testimony that +few are content to go on without some form of religion or other. + +All religion has, in one phase or another, gone through much the same +process. There has been for every religion a time when it took new form +out of older elements, a time when the accepted religions had little +enough sympathy for and understanding of what was taking place about +them while those committed to new quests were exultant in the +consciousness of spiritual adventure and discovery and heard the morning +stars sing together for joy. What is thus begun must submit always to +the testimony of time. In the end a religion is permanent as it meets +the great human needs and adjusts itself to their changing phases. It is +imperial and universal as it meets these needs supremely. If in addition +it be capable of organization, if there be within it room for expansion, +and if, on the whole, it justifies itself by the outcome of it in life +and society it will persist, and if it persists through a long period of +time and creates for itself literatures, dogmas and authorities, it +becomes as nearly fundamental as anything can be in this world. It +creates cultures, shapes civilizations, colours art, establishes ideals +and fills the whole horizon of its devotees. + +If a religion is to endure it must meet a wide range of need; it must be +plastic and yet invest itself with the sanctions of History. For the +conservative it must possess the note of authority and at the same time +promise freedom to the liberal. It must persuade the forward-looking +that it holds within itself the power to meet changing conditions. It +must offer a satisfying experience to the mystic and the practically +minded and deliverance to the despairing. It must be able to build into +its structure new sciences and philosophies and yet it must touch the +whole of life with some sense of the timeless, and above all, it must +include the whole of life, nor depend upon particularized appeals or +passing phases of thought. Historic Christianity has more nearly met all +these tests than any other religion, for though under the stress of +meeting so great a variety of needs and conditions it has organized +itself into forms as different as Latin Catholicism and the Society of +the Friends, so losing catholicity of organization, it has secured +instead a catholicity of spirit and a vast elasticity of appeal which +are the secret of its power and the assurance of its continuing and +enduring supremacy. + + +_Their Parallels in the Past_ + +Now by such tests as these what future may one anticipate for such cults +as we have been studying? Are they likely to displace the historic forms +of Christianity, will they substantially modify it, or will they wear +away and be reabsorbed? Evidently one of these three things must happen. +This is not the first time in the Western world that historic and +authoritative Christianity has been challenged. We should have, perhaps, +to go back to the fourth century to find an exact parallel and then we +should find in the vast and confused movement of Gnosticism an +unexpected parallel to a great deal of what is happening about us. +Gnosticism was the effort of a reason excessively given to speculation, +undisciplined and greatly unrestrained by any sense of reality to +possess and transform the Church. Various forces combined to build its +fabric of air-born speculation and though for the time it gave the +patristic Church the hardest fight of its existence, the discipline of +the Church was too strong for it. Its own weaknesses proved eventually +its undoing and Gnosticism remains only as a fascinating field of study +for the specialist, only a name if even so much as that for the +generality of us and valuable chiefly in showing what speculation may do +when permitted at will to range earth and sky, with a spurious +rationalism for pilot and imagination for wings. + +There have been, beside, in the history of the Church many other +movements possessing a great staying power and running in some cases for +generations alongside the main current of religious development, until +they finally disappeared with the changing centuries. Arguing from such +historical precedents as these one might easily assume a like fate for +the Gnosticism of our own time, and yet a note of caution is needed here +for there are divisive religious movements which have as yet neither +failed nor been absorbed in that from which they took their departure. +The expectation of the Catholic Church that Protestantism will spend its +force and be lost again in the majestic fabric of Latin Catholic +Christianity as it is continued amongst us, is as far from realization +to-day, or farther, than at any time in the last 300 years. We need to +remember also that conditions change. The right of individual initiative +and judgment once secured in the region of religion is not likely ever +to be lost. A good many divergent movements have literally been whipped +back into line or else put out in fire and blood. Nothing of that sort +is likely to happen now. + +No student of history should be blind to the sequence of action and +reaction. A period of excessive dependence upon authority may follow a +period of undue self-assertion, but it is not likely that we shall ever +find recreated exactly the conditions of the past or that religion can +hereafter be held, as it has heretofore, in relatively well marked +channels under the stress of accepted authorities. Prophecy is hazardous +business but it is safe to assume that these modern religious cults and +movements represent the beginnings of a freer, more diffused, less +formal religious faith. The peculiar cults themselves may reach their +term but the temper which produced them is likely to continue and with +other groupings of forces produce something in the future which will at +least be their parallel. + + +_The Healing Cults Likely to be Adversely Influenced by the Scientific +Organisation of Psycho-therapy_ + +As far as the fortunes of the distinctive cults themselves go, one's +conclusions may be less tentative. For the most part the foundations +upon which they are built are not big enough to carry an ample and +secure structure. They have been made possible not only by marked +limitations in historic religion itself, but also by contemporaneous +tempers which, one may sincerely hope, are self-limiting, and this is +said not through undue prejudice against the cults themselves, but +simply because one is loath to believe that the want of critical +faculty which has made some of these cults possible will not in the end +yield to experience and a really sounder education. Since, moreover, +some of them--and Christian Science, preëminently--depend upon faith and +mental healing, whatever helps us to a clearer understanding of the +nature and limits of psycho-therapy will greatly affect their future. +All faith healing cults have heretofore depended very greatly upon the +atmosphere of mystery with which they have been able to surround +themselves. The fact that they have been able to secure results with no +very clear understanding of the way in which the results have been +secured has invested them with awe and wonder, so essential to every +religion. + +But as psycho-therapy itself becomes organized, works out its laws, +develops its own science and particularly as the knowledge of all this +is extended and popularized, they will lose their base of support. For +this reason the writer believes that the final explanation of all faith +and mental healing in terms of some form of suggestion which is just now +strongly in evidence will prove a distinct service to us all. + +The intimate association of religion and healing has, on the whole, been +good neither for religion nor health. Of course, this statement will +probably be sharply challenged but it is maintained in the face of +possible challenge. As far as religion goes it has withdrawn the +interest of the religious, thus influenced, from the normal expressions +of the religious life to border-land regions; it has stressed the +exceptional rather than the sweep of law, and the occult rather than the +luminously reasonable. Where it has failed in individual cases, as it +is bound to fail, it has left those thus disillusioned without any sound +basis for their faith and generally has driven them away from religion +altogether. It has tempted religious teachers to win a hearing by signs +and wonders. Even the Founder of the Christian religion grew weary of +this, as the records show plainly enough, in that He saw His true work +to be thereby not helped but hindered, and if this be true of the +Founder it is by so much the more true of His followers. + +On the scientific side this temper has hindered honest thinking, +laborious investigation and that specialization which is absolutely +necessary to the furtherance of any great division of human effort. +Medicine made little progress until it got itself free of the Church. +Specifically the average minister is neither by training nor temperament +fitted for healing work and those laymen who have assumed that office +have generally been wanting in balance and self-restraint. This is not +to deny the reality of a power not ourselves making for health and +well-being generally, or the power of faith, or the efficacy of prayer. +Least of all is God, upon this understanding, to be shut out of life. +But the power not ourselves which makes for faith and healing is best +known through laborious investigation, the discovery of methods and +obediences to ascertained law. When we have clearly come to see the +nature of psycho-therapy, the occult authority of healing cults will in +the end yield to this understanding and the cults themselves be greatly +weakened or displaced. + +One must recognize, on the other hand, the staying power of any +well-established religious system. Through nurture and those profound +conservatisms which hold more tenaciously in the region of religion than +anywhere else, it is possible to continue from generation to generation +the unreasonable or the positively untrue, and this holds in the Church +as well as outside it. None the less, the most coherent systems must +reckon with their own weaknesses. Christian Science may have before it a +long period of solid going or even marked growth, but its philosophy +will at last yield to the vaster sweep of a truer philosophic thought. +Its interpretations of historic Christianity will come up again and +again for examination until their fallacies become apparent and its +force as a system of psycho-therapy will be modified by simpler and more +reasonable applications of the same power. + + +_New Thought Will Become Old Thought_ + +New Thought is likely to take a different course but it also will have +to reckon with changing sciences and philosophies. What is New Thought +to-day will be old thought to-morrow; it will be challenged by new +expressions of the spirit which begot it. It will endure, therefore, +only as it is open, flexible and possesses a great power of +accommodation. But as long as understandings and ideals are fluid, as +long as religion is under bonds to take account of all the elements +which must be incorporated in it in order to enlarge and continue it, as +long, in short, as the human spirit outgrows fixed forms in any region +there is likely to be in religion itself something corresponding to the +New Thought of to-day, but this will be true only as New Thought is not +a cult at all but something larger--a free and creative movement of the +human spirit. + +Of all these cults it has made the soundest contribution to religion as +a whole. It is also more easily assimilated, more easily absorbed. Its +own distinct field will be limited by the increasing hospitality of +Christian thought to contemporaneous truth. A wholly open-minded church +will go a long way toward taking from New Thought its raison d'être. Its +future depends, therefore, very largely upon the open-mindedness of the +older and more strongly established forms of religion. + +The future of Spiritualism is greatly open to conjecture. We have +already seen the alternatives which Spiritualism is called upon to face +and the uncertainties which attend its conclusions. A fuller +understanding of the possibilities of abnormal personality and the reach +of automatism are likely to work against Spiritualism. If we find +ascertainable causes for its phenomena resident within personality +itself there will be no need of calling in the other world in order to +explain what is happening in this. On the other hand, if there should +evidence an increasing and tested body of facts which can be explained +only in terms of spiritistic communications, Spiritualism will naturally +make headway. But we are certainly standing only upon the threshold of a +scientific interpretation of spiritistic phenomena and until the whole +region has been very much more carefully worked through and far more +dependable facts are in hand, one can only say that Spiritism is a +hypothesis which may or may not be verified, and attend the outcome. + +It is hard to believe that Theosophy and kindred speculation will ever +get a strong hold upon the practical Western mind. It owes what force it +has either to an excessive love of the speculative on the part of a few, +or else to that particular temper which always wants something else and +something new, or else to wearinesses and misunderstandings of the more +shadowed side of life. Theosophy is greatly at the mercy of the +positive, practical temper; it will always find a prevailing competitor +in the Christian doctrine of immortality. Whatever, moreover, explains +the apparent inequalities of life in more simple and reasonable terms +will cut the roots of it. The movement toward religious syncretism of +which Bahaism is just now the expression will not be so easy to dispose +of. There will always be a temper impatient of the past, eager for +unity, anxious for something big and interpenetrating. Historically this +temper has from time to time emerged, particularly in the latter phases +of Roman paganism, and there is likely to be a larger interchange of +religious faith and understanding in the future than there has been in +the past. + +In general, this desire for a universal religion, simple and wanting in +distinctive characters, follows a weakening of conviction, a loss of +passion for accepted forms. If anything should deepen again amongst us +in religion what corresponds just now to the passion for nationality +these more general religious quests would suffer. A strong feeling for a +church or a creed or one's own movement would displace them. They have, +on the other hand, in their favour the general tendency of all religion +toward simplicity, the reduction of faith, that is, to a few broad and +generally shared elements. But there is no reason to anticipate a speedy +breakdown of what one may call particularist religion and the +substitution therefor of a faith built up out of many diverse elements +and held in common by widely separated tempers. + + +_There is Likely to be Some Absorption of the Cults by a Widening +Historic Christianity_ + +If the past supplies analogy or suggestion there will be some tendency +for the cults and movements to be reabsorbed by the dominant religious +forms from which they have broken off. A careful analysis of this +statement would involve the consideration of a finality of Christianity +as now held in the Western world. That is impossible in the range of a +study like this. Any general statement is of course coloured by the +temper of the one who makes it and to a certain extent begs the whole +great question. But a careful and dispassionate examination of +present-day cults would seem to indicate that they really have nothing +to offer which the dominant Christianity does not possess either +explicitly or implicitly. There is a solidity of human experience behind +its forms and creeds which cannot be lightly left out of account. They +represent the travail of twenty centuries and have behind them far +older confidences and hopes. If Christianity should widen itself to the +full limit of its possibilities, it would leave little room for that +which seeks to supplant it and would meet the needs which have begotten +the cults in far richer and more reasonable ways. + +As far as the cults are mistakenly distinctive, as far as they cannot +stand a careful examination, they represent what must be corrected and +cannot be absorbed. Christianity can absorb New Thought far more easily +than Christian Science. Theosophy in its extremer forms it cannot absorb +at all. It is more hospitable to the quest for a universal religion for +it seeks itself to be a universal religion and can never achieve its +ideal unless it takes account of the desire for something big enough to +include the whole of life, East as well as West, and to make room within +itself for a very great variety of religious tempers. + + +_But Christianity is Being Influenced by the Cults_ + +If Christianity is not to reabsorb the cults in their present form, it +must, as has been said over and over again, take account of them and it +is not likely to go on uninfluenced by them. Already it has yielded in +some directions to their contentions. If it feels itself challenged by +them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the +correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its +most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is +need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The +necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to +make the message of the Church far less vital than it ought to be. +Preaching is too much declamation and far too much a following of narrow +and deeply worn paths. + +The cults themselves represent a craving for light, especially in the +regions of pain and loss. Historic Christianity has lost out because it +has made religion too self-centered, not that the cults are a corrective +here, for they are even more self-centered--that is one of their great +faults. The individual is not the center of the world; he is part of a +larger order concerned for great ends for which his life can only be +contributory. The Church and the cults together have forgotten too +largely that life is sacred only as we lose it. We need in the churches +generally a braver personal note and a very much larger +unself-centeredness. + +It is interesting to note that the movement of the cults, with the +possible exception of New Thought, has been away from rationalism rather +than in the direction of it. This is a consideration to be taken into +account. It would seem on the surface of it to indicate that what people +are wanting in religion is not so much reason as mysticism and that for +the generality religion is most truly conceived in terms not of the +known but of the unknown. If the Christian Church is to meet the +challenge of the cults with a far more clearly defined line of teaching, +it is also to meet the challenge of the cults with a warmer religious +life, with the affirmation of an experience not so much tested by crises +and conversions as by the constant living of life in the sense of the +divine--to use Jeremy Taylor's noble phrase: in the Practice of the +Presence of God. The weakness of the cults is to have narrowed the +practice of the presence of God to specific regions, finding the proof +of His power in health and well-being. If we can substitute therefor the +consciousness of God in the sweep of law, the immensity of force, the +normal conduct of life, in light and understanding, in reason as well as +mysticism and science as well as devotion, we shall have secured a +foundation upon which to build amply enough to shelter devout and +questing souls not now able to find what they seek in the churches +themselves and yet never for a moment out of line with what is truest +and most prophetic in Christianity itself. + +Sir Henry Jones has a paragraph in his "Faith that Enquires" distinctly +to the point just here. "The second consideration arises from the +greatness of the change that would follow were the Protestant Churches +and their leaders to assume the attitude of the sciences and treat the +articles of the creeds not as dogmas but as the most probable +explanation, the most sane account which they can form of the relation +of man to the Universe and of the final meaning of his life. The +hypothesis of a God whose wisdom and power and goodness are perfect +would then be tried and tested, both theoretically and practically, and, +I believe, become thereby ever the more convincing. The creed would be +not merely a record of an old belief to be accepted on authority, but a +challenge to the skeptic and the irreligious. The Church, instead of +being a place where the deliverances of ancient religious authorities +are expounded, and illustrated by reference to the contents of one book +and the history of one nation--as if no other books were inspired and +all nations save one were God-abandoned--the Church would be the place +where the validity of spiritual convictions are discussed on their +merits, and the application of spiritual principles extended; where +enquiring youths would repair when life brings them sorrow, +disappointment or failure, and the injustice of man makes them doubt +whether there be a God, or if there be, whether he is good and has +power, and stands as the help of man. Recourse to their certified +spiritual guides, knowing that full and sympathetic justice will be done +to all their difficulties, ought to be as natural to them as their +recourse to the physical laboratory or the workshop of the mechanician +when an engine breaks down."[83] + +[Footnote 83: "A Faith that Enquires," p. 82.] + + +_Medical Science Should Take a More Serious Account of the Healing +Cults_ + +Not only the churches but the schools and particularly Medical Science +need to take account of the cults. They constitute perhaps one of the +sharpest indictments of present-day education. Many of their adherents +are nominally educated above the average. They have secured for what +they follow the authority which always attaches, in the American mind, +to the fact that those who champion any movement are college bred, and +yet the want of clear vision, the power to distinguish and analyze, +along with the unexpected credulities which are thus made manifest, +seem to indicate arresting deficiencies in popular education. It has +left us unduly suggestible, much open to mass movement, at the mercy of +the lesser prophets and wanting in those stabilities and understandings +upon which a sound culture is to be built. When we consider what they +are capable of believing who have had college or university training, we +must conclude either that contemporaneous education is wanting in the +creation of sound mental discipline, or else that we have a strange +power of living in water-tight compartments and separating our faith +wholly from our reason. + +The cults which are organized around faith and mental healing at once +challenge and in a measure indict modern medical science. In many +directions all these movements are reactions against an excessive +materialism; they affirm the power of personality as against its +environment, testify that the central problems of life may be approached +from the spiritual as well as from the physical and material side. It +would not for a moment be fair to say that modern Medicine is ignoring +this. There has probably always been a considerable element of mental +healing in any wise medical practice. But on the whole, the marvellous +successes and advances in Medical Science within the last thirty years +and the very great success which has attended the definition of all +diseases in terms of physical disarrangement has led physicians +generally unduly to underestimate or ignore the undoubted power of faith +and mind over bodily states. + +Even as a matter of scientific investigation medicine as a whole has not +taken this line of approach seriously enough. The Society for Psychical +Research has something to teach the medical faculties just here. That +Society, as we have seen, set out in the most rigorous and scientific +way possible to find out first of all just what actual facts lay behind +the confused phenomena of Spiritualism. They have given a long +generation to just that. As they have finally isolated certain facts +they have, with a good deal of caution, undertaken to frame hypotheses +to account for them and so, with the aid of the students of abnormal +personality, they are gradually bringing a measure of order into the +whole region. Medical Science on the whole has not done this in the +region of faith and mental healing. We are, therefore, far too uncertain +of our facts. A good deal of this is open to correction. If a Society +for Psycho-Therapeutic Research should be organized, which would follow +up every report of healings with an accurate care, beginning with the +diagnosis and ending with the actual physical state of the patient as +far as it could be ascertained by the tests at their disposal, they +could greatly clarify the popular mind, prevent a vast deal of needless +suffering, save the sick from frustrated hope and secure for their own +profession a distinct reinforcement and an increased usefulness. + + +_A Neglected Force_ + +If they thus find--as is likely--that the real force of Psycho-therapy +has been largely overestimated, that imagination, wrong diagnosis and +mistaken report as to the actual physical condition have all combined to +produce confidences unjustified by the facts, we should begin to come +out into the light. And if, on the other hand, they found a body of +actual fact substantiating Psycho-therapy they would do well to add +courses therein to the discipline of their schools.[84] The whole thing +would doubtless be a matter for specialization as almost every other +department of medicine demands specialization. Every good doctor is more +or less a mental healer, but every doctor cannot become a specialist in +Psycho-therapy, nor would he need to. + +[Footnote 84: But this is already being done.] + +Temperamental elements enter here very largely. But we might at least +take the whole matter out of the hands of charlatans and the +half-informed and establish it upon a sound scientific basis. There is, +beyond debate, a real place for the physician who utilizes and directs +the elements of suggestion. They have gone farther, on the whole, in +this direction in France and Switzerland than we have in America. +Evidently we are standing only upon the threshold of marked advances +along these lines. Psycho-therapy can never be a substitute for a +medical science which deals with the body as a machine to be regulated +in its processes, defended against hostile invasion or reinforced in its +weaknesses, but there is also another line of approach to sickness. A +catholic medical science will use every means in its power. + + +_The Cults Must be Left to Time and the Corrections of Truth_ + +Beyond such general considerations as these there is little to be said. +The Christian churches will gain nothing by an intolerant attitude +toward expressions of faith and spiritual adventures beyond their own +frontiers. Just as there is a constant selective process in answer to +which the historic churches maintain their existences, a selective +process controlled by association and temper, in that some of us are +naturally Catholics and some Protestants, there are tempers which do not +take kindly to inherited organization, authority or creed. Such as these +are seekers, excessive perhaps in their individuality, but none the less +sincere in their desire for a faith and religious contact which will +have its own distinct meaning for their own lives. And if there may seem +to some of us elements of misdirection or caprice or unreason in their +quests, it is perhaps in just such ways as these that advances are +finally made and what is right and true endures. + +If nothing at all is to be gained by intolerance, nothing more is to be +gained by an unfair criticism and, in general, all these movements must +be left to the adjustments of time and the corrections of truth. + +We began this study by defining religion as the effective desire to be +in right relation with the power which manifests itself in the universe. +How vast this power is we are just beginning to find out. How various we +are in our temperaments and what unsuspected possibilities there are in +the depths of personality we are also just beginning to find out. There +is possible, therefore, a vast variation of contact in this endeavour to +be in right relation with the power which faith knows and names as God. +In an endeavour moving along so wide a front there is room, naturally, +for a great variety of quest. When we have sought rightly to understand +and justly to estimate the more extreme variants of that quest in our +own time, we can do finally no more than, through the knowledge thus +gained, to try in patient and fundamental ways to correct what is false +and recognize and sympathize with what is right and leave the residue to +the issue of the unresting movements of the human soul, and those +disclosures of the Divine which are on their Godward side revelation and +on their human side insight, understanding and obedience. + +_Printed in the United States of America_ + + + + +STRIKING ADDRESSES + + * * * * * + + +_JOHN HENRY JOWETT, D.D._ + +God Our Contemporary + +A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. + +Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr. Jowett has been given a high +place. Every preacher will want at once this latest product of his +fertile mind. It consists of a series of full length sermons which are +intended to show that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can +we find the resources to meet the needs of human life. + + +_SIDNEY BERRY, M.A._ + +Revealing Light $1.50. + +A volume of addresses by the successor to Dr. Jowett at Carr's Lane +Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim of which is to show what the +Christian revelation means in relation to the great historic facts of +the Faith and the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts +of men to-day. Every address is an example of the best preaching of this +famous "preacher to young men." + + +_FREDERICK C. SPURR_ + +_Last Minister of Regent's Park Chapel, London._ + +The Master Key + +A Study in World-Problems $1.35. + +A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of the Christian +Gospel and its relation to the travail through which the world is +passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in the vanguard of religious thought, yet +just as emphatically as any thinker of the old school, he insists on one +Physician able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. + + +_RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D._ + +_Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadelphia._ + +Unused Powers $1.25. + +To "Acres of Diamonds," "The Angel's Lily," "Why Lincoln Laughed," "How +to Live the Christ Life," and many other stirring volumes, Dr. Conwell +has just added another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. +Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the experimental +knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who having long faced the stark +realities of life, has been exalted thereby. + + +_GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D._ + +_Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Michigan._ + +The Undiscovered Country $1.50. + +A group of addresses marked by distinction of style and originality of +approach. The title discourse furnishes a central theme to which those +following stand in relation. Dr. Atkins' work, throughout, is marked by +clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing. + + +TIMELY ESSAYS AND STUDIES + + * * * * * + + +_NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS_ + +_Author of "Great Books as Life-Teachers."_ + +Great Men as Prophets of a New Era $1.50. + +Dr. Hillis' latest book strikes a popular chord. It fairly pulses with +life and human sympathy. He has a large grasp of things and relations, a +broad culture, a retentive memory and splendid imagination, and there +are few writers to-day with so large an audience assured in advance. The +subjects include: Dante; Savonarola; William the Silent; Oliver +Cromwell; John Wesley; John Milton; Garibaldi; John Ruskin, etc. + + +_THOS. R. MITCHELL, M.A., B.D._ + +The Drama of Life + +A Series of Reflections on Shakespeare's "_Seven Ages_." Introduction by +Nellie L. McClung. $1.25. + +A fresh, stimulating discussion of old themes. Mr. Mitchell handles his +subject with unusual directness, bringing to its discussion clarity of +thought and lucidity of expression which has already won the +enthusiastic endorsement of Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Chas. W. +Gordon, D.D., (Ralph Connor) Archdeacon Cody and Prof. Francis G. +Peabody. + + +_D. MACDOUGALL KING, M.B._ + +_Author of "The Battle with Tuberculosis."_ + +Nerves and Personal Power + +Some Principles of Psychology as Applied to Conduct and Health. With +Introduction by Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King. $2.00 + +Premier King says: "My brother has, I think helped to reinforce +Christian teaching by showing wherein recent medical and scientific +researches are revealing the foundations of Christian faith and belief +in directions hitherto unexplored and unknown.--The world needs the +assurance this book can scarcely fail to bring." + + +_REV. R.E. SMITH Waco, Texas._ + +Christianity and the Race Problem $1.25. + +A sane, careful study of the Race problem in the South, written by a +born Southerner, the son of a slave-owner and Confederate soldier. Mr. +Smith has lived all his life among negroes, and feels that he is capable +of seeing both sides of the problem he undertakes to discuss. + +PROBLEMS OF TODAY + + * * * * * + + +_GEORGE McCREADY PRICE, M.A._ + +Poisoning Democracy + +A Study of the Present-Day Socialism. $1.25 + +Professor Price shows that the conditions prevailing to-day are due +largely to the acceptance of various socialistic and evolutionary +theories termed "New" Theology. No more terrific moral and religious +indictment of Socialism has ever been presented. + + +_ALBERT CLARKE WYCKOFF_ + +Sense of Christian Science $1.75 + +A deadly, withering attack on Christian Science enfilading its every +position. Mr. Wyckoff's searching analysis of the pretensions, errors, +follies, and non-sense of so-called Christian Science should prove as +convincing as it is unanswerable. + + +_ALLEN W. JOHNSTON_ + +The Roman Catholic Bible and the Roman Catholic Church + +Foreword by David J. Burrell, D.D. $1.25 + +A book that examines the cardinal doctrines as taught by the Church of +Rome, such as the Invocation of Saints, Purgatory, Indulgences, Worship +of Mary, the Holy Eucharist, etc. etc., and indicates the dissimilarity +between this body of teaching and Holy Writ. + +New Editions. + + +_I.M. HALDEMAN_ + +Can the Dead Communicate with the Living? $1.25 + +"Needless to say, Dr. Haldeman holds no brief for Spiritism. A book that +is awakening everyone to the peril of 'spiritualism' among +Christians."--_Christian Work._ + + +_JAMES M. GRAY, D.D._ + +Spiritism and the Fallen Angels + +From a Biblical Viewpoint. $1.25 + +"Beginning with a review of the present-day revival of Spiritism and how +to meet it, Dr. Gray harks back to origins, the baleful influence of the +cult from the earliest recorded history of the human race." _S.S. +Times._ + +STANDARD REFERENCE WORKS + + * * * * * + +_G.B.F. HALLOCK Editor of "The Expositor."_ + +A Modern Cyclopedia of Illustrations for All Occasions + +Nineteen Hundred and Thirty-eight Illustrations. $3.00. + +A comprehensive collection of illustrative incidents, anecdotes and +other suggestive material for the outstanding days and seasons of the +church year. The author, well-known to the readers of "_The Expositor_," +has presented a really valuable handbook for Preachers, Sunday School +Superintendents and all Christian workers. + + +_JAMES INGLIS_ + +The Bible Text Cyclopedia + +A Complete Classification of Scripture Texts. New Edition. Large 8vo, +$2.00 + +"More sensible and convenient, and every way more satisfactory than any +book of the kind we have ever known. We know of no other work comparable +with it in this department of study."--_Sunday School Times._ + + +_ANGUS-GREEN_ + +Cyclopedic Handbook to the Bible + +_By Joseph Angus. Revised by Samuel G. Green._ + +New Edition. 832 pages, with Index, $3.00. + +"The Best thing in its line."--_Ira M. Price, Univ. of Chicago._ + +"Holds an unchallenged place among aids to the interpretation of the +Scriptures."--_Baptist Review and Expositor._ + +"Of immense service to Biblical students."--_Methodist Times._ + + +The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge _Introduction by R.A. Torrey_ + +Consisting of 500,000 Scripture References and Parallel Passages. 788 +pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. + +"Bible students who desire to compare Scripture with Scripture will find +the 'Treasury' to be a better help than any other book of which I have +any knowledge."--_R.R. McBurney, Former Gen. Sec., Y.M.C.A., New York._ + + +_A.R. BUCKLAND, Editor_ + +Universal Bible Dictionary + +511 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. + +_Dr. Campbell Morgan_ says: "Clear, concise, comprehensive. I do not +hesitate to say that if any student would take the Bible, and go through +it book by book with its aid, the gain would be enormous." + +CHURCH WORK + + * * * * * + + +_ROGER W. BABSON Author of "Fundamentals of Prosperity," etc._ + +New Tasks for Old Churches + +Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 60c. + +Suggestions for the solution of to-day's problems, clear-cut and +courageous. Babson has little sympathy with the arguments of +self-interest of business men or with the outworn methods of the church +in industrial communities. His sole interest is in the physical, social, +and spiritual salvation of the men, women, and children in our +industrial centres. + + +_PRES. WILLIAM ALLEN HARPER_ + +_Author of "The New Church For The New Time" etc._ + +The Church in the Present Crisis $1.75. + +Hon. Josephus Daniels says: "Dr. Harper has ably presented the demand +that the church shape the thought and life of the future. The world, +having tried everything else, is becoming convinced that no Golden Rule +alone will be the savior. Dr. Harper wisely stresses study of the Bible, +the Christian leaven in education, the duty to look difficult problems +in the face and solve them by application of the Christian religion. It +is a book of faith with wise directions and guidance." + + +_REV. ALBERT F. McGARRAH_ + +_Author of "Modern Church Management."_ + +Money Talks + +Stimulating Studies in Christian Stewardship. $1.25. + +Ministers and laymen, who desire to present convincingly the principles +and practices which should govern Christians in getting and using money, +will find here a wealth of fresh material, popular in style, yet deeply +inspiring in tone. A companion volume to "Modern Church Finance" and +"Modern Church Management." + + +_LYMAN EDWYN DAVIS, D.D., LL.D._ + +_Editor "Methodist Recorder."_ + +Democratic Methodism in America + +A Topical Survey of the Methodist Protestant Church. $1.50. + +A history of the Methodist Protestant church from its founding in 1830, +pointing out the various links in the chain of circumstances which lead +to the organization of the Methodist Protestant Church and the +fundamental principles which prompted and justified the movement. It +constitutes a vigorous and ably-argued plea for "mutual rights" +Methodism. + +BIBLE STUDY + + * * * * * + + +_P. WHITWELL WILSON_ + +_Author of "The Christ We Forget"_ + +The _Church_ We Forget. + +A Study of the Life and Words of the Early Christians. 8vo, cloth, net + +The author of "The Christ We Forget" here furnishes a companion-picture +of the earliest Christian Church--of the men and women, of like feelings +with ourselves, who followed Christ and fought His battles in the Roman +world of their day. "Here again," says Mr. Wilson, "my paint-box is the +Bible, and nothing else--and my canvas is a page which he who runs may +read." + + +_C. ALPHONSO SMITH, Ph.D., LL.D._ + +_Head of the Department of English in the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. +Md._ + +Key-note Studies in Key-note Books of the Bible 12mo, cloth, net + +The sacred books dealt with are Genesis, Esther, Job, Hosea, John's +Gospel, Romans, Philippians, Revelation. "No series of lectures yet +given on this famous foundation have been more interesting and +stimulating than these illuminating studies of scriptural books by a +layman and library expert."--_Christian Observer._ + + +_GEORGE D. WATSON, D.D._ + +God's First Words + +Studies in Genesis, Historic, Prophetic and Experimental. 12mo, cloth, +net + +Dr. Watson shows how God's purposes and infinite wisdom, His plan and +purpose for the race, His unfailing love and faithfulness are first +unfolded in the Book of Genesis, to remain unchanged through the whole +canon of Scripture. Dr. Watson's new work will furnish unusual +enlightment to every gleaner in religious fields, who will find "God's +First Words" to possess great value and profit. + + +_EVERETT PEPPERRELL WHEELER, A.M._ + +_Author of "Sixty Years of American Life," etc._ + +A Lawyer's Study of the Bible + +Its Answer to the Questions of To-day. 12mo cloth, net + +Mr. Wheeler's main proposition is that the Bible, when wisely studied, +rightly understood and its counsel closely followed, is found to be of +inestimable value as a guide to daily life and conduct. To this end Mr. +Wheeler examines its teachings as they relate to sociology, labor and +capital, socialism, war, fatalism, prayer, immortality. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Modern Religious Cults and Movements + +Author: Gaius Glenn Atkins + +Release Date: August 15, 2006 [EBook #19051] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS CULTS *** + + + + +Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Graeme Mackreth and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<h1>Modern Religious Cults and Movements</h1> + +<p style="margin-top: 10em;" class="center">Works by</p> + +<p class="center"><b>Gaius Glenn Atkins</b></p> + +<p><i>Modern Religious Cults and Movements</i></p> + +<p>Dr. Atkins has written a noteworthy and valuable book dealing with the +new cults some of which have been much to the fore for a couple of +decades past, such as: Faith Healing; Christian Science; New Thought; +Theosophy and Spiritualism, etc. $2.50</p> + +<p><i>The Undiscovered Country</i></p> + +<p>Dr. Atkins' work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation, +polished diction and forceful phrasing. A firm grasp of the elemental +truths of Christian belief together with an unusual ability to interpret +mundane experiences in terms of spiritual reality. $1.50</p> + +<p><i>Jerusalem: Past and Present</i></p> + +<p>"One of the books that will help to relieve us of the restless craving +for excitement, and to make clear that we can read history truly only as +we read it as 'His Story'—and that we attain our best only as the hope +of the soul is realized by citizenship in 'the City of God.'"—<i>Baptist +World.</i> $1.25</p> + +<p><i>Pilgrims of the Lonely Road</i></p> + +<p>"A very unusual group of studies of the great mystics, and shows real +insight into the deeper experience of the religious life."—<i>Christian +Work.</i> $2.00</p> + +<p><i>A Rendezvous with Life</i></p> + +<p style="margin-bottom: 10em;">"Life is represented as a journey, with various 'inns' along the way +such as Day's End, Week's End, Month's End, Year's End—all suggestive +of certain experiences and duties." Paper, 25 cts.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>Modern Religious Cults and Movements</h2> + +<h4>By</h4> + +<h3>GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D., L.H.D.</h3> + +<p class="center"><i>Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Mich.</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Author of "Pilgrims of the Lonely Road," "The Undiscovered Country," +etc.</i></p> + +<p class="center" style="margin-top: 10em;"><small>New York Chicago<br /> + +Fleming H. Revell Company<br /> + +London and Edinburgh<br /> + +Copyright, 1923, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY<br /> + +New York: 158 Fifth Avenue<br /> Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.<br /> London: 21 +Paternoster Square<br /> Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street</small></p> + +<p style="margin-top: 5em;" class="center"><i>To E.M.C.</i></p> + +<p><i>Whose constant friendship through changing years has been like the fire +upon his hearthstone, a glowing gift and a grateful memory</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>Introduction</h2> + + +<p>The last thirty years, though as dates go this is only an approximation, +have witnessed a marked development of religious cults and movements +largely outside the lines of historic Catholicism and Protestantism. One +of these cults is strongly organized and has for twenty years grown more +rapidly in proportion than most of the Christian communions. The +influence of others, more loosely organized, is far reaching. Some of +them attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science +and philosophy, and, generally, they represent the free movement of what +one may call the creative religious consciousness of our time.</p> + +<p>There is, of course, a great and constantly growing literature dealing +with particular cults, but there has been as yet apparently no attempt +to inquire whether there may not be a few unexpectedly simple centers +around which, in spite of their superficial differences, they really +organize themselves.</p> + +<p>What follows is an endeavour in these directions. It is really a very +great task and can at the best be only tentatively done. Whoever +undertakes it may well begin by confessing his own limitations. +Contemporaneous appraisals of movements upon whose tides we ourselves +are borne are subject to constant revision. One's own prejudices, no +matter how strongly one may deal with them, colour one's conclusions, +particularly in the region of religion. The really vast subject matter +also imposes its own limitations upon even the most sincere student +unless he has specialized for a lifetime in his theme; even then he +would need to ask the charity of his readers.</p> + +<p>Ground has been broken for such an endeavour in many different +directions. Broadly considered, William James' "Varieties of Religious +Experience" was perhaps the pioneer work. Professor James' suggestive +analyses recognize the greatly divergent forms religious experience may +take and establish their right to be taken seriously as valid facts for +the investigator. The whole tendency of organized Christianity—and +Protestantism more largely than Catholicism—has been to narrow +religious experience to accepted forms, but religion itself is impatient +of forms. It has its border-lands, shadowy regions which lie between the +acceptance of what Sabatier calls "the religions of authority" on the +one hand and the conventional types of piety or practical goodness on +the other. Those who find their religion in such regions—one might +perhaps call them the border-land people—discover the authority for +their faith in philosophies which, for the most part, have not the +sanction of the schools and the demonstration of the reality of their +faith in personal experience for which there is very little proof except +their own testimony—and their testimony itself is often confused +enough.</p> + +<p>But James made no attempt to relate his governing conceptions to +particular organizations and movements save in the most general way. +His fundamentals, the distinction he draws between the "once-born" and +the "twice-born," between the religion of healthy-mindedness and the +need of the sick soul, the psychological bases which he supplies for +conversation and the rarer religious experiences are immensely +illuminating, but all this is only the nebulæ out of which religions are +organized into systems; the systems still remain to be considered.</p> + +<p>There has been of late a new interest in Mysticism, itself a border-land +word, strangely difficult of definition yet meaning generally the +persuasion that through certain spiritual disciplines—commonly called +the mystic way—we may come into a first-hand knowledge of God and the +spiritual order, in no sense dependent upon reason or sense testimony. +Some modern movements are akin to mysticism but they cannot all be +fairly included in any history of mysticism. Neither can they be +included in any history of Christianity; some of them completely ignore +the Christian religion; some of them press less central aspects of it +out of all proportion; one of them undertakes to recast Christianity in +its own moulds but certainly gives it a quality in so dealing with it +which cannot be supported by any critical examination of the Gospels or +considered as the logical development of Christian dogma. Here are +really new adventures in religion with new gospels, new prophets and new +creeds. They need to be twice approached, once through an examination of +those things which are fundamental in religion itself, for they have +behind them the power of what one may call the religious urge, and they +will ultimately stand as they meet, with a measure of finality, those +needs of the soul of which religion has always been the expression, or +fall as they fail to meet them. But since some limitation or other in +the types of Christianity which are dominant amongst us has given them +their opportunity they must also be approached through some +consideration of the Christianity against which they have reacted. +Unsatisfied needs of the inner life have unlocked the doors through +which they have made their abundant entry. Since they also reflect, as +religion always reflects, contemporaneous movements in Philosophy, +Science, Ethics and Social Relationship, they cannot be understood +without some consideration of the forces under whose strong impact +inherited faiths have, during the last half century, been slowly +breaking down, and in answer to whose suggestions faith has been taking +a new form.</p> + +<p>A rewarding approach, then, to Modern Religious Cults and Movements must +necessarily move along a wide front, and a certain amount of patience +and faith is asked of the reader in the opening chapters of this book: +patience enough to follow through the discussion of general principles, +and faith enough to believe that such a discussion will in the end +contribute to the practical understanding of movements with which we are +all more or less familiar, and by which we are all more or less +affected.</p> + +<p class="right">G.G.A.</p> + +<p><i>Detroit, Michigan.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<p> +<a href="#I"><b>I. <span class="smcap">Forms and Backgrounds of Inherited +Christianity</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +Certain Qualities Common to All Religions—Christianity Historically Organized Around a<br /> +Transcendent God and a Fallen Humanity—The Incarnation; the Cross the Supreme Symbol of<br /> +Western Theology—The Catholic Belief in the Authority of an Inerrant Church—The<br /> +Protestant Church Made Faith the Key to Salvation—Protestantism and an Infallibly Inspired<br /> +Bible—The Strength and Weakness of This Position—Evangelical Protestantism the<br /> +Outcome—Individual Experience of the Believer the Keystone of Evangelical Protestantism—Readjustment<br /> +of Both Catholic and Protestant Systems Inevitable.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#II"><b>II. <span class="smcap">New Forces and Old Faiths</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +The Far-reaching Readjustments of Christian Faith in the Last Fifty Years—The Reaction of<br /> +Evolution Upon Religion—The Reaction of Biblical Criticism Upon Faith—The Average<br /> +Man Loses His Bearings—The New Psychology—TheInfluence of Philosophy and the<br /> +Social Situation—An Age of Confusion—TheLure of the Short Cut—Popular Education—The<br /> +Churches Lose Authority—Efforts at Reconstruction—An Age of Doubt and a Twilight-Zone<br /> +in History—The Hunger of the Soul and the Need for Faith—Modern Religious<br /> +Cults and Movements: Their Three centers About Which They Have Organized Themselves.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#III"><b>III. <span class="smcap">Faith Healing in General</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +The Bases of Faith and Mental Healing—Cannon's Study of Emotional Reactions—The<br /> +Two Doors—The Challenge of Hypnotism— Changed Attention Affects Physical States—The<br /> +Power of Faith to Change Mental Attitudes—Demon Possession—The Beginnings of<br /> +Scientific Medicine—The Attitude of the Early and Medieval Church—Saints and Shrines—Magic,<br /> +Charms, and the King's Touch: The Rise of the Faith Healer.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#IV"><b>IV. <span class="smcap">The Approach to Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +Mesmerism—The Scientific Investigation of Mesmerism—Mesmerism in America; Phineas<br /> +Quimby an Important Link in a Long Chain—Quimby is Led to Define Sickness as Wrong<br /> +Belief—Quimby Develops His Theories—Mary Baker Eddy Comes Under His Influence—Outstanding<br /> +Events of Her Life: Her Early Girlhood—Her Education: Shaping Influences—Her Unhappy Fortunes.<br /> +She is Cured by Quimby—An Unacknowledged Debt—She Develops Quimby's Teachings—Begins<br /> +to Teach and to Heal—Early Phases of Christian Science—She Writes "Science and Health" and<br /> +Completes the Organization of Her Church.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#V"><b>V. <span class="smcap">Christian Science as a Philosophy</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +Christian Science a Philosophy, a Theology, a Religion and a System of Healing—The<br /> +Philosophic Bases of Christian Science—It Undertakes to Solve the Problem of Evil—Contrasted<br /> +Solutions—The Divine Mind and Mortal Mind—The Essential Limitations of<br /> +Mrs. Eddy's System—Experience and Life—Sense-Testimony—The Inescapable Reality<br /> +of Shadowed Experience.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#VI"><b>VI. <span class="smcap">Christian Science as a Theology</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +Science and Health Offered as a Key to the Scriptures—It Ignores All Recognized Canons<br /> +of Biblical Interpretation—Its Conception of God—Mrs. Eddy's Interpretation of Jesus<br /> +Christ—Christian Science His Second Coming—Christian Science, the Incarnation and the<br /> +Atonement—Sin an Error of Mortal Mind—The Sacraments Disappear—The Real Power<br /> +of Christian Science.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#VII"><b>VII. <span class="smcap">Christian Science as a System of Healing and a Religion</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +Christian Science the Application of Philosophy and Theology to Bodily Healing—Looseness<br /> +of Christian Science Diagnosis—The Power of Mental Environment—Christian<br /> +Science Definition of Disease—Has a Rich Field to Work—A Strongly-Drawn System<br /> +of Psycho-therapy—A System of Suggestion—Affected by Our Growing Understanding<br /> +of the Range of Suggestion—Strongest in Teaching That God Has Meaning for the<br /> +Whole of Life—Exalts the Power of Mind; the Processes—Is Not Big Enough for the<br /> +Whole of Experience.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#VIII"><b>VIII. <span class="smcap">New Thought</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +New Thought Difficult to Define—"The Rediscovery of the Inner Life"—Spinoza's Quest—Kant<br /> +Reaffirms the Creative Power of Mind—Utilitarianism, Deism and Individualism—The<br /> +Reactions Against Them—New England Transcendentalism—New Thought Takes<br /> +Form—Its Creeds—The Range of the Movement—The Key-Words of New Thought—Its<br /> +Field of Real Usefulness—Its Gospel of Getting On—The Limitations and Dangers of Its<br /> +Positions—Tends to Become a Universal and Loosely-Defined Religion.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#IX"><b>IX. <span class="smcap">The Return of the East Upon the West. Theosophy and Kindred Cults</span></b> </a><br /> +<br /> +Historic Forces Carried Early Christianity West and Not East—The West Rediscovers<br /> +the East; the East Returns Upon the West—Chesterton's Two Saints—Why the West<br /> +Questions the East—Pantheism and Its Problems—How the One Becomes the Many—Evolution<br /> +and Involution—Theosophy Undertakes to Offer Deliverance—But Becomes<br /> +Deeply Entangled Itself—The West Looks to Personal Immortality—The East Balances the<br /> +Accounts of Life in a Series of Reincarnations—Theosophy Produces a Distinct Type of Character—A "Tour de Force"<br /> +of the Imagination—A Bridge of Clouds—The Difficulties of Reincarnation—Immortality Nobler, Juster and<br /> +Simpler—Pantheism at Its Best—and Its Worst.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#X"><b>X. <span class="smcap">Spiritualism</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +The Genesis of Modern Spiritualism—It Crosses to Europe—The Beginnings of Trance-Mediumship—The<br /> +Society for Psychical Research Begins Its Work—Confronts Difficulties—William James Enters the Field—The<br /> +Limitations of Psychical Investigation—The Society for Psychical Research Gives Intellectual Standing to<br /> +Spiritism—The Very Small Number of Dependable Mediums—Spiritism a Question of Testimony and<br /> +Interpretation—Possible Explanations of Spiritistic Phenomena—Myers' Theory of Mediumship—Telepathy—Controls—The<br /> +Dilemma of Spiritism—The Influence of Spiritism—The Real Alternative to Spiritism—The Investigations of Émile<br /> +Boirac—Geley's Conclusions—The Meaning of Spiritism for Faith.<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#XI"><b>XIXI. <span class="smcap">Minor Cults: The Meaning of the Cults for the Church</span></b></a><br /> +<br /> +Border-land Cults—Bahaism—The Bab and His Successors—The Temple of Unity—General<br /> +Conclusions—The Cults Are Aspects of the Creative Religious Consciousness of the<br /> +Age—Their Parallels in the Past—The Healing Cults Likely to be Adversely Influenced by<br /> +the Scientific Organization of Psycho-therapy—New Thought Will Become Old Thought—Possible<br /> +Absorption of the Cults by a Widening Historic Christianity—Christianity Influenced<br /> +by the Cults—Medical Science and the Healing Cults—A Neglected Force—Time and<br /> +the Corrections of Truth.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> + +<h3>THE FORMS AND BACKGROUNDS OF INHERITED CHRISTIANITY</h3> + + +<p>Chronologically the point of departure for such a study as this is the +decade from 1880 to 1890. This is only an approximation but it will do. +It was a particularly decorous decade. There was no fighting save on the +outposts of colonial empires, the little wars of Soldiers Three and +Barrack Room Ballads—too far away for their guns to be heard in the +streets of capital cities, but lending a touch of colour to newspaper +head-lines and supplying new material for rising young writers. It was +the decade of triumphant Democracy and triumphant Science and triumphant +Industrialism and, among the more open-minded, of triumphant Evolution. +Western Civilization was sure of its forces, sure of its formulæ, sure +of its future; there were here and there clouds no bigger than a man's +hand against particularly luminous horizons, but there was everywhere a +general agreement that they would be dissolved by the force of benign +development. The world seemed particularly well in hand.</p> + +<p>The churches generally shared this confidence. Catholicism and +Protestantism had reached a tacit working agreement as to their spheres +of influence and were even beginning to fraternize a little. The +divisive force of Protestantism seemed to have spent itself. Since +Alexander Campbell—dead now for a decade and a half—no Protestant sect +of any importance had been established. The older denominations had +achieved a distinctive finality in organization and doctrine. Evolution +and Biblical criticism were generally the storm centers of controversy +and though these controversies were severe enough they produced no +schisms in the churches themselves. A few religious leaders were urging +a more thoroughgoing social interpretation and application of the +teachings of Jesus; such as these were really looked upon with more +suspicion than the propagandists of a liberal theology.</p> + +<p>We see now with almost tragic clearness that, beneath the surface of the +whole interrelated order of that tranquil afternoon of the Victorian +epoch, there were forces in action working toward such a challenge of +the accepted and inherited as cultures and civilizations are asked to +meet only in the great crises of history and bound to issue, as they +have issued in far-flung battle lines, in the overthrow of ancient +orders and new alignments along every front of human interest. It will +be the task of the historians of the future who will have the necessary +material in hand to follow these immense reactions in their various +fields and they will find their real point of departure not in dates but +in the human attitudes and outlooks which then made a specious show of +being final—and were not final at all.</p> + +<p>Just there also is the real point of departure for a study like this. We +may date the rise of modern religious cults and movements from the last +decades of the nineteenth century, but they are really reactions not +against a time but a temper, an understanding of religion and a group of +religious validations which had been built up through an immense labour +of travailing generations and which toward the end of the last century +were in the way of being more seriously challenged than for a thousand +years (and if this seems too strong a statement the reader is asked to +wait for at least the attempted proof of it). We shall have to begin, +then, with a state of mind which for want of a better name I venture to +call the representative orthodox religious consciousness of the end of +the nineteenth century. That this consciousness is Christian is of +course assumed. It is Protestant rather than Catholic, for Protestantism +has supplied the larger number of followers to the newer religious +movements.</p> + +<p>To begin with, this representative religious consciousness was by no +means simple. Professor James Harvey Robinson tells us that the modern +mind is really a complex, that it contains and continues the whole of +our inheritances and can be understood only through the analysis of all +the contributive elements which have combined to make it what it is and +that the inherited elements in it far outweigh more recent +contributions. The religious mind is an equally complex and deep-rooted +inheritance and can best be approached by a consideration of the bases +of religion.</p> + + +<p><i>Certain Qualities Common to All Religions</i></p> + +<p>We are but pilgrims down roads which space and time supply; we cannot +account for ourselves in terms of what we know to be less than +ourselves, nor can we face the shadow which falls deeply across the end +of our way without dreaming, at least, of that which lies beyond. +Whence? Whither? and Why? are insurgent questions; they are voices out +of the depths. A very great development of intelligence was demanded +before such questions really took definite shape, but they are implicit +in even the most rudimentary forms of religion, nor do we outgrow them +through any achievement of Science or development of Philosophy. They +become thereby, if anything, more insistent. Our widening horizons of +knowledge are always swept by a vaster circumference of mystery into +which faith must write a meaning and beyond which faith must discern a +destiny.</p> + +<p>Religion begins, therefore, in our need so to interpret the power +manifest in the universe<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> as to come into some satisfying relationship +therewith. It goes on to supply an answer to the dominant +questions—Whence? Whither? Why? It fulfills itself in worship and +communion with what is worshipped. Such worship has addressed itself to +vast ranges of objects, fulfilled itself in an almost unbelievable +variety of rites. And yet in every kind of worship there has been some +aspiration toward an ideal excellence and some endeavour, moreover, of +those who worship to come into a real relation with what is worshipped. +It would need a detailed treatment, here impossible, to back up so +general a statement with the facts which prove it, but the facts are +beyond dispute. It would be equally difficult to analyze the elements in +human nature which lead us to seek such communion. The essential +loneliness of the soul, our sense of divided and warring powers and the +general emotional instability of personality without fitting objects of +faith and devotion, all contribute to the incurable religiosity of human +nature.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I have taken as a working definition of Religion a phrase +quoted by Ward Fowler in the introduction to his Gifford Lectures on +"The Religious Experience of the Roman People." "Religion is the +effective desire to be in right relationship to the power manifesting +itself in the Universe." This is only a formula but it lends itself to +vital interpretations and is a better approach to modern cults, many of +which are just that endeavour, than those definitions of religion just +now current which define it as a system of values or a process of +evaluation.</p></div> + +<p>The value which religion has for those who hold it is perhaps as largely +tested by its power to give them a real sense of communion with God as +by any other single thing, but this by no means exhausts the value of +religion for life. All religions must, in one way or another, meet the +need of the will for guidance and the need of the ethical sense for +right standards. Religion has always had an ethical content, simple +enough to begin with as religion itself was simple. Certain things were +permitted, certain things prohibited as part of a cult. These +permissions and prohibitions are often strangely capricious, but we may +trace behind taboo and caste and the ceremonially clean and unclean an +always emerging standard of right and wrong and a fundamental +relationship between religion and ethics. Religion from the very first +felt itself to be the more august force and through its superior +authority gave direction and quality to the conduct of its devotees. It +was long enough before all this grew into Decalogues and the Sermon on +the Mount and the latter chapters of Paul's great letters to his +churches and our present system of Christian ethics, but we discover the +beginning of the lordship of religion over conduct even in the most +primitive cults.</p> + +<p>We shall find as we go on that this particular aspect of religion is +less marked in modern religious cults and movements than either the +quest for a new understanding of God or new answers to the three great +questions, or the longing for a more satisfying communion with God. They +accept, for the most part, the generally held standards of Christian +conduct, but even so, they are beginning to develop their own ethical +standards and to react upon the conduct of those who hold them.</p> + +<p>As has been intimated, however, the appeal of religion goes far deeper +than all this. If it did no more than seek to define for us the "power +not ourselves" everywhere made manifest, if it did no more than answer +the haunting questions: Whence? and Whither? and Why?, if it did no more +than offer the emotional life a satisfying object of worship and +communion with the Divine, supplying at the same time ethical standards +and guiding and strengthening the will in its endeavour after goodness, +it would have done us an immense service. But one may well wonder +whether if religion did no more than this it would have maintained +itself as it has and renew through the changing generations its +compelling appeal. More strong than any purely intellectual curiosity +as to a first cause or controlling power, more haunting than any wonder +as to the source and destiny of life, more persistent than any +loneliness of the questing soul is our dissatisfaction with ourselves, +our consciousness of tragic moral fault, our need of forgiveness and +deliverance. This longing for deliverance has taken many forms.</p> + +<p>Henry Osborn Taylor in a fine passage has shown us how manifold are the +roads men have travelled in their quest for salvation.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> "For one man +shall find his peace in action, another in the rejection of action, even +in the seeming destruction of desire; another shall have peace and +freedom through intellectual inquiry, while another must obey his God or +love his God and may stand in very conscious need of divine salvation. +The adjustment sought by Confucius was very different from that which +drew the mind of Plato or led Augustine to the City of God. Often quite +different motives may inspire the reasonings which incidentally bring +men to like conclusions.... The life adjustment of the early Greek +philosophers had to do with scientific curiosity.... They were not like +Gotama seeking relief from the tedious impermanence of personal +experience any more than they were seeking to insure their own eternal +welfare in and through the love of God, the motive around which surged +the Christian yearning for salvation. Evidently every religion is a +means of adjustment or deliverance."</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "Deliverance," pp. 4 and 5.</p></div> + +<p>Professor James in his chapter on The Sick Souls deals most suggestively +with these driving longings and all the later analyses of the psychology +of conversion begin with the stress of the divided self. The deeper +teaching of the New Testament roots itself in this soil. The literature +of confession is rich in classic illustrations of all this, told as only +St. Augustine more than a thousand years ago or Tolstoy yesterday can +tell it. No need to quote them here; they are easily accessible for +those who would find for their own longings immortal voices and be +taught with what searching self-analysis those who have come out of +darkness into light have dealt with their own sick souls.</p> + +<p>Every religion has in some fashion or other offered deliverance to its +devotees through sacrifice or spiritual discipline, or the assurance +that their sins were atoned for and their deliverance assured through +the sufferings of others. All this, needless to say, involves not only +the sense of sin but the whole reach of life's shadowed experiences. We +have great need to be delivered not only from our divided selves but +from the burdens and perplexities of life. Religion must offer some +explanation of the general problem of sorrow and evil; it must, above +all, justify the ways of God with men.</p> + +<p>Generally speaking, religion is very greatly dependent upon its power so +to interpret the hard things of life to those who bear them that they +may still believe in the Divine love and justice. The generality of +doubt is not philosophical but practical. We break with God more often +than for any other reason because we believe that He has not kept faith +with us. Some of the more strongly held modern cults have found their +opportunity in the evident deficiency of the traditional explanation of +pain and sorrow. Religion has really a strong hold on the average life +only as it meets the more shadowed side of experience with the +affirmation of an all-conquering love and justice in which we may rest.</p> + +<p>Broadly considered, then, the elements common to all religions are such +as these: a satisfying interpretation of the power manifest in the +universe, the need of the mind for an answer to the questions Whence? +and Whither? and Why?, the need of the emotional life for such peace as +may come from the consciousness of being in right relationship and +satisfying communion with God, the need of the will and ethical sense +for guidance, and a need including all this and something beside for +spiritual deliverance. The representative religious consciousness of the +end of the nineteenth century in which we find our point of departure +for the religious reactions of the last generation naturally included +all this, but implicitly rather than explicitly. The intellectually +curious were more concerned with science and political economies than +the nature or genesis of religion, while the truly devout, who are not +generally given to the critical analysis of their faith, accepted it as +a Divine revelation needing no accounting for outside their Bible. +Moreover such things as these were not then and never can be held +abstractly. They were articulate in creeds and organized in churches +and invested with the august sanction of authority, and mediated through +old, old processes of religious development.</p> + + +<p><i>Christianity Historically Organized Around the Conception of a +Transcendent God and a Fallen Humanity</i></p> + +<p>For in its historic development religion has naturally taken distinctly +divergent forms, conditioned by race, environment, the action and +reaction of massed experience and by the temper and insight of a few +supremely great religious leaders. But centrally, the whole development +of any religion has been controlled by its conception of God and, in the +main, three different conceptions of God give colour and character to +the outstanding historic religions. Pantheistic religions have thought +of God as just the whole of all that is; they widen the universe to the +measure of the Divine, or narrow the Divine to the operations of the +universe. Pantheism saturates its whole vague content with a mystical +quality of thought, and colours what it sees with its own emotions. The +religions of the Divine Immanence conceive God as pervading and +sustaining all that is and revealing Himself thereby, though not +necessarily confined therein. The religions of the Divine Transcendence +have believed in a God who is apart from all that is, who neither begins +nor ends in His universe, and from whom we are profoundly separated not +only by our littlenesses but by our sin.</p> + +<p>All this is a bare statement of what is almost infinitely richer as it +has been felt and proclaimed by the devout and we shall see as we go on +how the newer religious movements take also their colour and character +from a new emphasis upon the nature of God, or else a return to +understandings of Him and feelings about Him which have been lost out in +the development of Christianity.</p> + +<p>Historically Christian theology, particularly in the West, has centered +around the conception of a Transcendent God. As far as doctrine goes +Christianity took over a great inheritance from the Jew, for arrestingly +enough the Jew, though he belongs to the East, had never anything in +common with Eastern Pantheism. On the contrary we find his prophets and +lawgivers battling with all their force against such aspects of +Pantheism as they found about them. The God of the Old Testament is +always immeasurably above those who worshipped Him in righteousness and +power; He is their God and they are His chosen people, but there is +never any identification of their will with His except in the rare +moments of their perfect obedience.</p> + +<p>True enough, through the insight of the prophets and particularly the +experience of psalmists, this conception of the Apart-God became +increasingly rich in the persuasion of His unfailing care for His +children. None the less, the Hebrew God is a Transcendent God and +Christianity inherits from that. Christianity took over what Judaism +refused—Jesus Christ and His Gospel. But out of the immeasurable wealth +of His teaching apostolic thinking naturally appropriated and made most +of what was nearest in line with the prophets and the lawgivers of their +race. Judaism refused Christ but the Twelve Apostles were Jews and the +greatest of the group—St. Paul—was a Jewish Rabbi before he became a +Christian teacher. He had been nurtured and matured in the schools of +his people and though he was reborn, in renunciations and obediences +distinctly Christian, there were in his very soul inherited rigidities +of form in conformity to which he recast his faith.</p> + +<p>More distinctly than he himself could ever have known, he particularized +the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Doubtless his own experience was the deeper +directing force in all this. Theologies always, to begin with, are the +molten outpouring of some transforming experience and they are always, +to begin with, fluid and glowing.</p> + +<p>Such glowing experiences as these are hard to communicate; they, too, +soon harden down and we inherit, as cold and rigid form, what was to +begin with the flaming outcome of experience. St. Paul's own struggle +and the bitterness of a divided self which issued in his conversion +naturally gave content to all his after teaching. He worked out his +system strangely apart from the other group of disciples; he had +probably never heard a word of Christ's teaching directly from Christ's +lips; he naturally fell back, therefore, upon his Jewish inheritance and +widened that system of sacrifices and atonements until he found therein +not only a place for the Cross but the necessity for it. He made much, +therefore, of the sense of alienation from God, of sin and human +helplessness, of the need and possibility of redemption.</p> + + +<p><i>The Incarnation as the Bridge Between God and Man; the Cross as the +Instrument of Man's Redemption. The Cross the Supreme Symbol of Western +Theology</i></p> + +<p>Here, then, are the two speculative backgrounds of historic +Christianity,—God's apartness from man in an inconceivable immensity of +lonely goodness, man's alienation from God in a helpless fallen estate. +For the bridging of the gulf between God and His world Christianity +offers the incarnation; for the saving of man from his lost estate +Christianity offers the Cross. The incarnation is the reëntry of God +into a world from which, indeed, according to the Christian way of +thinking, He has never been entirely separate, but from which He has, +none the less, been so remote that if ever it were to be rescued from +its ruined condition there was needed a new revelation of God in +humanity; and the Atonement is just the saving operation of God thus +incarnated.</p> + +<p>Eastern Christianity has made most of the incarnation. The great Greek +theologies were built around that. They exhausted the resources of a +language particularly fitted for subtle definition in their endeavour to +explain the mystery of it, and, after more than a century of bitter +debate about the nature and person of Christ, contented themselves with +affirming the reality both of the human and divine in His nature, +neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance, nor indeed +making clear in any truly comprehensible way the truth which they so +sought to define, or the faith to which they so passionately held. But +though their keen dialectic broke down under the burden they laid upon +it, they did, nevertheless, keep alive just that confidence in God as +one come into human life and sharing it and using it, without which +there would have been in all the faith and thinking of the West for more +than a thousand years an unbridged and unbridgeable gulf between God and +man.</p> + +<p>Indeed, when we turn back again to the great Greek symbols with that +conception of the immanence of God which the truer insights of our own +time have done so much to supply, we find these old forms and phrases +unexpectedly hospitable to our own interpretations. If the Western +Church had been more strongly influenced by the philosophical insight of +the early Eastern Church, Western Christendom might have been saved from +a good deal of that theological hardness from which great numbers are +just now reacting.</p> + +<p>But Western Christendom took the Cross for the central symbol of its +faith. What would have happened to Western Christendom without Augustine +we do not know, and it is idle to try to guess, but Europe in its +religious thinking followed for a thousand years the direction he gave +it. His theology is only the travail of his soul, glowing and molten. +His Confessions reveal to us more clearly than any other record we have +Paganism becoming Christian. In the travail of his spirit we see +something vaster than his own conversion, we see the formulation of new +spiritual experiences, the birth of new spiritual relationships, the +growth of new moral orders and consecrations. He bridges for us the +passages between Paganism and Christianity. He reveals what rebirth +meant for men to whom it was no convention but an agonizing recasting of +both the inner and outer life. He shows us what it meant to put aside +the inheritances and relationships of an immemorial order and to stand +as a little child untaught, undisciplined and unperfect in the presence +of the new. The spiritual attitude which Augustine attained was to be +for long the dominant spiritual attitude of Europe, was to govern +medieval conceptions, inspire medieval actions, colour with its flame +the mystic brooding of the medieval mind.</p> + +<p>In the end the sovereignty of God became for Augustine supreme and over +against this he set with strong finality man's hopeless fallen state. He +was doubtless in debt to St. Paul for these governing conceptions but +they took new character as they passed through the alembic of his own +experience. "The one pervading thought of the Greek fathers concerning +the redemptive work of Christ is that men are thereby brought into unity +with God. They do not hesitate to designate this unity to be as a +deification ... they dwell on the idea that we become partakers of the +Divine nature."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The emphasis here is not so much upon sin to be +atoned for or punishment to be avoided, as reconciliation to be +achieved.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," p. 162.</p></div> + +<p>After Augustine the interpretations of the Cross take a new direction. +Now men are thereby not so much to be made partakers of the divine +nature as to be saved from hell. The explanations of the way in which +this salvation is really achieved change with the changing centuries but +through shifting theologies there is one constant. All men are lost and +foredoomed to an eternal punishment from which they are saved only in +that Christ suffered for them and they, through their faith and +obedience, have availed themselves of His vicarious death. The varying +theological interpretations are themselves greatly significant as if +here were something whose meanings no single explanation could exalt, +something to be felt rather than understood. The Cross so seen is the +symbol at once of love and need, of moral defeat and moral discipline, +of suffering helplessness and overcoming goodness. We cannot overstate +the influence of this faith upon the better part of Western +civilization.</p> + +<p>It has kept us greatly humble, purged us of our pride and thrown us back +in a helplessness which is, after all, the true secret of our strength, +upon the saving mercy of God. The story of it, simply told, has moved +the hard or bitter or the careless as nothing else can do. Its +assurances of deliverance have given new hope to the hopeless and a +power not their own to the powerless. It has exalted as the very message +of God the patient enduring of unmerited suffering; it has taught us how +there is no deliverance save as the good suffer for the bad and the +strong put their strength at the service of the weak; it has taught us +that the greatest sin is the sin against love and the really enduring +victories for any better cause are won only as through the appeal of a +much enduring unselfishness new tempers are created and new forces are +released. Nor is there any sign yet that its empire has begun to come to +an end.</p> + + +<p><i>The Catholic Church Offered Deliverance in Obedience to the Authority +of an Inerrant Church</i></p> + +<p>Nevertheless the preaching of the Cross has not commonly taken such +forms as these; it has been rather the appeal of the Church to the +individual to escape his sinful and hopeless estate either through an +obedient self-identification with the Church's discipline and an +unquestioning acceptance of the Church's authority, or else through an +intellectual acceptance of the scheme of redemption and a moral +surrender to it. Here are really the two lines of approach through the +one or the other of which Christianity has been made real to the +individual from the time of St. Paul till our own time. During the early +formative period of the Church it was a matter between the individual +and his God. So much we read in and between the lines of the Pauline +Epistles. As far as any later time can accurately recast the thought and +method of a far earlier time evangelical Protestant theology fairly +interprets St. Paul. Faith—a big enough word, standing for both +intellectual acceptance and a kind of mystic receptivity to the love and +goodness and justice of God revealed in the Cross of Christ—is the key +to salvation and the condition of Christian character. It is also that +through which religion becomes real to the individual. But since all +this lays upon the individual a burden hard enough to be borne (as we +shall see when we come back to Protestantism itself) the Church, as her +organization became more definite and her authority more strongly +established, took the responsibility of the whole matter upon herself. +She herself would become responsible for the outcome if only they were +teachable and obedient.</p> + +<p>The Catholic Church offered to its communicants an assured security, the +proof of which was not in the fluctuating states of their own souls but +in the august authority of the Church to which they belonged. As long, +therefore, as they remained in obedient communion with their Church +their souls were secure. The Church offered them its confessional for +their unburdening and its absolutions for their assurance, its +sacraments for their strengthening and its penances for their discipline +and restoration. It took from them in spiritual regions and maybe in +other regions too, the responsibility for the conduct of their own lives +and asked of the faithful only that they believe and obey. The Church, +as it were, "stepped down" religion to humanity. It did all this with a +marvellous understanding of human nature and in answer to necessities +which were, to begin with, essential to the discipline of childlike +peoples who would otherwise have been brought face to face with truths +too great for them, or dismissed to a freedom for which they were not +ready.</p> + +<p>It was and is a marvellous system; there has never been anything like it +and if it should wholly fail from amongst us there will never be +anything like it again. And yet we see that all this vast spiritual +edifice, like the arches of its own great cathedrals, locks up upon a +single keystone. The keystone of the arch of Catholic certainty is the +acceptance of the authority of the Church conditioned by belief in the +divine character of that authority. If anything should shake the +Catholic's belief in the authority of his Church and the efficacy of her +sacraments then he is left strangely unsheltered. Strongly articulated +as this system is, it has not been untouched by time and change. To +continue our figure, one great wing of the medieval structure fell away +in the Protestant Reformation and what was left, though extensive and +solid enough, is still like its great cathedrals—yielding to time and +change. The impressive force and unity of contemporaneous Catholicism +may lead us perhaps to underestimate the number of those in the Catholic +line who, having for one reason or another lost faith in their Church, +are now open to the appeal of the newer movements. For example, the +largest non-Catholic religious group of Poles in Detroit are +Russellites. There are on good authority between three and four thousand +of them.</p> + + +<p><i>The Protestant Church Made Faith the Key to Salvation with Conversion +the Test for the Individual of the Reality of His Religious Experience</i></p> + +<p>If religion has been made real to the Catholic through the mediation of +his Church, Protestantism, seeking to recreate the apostolic Church, has +made the reality of religion a matter between the individual and his +God. And yet Protestantism has never dared commit itself to so simple a +phrasing of religion as this, nor to go on without authorities of its +own. Protestantism generally has substituted for the inclusive authority +of the Catholic Church the authority of its own creeds and fundamentally +the authority of the Bible. As far as creeds go Protestantism carried +over the content of Latin Christianity more largely than we have +generally recognized. Luther was in direct line with Augustine as +Augustine was in direct line with St. Paul, and Luther's fundamental +doctrine—justification by faith—was not so much a rewriting of ancient +creeds as a new way of validating their meaning for the individual. +Faith, in our common use of the term, has hardened down into an +intellectual acceptance of Protestant theologies, but certainly for St. +Paul and probably for Luther it was far more vital than this and far +more simple. It was rather a resting upon a delivering power, the +assurance of whose desire and willingness to deliver was found in the +New Testament. It was an end to struggle, a spiritual victory won +through surrender.</p> + +<p>The Latin Catholic system had come to impose upon such tempers as +Luther's an unendurable amount of strain; it was too complex, too +demanding, and it failed to carry with it necessary elements of mental +and spiritual consent. (St. Paul had the same experience with his own +Judaism.) What Luther sought was a peace-bringing rightness with God. He +was typically and creatively one of William James' "divided souls" and +he found the solution for his fears, his struggles and his doubts in +simply taking for granted that a fight which he was not able to win for +himself had been won for him in the transaction on the Cross. He had +nothing, therefore, to do but to accept the peace thus made possible and +thereafter to be spiritually at rest.</p> + +<p>Now since the whole of the meaning of the Cross for Christianity from +St. Paul until our own time is involved in this bare statement and since +our theologies have never been able to explain this whole great matter +in any doctrinal form which has secured universal consent, we must +simply fall back upon the statement of the fact and recognize that here +is something to be defined in terms of experience and not of doctrine. +The validating experience has come generally to be known as conversion, +and conversion has played a great part in evangelical Protestantism ever +since the Reformation. It has become, indeed, the one way in which +religion has been made real to most members of evangelical churches. So +sweeping a statement must be somewhat qualified, for conversion is far +older than Luther;<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> it is not confined to Protestantism and the +Protestant churches themselves have not agreed in their emphasis upon +it. Yet we are probably on safe ground in saying that religion has +become real to the average member of the average Protestant Church more +distinctly through conversion than anything else.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> But rather in the discipline of the Mystic as an enrichment +of the spiritual life than as a door to the Communion of the Church.</p></div> + +<p>Conversion has of late come up for a pretty thoroughgoing examination by +the psychologists, and their conclusions are so generally familiar as +to need no restatement here. William James, in a rather informal +paragraph quoted from one of his letters, states the psychologist's +point of view more simply and vividly than either he or his disciples +have defined their position in their more formal works. "In the case of +conversion I am quite willing to believe that a new truth may be +supernaturally revealed to a subject when he really asks, but I am sure +that in many cases of conversion it is less a new truth than a new power +gained over life by a truth always known. It is a case of the conflict +of two self-systems in a personality up to that time heterogeneously +divided, but in which, after the conversion crisis, the higher loves and +powers come definitely to gain the upper hand and expel the forces which +up to that time had kept them down to the position of mere grumblers and +protesters and agents of remorse and discontent. This broader view will +cover an enormous number of cases psychologically and leaves all the +religious importance to the result which it has on any other theory."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Letters of William James, Vol. II, p. 57.</p></div> + +<p>In Luther, Augustine and St. Paul, and a great fellowship beside, this +stress of the divided self was both immediate and intense. Such as these +through the consciousness of very real fault—and this is true of +Augustine and St. Paul—or through a rare spiritual sensitiveness and an +unusual force of aspiration—and this is true of many others—did not +need any conviction of sin urged upon them from the outside. They had +conviction enough of their own. But all these have been men and women +apart, intensely devout by nature, committed by temperament to great +travail of soul and concerned, above all, for their own spiritual +deliverance. But their spiritual sensitiveness is by no means universal, +their sense of struggle not a normal experience for another type of +personality. The demand, therefore, that all religious experience be +cast in their particular mould, and that religion be made real to every +one through the same travail of soul in which it was made real to them, +carries with it two very great dangers: first, that some semblance of +struggle should be created which does not come vitally out of +experience; and second, that the resultant peace should be artificial +rather than true, and therefore, should not only quickly lose its force +but really result in reactions which would leave the soul of the one so +misled, or better perhaps, so mishandled, emptier of any real sense of +the reality of religion than to begin with.</p> + + +<p><i>Protestantism Found Its Authority in an Infallibly Inspired Bible</i></p> + +<p>Now this is too largely what has happened in evangelical Protestantism. +The "twice-born" have been set up as the standard for us all; they have +demanded of their disciples the same experience as those through which +they themselves have passed. Since this type of religious experience has +always been the more ardent and vivid, since the churches in which least +has been made of it have generally tended to fall away into routine and +some want of real power, we have had, particularly since Jonathan +Edwards in America and the Wesleys in England, a recurrent insistence +upon it as the orthodox type of religious experience. Partly through +inheritance and partly in answer to its own genius Protestantism has +built up a system of theology tending to reproduce the sequence of +conviction of sin, aspiration, repentance, and conversion by doctrinal +pressure from the outside. The foundations of it all are in the New +Testament and somewhat in the Old, but what has been built upon these +foundations has been either too extended or too one-sided. In order to +include in one general sense of condemnation strong enough to create an +adequate desire for salvation, all sorts and conditions of people, +theology has not only charged us up with our own sins which are always a +sad enough account, but it has charged us up with ancestral and imputed +sins.</p> + +<p>This line of theology has been far too rigid, far too insistent upon +what one may call the facts of theology, and far too blind to the facts +of life. It has made much of sin in the abstract and sometimes far too +little of concrete sin; it has made more of human depravity than social +justice; it has failed to make allowance for varieties of temper and +condition; it is partly responsible for the widespread reaction of the +cults and movements of our own time.</p> + +<p>Since so strongly an articulate system as this needed something to +sustain it, Protestantism has constantly supported itself in the +authority of the Old and New Testaments. It displaced one authority by +another, the authority of the Church by the authority of the Book, and +in order to secure for this authority an ultimate and unquestioned power +it affirmed as the beginning and the end of its use of the Scriptures +their infallibility. The growth of Protestant teaching about the Bible +has necessarily been complicated but we must recognize that Protestant +theology and Protestant tradition have given the Bible what one may call +read-in values.</p> + +<p>At any rate after affirming the infallibility of the text Protestantism +has turned back to the text for the proof of its teaching and so built +up its really very great interrelated system in which, as has already +been said, the power of religion over the life of its followers and the +reality of religion in the experiences of its followers locked up on +just such things as these: First, the experiences of conversions; +second, conversion secured through the processes of Protestant +indoctrination, backed up by the fervent appeal of the Protestant +ministry and the pressure of Protestant Church life; and third, all this +supported by an appeal to the authority of the Bible with a proof-text +for every statement.</p> + +<p>All this is, of course, to deal coldly and analytically with something +which, as it has worked out in religious life, has been neither cold nor +analytical. Underneath it all have been great necessities of the soul +and issuing out of it all have been aspirations and devoutnesses and +spiritual victories and new understandings of God and a wealth of love +and goodness which are a part of the imperishable treasures of humanity +for three centuries. This faith and experience have voiced themselves +in moving hymns, built themselves into rare and continuing fellowships, +gone abroad in missionary passion, spent themselves for a better world +and looked unafraid even into the face of death, sure of life and peace +beyond. But behind the great realities of our inherited religious life +one may discover assumptions and processes less sure.</p> + + +<p><i>The Strength and Weakness of This Position</i></p> + +<p>Once more, this inherited faith in the Bible and the systems which have +grown out of it have been conditioned by scientific and philosophic +understandings. The Protestant doctrine of the infallibility of the +Bible assumed its authority not only in the region of religion but in +science and history as well. The inherited theologies really went out of +their way to give the incidental the same value as the essential. There +was no place in them for growth, correction, further revelation. This +statement may be challenged, it certainly needs to be qualified, for +when the time for adjustment and the need of adjustment really did come +the process of adjustment began to be carried through, but only at very +great cost and only really by slowly building new foundations under the +old. In fact the new is not in many ways the old at all, though this is +to anticipate.</p> + +<p>It is directly to the point here that the whole scheme of religion as it +has come down to us on the Protestant side till within the last fifty +years was at once compactly interwrought, strongly supported and +unexpectedly vulnerable. The integrity of any one part of its line +depended upon the integrity of every other part; its gospel went back +to the Fall of Man and depended, therefore, upon the Biblical theory of +the Creation and subsequent human history. If anything should challenge +the scientific or historical accuracy of the book of Genesis, the +doctrine of original sin would have either to be discarded or recast. If +the doctrine of original sin were discarded or recast, the accepted +interpretations of the Atonement went with it. With these changed or +weakened the evangelical appeal must either be given new character or +lose force. A system which began with the Fall on one side went on to +heaven and hell on the other and even heaven and hell were more +dependent upon ancient conceptions of the physical structure of the +world and the skies above it than the Church was willing to recognize. +The doctrine of eternal punishment particularly was open to ethical +challenge.</p> + + +<p><i>Evangelical Protestantism the Outcome of the Whole Process</i></p> + +<p>Of course all this is rather an extreme statement of the situation fifty +years ago. The churches did not all agree in insisting upon a +conversion; some evangelic churches were beginning to place their +emphasis upon Christian nurture; they sought what is secured for the +emotionally twice-born through guided growth and a larger dependence +upon normal spiritual conditions, though they were at least one with +their brethren in believing that those who come into Christian +discipleship must in the end be greatly changed and conscious of the +change; they too must possess as an assurance of the reality of their +religious life a sense of peace and spiritual well-being.</p> + +<p>The high Anglican Church approached the Latin Catholic Church in its +insistence upon sacramental regeneration. This wing of the Church +believed and believes still that baptism truly administered and the Holy +Communion also administered in proper form and accepted in due obedience +by priests belonging to some true succession, possess a mystic saving +power. Just why all this should be so they are perhaps not able to +explain to the satisfaction of any one save those who, for one reason or +another, believe it already. But those who cannot understand +sacramentarianism may dismiss it far too easily, for though there be +here danger of a mechanical formulism, the sacraments themselves may +become part of a spiritual discipline through which the lives of men and +women are so profoundly changed as in the most clear case of conversion, +manifesting often a spiritual beauty not to be found in any other +conception of Christian discipleship. Our differences here are not so +great as we suppose them.</p> + +<p>There have always been liberal reactions within the Church herself, +tending either toward relaxation of discipline or the more rational and +simple statements of doctrine. What has been so far said would not be +true of Unitarianism and Universalism in the last century. But these +movements have been somehow wanting in driving power, and so, when all +these qualifications are made, evangelical Protestantism has resulted in +a pretty clearly recognizable type. The representative members of the +representative evangelical churches all had a religious experience; some +of them had been converted after much waiting at the anxious seat, or +long kneeling at the altar rail; others of them had been brought through +Christian teaching to the confession of their faith, but all of them +were thereby reborn. They were the product of a theology which taught +them their lost estate, offered them for their acceptance a mediatorial +and atoning Christ, assured them that through their faith their +salvation would be assured, and counselled them to look to their own +inner lives for the issue of all this in a distinct sense of spiritual +peace and well-being. If they doubted or questioned they were answered +with proof-texts; for their spiritual sustenance they were given the +services of their churches where preaching was generally central, and +exhorted to grow in grace and knowledge through prayer and much reading +of their Bible.</p> + + +<p><i>The Individual Experience of the Believer the Keystone of Evangelical +Protestantism. Its Openness to Disturbing Forces</i></p> + +<p>Now fine and good as all this was it was, as the event proved, not big +enough to answer all the needs of the soul, nor strong enough to meet +the challenge of forces which were a half century ago shaping themselves +toward the almost entire recasting of great regions of human thought. It +was, to begin with, unexpectedly weak in itself. Evangelical +Protestantism, as has been noted, throws upon the members of Protestant +churches a larger burden of individual responsibility than does the +Catholic Church. The typical evangelical Protestant has had little to +sustain him in his religious life save his sense of reconciliation with +God, from whom possibly he never vitally thought himself to have been +estranged, and a consequent spiritual peace.</p> + +<p>His church promises him nothing except teaching, inspiration, +comradeship, an occasion for the confession of his faith and some +opportunity for service. His ministers are only such as he; they may +exhort but they dare not absolve. He is greatly dependent, then, for his +sense of the reality of religion upon his own spiritual states. If he is +spiritually sensitive and not too much troubled by doubt, if he +possesses a considerable capacity for religious understanding, if his +Bible is still for him the authoritative word of God, if his church +meets his normal religious needs with a reasonable degree of adequacy, +if he is resolute in purpose and if he has no excessively trying +experiences in the face of which his faith breaks down, and if the cares +of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, or the strain of poverty do +not too much distract him (and this is a long and formidable list of +ifs) then he is faithful in his church relationships and personally +devout. He grows in grace and knowledge and the outcome of it all is a +religious character admirable in manifold ways, steadfast and truthful +in good works.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The fact that in spite of all hindrances the Protestant churches do go +on, registering from decade to decade a varying statistical growth with +a strongly organized life and a great body of communicants who find in +the religious life thus secured to them the true secret of interior +peace and their true source of power, is itself a testimony to the +massive reality of the whole system. And yet the keystone of the great +structure is just the individual experience of the individual believer, +conditioned upon his longing for deliverance and his personal assurance +that he has found, through his faith in his church's gospel, what he +seeks.</p> + +<p>If anything should shake the Protestant's confidence in his creed or his +Bible, or if his own inner experiences should somehow fail in their +sense of sustaining reality, then all the structure of his religion +begins to weaken.</p> + +<p>If one may use and press a suggestive figure, here is a religious +structure very much like Gothic architecture; its converging arches of +faith and knowledge lock up upon their keystones and the thrust of the +whole great structure has been met and conquered by flying buttresses. +In other words, sustaining forces of accredited beliefs about science, +history and human nature have been a necessary part of the entire system +and the temple of faith thus sustained may be weakened either through +some failure in the keystone of it which is inner experience, or the +flying buttresses of it which are these accepted systems of science, +history, philosophy and psychology.</p> + + +<p><i>Readjustment of Both Catholic and Protestant Systems Inevitable</i></p> + +<p>Out of such elements as these, then, through such inheritances and +disciplines the representative religious consciousness of American +Protestantism of the end of the nineteenth century had been created. It +rooted itself in elements common to all religion, it inherited +practically the whole content of the Old Testament, it invested Hebraic +systems of sacrifice with typical meanings and Jewish prophecy with a +mystic authority. It was in debt to St. Paul and Augustine for its +theology. Its cosmogony was 4,000 years old and practically uninfluenced +by modern science, or else at odds with it. It was uncritical in its +acceptance of the supernatural and trained on the whole to find its main +line of evidence for the reality of religion in the supernatural. It +made more of the scheme of deliverance which St. Paul found in the +Crucifixion of Jesus than the ethics of the Gospels. It was mystic in +its emphasis upon an inner testimony to the realities it offered. For +the Protestant it locked up unexpectedly upon the infallible authority +of the Bible and for the Catholic upon the inerrancy of the Church. It +was out of the current of the modern temper in science and philosophy +generally. Its conceptions of the probable fate of the world were Jewish +and of the future life were medieval, and perhaps the strangest thing in +it all was the general unconsciousness of its dependence upon +assumptions open to challenge at almost every point and the process of +profound readjustment upon the threshold of which it stood.</p> + +<p>It is almost impossible to disentangle the action of the two sets of +strain which have within the last half century been brought to bear upon +it. Each has reacted upon the other. Perhaps the best thing to do is to +consider the forces which for the last two generations have been +challenging and reshaping inherited faiths, and then to consider the +outcome of it all in the outstanding religious attitudes of our own +time.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> + +<h3>NEW FORCES AND OLD FAITHS</h3> + + +<p>Within the last fifty years particularly the fundamentals of the +Christian faith have not only come up for reëxamination but have been +compelled to adapt themselves to facts and forces which have gone +farther toward recasting them than anything for a millennium and a half +before. The Reformation went deep but it did not go to the bottom. There +are differences enough in all reason between Protestantism and +Catholicism, but their identities are deeper still. The world of Martin +Luther and John Calvin was not essentially different in its outlook upon +life from the world of Augustine and Athanasius. The world of Jonathan +Edwards was much the same as the world of John Calvin and the world of +1850 apparently much the same as the world of Jonathan Edwards. There +was, of course, an immense difference in the mechanism with which men +were working but an unexpectedly small difference in their ruling ideas.</p> + + +<p><i>The Readjustments of Christian Faith More Far-reaching in the Last +Fifty Years Than for a Thousand Years Before; Science Releases the +Challenging Forces</i></p> + +<p>We should not, of course, underestimate the contribution of the +Reformation to the breaking up of the old order. It left the theologies +more substantially unchanged than Protestantism has usually supposed, +but it did mark the rise of changed attitudes toward authority. The +reformers themselves did not accept without protest the spirit they +released. They imposed new authorities and obediences upon their +churches; they distrusted individual initiative in spiritual things and +the more democratic forms of church organization. John Calvin sought in +his Institutes to vindicate the law-abiding character of his new gospel; +Luther turned bitterly against the German peasants in their demand for a +most moderate measure of social justice; the Anglican leaders exiled the +Pilgrims; the Puritan drove the Quaker out of Boston through an +instinctive distrust of inward illumination as a safe guide for faith +and religious enthusiasm as a sound basis for a new commonwealth. But +the spirit was out of the bottle and could not be put back.</p> + +<p>The right of the individual to make his own religious inquiries and +reach his own religious conclusions was little in evidence for almost +two hundred years after the Reformation, partly because the reactions of +the post-Reformation period made the faithful generally content to rest +in what had already been secured, partly because traditional authority +was still strong, and very greatly because there was neither in history, +philosophy nor science new material upon which the mind might exercise +itself. We may take 1859, almost exactly two hundred years after the +final readjustments of the Reformation period, as the point of departure +for the forces which have so greatly modified our outlook upon our +world and our understanding of ourselves; not that the date is +clean-cut, for we see now how many things had already begun to change +before Darwin and the Origin of Species.</p> + +<p>Darwin's great achievement is to have suggested the formula in which +science and history have alike been restated. He had no thought at all +that what he was doing would reach so far or change so much. He simply +supposed himself, through patient and exhaustive study, to have +accounted for the rich variety of life without the supposition of a +special creation for each form. But the time was ripe and longing for +what he supplied and his hypothesis was quickly taken and applied in +almost every field of thought. Nor does it greatly matter that Darwinism +has been and may be still greatly modified. We have come under the spell +of evolution. Our universe is no longer a static thing; it is growing +and changing. Our imaginations are impressed by long sequences of +change, each one of them minute in itself but in the mass capable of +accounting for immense transformations. Darwin's initiative released the +scientific temper which has been the outstanding characteristic of our +own age. The physicist, the chemist and the biologist re-related their +discoveries in the light of his governing principle and supplied an +immense body of fact for further consideration. Geology was reborn, the +records of the rocks came to have a new meaning, every broken fossil +form became a word, maybe a paragraph, for the retelling of the past of +the earth.</p> + +<p>Astronomy supplied cosmic backgrounds for terrestrial evolution and +Physics became a kind of court of appeal for both. The physicist +proclaimed the conservation of energy, reduced seeming solidities to +underlying force and resolved force itself into ultimate and tenuous +unities. The processes thus discovered and related seemed to be +self-sufficient. No need to bring in anything from the outside; unbroken +law, unfailing sequence were everywhere in evidence. Where knowledge +failed speculation bridged the gap. One might begin with a nebula and go +on in unbroken sequence to Plato or Shakespeare without asking for +either material, law or force which was not in the nebula to begin with. +Man himself took his own place in the majestic procession; he, too, was +simply the culmination of a long ascent, with the roots of his being +more deeply in the dust than he had ever dreamed and compelled to +confess himself akin to what he had aforetime scorned.</p> + + +<p><i>The Reaction of Evolution Upon Religion</i></p> + +<p>All our old chronologies became incidental in a range of time before +which even imagination grew dizzy. We found fragments of the skulls of +our ancestors in ancient glacial drifts and the traditional 6,000 years +since creation hardly showed on the dial upon which Geology recorded its +conclusions. There is no need to follow in detail how all this reacted +upon religion. The accepted religious scheme of things was an +intricately interlocking system irresistible in its logic as long as the +system remained unchallenged in its crucial points. If these should +begin to be doubted then the Christian appeal would have lost, for the +time at least, a most considerable measure of its force. The inner peace +which we have already seen to be the keystone of the Protestant arch +grew in part out of the sense of a universal condemnation from which the +believer was happily saved; this in turn was conditioned by the +unquestioned acceptance of the Genesis narrative. We can see clearly +enough now that Christianity, and Protestant Christianity especially, +really depended upon something deeper than all this. Still for the time +being all these things were locked up together and once the accepted +foundations of theology began to be questioned far-reaching adjustments +were inevitable and the time of readjustment was bound to be marked by +great restlessness and confusion.</p> + +<p>The evolutionary hypothesis profoundly affected man's thought about +himself. It challenged even more sharply his thought about God. Atheism, +materialism and agnosticism are an old, old trinity, but they had up to +our own time been at the mercy of more positive attitudes through their +inability to really answer those insurgent questions: Whence? Whither? +and Why? Creation had plainly enough demanded a creator. When Napoleon +stilled a group of debating officers in Egypt by pointing with a +Napoleonic gesture to the stars and saying, "Gentlemen, who made all +these?" his answer had been final. Paley's old-fashioned turnip-faced +watch with its analogies in the mechanism of creation had supplied an +irresistible argument for a creation according to design and a designing +creator. But now all this was changed. If Napoleon could have ridden +out from his august tomb, reassembled his officers from the dust of +their battlefields and resumed the old debate, the officers would have +been apparently in the position to answer—"Sire, they made themselves." +Our universe seemed to be sufficient unto itself.</p> + +<p>We have reacted against all this and rediscovered God, if indeed we had +ever lost Him, but this ought not to blind those who have accomplished +the great transition to the confusion of faith which followed the +popularization of the great scientific generalizations, nor ought it to +blind us to the fact that much of this confusion still persists. +Christian theism was more sharply challenged by materialism and +agnosticism than by a frankly confessed atheism. Materialism was the +more aggressive; it built up its own great system, posited matter and +force as the ultimate realities, and then showed to its own satisfaction +how everything that is is just the result of their action and +interaction. Nor did materialism pause upon the threshold of the soul +itself. Consciousness, so conceived, was a by-product of the higher +organization of matter, and we ourselves a spray flung up out of the +infinite ocean of being to sparkle for a moment in the light and then +fall back again into the depths out of which we had been borne.</p> + +<p>Those who so defined us made us bond-servants of matter and force from +birth to death though they drew back a little from the consequences of +their own creeds and sought to save a place for moral freedom and +responsibility and a defensible altruism. It is doubtful if they +succeeded. Materialism affected greatly the practical conduct of life. +It offered its own characteristic values; possession and pleasure became +inevitably enough the end of action, and action itself, directed toward +such ends, became the main business of life. Science offered so +fascinating a field for thought as to absorb the general intellectual +energy of the generation under the spell of it; the practical +application of science to mechanism and industry with the consequent +increase in luxury and convenience, absorbed the force of practical men.</p> + +<p>It naturally went hard with religion in a world so preoccupied. Its +foundations were assailed, its premises questioned, its conclusions +denied, its interests challenged. The fact that religion came through it +at all is a testimony both to the unconquerable force of faith and the +unquenchable need of the soul for something greater than the scientific +gospel revealed or the achievements of science supplied.</p> + + +<p><i>The Reaction of Biblical Criticism Upon Faith</i></p> + +<p>The first front along which the older faith met the impact of new forces +was scientific; the second drive was at a more narrow but, as far as +religion goes, an even more strategic front. The Bible had to submit to +those processes of inquiry and criticism which had so greatly altered +the scientific outlook. The Old and New Testaments, as has been said, +supplied really the basal authority for the whole Protestant order, and +speaking merely as a historian one is well within the facts when one +says that even before the enlightenment of the last two generations the +traditional way of thinking about the Bible had not proved satisfactory. +The more free-minded were conscious of its contradictions; they could +not reconcile its earlier and later moral idealisms; they found in it as +much to perplex as to help them. Some of them, therefore, disowned it +altogether and because it was tied up in one bundle with religion, as +they knew religion, they disowned religion at the same time. Others who +accepted its authority but were unsatisfied with current interpretations +of it sought escape in allegorical uses of it. (We shall find this to be +one of the distinct elements in Christian Science.) But after all it did +answer the insistent questions, Whence? and Whither? and Why? as nothing +else answered them. Therefore, in spite of challenge and derelict faith +and capricious interpretations and forced harmonies it still held its +own. Directly science began to offer its own answers to Whence? and +Whither? and Why? curiosity found an alternative. Science had its own +book of genesis, its own hypothesis as to the creation of man, its own +conclusions as to his ascent. These had a marvellously emancipating and +stimulating power; they opened, as has been said, vast horizons; they +affected philosophy; they gave a new content to poetry, for the poet +heard in the silences of the night:</p> + +<p class="indented"> +"Æonian music measuring out<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance—</span><br /> +The blows of Death."<br /> +</p> + +<p>The challenge of science to the book of Genesis specifically and to the +miraculous narratives with which both the Old and the New Testaments are +veined more generally, doubtless stimulated Biblical criticism, but the +time was ripe for that also. The beginnings of it antedate the +scientific Renaissance, but the freer spirit of the period offered +criticism its opportunity, the scientific temper supplied the method and +the work began.</p> + +<p>Inherited faith has been more directly affected by Biblical criticism +than by the result of scientific investigation and the generalizations +based thereon. The Bible had been the average man's authority in science +and history as well as faith. That statement naturally needs some +qualification, for before evolution took the field it was possible not +only to reconcile a fair knowledge of the natural sciences with the +Bible, but even, as in the argument for design, to make them +contributory to Bible teaching. But evolution changed all that and it +was really through the impact of the more sweeping scientific +conclusions upon his Bible that the average man felt their shock upon +his faith. If he had been asked merely to harmonize the genesis of the +new science with the genesis of the Old Testament he would have had +enough to occupy his attention, though perhaps he might have managed it. +The massive mind of Gladstone accomplished just that to its own entire +satisfaction.</p> + +<p>But the matter went deeper. A wealth of slowly accumulated knowledge was +brought to bear upon the Scriptures and a critical acumen began to +follow these old narratives to their sources. There is no need here to +follow through the results in detail. They<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> were seen to have been +drawn from many sources, in some cases so put together that the joints +and seams were plainly discernible. One wonders how they had so long +escaped observation. The Bible was seen to contain contributory elements +from general ancient cultures; its cosmogony the generally accepted +cosmogony of the time and the region; its codes akin to other and older +codes. It contained fragments of old songs and the old lore of the +common folk. It was seen to record indisputably long processes of moral +growth and spiritual insight. Its prophets spoke out of their time and +for their time. It was plainly enough no longer an infallible dictation +to writers who were only the automatic pens of God, it was a growth +rooted deep in the soil out of which it grew and the souls of those who +created it. The fibres of its main roots went off into the darkness of a +culture too long lost ever to be quite completely understood. It was no +longer ultimate science or unchallenged history.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The Old Testament narratives particularly. The results of +New Testament criticism have not yet fully reached the popular mind.</p></div> + +<p>We have come far enough now to see that nothing really worth while has +been lost in this process of re-interpretation, and much has been +gained. If, as the French say in one of their luminous proverbs, to +understand is to pardon, to understand is also to be delivered from +doubts and forced apologies and misleading harmonies and the necessity +of defending the indefensible. In our use of the Bible, as in every +other region of life, the truth has made us free. It possesses +still—the Bible—the truth and revelation and meaning for life it +always possessed. We are gradually realizing this and gaining in the +realization. But the Bible has been compelled to meet the challenge of +an immensely expanded scientific and historical knowledge. We have had +to test its supposed authority as to beginnings by Astronomy, Geology +and Biology; we have had to test its history by the methods and +conclusions of modern historical investigation. The element of the +supernatural running through both the Old and New Testaments has been +compelled to take into account that emphasis upon law and ordered +process which is, perhaps more than any other single thing, the +contribution of science to the discipline of contemporaneous thought.</p> + + +<p><i>The Average Man Loses His Bearings</i></p> + +<p>The whole process has been difficult and unsettling. There was and is +still a want of finality in the conclusions of Biblical scholars. It +needed and needs still more study than the average man is able to give +to understand their conclusions; it needed and it needs still a deal of +patient, hard, clear-visioned thinking to win from the newer +interpretations of the Bible that understanding and acceptance of its +value which went with the inherited faith. The more liberal-minded +religious teachers doubtless very greatly overestimate the penetration +of popular thought already accomplished, by what seems to them a +familiar commonplace. The New Testament is still, even for the scholar, +a challenging problem. Conclusions are being bitterly contested and +where the specialist is himself in doubt the average man is naturally in +utter confusion. The more conservative communions neither accept nor +teach the results of the higher criticism, and so it reaches the body of +their communicants only as rumour and a half-understood menace to the +truth.</p> + +<p>Religion is naturally the most conservative thing in the world and even +when we think ourselves to have utterly changed our point of view +something deeper than mere intellectual acceptance protests and will not +be dismissed. We pathetically cling to that to which we, at the same +time, say good-bye. The average man somewhat affected by the modern +scientific spirit is greatly perplexed by the miraculous elements in the +Bible and yet he still believes the Bible the word of God with an +authority nothing else possesses. In fact, by a contradiction easy +enough to understand, what puzzles him most seems to him the clearest +evidence of the supernatural character of the narrative itself. His +religion is not so much the interpretation of what he does understand as +the explanation of what he does not understand. If he gives up the +supernatural his faith goes with it, and yet the other side of him—the +scientifically tempered side—balks at the supernatural.</p> + +<p>It is hard to know what to do with such a temper. Indeed, just this +confused temper of believing and doubting, with miracles for the storm +center, has offered a rich field for those interpretations of the +miraculous, particularly in the New Testament, in terms of faith and +mental healing, to which Christian Science and New Thought are so much +given. We may conclude in a sentence by saying that since the +infallibility of the Bible was one of the flying buttresses which upheld +the inherited structure of religion, those changes and confusions which +have grown out of two generations of Biblical criticism have greatly +affected the popular faith.</p> + + +<p><i>The New Psychology Both a Constructive and Disturbing Influence</i></p> + +<p>A third influence tending to break up the stability of the old order has +been the new psychology. So general a statement as this needs also to be +qualified, for, suggestively enough, the new psychology has not so much +preceded as followed the modern multiplication of what, using James' +phrase, we may call the "Varieties of Religious Experience." It has +been, in part, a widening of our conclusions as to the mind and its +processes to make room for the puzzling play of personality which has +revealed itself in many of these experiences. Hypnotism necessarily +antedated the interest of psychology in the hypnotic state; it compelled +psychology to take account of it and for the explaining of hypnotism +psychology has been compelled to make a new study of personality and its +more obscure states. The psychologists have been far more hospitable to +the phenomena of mental healing than have the faculties of medicine. +They took them seriously before the average doctor would even admit that +they existed. Their study led them to a pretty thoroughgoing +consideration of the power of suggestion upon bodily states, and +eventually to formulate, as they have been able, both the laws of +suggestion and the secret of its power. Telepathy and psychic phenomena +generally have also offered a rich field to the student of the abnormal +and psychology has broadened its investigations to include all these +conditions. That is to say, the border-land phenomena of consciousness +as stressed and manifested in the more bizarre cults have really +supplied the material upon which the new psychology has been working, +and the psychologist to-day is seriously trying to explain a good many +things which his predecessors, with their hard and fast analyses of the +mind and its laws, refused to take seriously.</p> + +<p>They concede that a complete psychology must have a place in it for the +abnormal as well as the normal, and for the exceptional as well as for +the staid and universally accepted. Those who have been fathering new +religions and seeking to make the abnormal normal have been quick to +avail themselves of the suggestions and permissions in the new +psychology. Once we have crossed the old and clearly defined frontiers, +almost anything seems possible. Personality, we are now taught, is +complex, far-reaching, and is really, like a floating iceberg, more +largely below the sea level of consciousness than above it. How far it +extends and what connections it makes in these its hidden depths, no one +of us may know. Normal consciousness, to change the figure, is just one +brilliantly illuminated center in a world of shadow deepening into +darkness. The light grows more murky, the shadows more insistent, as we +pass down, or out, or back from that illumined center. We cannot tell +how much of the shadow is really a part of us, nor do we dare to be +dogmatic about what may, or may not, there be taking place.</p> + +<p>Indeed, we may fill the shadows with almost anything which caprice or +desire may suggest. Our curiously inventive minds have always loved to +fill in our ignorances with their creations. We formerly had the +shadowed backgrounds of the universe to populate with the creatures of +our fear or fancy, but now, strangely enough, since science has let in +its light upon the universe psychology has given us the subconscious as +a region not yet subdued to law or shot through with light. And the +prophets of new cults and border-land movements have taken advantage of +this. "Since there is," they say in substance, "so much in life of which +we are not really conscious, and since there are hints within us of +strange powers, how can we set limits to what we may either be or do, +and may not one man's caprice be as reasonable as another man's reason?"</p> + +<p>The popularization of the new psychology has thus created a soil finely +receptive to the unusual. Without understanding what has been +accomplished in the way of investigation, and with little accurate +knowledge of what has actually been tested out, there is amongst us a +widespread feeling that almost anything is possible. Here also we may +end in a sentence by saying that present-day psychology with its wide +sweep of law, its recognition of the abnormal, its acceptance of and +insistence upon the power of suggestion, its recognition of the +subconscious and its tendency to assign thereto a great force of +personal action, has broken down old certainties and given a free field +to imagination. It has, more positively, taught us how to apply the laws +of mental action to the more fruitful conduct of life, and so supplied +the basis for the cults which make much of efficiency and +self-development. It has also lent new meaning to religion all along the +line.</p> + + +<p><i>The Influence of Philosophy and the Social Situation</i></p> + +<p>How far contemporaneous philosophy has affected inherited faith or +supplied a basis for new religious development, is more difficult to +say. Beyond debate philosophic materialism has greatly influenced the +religious attitude of multitudes of people just as the reactions against +it have supplied the basis for new religious movements. Pragmatism, +affirming that whatever works is true, has tended to supply a +philosophic justification for whatever seems to work, whether it be true +or not, and it has beside tended to give us a world where little islands +of understandings have taken, as it were, the place of a continuous +continent of truth. The tendencies of the leaders of new cults have been +to take the material which science and psychology have supplied and +build them into philosophies of their own; they have not generally been +able or willing to test themselves by the conclusions of more +disciplined thinkers.</p> + +<p>New Thought has undoubtedly been affected by the older +idealisms—Berkeley's for example—while James and Royce have supplied +congenial material. The movements are generally selective. New Thought +uses James' applied psychology and possibly Royce's Absolute, but does +not consistently confine itself to any one system. Philosophy also has +been itself of late working in a pretty rarified region. Its problems +have not been the problems of the common mind. It has been trying to +find out how we know, to relate the inner and the outer world, and in +general to account for things which the average man takes for granted, +and in the understanding of which he is more hindered than helped by the +current philosophy of the schools. It takes philosophy a good while to +reach the man in the street, and even then its conclusions have to be +much popularized and made specific before they mean much for him. We +shall know better fifty years from now what philosophy is doing for +religion and life than we know to-day. There are, however, as has been +said, aspects of philosophy which religion generally is beginning to +take into account.</p> + +<p>The failure of Christianity to create for itself a distinctly Christian +environment has also had much to do with dissolving old religious +stabilities. Strongly felt social injustices are releasing forces of +discontent and creating a fertile soil for revolutionary experiment, +though it must be said that modern religious cults and movements have +not gained so much from this particular form of discontent as have those +movements which look toward radical social readjustment. But the whole +situation has created a shaken state of public opinion. The fierceness +of modern competition, industrially and economically, finally carried +through to the tragic competition of a world war, has put our tempers on +edge. The extremes of wealth and poverty and the baffling fluctuations +in modern industry have brought the existing order into disrepute. The +very great number of the socially unfit and the grievous number of +social misfits, along with crime and poverty and the deposit of human +sediment in our cities, not only trouble men of good will but create a +human element easily misled. Such conditions as these are in such +painful contrast with the ideals of the Gospel, the spirit of +Christianity and even the potential productive force of modern society +as to lead many to believe that something is radically wrong. Many are +persuaded that Christianity as now organized and led is socially +sterile; they have withdrawn themselves from the church; many of them +have become its mordant critics; the more extreme of them have disowned +religion as well as its organized form, and the violently radical would +dethrone any conception of the Divine and take the word God out of our +vocabulary. This extreme group has not for the most part associated +itself with the new religious movement, but here at least has been a +disintegrating force.</p> + + +<p><i>An Age of Confusion</i></p> + +<p>In such ways as these, then, the accepted religious order identified +with historic Catholicism and Protestantism has in the last fifty years +been greatly altered. Science, Biblical criticism, psychology and +philosophy, and social unrest have all had their share in making people +impatient of the inherited order, or doubtful or defiant of it. We have +been asked to relate our old creeds and confidences to new insights and +understandings. The old answers to the questions Whence? and Whither? +and Why? have been challenged by new answers; our horizons have been +pushed back in every direction and a strange sense of mystery both in +personality and the external order has perplexed and stimulated us. +Along with all this and in no little way growing out of it, has gone +impatience of discipline and an undue haste to gain the various goods of +life.</p> + +<p>Evolution misled us, to begin with. If the longing for deliverance be +one of the driving forces in religious life, then the vaster scientific +conclusions of the latter part of the nineteenth century offered a new +definition of deliverance. It was not, after all, so much in the travail +of the soul as in a serene and effortless self-commitment to a power, +not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, that we were to be saved. +We had only to push out upon tides which asked of us neither rudder nor +oar, to be brought to our appointed havens. How greatly we have been +disillusioned in all this and how bitterly we have been taught that life +is not so much a drifting with the tide as making brave headway against +it, we all know well enough to-day. Somewhere back of a vast deal in +these modern religious cults and movements, is the smug optimism, now +taking one form and now another, which was the misleading bequest of +the nineteenth century to the twentieth.</p> + +<p>The great scientific discoveries and their application to the mechanism +of life led the nineteenth century to believe that nothing was +impossible. Everything we touched became plastic beneath our touch save +possibly ourselves; there seemed to be no limit to what man might do and +he consequently assumed that there was no limit to what he might become. +He disassociated his hopes from both his disciplines and experiences; +everything seemed not only possible but easily possible. A general +restlessness of temper, due in part to the breaking up of the inherited +order, in part to the ferment of new ideas and in part to a general +relaxing of discipline, began to manifest itself.</p> + +<p>The demoralizing influence of migratory populations ought not to be +overlooked in this connection. In all the Western nations there has been +an outstanding growth of industrial city populations due to changing +economic conditions. The steadying influences of old environments have +been lost, the influence of the new environment is too stimulating at +its best and demoralizing at its worst. Our cities are not kind to home +life; too often they do not supply a proper physical setting for it. The +specialization of hard driven industries takes the creative joy out of +work and leads to an excess of highly commercialized pleasure. The +result is the modern city worker, never living long enough in one place +to create for himself a normal social environment, always anxious about +his economic future, restless, too largely alternating between +strenuous work and highly coloured pleasure and much open, through +temperament and circumstance, to the appeal of whatever promises him a +new experience or a new freedom.</p> + + +<p><i>The Lure of the Short Cut</i></p> + +<p>Dean Inge in a recent study of the contribution of the Greek temper to +religion has drawn a strong, though deeply shadowed picture of the +disorganization of modern life through such influences as these. "The +industrial revolution has generated a new type of barbarism, with no +roots in the past. For the second time in the history of Western Europe, +continuity is in danger of being lost. A generation is growing up, not +uneducated, but educated in a system which has little connection with +European culture in its historical development. The Classics are not +taught; the Bible is not taught; history is not taught to any effect. +What is even more serious, there are no social traditions. The modern +townsman is <i>déraciné</i>: he has forgotten the habits and sentiments of +the village from which his forefathers came. An unnatural and unhealthy +mode of life, cut off from the sweet and humanizing influences of +nature, has produced an unnatural and unhealthy mentality, to which we +shall find no parallels in the past. Its chief characteristic is +profound secularity or materialism. The typical town artisan has no +religion and no superstitions; he has no ideals beyond the visible and +tangible world of senses."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> "The Legacy of Greece," p. 38.</p></div> + +<p>Writing as an Englishman Dean Inge did not note the equally unsettling +influence of migratory races. The European peasant in Detroit or Chicago +or New York is still more <i>déraciné</i>. He has not only left the soil in +whose culture his ancestors had been established for generations, he has +left the tradition and the discipline which have made him what he is. +The necessary readjustments are immensely difficult. For the first +generation they are largely a dumb puzzle, or a dull, aching +homesickness or a gray laborious life whose outcome must be often +strangely different from their dreams, but for the second generation the +whole experience is a heady adventure in freedom not easy to analyze +though social workers generally are agreed that the children of the +immigrant, belonging neither to the old nor the new, are a disturbing +element in American life. A city like Detroit, in which this is being +written, where both movements combine, the American country and village +dweller coming to a highly specialized industrial center and the +European immigrant to an entirely new environment, illustrates the +complex issue of the whole process.</p> + +<p>It is just to note that the Catholic immigrant, finding in his Church +the one homelike thing, is often a better Catholic in America than he +was at home. A Protestant writer without accurate information would not +dare to generalize on the religious dislocation of the second Catholic +generation. But there must be a very great loss. The large non-churched +elements in our population must be in part due to Catholic +disintegration as they are certainly due to Protestant disintegration. +And new movements find their opportunity in this whole group. In +general, society, through such influences, has grown impatient of +discipline, scornful of old methods, contemptuous of experience and +strangely unwilling to pay the price of the best. The more unstable have +surrendered themselves to the lure of the short cut; they are persuaded +that there are quick and easy roads to regions of well-being which had +before been reached only through labour and discipline and much travail +of body, mind and soul.</p> + + +<p><i>Popular Education Has Done Little to Correct Current Confusions</i></p> + +<p>Nor has the very great extension of popular education really done much +to correct this; it seems rather to intensify it, for education shared +and shares still the temper of the time. Our education has been more +successful generally in opening vistas than in creating an understanding +of the laws of life and the meaning of experience; it has given us a +love of speculation without properly trained minds; it has furnished us +with the catch words of science and philosophy but has not supplied, in +the region of philosophy particularly, the corresponding philosophic +temper. It has, above all, been fruitful in unjustified self-confidence, +particularly here in America. We have confused a great devotion to +higher education and the widespread taking of its courses with the solid +fruition of it in mental discipline. America particularly has furnished +for a long time now an unusual opportunity for bizarre and capricious +movements. Nothing overtaxes the credulity of considerable elements in +our population. Whatever makes a spacious show of philosophy is sure to +find followers and almost any self-confident prophet has been able to +win disciples, no matter to what extremes he goes.</p> + +<p>This has not been equally true of older civilizations with a more +clearly defined culture or a more searching social discipline. Something +must be lacking in the education of a people in which all this is so +markedly possible. The play of mass psychology (one does not quite dare +to call it mob psychology) also enters into the situation. Democracy +naturally makes much of the verdict of majorities. Any movement which +gains a considerable number of adherents is pretty sure to win the +respect of the people who have been taught to judge a cause by the +number of those who can be persuaded to adopt it. This generally +unstable temper, superficial, restless, unduly optimistic, open to +suggestion and wanting in the solid force of great tradition has joined +with the recasting of Science, Theology, Psychology and Philosophy, to +open the door for the entrance of new religions, and in general, to so +unsettle the popular mind as to make almost anything possible.</p> + + +<p><i>The Churches Lose Authority</i></p> + +<p>In the field of religion certain well-defined consequences have either +followed or accompanied the whole process. There has been, to begin +with, a loosening of church ties. The extent of all this has been +somewhat covered up by the reasonable growth of the historic churches. +In spite of all the difficulties which they have been called upon to +face, the statistics generally have been reassuring. The churches are +attended in the aggregate by great numbers of people who are untroubled +by doubts. Such as these have little sympathy with the more restless or +troubled, and little patience with those who try to understand the +restless and troubled; they do not share the forebodings of those who +look with a measure of apprehension upon the future of Christianity. As +far as they recognize disturbing facts at all they are very much like +Carlyle who, when told that Christianity was upon its last legs, said, +"What of that? Christianity has always been upon its last legs." And +perhaps their simple faith and hope are more to the point than many +opposing attitudes. The churches have grown faster than the population, +or at least they had at the last census. More than that, there has been +a marked increase in church activity. The churches are better organized; +they are learning the secret of coöperation; they are reaching out in +more directions and all of them, even the more democratic, are more hard +driven from the top.</p> + +<p>The result of all this has been a great show of action, though it is +difficult now to say whether the real results of this multiplied +activity have been commensurate in spiritual force and ethical fruitage +with the intensity of their organized life. (The writer thinks not.) But +through all this we discern, nevertheless, a marked weakening of +authority as far as the Church goes and a general loosening of ties; +though the churches in the regions of finance and organization drive +harder than they used to drive, in the matter of creed and conduct they +are driving with an easy rein. Denominational loyalties are relaxed; +there is much changing from one denomination to another and within the +denominations and individual churches there is, of course, a substantial +proportion of membership which is only nominal.</p> + + +<p><i>Efforts at Reconstruction Within the Church</i></p> + +<p>There are those who view with apprehension the whole future of religion. +They believe that the foundations of the great deep are breaking beneath +us, that Christianity must be profoundly recast before it can go on +prevailingly, and they are reaching in one direction and another for +constructive changes, but all this within the frontiers of historic +Christianity and the Church. They want church unity but they still want +a church; they want a new theology but still a theology; they want new +applications of religion but still substantially the old religion. There +was more of this during the war than just now. Such a book as Orchard's +"Future of Religion," perhaps the most thoughtful analysis of conditions +given us for a long time, was born of the war itself and already many of +its anticipations seem to miss the point. Such expectations of wholesale +religious reconstruction leave out of account the essential conservatism +of human nature, a conservatism more marked in religion than anywhere +else.</p> + +<p>There is also a strong and telling group which is seeking so to recast +and interpret inherited faiths as to make them more consonant to modern +needs and more hospitable to new understandings. Such as these have +accepted gladly the tested conclusions of science, the results of +Biblical criticism and the revealing suggestion of both psychology and +philosophy; they have sought to disentangle the essential from the +unessential, the enduring from the transient. They have found in science +not the foe but the friend of religion. Those intimations of unfailing +force, those resolutions of the manifold phases of action and reality +toward which science is reaching have seemed to them a discovery of the +very presence and method of God, and they have found in just such +regions as these new material for their faith. They have dealt +reverently with the old creeds, for they have seen that the forms which +Christianity has taken through the centuries have grown out of enduring +experiences and needs never to be outgrown, and that their finality is +the finality of the deep things of the soul itself. They have been able, +therefore, to make new truth tributary to old faith and to interpret the +central affirmations of Christianity in terms of present-day facts. They +have sought to share their conclusions with others and they have really +been able to carry Christianity through the transitional period of the +last fifty years and continue it open-minded, strongly established, +reverent and enriched rather than impoverished.</p> + +<p>What they have done has been doubly hard, once through the sheer +difficulty of the task itself, and once through the hostile and too +often abusive temper with which they and their endeavours have been +opposed. None the less, they have saved for Christendom a reasonable +faith. Science has of late gone half-way to meet them. It is rather +painfully revising a good many of its earlier conclusions and on the +whole walking rather humbly just now before its God, recognizing that +the last word has not yet really been said about much of anything.</p> + + +<p><i>An Age of Doubt and a Twilight-Zone in History</i></p> + +<p>But the apparently unchanged traditions of the older forms of faith and +the relatively strong position of the Church must not blind us to the +generally disorganized condition of religion to-day. There is much in +evidence a body of doubt which clouds the outlook of multitudes upon +religion generally. Beyond debate a kind of eclipse of faith began to +draw across the Western world so early as the middle of the last +century. The militant skepticism of the brilliant group of younger poets +who sang their defiances in the first two decades of the nineteenth +century to a world which professed itself duly shocked, is wholly +different from the sadness with which the more mature singers of two +generations later announce their questioning and their disillusionment. +The difference is just the difference between Shelley and Matthew +Arnold. There is a philosophic depth in this later music which the +former wholly lacked. Arnold speaks for his time when he announces +himself as standing between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to +be born. A profound disillusionment expressed itself in great ranges of +later nineteenth century literature and confirmed the more sensitive and +despairing in a positive pessimism, strangely contrasted to the +self-assertive temper of the science and industry of the period. It +would need a pretty careful analysis to follow all this to its roots. +Something of it no doubt was due to the inability of poet and +philosopher to reconcile their new understanding of life and the +universe with the old religious forms but more of it was likely due to +some deep exhaustion of spiritual force, an exhaustion which has from +time to time marked transitional periods in the development of cultures +and civilizations.</p> + +<p>There have always been twilight zones in history, times in which the +force of the old had spent itself and nothing new had come to take its +place. We are beginning to see now that we too have been passing through +a twilight zone whose contrasts are all the more dramatic through the +more than tropic swiftness with which the high lights of the Victorian +period darkened into the distractions and disillusionments of our own +time. The best one can say is that there was on the part of the more +sensitive a widespread anticipation of all this, as if the chill of a +coming shadow had fallen first of all upon them, and beyond debate, not +a little of the doubt which has been so marked a feature of the last two +generations in literature generally, and in the attitude of a great +number of people toward religion, has been due to just this.</p> + + +<p><i>The Hunger of the Soul and the Need for Faith Persist</i></p> + +<p>And yet, since religion is so inextinguishable a thing, changing forces +and attitudes have still left untouched the hunger of the soul and the +need of men for faith. Indeed the very restlessness of the time, the +breaking up of the old orders, the failure of the old certainties, has, +if anything, deepened the demand for religious reality and there has +been in all directions a marked turning to whatever offered itself as a +plausible substitute for the old, and above all a turning to those +religions which in quite clearly defined ways promise to demonstrate the +reality of religion through some sensible or tangible experience. If +religion will only work miracles and attest itself by some sign or other +which he who runs may read there is waiting for it an eager +constituency. We shall find as we go on how true this really is, for the +modern religious cult which has gained the largest number of followers +offers the most clearly defined signs and wonders.</p> + +<p>If religion cures your disease and you are twice persuaded, once that +you really are cured and once that religion has done it, then you have +something concrete enough to satisfy anybody. Or if, perplexed by death +and with no faith strong enough to pierce that veil through a persuasion +of the necessity of immortality established in the very nature of +things, you are offered a demonstration of immortality through the +voices and presences of the discarnate, then, once more, you have +something concrete enough, if only you were sure of it, to settle every +doubt. And finally, if the accepted religions are too concrete for you +and if you desire a rather vague and poetic approach to religion made +venerable by the centuries and appealingly picturesque through the +personalities of those who present it, you have in some adaptation of +oriental faith to occidental needs a novel and interesting approach to +the nebulous reality which passes in the Eastern mind for God, an +approach which demands no very great discipline and leaves a wide margin +for the play of caprice or imagination.</p> + + +<p><i>Modern Religious Cults and Movements Find Their Opportunity in the +Whole Situation. The Three Centers About Which They Have Organized +Themselves</i></p> + +<p>There has been, then, as the outcome of the complex of forces which we +have been considering, a new approach to religion distinctive in our own +time and in general taking three directions determined by that against +which it has reacted, or perhaps more positively by the varying +character of what it seeks. A pretty careful analysis of modern +religious cults and movements shows that they have organized themselves, +in action and reaction, around three centers definitely related to three +outstanding deficiencies of inherited faith. I say deficiencies, though +that is of course to beg the question. We saw earlier in this study how +religion everywhere and always grows out of some of the few central and +unexpectedly simple, though always supremely great, needs and how the +force of any religion waxes or wanes as it meets these needs. Religion +is real to the generality of us as it justifies the ways of God to man +and reveals the love and justice of God in the whole of personal +experience. Religion is always, therefore, greatly dependent upon its +power to reconcile the more shadowed side of experience with the Divine +love and power and goodness. It is hard to believe in a Providence whose +dealings with us seem neither just nor loving. Faith breaks down more +often in the region of trying personal experience than anywhere else.</p> + +<p>All this is as old as the book of Job but it is none the less true +because it is old.</p> + +<p>The accepted theology which explained sin and sorrow in terms of the +fall of man and covered each individual case with a blanket indictment +justified by the condemnation of the whole of humanity has lost its +force. It depended, to begin with, on a tradition of human beginnings +which has not borne examination, and it was beside, in spite of all the +efforts to defend it, profoundly unethical. Calvinistic theology, +moreover, made a difficult matter worse by assuming for every individual +a predestined fate reaching beyond death itself which a man was +powerless to escape. Those chapters in the long story of theology which +record the turning and groping of minds—and souls—enmeshed in this web +of their own weaving and more deeply entangled still in the challenging +experiences of life itself are among the most pathetic and arresting +in the whole story of human thought. We ought to recognize more clearly +than we have generally done and confess more frankly that our inherited +explanations of the problems of pain and sorrow have been markedly +unsatisfactory and have greatly contributed to the justifiable reaction +against them.</p> + +<p>One group of modern religious cults and movements, then, has found its +opportunity just here. Christian Science and kindred cults are just an +attempt to reconcile the love and goodness of God with pain, sickness, +sorrow, and to a lesser degree with sin. How they do this remains to be +seen, but the force of their appeal depends upon the fact that a very +considerable and constantly growing number of people believe that they +have really done it. Such cults as these have also found a place for the +New Testament tradition of healing; they have also appealed strongly to +those who seek a natural or a pseudo-natural explanation for the +miraculous elements in religion generally. They have been expectedly +reinforced by the feeling for the Bible which strongly persists among +those who are not able to find in the inherited Protestant position that +real help in the Bible which they had been taught they should there +find, and who are not, on the other hand, sufficiently acquainted with +the newer interpretations of it to find therein a resolution for their +doubts and a vital support for their faith. Finally, Christian Science +and kindred cults offer a demonstration of the reality of religion in +health and happiness, and generally, in a very tangible way of living. +Here, then, is the first region in which we find a point of departure +for modern religious cults and movements.</p> + +<p>Spiritualism organizes itself around another center. Religion generally +demands and offers a faith in immortality. We are not concerned here +with the grounds which various religions have supplied for this faith +or the arguments by which they have supported it. Generally speaking, +any religion loses ground as it fails to convince its adherents of +immortality, or justify their longings therefor. Any religion supplying +clear and indisputable proof of immortality will command a strong +following and any seeming demonstration of immortality not particularly +associated with this or that religious form will organize about itself a +group of followers who will naturally give up pretty much everything +else and center their entire interests upon the methods by which +immortality is thus supposed to be demonstrated. Now modern Spiritualism +comes in just here. It professes to offer a sure proof of immortality to +an age which is just scientific enough to demand something corresponding +to scientific proof for the support of its faith and not scientific +enough to accept all the implications of science, or to submit to its +discipline. Theosophy and kindred cults are generally a quest for +deliverance along other than accepted Christian lines; they substitute +self-redemption for Christian atonement, and deliverance through +mystical disciplines for that forgiveness of sin and assurance of +salvation in which Christianity has found its peace.</p> + +<p>There is, of course, a vast deal of action and reaction between the +newer movements themselves and between the new faith and the old. There +are elements common to all religions; there are frontiers where all +religions meet and somewhat merge; at some point or other almost every +faith touches its contrary or becomes uncertain and shifts its emphasis. +Religion is always dependent upon changing tempers and very greatly +upon varying personalities; it is always in flux, impatient of +definitions and refusing the rigid boundary lines within which we +attempt to confine it. Though it be clearly possible, therefore, to find +three distinct points of departure for the whole of the border-land +cults and religions, there is running through them all a certain unity +of driving force. They are in general a quest for a new type of +religious reality; they are largely due to certain marked inadequacies +of the more accepted religious teachings and to the want of the more +accepted religious experiences to satisfy certain types. They have come +to light in our own time through the failure of authority in both +Catholicism and Protestantism, through the failure of the accepted +understandings of the Bible to satisfy those who are still persuaded +that it has a real message and through the reaction of the modern spirit +upon religious attitudes. They owe much to the deficiency of the +traditional explanation of sin, sorrow and suffering; they owe something +to the failure of Christianity to create a Christian environment; and +they owe not a little to the natural longing for some positive assurance +of life after death, as well as to the quest of the soul for deliverance +and its longing for a satisfying communion with God. And they are +reinforced in every direction by the restless and unsettled temper of a +time subject to great changes of habit and outlook through the breaking +up of old industrial and social orders and the impact of new forces +driving in from every direction.</p> + +<p>We shall need to relate these conditioning causes more definitely to the +various cults and movements as we go on to study them, but here at least +are the backgrounds against which they must be studied and the lines of +testing down which they must be followed. We shall begin in our more +detailed study of these movements with the modern religious quest for +health and healing. But even here we shall find it worth while to trace +broadly the history of faith and mental healing.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> + +<h3>FAITH HEALING IN GENERAL</h3> + + +<p>Those cults which are either founded upon faith healing or involve it +have a long ancestry. George Barton Cutten's very suggestive book<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> +makes that clear enough and supplies an informing mass of detail. +Medical Science and Psychology have been slow to take into account the +facts thus submitted, but they have of late made amends for their +somewhat unaccountable delay, and we have now reached certain +conclusions about which there is little controversy except, indeed, as +to the range of their application. Beneath all faith healing and kindred +phenomena there are three pretty clearly defined bases. First, the +action or reaction of mind upon body; second, the control of mental +attitudes by the complex of faith; and, as an interrelated third, the +control of the lower nerve centers by suggestion.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> "Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing."</p></div> + + +<p><i>The Bases of Faith and Mental Healing</i></p> + +<p>There is an almost baffling interplay of what one may call these three +controlling principles, and the exhaustive discussion of the whole +subject demands the knowledge of the specialist. But we do know, to +begin with, that just as there are demonstrated bodily approaches to +both the mental and spiritual aspects of life, so there are equally +undeniable mental and even spiritual approaches to physical conditions. +We have here to fall back upon facts rather than upon a definite +knowledge of what happens in the shadowy border-land across which the +mind takes over and organizes and acts upon what is presented to it by +the afferent nervous system. Nothing, for example, could be really more +profound than the difference between waves of compression and +rarefaction transmitted through the luminiferous ether and the +translation of their impact into light. Somewhere between the retina of +the eye, with its magic web of sensitive nerve ends, and the proper +registering and transforming regions of the brain something happens +about which Science can say no final word.</p> + +<p>What happens in the case of light is equally true of sound and tactual +sensation. That vivid and happy consciousness of well-being which we +call health is just the translation of normal balances, pressures and +functionings in the mechanism of the body into an entirely different +order of phenomena. Health is a word of manifold meaning and if its +foundations are established in the harmonious coöperation of physical +processes, its superstructure rises through mental attitudes into what, +for want of a more clearly defined word, we call spiritual states. Two +orders meet and merge within us. Above a world of idea, insight, desire +and subordination of means to ends, the whole driven by the will and +saturated with emotion, a world which has its contacts with the unseen +and eternal and derives its strength from the truly immaterial; below a +world of material and forces in subjection to the laws of physics and +chemistry and involved in the processes of the conservation and +transformation of physical energy, and consciousness the clearing-house +for the whole.</p> + + +<p><i>Cannon's Study of Emotional Reactions Upon Physical States</i></p> + +<p>This interplay of body and mind has of late been made the subject of +careful and long continued experimentation with a special reference to +the reactions of strong emotion upon bodily states, particularly as +registered in chemical changes. These experiments have been carried on +with an almost incredible patience and attention to detail under the +most difficult circumstances, and their conclusions seem final. +Professor Walter B. Cannon of Harvard University has recently put the +result of such investigation at our service in a most interesting +way.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> (It ought to be said, however, that a similar series of +experiments repeated at the laboratories of the University of Chicago +failed to produce the same results.)</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage," quoted +without page references.</p></div> + +<p>Strong emotion affects almost every physical region, modifies almost +every physical function. The normal secretion of digestive fluids is +greatly increased by hunger (though here, of course, hunger itself may +have a physical basis) and also by what the investigator calls sham +feeding—food, that is, taken by an animal and so deflected as not to +pass into the digestive tract at all stimulates the gastric flow quite +as much as if it were actually received into the stomach. On the other +hand unhappy emotional disturbance greatly retards the digestive +processes. Pain, for example, results in pronounced inhibitions of the +secretion of gastric juice while happy emotional states produce +naturally the opposite effect. Pain is often accompanied by nausea, +indeed the nausea of a sick headache may be only secondary, induced by a +pain springing from quite another source than retarded digestion.</p> + +<p>Professor Cannon's experiments are most interesting as he traces the +variations of the flow of adrenal secretion induced by emotion and then +retraces the effect of the chemical changes so produced upon bodily and +mental states. The secretion of adrenin<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> is greatly increased by pain +or excitement. The percentage of blood sugar is also greatly increased +by the same causes. The heaviness of fatigue is due, as we know, to +poisonous uneliminated by-products resulting from long continued or +over-taxing exertion of any sort. Under the influence of fatigue the +power of the muscles to respond to any kind of stimulus is greatly +reduced. (It is interesting to note, however, that muscular fibre +detached from the living organism and mechanically stretched and relaxed +shows after a period the same decrease in contractability under +stimulation.) On the other hand any increase in adrenal secretion +results in renewed sensitiveness to stimulation, that is by an increased +power of the muscle to respond. Falling blood pressures diminish +proportionately the power of muscular response. Rising blood pressure is +effective "in largely restoring in fatigued structures their normal +irritability" and an increase of adrenin seems to raise blood pressure +by driving the blood from the interior regions of the body "into the +skeleton muscles which have to meet, by extra action, the urgent demands +of struggle or escape."</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> I follow Cannon in the form of this word.</p></div> + +<p>Adrenin is of real use in counteracting the effects of fatigue or in +enabling the body to respond to some unusual call for effort. The +coagulation of the blood is also affected by the same agent, that is, it +coagulates very much more rapidly.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Coagulation is also hastened by +heightened emotion; a wound does not bleed so freely when the wounded +one is angry or excited. A soldier, then, in the stress of combat is not +only rendered insensible to fatigue and capable of abnormal activity, +but his wounds are really not so dangerous as they would otherwise be. +There are here suggestions of elemental conditions having to do with +struggle and survival, conditions which play their very great part in +the contests of life.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Cannon thinks, however, that this effect is produced +indirectly.</p></div> + +<p>Emotions set free, as has been said, larger percentages of sugar which +are immediately utilized by the muscles in heightened or fatiguing +effort. All these experiments point very clearly to reservoirs of power, +both physical and mental, upon which we may draw in times of stress and +under emotional excitement.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Such emotionally induced chemical +actions and reactions as have been indicated release these stored +energies, render us for the time being unconscious of fatigue and even +guard us against the too rapid exhaustion of vital power. Whatever +heightens emotion, therefore, modifies the very chemical structure of +the body.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Excessive emotional reactions upon bodily states may +explain, as Cannon suggests, the more obscure phenomena of religious +frenzy such as the ceremonial dances of savages, the "Danse Macabre" of +the Middle Ages, the feats of the whirling dervishes, the jumping and +shouting of revivalism; also, maybe, the modern jazz.</p></div> + + +<p><i>The Two Doors</i></p> + +<p>There are other changes as well. The breath is quickened, the lungs are +expanded, waste products are very much more rapidly eliminated and so in +answer to summoning states of the soul the body as a whole readjusts +itself in marvellous subtle forms, mobilizing all its forces for the +contests which the emotion anticipates, or indeed which the emotion +itself calls out. And if all this seems unduly technical it is only to +bear out with something like a scientific accuracy the statements made a +little earlier that two orders meet and merge within us and that the +reactions of our loves, our fears, or our longings upon our bodily +processes may be stated in terms of the test tube and the chemist's +scale.</p> + +<p>Such changes as are thus registered react in turn upon mental +attitudes. Fatigue produces mental depression. An accumulation of +uneliminated waste darkens all our horizons; irritability of mind and +soul attend physical irritability; any unhappy modification in the +balance of the physical registers automatically an equally unhappy +modification in the balance of the psychic. Most of us, as we come to +know ourselves better, recognize marked alterations even in spiritual +states which we are taught to refer to physical condition, but just as +truly altered spiritual conditions produce altered physical states. +There is an endless give and take and there are, therefore, two doors of +approach to our pains, wearinesses and sicknesses.</p> + + +<p><i>The Challenge of Hypnotism</i></p> + +<p>Medicine, surgery and hygiene as at present organized largely approach +personal well-being from the physical side. They have for their support +a body of fact and a record of accomplishment which cannot be put out of +court without sheer intellectual stultification. Modern medicine has +been so massively successful in dealing with disease on the basis of a +philosophy which makes everything, or nearly everything, of the body and +nothing or next to nothing of the mind, that medicine was in danger of +becoming more sheerly materialistic than almost any other of our +sciences; Physics and Chemistry had their backgrounds in which they +recognized the interplay of realities too great for their formulæ and +forces too subtle for their most sensitive instruments. But medicine was +almost in the way of forgetting all this when it was compelled—and +that for its own good—to take account of an entirely different set of +forces.</p> + +<p>This was, to begin with, as far as the modern scientific approach is +concerned, first made clearly apparent in Hypnotism. Hypnotism seems to +be such a modification of normal mental conditions under the power of +commanding suggestion as really for the time being to focus +consciousness and mental action generally in one suggested line. A new +set of inhibitions and permissions are thus imposed upon normal +consciousness. Attention is withdrawn from the usual frontiers (if one +may use the word) to which, consciously or subconsciously, it has always +been directed and centered upon one single thing.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Sidis defines Hypnosis as the disassociation of the +superior and inferior nerve centers. They commonly work in perfect +harmony, their blended unity forming one conscious personality. "In +hypnosis the two systems or nervous centers are disassociated, the +superior centers and the upper consciousness are inhibited or better cut +off, split off from the rest of the nervous system with its organic +consciousness, which is thus laid bare, open to the influence of +external stimuli or suggestions.... In hypnotic trance ... we have +direct access to man's organic consciousness and through it to organic +life itself."... If we broaden this last sentence to include not only +organic consciousness but the deeper strata of personality in which not +only individual but perhaps racial experience is bedded, we have the key +to a vast range of obscure phenomena. Sidis believes that "strong +permanent impressions or suggestions made on the reflex organic +consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their functional +disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic structure" +and this in a sentence is probably what lies behind all faith and mental +healing.—"The Psychology of Suggestion," pp. 69 and 70.</p></div> + +<p>The hypnotized person becomes, therefore, unconscious of any reporting +agencies outside the field of his abnormally focused attention. Normal +conditions of pain or pleasure cease for the time to become real. +Attention has been forced entirely out of normal channels and given a +new direction. Then we discover, strangely enough, that though those +messages of the afferent nerves cease to have any effect upon the +subject, the imaginings of the subject carried back along outgoing lines +produce the most unexpected results in physical states. If a postage +stamp be placed upon the hand of the hypnotized subject and he be told +that the stamp is a mustard plaster, the stamp reddens the skin and +presently raises a blister. In other words, heightened and intensified +expectant attention is able to produce the same results as an irritating +agency.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Experiments by Krafft-Ebing and Forel. To be taken with +caution. See Jacoby, "Suggestion and Psycho-Therapy," p. 153.</p></div> + + +<p><i>Changed Attention Affects Physical States</i></p> + +<p>We are concerned here chiefly with the fact and it is a fact capable of +far-reaching application. Of course the nature and extent of the changes +thus produced are the battlegrounds of the two schools. Medical Science +is quite willing to admit that while functional action may thus be +modified no real organic changes can be produced. There is a border-land +so much still in shadow that no final word can be said about the whole +matter, but it is incontestably true that modifications of attention +have a reflex in the modification of physical states.</p> + +<p>A pain which is not registered does not, for the time being at least, +exist, and if the attention can either through hypnotism or by a +persistent mental discipline be withdrawn from disturbing physical +reports, then the conditions which produce them will at least be left to +correct themselves without interference from consciousness and since the +whole tendency of disturbed physical organism is to correct itself, the +whole process probably goes on more quickly as it certainly goes on with +less discomfort if attention is withdrawn.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> The assumption of health +is a tremendous health-giving force and if the condition to be remedied +is really due to a mental complex which needs only some strong exertion +of the will or readjustment of attitude to change, then marvellous +results may follow changed mental and spiritual states. The apparently +dumb may speak, the apparently paralyzed rise from their beds, the +shell-shocked pull themselves together and those under the bondage of +their fears and their pains be set free. There are so many illustrations +of all this that the fact itself is not in debate.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Organic changes (the storm center of the controversy) may +possibly be induced through a better general physical tone. Such changes +would not be directly due to suggestion but to processes released by +suggestion. Organic change may certainly be checked and the effect of it +overcome by increased resistance. So much conservative physicians admit. +How far reconstruction thus induced may go is a question for the +specialist.</p></div> + + +<p><i>The Power of Faith to Change Mental Attitudes</i></p> + +<p>Now since mental attitudes so react upon bodily states, whatever +strongly controls mental attitudes becomes a very great factor in +mental healing. There is a long line of testimony that what may be +called the complex of faith does just this with unique power, for faith +implies supernatural intervention. If there be anywhere an +all-prevailing power whose word is law and we could really be persuaded +that such a power had really intervened—even if it actually had not—on +our behalf and brought its supernatural resource to bear upon our +troubled case, then we should have a confidence more potent in the +immediate transformation of mental attitudes than anything else we could +possibly conceive. If we really believed such a power were ready to help +us, if we as vividly expected its immediate help, then we might +anticipate the utmost possible therapeutic reaction of mind upon body. A +faith so called into action should produce arresting results, and this +as a matter of investigation is true.</p> + +<p>In following through the theories of faith healing we may take here +either of two lines. The devout may assert a direct divine +interposition. God is. He has the power and the will; all things are +plastic to His touch; He asks only faith and, given faith enough, the +thing is done and there is no explaining it. Those who believe this are +not inclined to reason about it; in fact it is beyond reason save as +reason posits a God who is equal to such a process and an order in which +such results can be secured. This is rather an achievement of faith than +reason but the Christian Church generally has held such a faith—a faith +sustained by the testimony which favours it and unaffected by the +testimony which challenges it. The scientific temper which seeks +economy in all its explanations and asks only for a cause sufficient for +the effect and which is, moreover, constantly trying to relate the +unknown to the known, takes another line and finds in faith healing just +one more illustration of the power of mind over body. This does not +exclude God but it discovers Him in resident forces and finds in law the +revelation of His method. The conclusions, then, to which we are +generally coming may not only be reconciled with a devout faith, they +may, when followed through, enrich faith; but they do subdue the whole +great matter to a sequence of cause and effect and they are gradually +finding a satisfactory explanation for what has heretofore been deeply +involved in mystery.</p> + +<p>Just as Hypnotism, through the very dramatic abnormality of it, in +altering the sensitiveness of those physical tracts from which attention +is withdrawn or in producing physical effects through suggestive +focusing, has helped us to understand the part which attention plays in +the flux of physical states, so our later studies of the subconscious +help us here. We do know that a great deal may really take place in +personality of which consciousness takes no account. Consciousness in +its most active phases is alert, purposeful and preoccupied with the +immediate concern of the moment. Consciousness heeds commands and takes +account of such conditions as strongly assert themselves, but does not +in its full drive take much account of suggestion unless the suggestion +possesses unusual force. Suggestions usually need leisurely turning over +in the mind and the mind commonly refers them—often without knowing +it—to those regions of mental action which lie beneath the threshold of +strongly focused consciousness.</p> + +<p>But suggestion does not thereby cease to work. It starts processes all +its own which go on till they are worked through. After a longer or +shorter period of incubation the outcome of suggestion is lifted into +the light of consciousness, often to produce results all the more +striking because we cannot explain them to ourselves or any one else. +All this does not withdraw such phenomena from the realm of law; it only +clothes them with the mystery of the unknown and extends the fields in +which they may operate. Proper suggestion let fall into these unknown +depths or improper suggestion as well, becomes an incalculable force in +shaping the ends of life. We have here, then, well attested truths or +laws—it is difficult to know what to call them—which help us to +understand the bases of faith healing or mental healing by suggestion. +Now directly we turn to such records as remain to us we find that such +forces as these have been in action from the very beginning. All disease +was in early times referred generally to spirit possession. If only the +evil spirit could be exorcised the patient would get well and the priest +was, of course, the proper person to undertake this. Religion and +medicine were, therefore, most intimately united to begin with and +healing most intimately associated with magic. The first priests were +doctors and the first doctors were priests and what they did as priests +and what they did as doctors were alike unreasonable and capricious. +The priest and his church have very unwillingly surrendered the very +great hold over the faithful which this early association of medicine +and religion made possible. Any order or institution which can approach +or control humanity through the longing of the sick for health, has an +immense and unfailing empire.</p> + + +<p><i>Demon Possession the Earliest Explanation of Disease</i></p> + +<p>There are, says Cutten, three fairly well defined periods in the history +of Medicine. The first, beginning as far back as anything human begins +and coming down to the end of the second century; the second, ending +with the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries; and the third from perhaps +the sixteenth century on. The second period, he adds, was by far the +most sterile and stationary of the three "largely due to the prohibitive +attitude of the Church. The science of Medicine, then, is almost wholly +the result of the investigations and study of the last period. This +means that medicine is one of the youngest of the sciences, while from +the very nature of the case it is one of the oldest of the arts."</p> + +<p>Demon possession was, as has been said, the earliest explanation of +disease. This would naturally be true of a time almost wholly wanting in +any conception either of law or any relation of cause and effect beyond +the most limited regions of experience. Since the only cause of which +man had any real knowledge was his own effort he peopled his world with +forces more or less like himself, except that they were invisible, who +operated practically the whole of natural phenomena. There was a spirit +for every place and every happening; spirits for fields and hearths, +thresholds and springs. Some of them were friendly, some of them +naturally unfriendly, but they were everywhere in existence, everywhere +in action and naturally if they were unfriendly they would from time to +time and in various most curious ways get into the body itself and there +do any amount of mischief.</p> + +<p>The priest-doctor's task, therefore, was to get them out. He might scare +them out, or scold them out, or pray them out, or trick them out. He +would use his medicine as much to make the place of their temporary +abode uncomfortable for the demon as remedial for the patient and, +indeed, the curious and loathsome things which have been used for +medicines might well disgust even a malevolent demon. One thing stands +out very clearly and that is that whatever the medicine did or left +undone, it worked through its influence upon the mind of the patient and +not through any real medicinal value.</p> + + +<p><i>The Beginnings of Scientific Medicine</i></p> + +<p>Of course along with all this would go a kind of esoteric wisdom which +was part of the stock in trade of the healer. There were charms, +incantations and magic of every conceivable sort. The medicine man of +uncivilized or even half-civilized peoples really makes medicine for the +mind rather than the body. There were, however, gleams of scientific +light through all this murky region. The Egyptians knew something of +anatomy though they made a most capricious use of it and there must have +been some knowledge of hygienic methods; the prohibitions of Leviticus, +for example, and of the Jewish law generally for which the Jew must have +been, as far as medical science is concerned, somewhat in debt to the +Egyptian and the Chaldean, really have sound hygienic reasons behind +them. The Greeks began with demons but they ended with something which +approached true science.</p> + +<p>The real contribution of Greece, however, seems to have been on the +positive rather than the negative side. They made much of health as an +end in itself, had gods and goddesses of physical well-being. The Greek +had constantly held before him such an ideal of physical excellence as +had never before been approached and has never since been equalled. He +seems to have been abstemious in eating; he practiced the most strenuous +physical exercises; he lived a wholesome outdoor life, and so created a +civilization in which health very largely took care of itself. An +examination of what records remain to us hardly sustains the accepted +opinion that the Greeks had made substantial advances along purely +scientific lines,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> but at any rate as far as medicine goes, there is +little to choose between the Greece of the fourth century before Christ +and the Europe of the sixteenth century after, save that the life of the +Greek was far more normal, temperate and hygienic and the mind of the +Greek more open, sane and balanced.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Probably too strong a statement. For an opposite view +strongly supported by a scholar's research see Singer's article in "The +Legacy of Greece" (Oxford Press), p. 201.</p></div> + +<p>Plato anticipated conclusions which we are just beginning to reach when +he said, "the office of the physician extends equally to the +purification of mind and body. To neglect the one is to expose the other +to evident peril. It is not only the body which, by sound constitution, +strengthens the soul, but the well regulated soul, by its authoritative +power, maintains the body in perfect health." Whether the best classic +civilization made, consciously, its own this very noble insight of +Plato, the best classic civilization did secure the sound mind and the +sound body to an extent which puts a far later and far more complex +civilization to shame. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Greek to +this whole great subject was his passion for bodily well-being and his +marvellous adaptation of his habits and type of life to that end.</p> + +<p>He did, moreover, separate religion, magic and medicine to some +appreciable extent and he gave us at least the beginnings of a medical +profession, approaching medicine from the scientific rather than the +religious or traditional point of view. Even though his science was a +poor enough thing, his doctors were none the less doctors and the +medical profession to-day is entirely within its right when it goes back +to Hippocrates for the fathering of it.</p> + + +<p><i>The Attitude of the Early and Medieval Church</i></p> + +<p>Christianity changed all this and on the whole for the worse. And yet +that statement ought to be immediately qualified, for Christianity did +bring with it a very great compassion for suffering, a very great +willingness to help the sick and the needy. The Gospels are inextricably +interwoven with accounts of the healing power of the founder of +Christianity. All the later attitude of Christianity toward disease must +be considered in the light of this fact. We owe to Christianity the +first real hospitals, the first really compassionate and unselfish care +for the sick and impulses which, as they have finally worked out, have +had more to do with giving quality and direction to medicine and +particularly in investing the whole practice of medicine with its true +atmosphere than any other single force.</p> + +<p>And yet all this has been a long, long time coming true and for almost +1,500 years the Church and its authorities were a hindrance rather than +a help and that for two or three outstanding reasons. Christianity, to +begin with, sadly underestimated physical values in its overinsistence +upon spiritual values. The body was at best but the tabernacle of the +soul and the soul being the chief concern, whatever happened to the body +was of little importance. The body was not only underestimated, it was +scorned and abused, starved and scourged; it was the seat of unholy +influences and impulses; its natural longings were at the best under +suspicion, at the worst under absolute condemnation. Christianity, +speaking through the Church, took immense care for its spiritual +hygiene, though even here it went wrong because it forgot Plato's noble +word, but it failed utterly in physical hygiene.</p> + +<p>Then again sickness and suffering were for the Church but the manifest +punishment of some sin known or concealed. To interfere, therefore, was +in some way to defeat the justice of God. Pestilences were inscrutable +providences; they were the wrath of God made manifest. In the face of so +stupendous a calamity anything man might do was not only futile but +impertinent.</p> + +<p>By a strange contradiction early and medieval Christianity, while making +little of the body, nevertheless strongly opposed any study of anatomy +which depended upon post-mortems or dissection. This probably because of +their belief in the resurrection of the body. Any mutilation of the body +after death would be a real handicap in the day of resurrection. But +behind all this, equally real though intangible, was the desire of the +Church to have the whole of life under its own direct control. It +instinctively feared methods of thought or processes of investigation +not directly a part of its own imperial administration of life. Some +subtle distrust of the human reason went along with all this. As a +result the Church, in the main, threw herself against the more +independent processes of scientific thought, sought to subdue all the +facts of life to her creeds and understandings and so became a real +hindrance to any pursuit of truth or any investigation of fact which lay +outside the region of theological control. How largely all this retarded +growth and knowledge and the extension of human well-being it is +difficult to say, but the fact itself is well established.</p> + + +<p><i>Saints and Shrines</i></p> + +<p>For one thing early Christianity continued the belief in demoniac +possession. By one of those accidents which greatly influence history +the belief in demon possession was strongly held in Palestine in the +time of Christ and the Gospel narratives reflect all this in ways upon +which it is not necessary to enlarge. The Gospels themselves lent their +mighty sanction to this persuasion and there was nothing in the temper +of the Church for more than a thousand years afterward to greatly modify +it. Indeed the temper of the Church rather strengthened it. Origen +believed that demons produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the +air and pestilences. They hover concealed in clouds in the lower +atmosphere and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen +offered them as gods.</p> + +<p>According to St. Augustine all diseases of Christians are to be ascribed +to these demons and the church fathers generally agreed with these two, +the greatest of them all. It was, therefore, sinful to do anything but +trust to the intercession of the saints. The objection of the Church to +dissection which is, of course, the indispensable basis for any real +knowledge of anatomy was very slowly worn down. The story of Andreas +Vesalius whom Andrew White calls the founder of the modern science of +anatomy is at once fascinating and illuminating. He pursued his studies +under incredible difficulties and perhaps could never have carried them +through without the protection of Charles V whose physician he was. He +was finally driven out, a wanderer in quest of truth, was shipwrecked +on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and in the prime of his life and +strength "he was lost to the world." But he had, none the less, won his +fight and the opposition of the Church to the scientific study of +anatomy was gradually withdrawn. But every marked advance in medical +science had really to fight the battle over again. The Sorbonne +condemned inoculation, vaccination had slowly to fight its way and even +the discovery of anesthetic, perhaps the greatest single blessing ever +given surgery, met with no little theological obstruction. It is only +fair to say in this connection that so stupid a conservatism has been by +no means the sole possession of the Church and the clergy. Medicine has +been upon occasion almost as conservative and the difficulties which Sir +Joseph Lister encountered in his endeavour to win the London hospitals +for asepsis and anti-sepsis were quite as bitter. The difficulties were +of a piece with the opposition of the Church to scientific advancement. +After all a conservatism of this sort is a matter of temperament rather +than creed or class.</p> + +<p>But if the Church was strangely slow to give place to medicine and +surgery, the Church sought, through agencies and methods of its own, to +cure disease. It is impossible to follow through in detail the long +story though it all bears upon the line we are following through its +massive testimony to the power of mind over body. Since the Church +believed in demon possession it sought to cure by exorcism and there are +in the ritual of the Church, as the ritual has finally taken form, +offices growing out of this long, long battle against evil spirits which +have now little suggestion of their original purpose. The sign of the +Cross was supposed to have commanding power, the invocation of the +triune deity had its own virtue, the very breathing of the priest was +supposed to influence the evil spirit and he fled defeated from the +touch of holy water.</p> + +<p>The Church possessed, as was everywhere then believed, not only a +prevailing power over demons, but a supernatural power all her own for +the healing of disease. This power was associated with saints and relics +and shrines. During the lifetime of the saint this power was exercised +through direct saintly interposition. After the death of the saint it +was continued in some relic which he left behind him, or some shrine +with which he had been particularly associated. There grew up gradually +a kind of "division of labour among the saints in the Middle Ages." Each +saint had its own peculiar power over some bodily region or over some +particular disease. And so the faithful were guarded by a legion of +protecting influences against everything from coughs to sudden death. +There is almost an unimaginable range of relics. Parts of the true Cross +possessed supreme value. St. Louis of France was brought back almost +from death to life by the touch of the sacred wood. The bones and hairs +of saints, rings which they had worn and all such things as these had +value and to prove that the value was not resident in the relic but in +the faith with which the relic was approached we have reported bones of +saints possessing well authenticated healing value, later proved to have +been the bones not of men but of animals. There have been sacred springs +and consecrated waters almost without number. They will still show you +in Canterbury Cathedral stones worn by the feet of countless pilgrims +seeking at the shrine of Thomas à Becket a healing to the reality of +which those who wore away those stones bore testimony in a variety of +gifts which made the shrine of à Becket at one time one of the treasure +houses of Christendom.</p> + +<p>"The two shrines at present best known are those of Lourdes in France +and Ste. Anne de Beaupré in the Province of Quebec. Lourdes owes its +reputed healing power to a belief in a vision of the Virgin received +there during the last century. Over 300,000 persons visit there each +year." Charcot, it is worth noting, had confidence enough not in the +shrine but in the healing power of faith to send fifty or sixty patients +to Lourdes every year. His patients were, of course, the mentally and +nervously unbalanced. The French government supervises the sanitary +conditions at Lourdes and a committee of doctors have undertaken some +examination of the diseased who visit the shrine for the guidance of +their profession. Ste. Anne de Beaupré owes its fame to certain wrist +bones of the mother of Christ.</p> + + +<p><i>Magic, Charms, and the King's Touch: The Rise of the Faith Healer</i></p> + +<p>Religious faith is not always necessary—any faith will do. Charms, +amulets, talismans have all played their part in this long compelling +story. The various metals, gems, stones and curious and capricious +combinations of pretty much every imaginable thing have all been so +used. Birth girdles worn by women in childbirth eased their pain. A +circular piece of copper guarded against cholera. A coral was a good +guard against the evil eye and sail-cloth from a shipwrecked vessel tied +to the right arm was a preventive as well as a cure for epilepsy. There +is almost no end to such instances. The list of charms and incantations +is quite as curious. There are forms of words which will cure insomnia +and indeed, if one may trust current observation, forms of words not +primarily so intended may still induce sleepfulness.</p> + +<p>The history of the king's touch as particularly helpful in epilepsy and +scrofula, though useful also for the healing of various diseases, is +especially interesting. This practice apparently began with Edward the +Confessor in England and St. Louis in France and was due to the faith of +those who came to be touched and healed in the divine right and lonely +power of the king. It is significant that the practice began with these +two for they, more than any kings of their time or most kings since, +were really men of rare and saintly character. Curiously but naturally +enough the English have denied any real power in this region to French +kings and the French have claimed a monopoly for their own sovereigns. +The belief in the king's touch persisted long and seems toward the end +to have had no connection with the character of the monarch, for +Charles II did more in this line than any one who ever sat on an English +throne. During the whole of his reign he touched upward of 100,000 +people. Andrew White adds that "it is instructive to note, however, that +while in no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula and so +many cures vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of the +disease."</p> + +<p>Along with the king's touch went the king's gift—a piece of gold—and +the drain upon the royal treasury was so considerable that after the +reign of Elizabeth the size of the coin was reduced. Special coins were +minted for the king's use in that office and these touching pieces are +still in existence. William III refused to take this particular power +seriously. "God give you better health and more sense," he said as he +once touched a patient. In this particular instance the honest +skepticism of the king was outweighed by the faith of the suppliant. We +are assured that the person was cured. The royal touch was discontinued +after the death of Queen Anne.</p> + +<p>The list of healers began early and is by no means ended now. The power +of the healer was sometimes associated with his official station in the +Church, sometimes due to his saintly character and often enough only to +a personal influence, the fact of which is well enough established, +though there can be in the nature of things no finality in the estimate +of his real efficacy. George Fox performed some cures; John Wesley also. +In the seventeenth century one Valentine Greatrakes seems to have been +the center of such excitements and reported healings as Alexander Dowie +and others in our own time and it is finally through the healer rather +than the saint or the king or shrine or relic that we approach the +renaissance of mental and faith healing in our own time.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> + +<h3>THE APPROACH TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MARY BAKER EDDY</h3> + + +<p>There is, however, another stage in this long line of development which +needs to be considered since it supplies a double point of departure; +once for the most outstanding healing cult in our time—Christian +Science—and once for the greatly enlarged use of suggestion in modern +medical practice, and that is mesmerism and "animal magnetism."</p> + + +<p><i>Mesmerism a Point of Departure for Modern Healing Cults</i></p> + +<p>Paracelsus<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> may be taken as a starting point just here. He is known +in the history of medicine "for the impetus he gave to the development +of pharmaceutical chemistry, but he was also the author of a visionary +and theosophic system of philosophy." He believed in the influence of +the stars upon men, but he enlarged upon the old astrologic faiths. "He +believed the human body was endowed with a double magnetism, one portion +attracted to itself the planets and was nourished by them, the result of +which was the mental powers, the other portion attracted and +disintegrated the elements, from which process resulted the body." His +world, therefore, was a world of competitive attractions. He believed +the well had an influence over the sick through magnetism and used the +magnet in his practice.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> A German-Swiss physician and alchemist, b. 1493, d. 1541. +These quotations, partly from authorities on faith healing and partly +from the history of Spiritualism, illustrate the underground connection +in this whole region.</p></div> + +<p>"This dual theory of magnetic cures, that of the magnetic influence of +men on men and of the magnet on man, was prevalent for over a century." +"It is, then, upon these ideas—the radiation from all things, but +especially the stars, magnets and human bodies, of a force which would +act in all things else, and which was in each case directed by the +indwelling spirit, together with the conception of a perpetual contact +between reciprocal and opposing forces—that the mysticism of the +seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly depends."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Podmore, "Modern Spiritualism," Vol. I, p. 45. I am in +debt also to Cutten for general information and some quoted paragraphs.</p></div> + +<p>These ideas were adopted by a group of men who are now only names for +us. The phenomena of magnetism fascinated them and supplied them +analogies. There is, they thought, an all-prevailing magnetic influence +which binds together not only celestial and terrestrial bodies, but all +living things. Life and death were for them simply the registry of the +ebbing and flowing of these immaterial tides and they ended by +conceiving a vital fluid which could be communicated from person to +person and in the communication of which the sick could be healed—the +driftwood of their lore has come down to us on the tides of time; we +still speak of magnetic personalities—and they sought in various ways +to control and communicate these mysterious forces.</p> + +<p>One of them invented steel plates which he applied to the body as a cure +for disease. He taught his system to Mesmer who made, however, one +marked advance upon the technique of his predecessors and gave his name +to his methods; he produced his results through physical contacts and +passes. But he shared with his predecessors and stated with that compact +clearness of which the French language is so capable even when dealing +with obscure matters, that there is a "fluid so universally diffused and +connected as to leave nowhere any void, whose subtlety is beyond any +comparison and which by its nature is capable of receiving, propagating +and communicating all impressions of movement.... This reciprocal action +is subject to mechanical laws at present unknown."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> This fluid in its +action governs the earth and stars and human action.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Price's "Historique de facts relatifs du Magnétisme +Animal," quoted by Podmore.</p></div> + +<p>He originated the phrase "Animal Magnetism" and was, though he did not +know it, the originator of hypnotism; until well within our own time +mesmerism was the accepted name for this whole complex group of +phenomena. The medical faculties examined his claims but were not +willing to approve them, but this made no difference in Mesmer's +popularity. He had so great a following as to be unable to deal with +them personally. He deputed his powers to assistants, arranged a most +elaborate apparatus and surrounded his whole procedure with a dramatic +setting of stained glass, mirrored and scented rooms and mysterious +music. The result of it all naturally, as far as his patients were +concerned, was marked excitements and hysterias. They had often to be +put into padded rooms. And yet the result of all this murky confusion +was said to be numbers of marked cures. He was investigated by the +French government and two commissions presented their reports, neither +of which was favourable. Imagination, not magnetism, they said, +accounted for the results. His popularity wore away markedly when he +undertook to explain his method and reveal his secrets. He left Paris in +1815 and lapsed into obscurity.</p> + + +<p><i>The Scientific Investigation of Mesmerism in France</i></p> + +<p>As has been said, there are two lines of development growing out of +Mesmer and his methods. Ten years after Mesmer left Paris Alexandre +Bertrand pointed out that after the elimination of errors due to fraud +or mal-observation, the results which Mesmer and his associates had +produced were due not to animal magnetism, but to expectation induced by +suggestion and intensified by the peculiar setting which Mesmer had +contrived for his so-called treatments. The schools of medicine were +slow to follow out Bertrand's discovery and it was not until something +like twenty years later, through the studies of Braid, that hypnotism +began to be taken seriously.</p> + +<p>But once the matter was brought broadly before them, the doctors began +to follow it through. Charcot, in the Salpêtriére, used hypnotic +suggestion for the correction of abnormal mental and nervous states. The +psychologists took up the matter and hypnotic suggestion has come to be +not only a legitimate subject for the investigation of the student and +an accepted method in correction of abnormal mental states, but as it +were a window through which we are beginning to see deeply into +unsuspected depths and intricacies of personality.</p> + +<p>Modern faith healing cults, however, have not come to us down this line, +though the studies of Bertrand, Braid, Charcot, Du Bois and their +associates supply the interpretative principles for any real +understanding of them. Mesmerism naturally appealed to the type of mind +most easily attracted by the bizarre and the mysterious. There are +always amongst us the credulous and curious who find little enough +either to awe or inspire them in the broad sweep of law, or in such +facts as lie open to the light of reason. Such as these are impatient of +discipline, eager to free themselves from the sequence of cause and +effect; they are impressed by the occult powers and seek short cuts to +health, or goodness, or wisdom. They delight to build up, out of their +own inner consciousness, systems which have little contact with reality +and which, through their very tenuousness, are as incapable of disproof +as through their disengagement from normal experience they are capable +of verification. They are the people of what the alienist calls the +"idée fixe." Everything for them centers about one idea; they have one +key and one only to the marvellous complexity of life. Such a temper as +this naturally disassociates them from reality and makes them +contemptuous of contradictory experiences.</p> + + +<p><i>Mesmerism is Carried to America; Phineas Quimby an Important Link in a +Long Chain</i></p> + +<p>America has been far too rich in such a temper as this and it was never +more so than in the forties and the fifties of the last century. +Mesmerism crossed the ocean and while Braid and later Bernheim and +Charcot were following it through on sound, psychological lines and +bringing to bear upon it great insight and scientific discipline, it +fell here into the hands of charlatans and adventurers. Phineas +Parkhurst Quimby, best known for his connection with Mary Baker Eddy, +hardly deserves the name of charlatan, though he was dangerously near +being just that. He belonged to the border-land regions in thought and +propaganda and he did give to the whole complex movement which we have +been considering a direction which has played a relatively great part in +its later development. He had a shrewd mind which ranged over wide +regions; he is a pretty typical example of the half-disciplined, +forceful and original personality which has played so large a part in +American life. The New England of his time—Quimby was born in New +Hampshire and spent his life in Maine—was giving itself whole-heartedly +to a mysticism bounded on the one side (its higher and more +representative side) by Emerson and the transcendentalists and on the +other by healers, prophets of strange creeds and dreamers of Utopias. +Phrenology, mind reading, animal magnetism, clairvoyance, all had their +prophets.</p> + +<p>Quimby belongs to this succession. His education was meagre, he did not +even know how to spell according to the dictionary or punctuate +according to the grammar.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> He had his own peculiar use of words—a +use by which Mary Baker Eddy was doubtless greatly influenced. He had +marked mechanical ability and a real passion for facts. He was an +original thinker, little in debt to books for his ideas though he was +undoubtedly influenced by the temper of his environment to which +reference has already been made. He had a speculative, but not a trained +interest in religion and dealt freely with the orthodoxy of his time +constrained by no loyalty to the accepted faith and no critical +knowledge of its content. "Truth" and "Science" were characteristic +words for him and he shared his speculations and conclusions freely with +his disciples.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> What is here said of Quimby is condensed from Dresser's +"The Quimby Manuscripts."</p></div> + + +<p><i>Quimby is Led to Define Sickness as Wrong Belief</i></p> + +<p>In his early thirties he was supposed to be dying of consumption and +suffered much from excessive medication. He recovered through an +emotional crisis but does not seem to have followed out the possible +suggestion of his recovery. He turned instead to mesmerism and travelled +about with one Lucius Burkmer over whom he had strong hypnotic +influence. When hypnotized Burkmer (or Burkman) claimed the power to +look as through a window into the bodies of Quimby's patients and +discover, often with illuminating detail, their condition; a good many +reputed cures followed. The testimonials to these cures and to the +strange powers of Burkmer are themselves an arresting testimony to the +lengths people go in the face of what they do not understand. "I have +good reason to believe that he can discern the internal structure of an +animal body and if there be anything morbid or defective therein detect +and explain it.... He can go from point to point without passing through +intermediate space. He passes from Belfast [Maine] to Washington or from +the earth to the moon ... swifter than light, by a single act of +volition."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 38.</p></div> + +<p>Quimby had too alert an intelligence to rest content with the merely +occult. He came to believe that Burkmer only saw what the patient +thought, could do no more than describe the patient's idea of his own +state, or else report the "common allopathic belief about the disease in +question," and the cure, he was persuaded, was not in the medicine +prescribed but in "the confidence of the doctor or medium." (Note that +Quimby here associates the cures produced by the medical faculty and his +own cures in one sweeping generalization.) What he was really dealing +with then was "belief." It might be the belief of the doctor or the +patient or the belief of his friends—but sickness was only "belief." +This also was a sweeping generalization but it becomes intelligible as +we follow the process by which Quimby reached his conclusions and it +helps us to understand the significance of Belief as one of the key +words of Christian Science. Quimby was led to identify sickness and +wrong beliefs through this analysis of mesmeric diagnosis and health and +right belief through his own experiences as a healer. He had no training +to help him to an understanding of the real facts which lay behind the +belief in sickness. He became a skillful diagnostician of states of mind +and a healer of such diseases as could be so treated. But he knew, +scientifically, no more of what lay behind it all than a ploughman may +know of what lies beneath the furrows he turns.</p> + + +<p><i>Quimby Develops His Theories</i></p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy took over the catch-words of his system and its loose +assumptions, and a reasonably careful comparison of the Quimby +manuscripts and "Science and Health" shows not only Mrs. Eddy's +fundamental and never honestly acknowledged and finally categorically +denied indebtedness to Quimby, but the confusion which Quimby's rather +striking and original philosophy suffered at her hands. Beginning with +his persuasion that health and sickness are phases of belief Quimby +discarded mesmerism altogether and addressed himself to the minds of his +patients. He had doubtless a keen intuitive knowledge of human nature +and its morbid fancies and he was dealing generally with neurotic +temperaments over which he exercised a strong and helpful power of +suggestion. His explanation of disease—that it is a wrong +belief—becomes grotesque enough when he comes down to detail. This, for +example, is his diagnosis of Bronchitis—"You listen or eat this belief +or wisdom [evidently that Bronchitis is real] as you would eat your +meals. It sets rather hard upon your stomach; this disturbs the error of +your body and a cloud appears in the sky.... The elements of the body of +your belief are shaken, earth is lit up by the fire of your error, the +heat rises, the heaven or mind grows dark ... the lightning of hot +flashes shoot to all parts of the solar system of your belief. At last +the winds or chills strike the earth or surface of the body, a cold +clammy sensation passes over you. This changes the heat into a sort of +watery substance which works its way into the channels and pores to the +head and stomach."<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> "Quimby Manuscripts," p. 118.</p></div> + +<p>This is Quimby at his worst but beneath it is the germ of the method and +philosophy which have attained so luxurious a growth—the explaining, +that is, of disease in terms of wrong belief. Inevitably in the +elaboration of all this Quimby reached out to include religion and +theology and even created his own distinctive metaphysics. He +distinguished between the mind and spirit; he must of course discover in +personality a power superior to fluctuating mental attitudes. He called +his system a science since he was trying to reduce it to a system and +discover its laws. He found a parallel to what he was doing in the +narratives of healing in the Christian Gospels and claimed Christ as the +founder of his science.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 185.</p></div> + +<p>All belief opposed to his was "error"; "Truth" was naturally opposed to +error. He subordinates the testimony of the senses to the necessities of +his system; he defines God variously as Wisdom, as Truth, possibly as +Principle though his use of the word Principle is far more intelligible +than Mrs. Eddy's.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> He increasingly identifies his system and the +teachings of Jesus and ends by calling it "Christian Science."<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 309.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 388.</p></div> + +<p>In substance in the more than 400 closely printed pages of the Quimby +manuscripts as now edited we discover either the substance or the +suggestion of all that Mrs. Eddy later elaborated. Now all this, +confused as it is, brings us to the threshold of a distinct advance in +mental and faith healing.</p> + + +<p><i>Mary Baker Eddy Comes Under Quimby's Influence</i></p> + +<p>Practically faith and mental healing had depended, till Quimby took it +up, upon persons or objects. The saint or the healer worked through +personal contact; the shrine must be visited, the relic be touched. Such +a system was naturally dependent upon accidents of person or place; it +would not be widely extended nor continued nor made the basis of +self-treatment. But if what lay behind the whole complex group of +phenomena could be systematized and given real power of popular appeal +through its association with religion it would possess a kind of +continuing independence, conditioned only by the willingness of people +to be persuaded of the truth of its philosophy or to answer to its +religious appeal. It would then become a mental and spiritual +discipline to be written into books and taught by the initiated. As far +as it could be associated with religion it would become the basis of a +cult and it would have an immense field.</p> + +<p>All difficult or chronic or obscure illnesses would offer an opportunity +to its propagandists, and the necessary obscurities and irrationalities +of such a system would simply be, for the minds to which it would +naturally appeal, added elements of power. Any system which has sickness +for its field and credulity for its reinforcement and a specious show of +half truth for its philosophic form and religion to give its sanction +and authority is assured, to begin with, of a really great following. +Its very weaknesses will be its strength. It will work best as it is +neither clear nor simple—though it must make a show of being both. And +if, in addition, there is somewhere at the heart of it force and truth +enough to produce a certain number of cures it will go on. What it fails +to do will be forgotten or ignored in the face of what it really does +do.</p> + +<p>Now Quimby, through his own native force and such a combination of +circumstances as occurs only once in long periods of time, stood upon +the threshold of just such a revolution in the history of faith and +mental healing as this. He anticipated the method and supplied the +material, but he either did not or could not popularize it. He was not +selfish enough to monopolize it, not shrewd enough to commercialize it, +and, maybe, not fanatic enough to make it a cult. He was more interested +in his own speculations than in making converts and without one of those +accidents which become turning points in a movement nothing would have +probably come of his work save its somewhat vague and loose continuance +in the thought and teaching of a small group. (It is doubtful if New +Thought, which as we shall see grew out of his work through his +association with the Dressers, would have come to much without the +stimulus of Christian Science against which it reacted.) Some one was +needed to give the whole nebulous system organization and driving force +and above all to make a cult of it.</p> + + +<p><i>Outstanding Events of Her Life: Her Early Girlhood</i></p> + +<p>Mary Baker Eddy did just this and Christian Science is the result. It is +idle to calculate the vanished alternatives of life but in all +probability she never would have done it without Quimby. She and her +followers would do far better to honestly recognize this indebtedness. +It would now make little difference with either the position of their +leader or the force of their system but it would take a pretty keen +weapon out of the hands of their critics and give them the added +strength which thoroughgoing honesty always gives to any cause. There +is, on the other hand, little likelihood that Quimby's persuasions would +ever have carried beyond the man himself if he had not found in Mrs. +Eddy so creative a disciple.</p> + +<p>The outstanding facts of Mary Baker Eddy's life are too well known to +need much retelling here. The story of her life and the history of +Christian Science as told by Georgine Milmine in <i>McClure's Magazine</i> +during the years of 1907-8 is final. It is based upon thorough +investigation, original documents and an exhaustive analysis of facts. +The facts brought out in the various litigations in which Mrs. Eddy and +the church have been involved confirm both the statements and +conclusions of this really distinctive work. The official life by Sibyl +Wilbur (whose real name seems to be O'Brien) is so coloured as to be +substantially undependable. It touches lightly or omits altogether those +passages in Mrs. Eddy's life which do not fit in with the picture which +Mrs. Eddy herself and the church desire to be perpetuated.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy was descended from a shrewd, industrious and strongly +characterized New England stock. Her father was strongly set in his +ways, narrow and intense in his religious faith. Mary Baker was a +nervous, high-strung girl, unusually attractive in personal appearance, +proud, precocious, self-conscious, masterful. She was subject to +hysterical attacks which issued in states of almost suspended animation. +Her family feared these attacks and to prevent them humoured her in +every way. In due time she joined the Tilton Congregational Church. She +says herself that she was twelve years old at the time, but the records +of the church make her seventeen. The range of her education is debated. +Mrs. Eddy herself claims a rather ambitious curriculum. "My father," she +says, "was taught to believe that my brain was too large for my body and +so kept me out of school, but I gained book knowledge with far less +labour than is usually requisite. At ten years of age I was familiar +with Lindley Murray's Grammar, as with the Westminster Catechism and +the latter I had to repeat every Sunday. My favourite studies were +Natural Philosophy, logic and moral science. From my brother Albert I +received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. After +my discovery of Christian Science most of the knowledge I gleaned from +school books vanished like a dream. Learning was so illumined that +grammar was eclipsed. Etymology was divine history, voicing the idea of +God in man's origin and signification. Syntax was spiritual order and +unity. Prosody the song of angels and no earthly or inglorious +theme."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> "Retrospection and Introspection," 1909.</p></div> + + +<p><i>Her Education: Shaping Influences</i></p> + +<p>It is not fair to apply critical methods to one who confesses that most +of the knowledge she had gleaned from school books vanished like a +dream, but there is much in Mrs. Eddy's writing to bear out her +statement. Those who knew her as a girl report her as irregular in +attendance upon school, inattentive during its sessions and far from +knowing either Greek or Latin or Hebrew. "According to these schoolmates +Mary Baker completed her education when she had finished Smith's Grammar +and reached Long Division in Arithmetic." The official biography makes +much of an intellectual friendship between the Rev. Enoch Corser, then +pastor of the Tilton Congregational Church, and Mary Baker. "They +discussed subjects too deep to be attractive to other members of the +family. Walking up and down in the garden, this fine old-school +clergyman and the young poetess as she was coming to be called, threshed +out the old philosophic speculations without rancour or irritation."<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> "The Life of Mary Baker Eddy," Sibyl Wilbur, 4th edition. +Christian Science Publishing Company.</p></div> + +<p>There is little reason to doubt her real interest in the pretty rigid +Calvinistic theology of her time. Indeed, we could not understand her +final line of religious development without taking that into +consideration. Milmine suggests other forces which would naturally have +influenced a sensitive and curious girl; for example, the current +interest in animal magnetism, a subject which dominated certain aspects +of her thinking to the end. Milmine suggests also that she may have been +considerably influenced by the peculiar beliefs of the Shakers who had a +colony near Tilton. The Shakers regarded Ann Lee, their founder, as the +female principle of God and greater than Christ. They prayed always to +"Our Father and Mother which art in heaven." They called Ann Lee the +woman of the Apocalypse, the God-anointed woman. For her followers she +was Mother Ann, as Mary Baker was later Mother Eddy. Ann Lee declared +that she had the gift of healing. The Shakers also made much of a +spiritual illumination which had the right of way over the testimony of +the senses. The Shakers called their establishment the Church of Christ +and the original foundation the Mother Church. The Shakers forbade +audible prayer and enjoined celibacy. There are parallels enough here to +sustain Milmine's contention that Mary Baker was at least largely +influenced by suggestions from her peculiar group of neighbours.</p> + + +<p><i>Her Unhappy Fortunes. She is Cured by Quimby. An Unacknowledged Debt</i></p> + +<p>Mary Baker married George Washington Glover at the age of twenty-two. +She was soon left a widow and her only son was born after his father's +death. The story of the years which follow is unhappy. She was poor, +dependent upon relatives whose patience she tried and whose hospitality +was from time to time exhausted. Her attacks of hysteria continued and +grew more violent. Her father sometimes rocked her to sleep like a +child. The Tiltons built a cradle for her which is one of the traditions +of this unhappy period of her life. She tried mesmerism and clairvoyance +and heard rappings at night.</p> + +<p>She married again, this time a Dr. Daniel Patterson, a travelling +dentist. He never made a success of anything. They were miserably poor +and his marriage was no more successful than most of his other +enterprises. He was captured, though as a civilian, during the Civil War +and spent one or two years in a southern prison. Futile efforts were +made at a reconciliation and in 1873 Mrs. Patterson obtained a divorce +on the grounds of desertion. Meanwhile she had been separated from her +son, of whom she afterward saw so little that he grew up, married and +made his own way entirely apart from his mother.</p> + +<p>In 1861 Mrs. Patterson's physical condition was so desperate that she +appealed to Quimby. Her husband had had some interest in homeopathy and +she was doubtless influenced by the then peculiar theories of the +homeopathic school. (Indeed she claimed to be a homeopathic practitioner +without a diploma.) She had had experience enough with drugs to make her +impatient and suspicious of current methods of orthodox medication. +Under Quimby's treatment she was physically reborn and apparently +spiritually as well. It is necessary to dwell upon all these well-known +details to understand what follows and the directions which her mind now +took. Milmine's analysis is here penetrating and conclusive. She had +always been in revolt against her environment. Her marriages had been +unhappy; motherhood had brought her nothing; she had been poor and +dependent; her strong will and self-assertive personality had been +turned back upon herself.</p> + +<p>She had found no satisfaction in the rigid theologies of the time. She +had sought help from accepted religion and religion had had nothing to +give her. We have to read between the lines and especially to evaluate +all this period in the light of "Science and Health" itself to +reconstruct the movement of her inner life, but beyond a doubt her +thought had played about the almost tragic discrepancy between her own +experiences and the love and goodness of God. She had known pain and +unhappiness in acute forms and had found nothing in what she had been +taught ample enough to resolve her doubts or establish her faith.</p> + +<p>She found in Quimby's philosophy a leading which she eagerly followed. +Now for the first time she is really set free from herself. A truer +sense of dramatic values would have led Mrs. Eddy herself to have made +more of the unhappy period which began to come to an end with her visit +to Quimby and would lead her disciples now to acknowledge it more +honestly. It is a strong background against which to set what follows +and give colour by contrast to her later life. The twice-born from Saul +of Tarsus to John Bunyan have dwelt much upon their sins and sorrows, +seeking thereby more greatly to exalt the grace of God by which they had +been saved. Mary Baker Eddy came strongly to be persuaded that she had +saved herself and consequently not only greatly underestimated her debt +to Quimby, but emptied her own experiences of dramatic contrasts to make +them, as she supposed, more consistent, and her disciples have followed +her.</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, though her life as a whole is not an outstanding +asset for Christian Science and is likely to grow less so, one must +recognize the force of a conviction which changed the neurotic Mrs. +Patterson of the fifties and sixties into the masterful and successful +woman of the eighties and nineties. She belongs also to the fellowship +of the twice-born and instead of minimizing the change those who seek to +understand her, as well as those who seek to exalt her, would do well to +make more of it. She did that herself to begin with. No master ever had +for a time a more grateful disciple. She haunted Quimby's house, read +his manuscripts, wrote letters for the paper, "dropped into verse" and +through her extravagance "brought ridicule upon Quimby and herself."</p> + +<p>Quimby died in 1866, accompanied to his last resting place by a tribute +in verse from his grateful pupil. Mrs. Eddy had at the time apparently +no thought of continuing his work except in a most modest way. She wrote +Julius Dresser who had come under Quimby's influence, suggesting that he +would step forward into the place vacated. "I believe you would do a +vast amount of good and are more capable of occupying his place than any +other I know of."<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> She asked Dresser's help in recovering from a fall +which she had just had on the ice and which had so injured her, as she +supposed, to make her the helpless cripple that she was before she met +Quimby. This fall is worth dwelling upon for a bit, for it really marks +a turning place in Mrs. Eddy's life. In her letter to Dresser she says +that the physician attending "said I have taken the last step I ever +should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone and will walk."<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> +Sometime later in a letter to the <i>Boston Post</i> Mrs. Eddy said, "We +recovered in a moment of time from a severe accident considered fatal by +the regular physicians." There is a considerable difference between two +days and a moment of time and the expression of a determination to walk +in the Dresser letter and the testimony to an instantaneous cure in the +<i>Boston Post</i> letter. Dr. Cushing, the physician who attended Mrs. Eddy +at the time, gives still a third account. He treated her, he says, over +a period of almost two weeks and left her practically recovered. He also +attended her in a professional capacity still later and offers all this +in a sworn statement on the basis of his record books. There is a very +considerable advantage in a philosophy which makes thought the only +reality, for, given changing thought and a complacent recollection, +facts may easily become either plastic or wholly negligible.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> "A History of the New Thought Movement," Dresser, p. 110.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + + +<p><i>She Develops Quimby's Teachings Along Lines of Her Own</i></p> + +<p>The real significance of this much debated but otherwise unimportant +episode is that it seems to have thrown Mrs. Eddy upon her own +resources, for now that Quimby was dead she begins to develop what she +had received from him through both experience and teaching along lines +of her own. She had found a formula for the resolution of problems, both +physical and mental, which had hag-ridden her for years. She had a +natural mental keenness, a speculative mind, a practical shrewdness (the +gift of her New England ancestors) and an ample field. The theology, the +medical science and indeed the philosophy or psychology of the New +England of the sixties contributed strongly, through their limitations, +to the growth of bizarre systems which had in them elements of truth. We +shall need to come back to this again in any evaluation of Christian +Science as a whole, but we cannot understand the rapid development of +the movement of which Christian Science was just one aspect without +taking all this into consideration.</p> + +<p>Medicine itself has been greatly revolutionized within the last fifty +years. While Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy was finding her unhappy +way through border-land regions into a cloudy light, Louis Pasteur, +sitting, in the phrase of Huxley, "as humbly as a little child before +the facts of life," was making those investigations in bacteriology +which were to be, in some ways, the greatest contribution of the +nineteenth century to the well-being of humanity. He was following +patiently the action of microscopic organisms, especially in their +relation to health, discovering the secret of contagion and infection, +outlining methods of defense against the attacks of these invisible +armies, finding the true basis for inoculation, extending its operation, +robbing hospitals of their terrors and surrounding surgery with +safeguards heretofore undreamt of, literally performing miracles (in his +control of swine plague and the like), and for the want of another +subject preparing to experiment upon himself for the prevention of +hydrophobia, and in doing it all in the most simple and humble way, +naively unconscious of his own fame and living from first to last in a +noble and comparative poverty which contrasts dramatically with the +material well-being for which Mrs. Eddy was so eager. Nothing of this +had ever come into Mrs. Eddy's field or those whom she addressed. With +all the aid which the modern physician has at his control, diagnosis is +still a difficult matter, physicians confess it themselves. There is +still, with all the resource of modern medical science, a residuum of +hopeless and obscure cases which baffle the physician. That residuum was +very much larger fifty years ago than it is now.</p> + + +<p><i>She Begins to Teach and to Heal</i></p> + +<p>The typical Protestant religious experience, as we have seen, was not +great enough to contain all the facts of life. The molten passion of an +earlier Calvinism had hardened down into rigidities which exalted the +power of God at the cost of human helplessness. There was no adequate +recognition among the devout of the sweep of law. Everything that +happened was a special Providence and it was hard enough to fit the +trying facts of life into an understanding of Divine Love when there was +apparently so much in life in opposition to Divine Love.</p> + +<p>A very great deal of the ferment of the time was just the endeavour to +find some way out of all this and the group of which Mrs. Eddy was a +part were really the first to try to find their way out except as roads +of escape which were, on the whole, not ample enough had been sought by +the theological liberalism of the time of which Unitarianism was the +most respectable and accepted form. There are, as has been said, curious +underground connections through all this region. We find homeopathy, +spiritualism, transcendentalism, theological liberalism and faith +healing all tied up in one bundle.</p> + +<p>The line which Mrs. Eddy now came to follow is, on the whole, clear +enough. She becomes in her turn teacher and healer, giving her own +impress and colour to what she called the science she taught, claiming +it more and more as her own and not only forgetting, but denying as she +went on, her indebtedness to any one else. The whole thing gradually +became in her mind a distinct revelation for which the ages had been +waiting and this revelation theory is really the key to the +contradictions and positive dishonesties which underlie the authorized +account of the genesis of Christian Science. She associated herself with +one of the more promising of her pupils who announced himself as Dr. +Kennedy, with Mrs. Eddy somewhat in the background. Kennedy was the +agent, Mrs. Eddy supplied him with the material of what was a mixed +method of teaching and healing. She had always been desperately poor; +now for the first time she had a respectable bank account.</p> + +<p>There were corresponding changes in her personality and even her +physique. She began to give lessons, safeguarding her instructions from +the very first in such ways as to make them uncommonly profitable. Her +pupils paid $100 for the course and agreed also to give her a percentage +of the income from their practice. In the course of litigation which +afterward follows, the courts pronounced that they did not find in her +course of instruction anything which could be "in any way of value in +fitting the defendant as a competent and successful practitioner of any +intelligible art or method of healing the sick." The court, therefore, +was of the opinion that "consideration for the agreement had wholly +failed." In a sense the court was mistaken. Mrs. Eddy was giving her +disciples something which, whether it fitted them to be competent and +successful practitioners of any intelligible art or method of healing +the sick, or no, was of great financial advantage both to them and to +their teacher. She afterward raised her tuition fee to $300 and stated +that God had shown her in multitudinous ways the wisdom of this +decision.</p> + + +<p><i>Early Phases of Christian Science</i></p> + +<p>Everything was, to begin with, a matter of personal relationship between +Mrs. Eddy and her students. They constitute a closely related group, the +pupils themselves extravagant in their gratitude to their teacher. There +were, of course, schisms, jealousies, recriminations, litigation, but +none the less, the movement went on. The first attempt at organization +was made at Lynn in 1875. A hall was rented, meetings were held in the +evening, the society was known as the "Christian Scientists" and as an +organization Christian Science came into the world. The first edition of +"Science and Health" was also published in 1875. There was difficulty in +finding a publisher; those who assisted Mrs. Eddy financially were +losers in the enterprise. They were never reimbursed, though "Science +and Health" afterward became the most remunerative single publication in +the world. Two years later Mrs. Glover (for after her divorce from +Patterson she had taken her earlier married name) married Gilbert Eddy +and so took the name by which she is best known to the world.</p> + +<p>There is much in this period of Mrs. Eddy's life to indicate that she +had not yet reached an inner serenity of faith. She was never able to +free herself from a perverted belief in animal magnetism or mesmerism +which showed itself in fear rather than faith. She believed herself +persecuted and if she did not believe in witchcraft she believed in +something curiously like it. Indeed, to Mrs. Eddy belonged the rather +curious distinction of having instigated the last trial for witchcraft +in the United States and with a fitting sense of historic propriety she +staged it at Salem. The judge dismissed the case, saying that it was not +within the power of the Court to control the defendant's mind. The case +was appealed, the appeal waived and the whole matter rests as a curious +instance in the records of the Salem court.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy does not appear as the plaintiff in the case. The complainant +is one of her students, but Mrs. Eddy was behind the complaint, the real +reason for which is apparently that the defendant had refused to pay +tuition and royalty on his practice and was interfering with the work of +the group of which Mrs. Eddy was leader. The incident has value only as +showing the lengths to which the mind may be led once it has detached +itself from the steadying influences of experience-tested reality. It is +interesting also to note that in one way and another Mrs. Eddy and her +church have been involved in more litigation than any other religious +teacher or religious movement of the time.</p> + + +<p><i>She Writes "Science and Health" and Completes the Organization of Her +Church</i></p> + +<p>Nothing apparently came of the first tentative organization in 1875. The +first incorporated Church of Christ Scientist was chartered in 1879 with +twenty-six charter members and Boston as its seat. Meetings of this +church were held, to begin with, in Lynn and Boston, but Lynn was not +friendly to the new enterprise and the Boston group became the center of +further growth. Mrs. Eddy left Lynn finally in 1882 and during all the +next period the history of Christian Science is the history of the +Mother Church in Boston and of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. +Mrs. Eddy suffered no dissent, her pupils either followed or left her. +She was the controlling force in the whole movement. She began to +surround herself with a certain mystery and delighted in theatrical +effects. She had written and rewritten "Science and Health" until it +began to take final form. The <i>Journal of Christian Science</i> became the +official organ of Mrs. Eddy's movement as "Science and Health" was its +gospel.</p> + +<p>The movement reached beyond Boston and New England and invaded the West. +It was now so outstanding as to create general public interest. The +churches began to take notice of it and indeed, whatever has been for +the last twenty years characteristic of Christian Science was then +actively in action. What follows is the familiar story of Mrs. Eddy's +own personal movements, her withdrawal to Concord, her growing +detachment from the movement which she nevertheless ruled with an iron +hand, the final organization of the church itself along lines wholly +dictated by its leader, the deepening of public interest in the movement +itself, Mrs. Eddy's removal from Concord to Newton and her death. She +left behind her the strongest and most driving organization built up by +any religious leader of her time. Of all those, who since the Wesleys +have inaugurated and carried through a distinct religious movement, only +Alexander Campbell is in the same class with Mrs. Eddy and Campbell had +behind him the traditional force of the Protestantism to which he gave +only a slightly new direction and colouring. Mrs. Eddy's contributions +are far more distinct and radical.</p> + +<p>We need, then, to turn from her life, upon whose lights and shadows, +inconsistencies and intricacies, we have touched all too lightly, to +seek in "Science and Health" and the later development of Christian +Science at once the secret of the power of the movement and its +significance for our time.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> + +<h3>CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A PHILOSOPHY</h3> + + +<p>Christian science has a considerable group of authorized publications +and a well-conducted department of publicity. Its public propaganda is +carried on by means of occasional lectures, always extremely well +advertised and through its reading rooms and periodicals. Its +unadvertised propaganda is carried on, naturally, by its adherents. +Every instance of obscure or protracted illness offers it an opportunity +and such opportunities are by no means neglected. But the supreme +authority in Christian Science is Mary Baker Eddy's work "Science and +Health." This is read at every Sunday service and is the basis of all +lectures and explanatory advertisements. In general its exponents do not +substantially depart from the teachings of its book, nor, such is the +discipline of the cult, do they dare to. There are doubtless such +modifications of its more extreme and impossible contentions as every +religion of authority experiences. Christian Science cannot remain +unaffected by discussion and the larger movements of thought. But it has +not as yet markedly departed from the doctrines of its founder and must +thereby be judged.</p> + +<p>The book in its final form represents a considerable evolution. The +comparison of successive editions reveals an astonishing amount of +matter which has been discarded, although there has been no real +modification of its fundamental principles. References to malicious +animal magnetism which fill a large place in the earlier editions, are +almost wholly wanting in the last, and there has been a decided progress +toward a relative simplicity of statements. The book is doubtless much +in debt to Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser, Mr. Wiggins, who brought to the +revision of Mrs. Eddy's writings a conscientious fidelity. One needs to +stand a good ways back from the book itself in order at all to get any +balanced view of its philosophy but, so seen, its fundamentals are +almost unexpectedly simple.</p> + + +<p><i>Christian Science a Philosophy, a Theology, a Religion and a System of +Healing; General Conditions Which Have Lent it Power</i></p> + +<p>Christian Science is offered as a philosophy, a theology, a religion and +a method for the practical conduct of life and it needs to be considered +under each of these four heads. It demands also for any proper +understanding of it the backgrounds of Mrs. Eddy's peculiar temperament +and checkered history. It is a growth. For her fundamentals Mrs. Eddy +is, beyond reasonable debate, in debt to Quimby and in some ways +Quimby's original insights have suffered at her hands. None the less, in +its final form "Science and Health" is what Mrs. Eddy has made it and it +is what it is because she was what she was. She shared with her own +generation an absorbing interest in fundamental theological problems. +She inherited a religion which has reduced the whole of life to rigid +and on the whole too narrow theological formulæ. She was not able to fit +her experience into the formula which her faith supplied and yet, on the +other hand, her faith exercised a controlling influence over her life. +She was in a small and pathetic way a kind of nineteenth century Job +grappling with the old, old question given sin and, above all, pain and +suffering to find God. She could not adjust either Divine love or a just +Divine sovereignty to what she herself had been called upon to bear. A +natural tendency toward the occult and the desperate willingness of the +hopelessly sick to try anything which promises a cure, led her in many +directions. So much her biography explains.</p> + +<p>Quimby was the first teacher she found whose system seemed to offer any +key at all to the intellectual and spiritual puzzle in which she found +herself and when his system seemed to be proved for her by her recovery +from a chronic abnormal state, she thereafter followed and elaborated +what he suggested. Here a certain natural shrewdness and ingenuity of +mind stood her in good stead. She was helped by her own ignorances and +limitations. If she had been a trained thinker, familiar with a wide +range of philosophic speculation, she would never have dared write so +dogmatically; if she had been a great philosopher with the philosopher's +inclusive vision, she would never have dared build so much on +foundations so narrow.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy was, unconsciously to herself, a type. She thought and felt +for multitudes of perplexed people unable to reconcile the more trying +experiences of life with what faith they had in the love and goodness of +God, unable on the other side to find the love and goodness of God in +the wide sweep of law and the orderly sequence of cause and effect, and +incapable under any circumstances of the patient analysis needed to +trace to all their sources the threads of their strangely mingled webs +of life; impressionable folk under the spell of words; speculative; at +once credulous and skeptical; intellectually alert enough to want to do +their own thinking and not intellectually disciplined enough to do it +well; persuaded that the Bible has both a message and authority and +unable to find in their traditional interpretation of it either a +satisfying message or an adequately directing authority; impatient of +discipline and pathetically eager for some short cut to happiness and +well-being. In a very signal way Mrs. Eddy has spoken and written for +this type particularly in American life. Her very style a liability as +it is, when tested by either logic or the accepted standards of good +writing, has, nevertheless, been an asset with those who have made her +their prophetess.</p> + +<p>The secret of Mrs. Eddy's power and the power of her system after her is +most largely in her essential intellectual and spiritual kinship with +such a temper and intellectual status as this, but she possessed also a +real measure of creative capacity, a marked reach of speculative power, +rare shrewdness and a masterful temper. Mrs. Eddy believed herself to +have found her system in the Old and New Testaments—but she did not. +She gradually built it up out of the suggestions which had been given +her to begin with; she gave it colour and direction from her own +experiences; she proved it to her own satisfaction in the healings which +seemed to result from it, then fitted it all as best she could into the +framework of her inherited Christian faith and read its meanings back +into the Scriptures. It is a pseudo-philosophy pseudo-Christianized (if +one may use the word) by a curious combination of ingenuity, devotion, +main strength and even awkwardness. And though Christian Science is +carrying on to-day as a religion rather than as either a philosophy or a +system of healing, it will stand or fall on the intellectual side as a +philosophy and not as a religion.</p> + + +<p><i>The Philosophic Bases of Christian Science</i></p> + +<p>It is professedly an idealistic monism based on carefully selected facts +and depending for its proof upon certain results in the experience of +those who accept it. An idealism because there is for Mrs. Eddy no +reality save in mind, a monism because there is for Mrs. Eddy only one +reality and that is God. For a definition of God she offers only +synonyms and affirmations though here perhaps she follows only the usual +procedure of theology. God is divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, +Spirit, Mind—and all these capitalized, for it makes a vast difference +in the philosophy of Christian Science whether such familiar words as +these are spelled with a capital letter or not. It would be possible +from Mrs. Eddy's own words to pretty effectually prove what has been +more than once claimed: that Christian Science does not offer a personal +God, but all our terminology in this region is necessarily somewhat +loose, though hers is excessively so. Some of her definitions of God are +as personal as the Westminster Catechism or the Thirty-nine Articles. +The writer believes, however, after such dispassionate consideration of +the philosophy of Christian Science as he is able to give, that it would +make absolutely no difference in its philosophic basis whether God were +conceived as a person or not. If the God of Christian Science be taken +merely as the exaltation of an abstract idealism or a philosophic +Absolute everything would be secured which is otherwise secured.</p> + +<p>Up to a certain point Christian Science marches with other idealistic +systems. From Plato down we have had philosophers a plenty, who have +sought to build for us a universe whose only realities are mind and its +attributes, or perhaps more technically, consciousness and its content. +It is truly a difficult enough matter to relate the world without and +the world within, once we begin thinking about it (though happily and in +the practical conduct of life this is not so hard as the philosophers +make out, otherwise we should be in a hopeless state), and it is natural +enough for one type of mind to simplify the problem by making the world +within the only world. Nor have there been wanting those who have sought +to reduce everything to a single reality whether matter or mind, and +ever since we have had theology at all a perplexed humanity has been +seeking to reconcile the goodness and the power of God with the sin and +sorrow of our troubled world.</p> + +<p>But Christian Science parts company soon enough with this great +fellowship of dreamers and philosophers and takes its own line. It +affirms consciousness and its content to be the only reality; it affirms +the divine Mind to be the ultimate and all-conditioning reality; it +affirms love and goodness to be the ultimate qualities of the divine +Mind, but it meets the problem of sin and evil by denying them any +reality at all. (Here it is in more or less accord with certain forms of +mysticism.) But even as Christian Science cuts this Gordian knot it +creates for itself another set of difficulties and involves itself in +those contradictions which will eventually be the undoing of it as a +philosophy.</p> + + +<p><i>It Undertakes to Solve the Problem of Evil. Contrasted Solutions</i></p> + +<p>What Christian Science is seeking is an ideal order with a content of +unqualified good and it secures this by denying the reality of every +aspect of experience which either challenges or contradicts its own +idealism. What is distinctive, then, in Christian Science is not its +affirmations but its denials. All systems of philosophic idealism face +practically the same problem and offer various solutions. They most +commonly resolve evil of every sort—and evil is here used in so wide a +way as to include sin and pain and sorrow—into an ultimate good.</p> + +<p>Evil is thus an "unripe good," one stage in a process of evolution +which, when it has had its perfect and all-transforming way, will reveal +both moral and physical evil to have been no evil at all but simply +aspects of life, trying enough at the time and puzzling enough when +taken by themselves, but having their own distinct and contributory +value when considered in their relation to the final whole. Such an +approach as this does not in any wise diminish for the individual either +the reality of pain or the unhappy consequences of sin, but it does ask +him to judge the wisdom and love of God not by their passing phases but +by their outcome in the wealth and worth of character.</p> + +<p>Robert Browning sang this sturdily through a long generation riding down +its difficulties by the sheer force of an unconquerable optimism and +subduing argument to lyric passion.</p> + +<p class="blockquot"> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;</span><br /> +What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.</span><br /> +<br /> +"And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For the fullness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?</span><br /> +Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Others affirm the self-limitation of God.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> In His respect for that +human freedom which is the basis of self-regulated personal action and +therefore an essential condition of character, He arrests Himself, as it +were, upon the threshold of human personality and commits His children +to a moral struggle justifying the inevitable incidents of moral defeat +by the greatness of the ends to be attained. A vast deal of what we call +evil—broadening evil to include not only moral defeat but also pain—is +either a consequence or a by-product of what Henry Churchill King calls +the fight for character. Such a solution as this is consistent with the +love of God and the moral order; whether it is consistent with a +thoroughgoing monism or not is another question. William James doubted +it and so frankly adopted Pluralism—which is perhaps just a way of +saying that we cannot reconcile the contending forces in our world order +with one over-all-controlling power—as his solution of the problem.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Walker, for example, in his extremely suggestive Spiritual +Monism and Christian Theism.</p></div> + +<p>Josiah Royce has valiantly maintained, through long and subtle argument, +the goodness of the whole despite the evil of the incidental. "All +finite life is a struggle with evil. Yet from the final point of view +the Whole is good. The Temporal Order contains at no one moment anything +that can satisfy. Yet the Eternal Order is perfect. We have all sinned, +and come short of the glory of God. Yet in just our life, viewed in its +entirety, the glory of God is completely manifest. These hard sayings +are the deepest expressions of the essence of true religion."<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> He +finds the root of evil in the dissatisfaction of the finite will—a +dissatisfaction which on the other hand is the secret of the eventual +triumph of good.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> "The World and the Individual," Royce, Vol. II, Chap. +9—passim.</p></div> + +<p>We suffer also through our involution with "the interests and ideals of +vast realms of other conscious and finite lives whose dissatisfactions +become part of each individual man's life when the man concerned cannot +at present see how or why his own ideals are such as to make these +dissatisfactions his fate." We suffer also through our associations with +nature, none the less "this very presence of evil in the temporal order +is the condition of the perfection of the eternal order." He dismisses +definitely, in an argument still to be quoted, the conclusion of the +mystic that an "experience of evil is an experience of unreality ... an +illusion, a dream, a deceit" and concludes: "In brief, then, nowhere in +Time is perfection to be found. Our comfort lies in the knowledge of the +Eternal. Strengthened by that knowledge, we can win the most enduring of +temporal joys, the consciousness that makes us delight to share the +world's grave glories and to take part in its divine sorrows,—sure that +these sorrows are the means of the eternal triumph, and that these +glories are the treasures of the house of God. When once this comfort +comes home to us, we can run and not be weary, and walk and not faint. +For our temporal life is the very expression of the eternal triumph."</p> + +<p>One may gravely question whether philosophy has ever so completely made +out its case as Professor Royce thinks. He is affirming as the reasoned +conclusion of philosophy what is rather a faith than a demonstration, +but none the less, all honest thinking has hitherto been brave enough to +recognize the reality of evil and to test the power of God and His love +and goodness not by the actuality of present pain, or the confusion of +present sin, but rather by the power which He offers us of growing +through pain to health or else so bearing pain as to make it a real +contribution to character and of so rising above sin as to make +penitence and confession and the struggle for good and the achievement +of it also a contribution to character. So St. Paul assures us that all +things work together for good for those that love God. "The +willingness," says Hocking, "to confront every evil, in ourselves and +outside ourselves, with the blunt, factual conscience of Science; +willingness to pay the full causal price for the removal of the blemish; +this kind of integrity can never be dispensed with in any optimistic +program."<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> "The Meaning of God in Human Experience," p. 175.</p></div> + +<p>Sir Henry Jones takes the same line. "The first requisite for the +solution of the contradiction between the demand of religion for the +perfection of God, and therefore the final and complete victory of the +good in the other, is the honest admission that the contradiction is +there, and inevitable; though possibly, like other contradictions, it is +there only to be solved."<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> "A Faith that Enquires," p. 45.</p></div> + + +<p><i>The Divine Mind and Mortal Mind</i></p> + +<p>Christian Science solves this problem, as has been said, by denying the +reality of evil, but since we have an abundance of testimony to pain and +sickness, Mrs. Eddy goes a step farther. She denies the reality of the +testimony of the senses wherever pain and sickness are concerned.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> +(Mrs. Eddy's denial of the reality of sin is hardly parallel to her +denial of the reality of physical ills.) And here the word comes in +which is made to carry a heavier load than any one poor word was ever +burdened with before. All that is involved in the recognition of +physical ills and indeed all that is involved in the recognition of the +material side of existence is error. (Once fairly on her road Mrs. Eddy +makes a clean sweep of whatever stands in her way.) What one may call +the whole shadowed side of experience is not only ignored, it is denied +and yet before it can be explained away it has to be explained. It is, +in brief, for Mrs. Eddy and her followers the creation of mortal mind. +Mortal mind, she says, "is nothing claiming to be something; mythology; +error creating other errors; a suppositional material sense; ... that +which neither exists in science nor can be recognized by the spiritual +sense; sin; sickness; death."<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> "Science and Health," last edition, pp. 108, 120, 293, +488.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 591.</p></div> + +<p>Mortal mind is that side of us which accepts our entanglement in the +facts and forces of the world order and upon mortal mind so vaguely +conceived Mrs. Eddy throws the whole burden of responsibility for all +the unhappy aspects of experience and conditioning circumstances. She +gives it a surprising range of creative power. It has created +everything Mrs. Eddy does not like or believe in. In other words, there +is not one reality but two, one the reality of well-being, the other the +reality of unhappiness and suffering, but according to Mrs. Eddy the +first reality is the only real reality, the second is an unreal reality +which we ourselves create through false beliefs and which we may escape +at any moment by simply shifting the center of our creative idealism. +Mrs. Eddy makes what she means by mortal mind reasonably clear through +endless repetition and some analysis, but she never for a moment +accounts for its existence. It is no creation of what she calls the +divine Mind; indeed she says in substance that God is not conscious of +it at all; it lies entirely outside the range of His knowledge. (Page +243.)</p> + +<p>God is Good. Since He is good He cannot have created nor be responsible +for, nor even recognize pain, sorrow or suffering. "The Divine Mind +cannot suffer" (page 108, also page 335), "is not responsible for +physical and moral disasters" (page 119). God did not create matter (the +Father mind is not the father of matter) (page 257), for matter means +pain and death, nor do such things as these belong in any way to the +order of the Divine Mind. They have no admitted reality in Mrs. Eddy's +scheme of a true idealism. Man is "God's spiritual idea" and since he +belongs by right to an order in which there is neither sin nor sorrow +nor death, such things as these have no reality for him save as he +admits them. What really admits them is mortal mind, the agent of +another system of Belief in which humanity has in some way, which is +never really explained, become entangled, and we may apparently escape +from the one order to the other simply by a change in our beliefs. For +all the shadowed side of life has reality only as we accept or believe +in it; directly we cease to believe in it or deny it it ceases to be.</p> + +<p>It is, as near as one can make out, a myth, an illusion, whose +beginnings are lost in obscurity and which, for the want of the +revelation vouchsafed through her, has been continued from age to age by +the untaught or the misled. For example, Arsenic is not a poison, so we +are told again and again. It is only a poison because people think it +is;<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> it began to be a poison only because people thought it was, it +continues to be a poison only because the majority of people think it is +now and, such is the subtle and far-reaching influence of mind upon +mind, it will continue to be a poison as long as any one continues to +believe it to be. Directly we all believe that Arsenic is not a poison +it will be no poison. Poisons, that is, are the creation of mortal mind. +Pain is pain only through the same mistaken belief in the reality of it. +"By universal consent mortal belief has constituted itself a law to bind +mortals to sickness, sin and death." And so on at great length and +almost endless repetition.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Page 178.</p></div> + + +<p><i>The Essential Limitations of Mrs. Eddy's System</i></p> + +<p>Since matter conditions us who were born to be unconditioned and since +matter is apparently the root of so many ills, the seat of so many +pains, matter goes with the rest. Mrs. Eddy is not always consistent in +her consideration of matter; sometimes she confines herself to saying +that there is neither sensation nor life in matter—which may be true +enough save as matter both affords the material for sensation and +conditions its forms, which is an immense qualification,—but again and +again she calls matter an illusion. Consistently the laws of physics and +chemistry should disappear with the laws of hygiene and medicine, but +Mrs. Eddy does not go so far as that though it would be difficult to +find a logical stopping place once you have taken this line. Mortal mind +is apparently the source of all these illusions.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy's disposal of matter, along with her constant return to its +misleading mastery in experience is an outstanding aspect of her book. +The writer is inclined to believe that Mrs. Eddy's formula: "There is ... +no matter in life and no life in matter," is an echo of Tyndall's +famous utterance—made about the time she was working with her +system—that he found "in matter the promise and potency of all life." +There is surprisingly little reference in "Science and Health" to +philosophic or scientific sources. Cutter's physiology is quoted in some +editions—an old textbook which the writer remembers to have found among +his mother's school books. There are a few references to popular +astronomy, but in general for Mrs. Eddy modern science does not exist +except in the most general way as the erroneous expression of error and +always with a small "s" as against the capital "S" of her own system. Nor +does she show any knowledge of other philosophic idealisms nor any +acquaintance with any solution of the problems she was facing save the +commonplaces of evangelical orthodoxy. "Science and Health" knows +nothing also of any medical science save the empirical methods of the +medical science of 1860 and 1870.</p> + +<p>But she cannot have been wholly uninfluenced—being a woman of an alert +mind—by the controversy which, in the seventies and eighties, was +raging about a pretty crass and literal materialism, and her writings +probably reflect—with a good deal of indirection—that controversy. +Here is a possible key to a good many things which are otherwise +puzzling enough. She is, in her own fashion, the defender of an +idealistic interpretation of reality and experience. Now all idealistic +systems have had to dispose of matter in some way. In general idealists +find in matter only the reflection in consciousness of the material +which sense experience supplies, and since the raw material is in every +way so different from the mental reflection, the idealist may defend his +position plausibly in assuming matter to be, in its phenomenal aspects, +really the creation of thought. But he must account for the persistency +of it and the consistency of experience so conditioned. He does this by +assuming the whole interrelated order to be held, as it were, in +solution, in some larger system of thought which really supplies for us +our environment and if he be both devout and consistent he calls this +the thought God.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> In this way he solves his problem—at least to his +own satisfaction—and even supplies a basis for Theistic faith. But he +does not deny the working reality of his so-called material experiences +nor does he, like Mrs. Eddy, accept one aspect of this experience and +deny the other. This is philosophically impossible.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> So Royce in "The World and the Individual."</p></div> + +<p>A thoroughgoing theistic monism must find in matter some aspect or other +of the self-revelation of God. It may be hard pressed to discover just +how the psychical is "stepped down" to the physical. (That is the +essential difficulty in all Creationism.) But something must be assumed +to get a going concern in any department of thought and there is much in +that resolution of matter into force and force into always more tenuous +and imponderable forms—which is the tendency of modern science—to +render this assumption less difficult to the rational imagination than +perhaps any other we are asked to make. When the final elements in +matter have become electrons and the electron is conceived as a strain +in a magnetic field and thus the</p> + +<p class="indented"> +"Cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,<br /> +The solemn temples, the great globe itself,<br /> +Yea, all which is inherent,"<br /> +</p> + +<p>become the projection into sensibly apprehended form of the flux of an +infinite and eternal energy, it is not hard to define that energy in +terms of a divine will. Indeed it is hard not to do just that. But there +is no place in such a resolution as this for the conclusions of "Science +and Health."</p> + +<p>Or we may accept in one form or another a dualism in which the +practical mind is generally content to rest. According to this point of +view we have to do with a reality which may be known under two aspects. +It is the chemical action and interaction of elements—and the mind +which measures and combines them; it is the physical action and +interaction of force—and the mind which directs the process. +Biologically "the living creature gives an account of itself in two +ways. It can know itself as something extended and intricately built up, +burning away, moving, throbbing; it can also know itself as the seat of +sensation, perceptions, feelings, wishes, thoughts. But there is not one +process, thinking, and another process, cerebral metabolism (vital +processes in nerve-cells); there is a psycho-physical life—a reality +which we know under two aspects. Cerebral control and mental activity +are, on this view, different aspects of one natural occurrence. What we +have to do with is the unified life of a psycho-physical being, a +body-mind or mind-body."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> In short there is no philosophy or science +outside the covers of her own book to which Mrs. Eddy may turn for +support and though this does not prove the case against her—she might +be right and the whole disciplined thought of her time be wrong—this +latter supposition is so improbable as to rule it out of court.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> J.A. Thomson, "The Outline of Science," p. 548.</p></div> + +<p>The materialism against which she contends has ceased to exist. The +matter which she denies does not exist in the sense of her denial. There +was, even when she was writing, a line of which she was apparently +wholly ignorant which has since been immensely developed, and of all +this there is naturally no reflection at all in her work. It is more +hopelessly out of touch with the laborious and strongly established +conclusions of modern thought in every field than the first chapters of +Genesis for there one may, at least, substitute the science of to-day +for the science of 3,000 years ago and still retain the enduring +insights of the faith then voiced, but there is no possible +accommodation of "Science and Health" to either the science or the +philosophy of the twentieth century. It must be left to a consistent +Christian Scientist to reconcile his gospel with the freer movements of +the world of which he is still a citizen—though perhaps this also might +be urged against a deal of contemporaneous Christian faith—but it is +all an arresting testimony to the power of the human mind to organize +itself in compartments between which there is no communication.</p> + + +<p><i>Experience and Life</i></p> + +<p>Beyond all this is the fact of which "Science and Health" takes no +account—the conditioning of conscious life and working experience by +its material environment however conceived. This is true of every phase +of life and all our later emphasis upon the power of the mind in one +direction and another to escape this conditioning scarcely affects the +massive reality of it. Christian Science makes no attempt at all to +escape this—save in the region of physical health—or else it provides +an alibi in the phrase, "I have not demonstrated in that region yet." +But it does not thus escape the limitation imposed upon us all and if +we may dare for a moment to be dogmatic, it never will. At the best we +live in a give and take and if, through discipline and widening +knowledge, we may push back a little the frontiers which limit us, and +assert the supremacy of soul over the material with which it is so +intimately associated, we do even this slowly and at great cost and +always in conformity with the laws of the matter we master.</p> + +<p>There is a body of evidence here which can no more be ignored than +gravitation, and we best dispose of association of personality with the +material fabric of the body and the world of which it is a part, not by +denying their mutual interdependence but by discovering therein the laws +and methods of an infinite wisdom. Here are ministries through which we +come to consciousness of ourselves, here are materials upon which we +exercise our power, here are realities which hold us fast to normal and +intelligible lives, here are masters whose rule is kind and servants +whose obediences empower us. They condition our happinesses as well as +our unhappinesses and supply for us the strings of that harp of the +senses upon which the music of life is played. Life really gains its +spiritual content through the action and interaction of the aspiring +self upon its environment—whether that environment be intimate as the +protest of a disturbed bodily cell or remote as Orion and the +Pleiades.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> The very words which Mrs. Eddy uses would be idle if this +were not so and though a thoroughgoing defender of her system may read +into its lines a permission for all this, the fundamentals of her system +deny it.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> "And I am inclined to think that the error of forgetting +that spirit in order to be real or that principles, whether of morality, +religion or knowledge, must be exemplified in temporal facts, is a no +less disastrous error than that of the sciences which have not learned +that the natural, when all the meaning of it is set free, blossoms into +the spiritual like the tree into flower. Religion and philosophy and +science also have yet to learn more fully that all which can possibly +concern man, occupy his intelligence or engage his will, lies at the +point of intersection of the natural and spiritual."—"A Faith that +Enquires," p. 27.</p></div> + +<p>Christian Science breaks down both philosophically and practically just +here. It is none the less a dualism because it denies that it is. It +confronts not one but two ranges of reality; it gains nothing by making +mortal mind the villain in the play. It is compelled to admit the +existence of the reality which it denies, even in the fact of denying +it. What we deny exists for us—we could not otherwise deny it. Royce +has put all this clearly, strongly, finally. "The mystic first denies +that evil is real. He is asked why, then, evil seems to exist. He +replies that this is our finite error. The finite error itself hereupon +becomes, as the source of all our woes, an evil. But no evil is real, +hence no error can be real, hence we do not really err even if we +suppose that evil is real. Here we return to our starting point and +could only hope to escape by asserting that it is an error to assert +that we really err or that we really believe error to be real, and with +a process thus begun there is indeed no end, nor at any stage in this +process is there consistency."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> All this is subtle enough, but if we +are to make our world by thinking and unthinking it, all this is +unescapably true.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> "The World and the Individual," Vol. II, p. 394.</p></div> + +<p>When, moreover, you have reduced one range of experience to illusion +there is absolutely nothing to save the rest. If evil is error and error +evil and the belief that evil is an illusion is itself an illusion what +is there to guarantee the reality of good? The sword with which Mrs. +Eddy cut the knot of the problem of evil is two-edged. If the optimist +denies evil for the sake of good and points for proof to the solid +coherency of the happier side of life, the pessimist may as justly deny +good for the sake of evil and point for proof to the solid coherency of +the sadder side of life; he will have no trouble in finding his facts. +If sickness is a dream then health is a dream as well. Once we have +taken illusion for a guide there is no stopping until everything is +illusion. The Eastern mystic who went this road long before Mrs. Eddy +and who thought it through with a searching subtleness of which she was +incapable, reached the only logical conclusion. All experience is +illusion, entire detachment from action is the only wisdom, and +absorption in an unconscious something which only escapes being nothing +is our appointed destiny:</p> + +<p class="indented"> +"We are such stuff<br /> +As dreams are made of,<br /> +And our little life<br /> +Is rounded with a sleep."<br /> +</p> + + +<p><i>Sense-Testimony Cannot Be Accepted for Health and Denied for Sickness</i></p> + +<p>Christian Science, then, is not monism, it is rather a dualism; it +confronts not one but two ranges of reality and it is compelled to admit +the existence of the reality which it denies, even the fact of denying +it, for it is a philosophical axiom that what we deny exists for us—we +could not otherwise deny it. Denial is the recognition of reality just +as much as affirmation. To repeat, it is this continuous interwoven +process of trying to reconcile the one-sided idealism of Christian +Science with the necessity of its argument and the facts of life which +gives to "Science and Health" what one may call its strangely bifocal +character, though indeed this is a somewhat misleading figure. One has +the same experience in reading the book that one has in trying to read +through glasses which are out of focus; you are always just seeing and +just missing because Mrs. Eddy herself is always just seeing and just +missing a really great truth.</p> + +<p>This fundamental inconsistency penetrates the whole system even down to +its practical applications. Christian Science denies the testimony of +the senses as to sickness and yet accepts them as to health. It goes +further than this, it accepts the testimony of the senses of other +people—physicians, for example, in accepting their diagnosis. The +edition of "Science and Health" published in 1918 offers in chapter +eighteen a hundred pages of testimonials sent in by those who have in +various ways been helped by their faith. These letters are shot through +and through with a recognition of the testimony of the senses which no +explanation can possibly explain away. "I was afflicted with a fibroid +tumour which weighed not less than fifty pounds, attended by a +continuous hemorrhage for eleven years." If the senses have any language +at all, this is their language. A growth cannot be known as a fibroid +tumour without sense testimony, nor its weight estimated without sense +testimony, nor a continuous hemorrhage be recorded, or its cessation +known without sense testimony, nor can epilepsy be diagnosed, nor +bilious attacks recognized without sense testimony. On page 606 a +grateful disciple bears witness to the healing of a broken arm, +testimony to said healing being demonstrated by a visit to a physician's +office "where they were experimenting with an X-ray machine. The doctor +pointed out the place as being slightly thicker at that part, like a +piece of steel that had been welded." In other words, Christian Science +cannot make out its case without the recognition of the veracity of a +sense testimony, whose truth its philosophy denies.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy seems to dismiss all this in one brief paragraph. "Is a man +sick if the material senses indicate that he is in good health? No, for +matter can make no conditions for man. And is he well if the senses say +he is sick? Yes, he is well in Science, in which health is normal and +disease is abnormal."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> +If Mrs. Eddy and her followers believe so specious a statement as that, +to set them free from an inconsistency which is central in their whole +contention, they are welcome to their belief, but the inconsistency +still remains. You can go far by using words in a Pickwickian sense but +there is a limit. A consistent idealism is philosophically possible, but +it must be a far more inclusive and deeply reasoned idealism than +Christian Science. The most thoroughgoing idealisms have accepted the +testimony of the senses as a part of the necessary conduct of life as +now conditioned. Anything else would reduce us to unspeakable confusion, +empty experience of its content, dissolve all the contacts of life and +halt us in our tracks for we cannot take a step safely without the +testimony of the senses and any scheme of things which seeks to +distinguish between the varying validities of sense testimony, accepting +only the evidence of the senses for health and well-being and denying +the dependability of whatever else they register, is simply an immense +caprice which breaks down under any examination.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Page 120. It is only fair to say that Mrs. Eddy is +hampered by her own want of clear statement. The phrase (so often used +in "Science and Health") "in Science" is probably in her mind equivalent +to "in the ideal order" and if Mrs. Eddy had clearly seen and clearly +stated what she is groping for: that the whole shadowed side of life +belongs to our present world of divided powers and warring forces and +unfinished enterprises, that God has something better for His children +toward which we are being led through the discipline of experience and +that we may therefore seek to conceive and affirm this ideal order and +become its citizens in body, mind and soul, she would have escaped a +perfect web of contradiction and been in line not only with the great +philosophies but with historic Christian faith. But then Christian +Science would not be Christian Science.</p></div> + +<p><i>The Inescapable Reality of Shadowed Experience</i></p> + +<p>Evil does not cease to be because it is denied. The acceptance of sense +testimony is just as necessary in the region of pain and sickness as in +driving a motorcar down a crowded street and the hypothesis of a +misleading mortal mind, instead of explaining everything, demands itself +an explanation. What Mrs. Eddy calls mortal mind is only the registry of +the dearly bought experience of the race. We began only with the power +to feel, to struggle, to will and to think. We have been blind enough +and stupid enough but we are, after all, not unteachable and out of our +experience and our reflections we have created the whole splendid and +dependable body of human knowledge. What we know about pain is itself +the outcome of all the suffering of our kind. We began with no developed +philosophy nor any presuppositions about anything. Experience reflects +encompassing realities which we are able to escape only as we make their +laws our ministers. We did not give fire the power to burn, we +discovered that only in the school of the touch of flame. We did not +give edged steel the power to cut, we found that out through death and +bleeding wounds. We did not give to poisons their deadly power, our +attitude toward them is simply the outcome of our experience with them.</p> + +<p>Conditioned as we are by those laws and forces with which this present +existence of ours is in innumerable ways inextricably interwoven, our +tested and sifted beliefs are only the outcome of an action and +interaction of recipient or creative personality upon its environment +old as human consciousness, and if in all this we have become persuaded +of pain and suffering and shadowed experience, it is only because these +are as real as any elements in experience can possibly be. To attempt +to write them out or deny them out or juggle them out in any kind of way +save in bravely meeting them and humbly being taught by them and in the +full resource of disciplined power getting free from them by removing +the causes which create them, is to cheat ourselves with words, lose +ourselves in shadows which we mistake for light and even if in some +regions we seem to succeed it is only at the cost of what is more bitter +than pain and more deadly than wounds—the loss of mental and spiritual +integrity. This is a price too great to pay for any mere healing.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> + +<h3>CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A THEOLOGY</h3> + + +<p>"Science and Health" is offered, among other things, as a key to the +Scriptures, and along with her interpretation of both the Old and the +New Testaments in terms of her peculiar philosophy Mrs. Eddy rewrites +the great articles of the Christian creeds. A careful student of Mrs. +Eddy's mental processes is able in this region to understand them better +than she understood them herself. She had, to begin with, an inherited +reverence for the Bible as an authority for life and she shared with +multitudes of others a difficulty to which reference has already been +more than once made. For what one may call the typical Protestant +consciousness the Bible is the final revelation of God, governing, if +only we can come to understand it, both our faith and our conduct of +life, but the want of a true understanding of it and, above all, the +burdening of it with an inherited tradition has clouded its light for +multitudes of devout souls.</p> + + +<p><i>Science and Health Offered as a Key to the Scriptures</i></p> + +<p>Such as these have been almost pathetically eager to accept any +interpretation, no matter how capricious, which seemed to read an +intelligible meaning into its difficult passages, or reconcile its +contradictions, or make it a more practical guide in the conduct of +life. Any cult or theory, therefore, which can seem to secure for itself +the authority of the Bible has obtained directly an immense +reinforcement in its appeal to the devout and the perplexed, and Mrs. +Eddy has taken full advantage of this. Her book is veined with Scripture +references; two of her chapters are expositions of Biblical books +(Genesis and Revelation); and other chapters deal with great doctrines +of the Church.</p> + + +<p><i>It Ignores All Recognized Canons of Biblical Interpretation. +Illustrations</i></p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy naturally sought the authority for her philosophy between the +covers of the Scriptures. Beyond debate her teachings have carried much +farther than they otherwise would, in that she claims for them a +Scriptural basis, and they must be examined in that light. Now there are +certain sound and universally recognized rules governing the scholarly +approach to the Old and New Testaments. Words must be taken in their +plain sense; they must be understood in their relation to their context. +A book is to be studied also in the light of its history; the time and +place and purpose of its composition, as far as these are known, must be +considered; no changes made in the text save through critical +emendation, nor any translations offered not supported by accepted +texts, nor any liberties be taken with grammatical constructions. By +such plain tests as these Mrs. Eddy's use of the Scriptures will not +bear examination. She violates all recognized canons of Biblical +interpretation on almost every page.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> This is a brief—and a Christian Scientist may protest—a +summary dismissal of the claim of "Science and Health" to be a "key to +the Scriptures." But nothing is gained—save of the unnecessary +lengthening of this chapter—in going into a detailed examination of her +method and conclusions. She has insight, imagination, boundless +allegorical resource, but the whole Bible beneath her touch becomes a +plastic material to be subdued to her peculiar purpose by omissions, +read-in meanings and the substantial and constant disregard of plain +meanings. To the student the whole matter is important only as revealing +the confusion of the popular mind which receives such a method as +authoritative.</p></div> + +<p>Her method is wholly allegorical and the results achieved are +conditioned only by the ingenuity of the commentator. It would require a +body of citation from the pages of "Science and Health," not possible +here, to follow through Mrs. Eddy's peculiar exegesis. One needs only to +open the book at random for outstanding illustrations. For example, +Genesis 1:6, "And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the +waters and let it divide the waters from the waters." The word +"firmament" has its own well established connotation gathered from a +careful study of all its uses. We can no more understand the earlier +chapters of Genesis without an understanding of Hebrew cosmogony than we +can understand Dante without a knowledge of medieval cosmogony. But, +given this knowledge which is the common possession of all sound +scholarship, we can at least understand what the passage means, even +though we have long left behind us the naïve conception of the vaulted +skies to which it refers.</p> + +<p>All this is a commonplace not worth repeating at the cost of the white +paper upon which it is printed, save as the ignoring of it leads to such +an interpretation of the passage as that which Mrs. Eddy offers: +"spiritual understanding by which human conception material mind is +separated from Truth is the firmament. The Divine Mind, not matter, +creates all identities and they are forms of Mind, the ideas of Spirit +apparent only as Mind, never as mindless matter nor the so-called +material senses" (page 505). Comment is not only difficult but +impossible in the face of a method like this. If such an interpretation +were an exception it might seem the unfair use of a hypercritical temper +to quote this particular expression of Mrs. Eddy's mind. But her whole +treatment of Scripture suffers from the same method.</p> + +<p>Everything means something else. The Ark is "the idea, or reflection of +truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle." Babel is +"self-destroying error"; baptism is "submergence in Spirit"; Canaan is +"a sensuous belief"; Dan (Jacob's son) is "animal magnetism"; the dove +is "a symbol of divine Science"; the earth is "a type of eternity and +immortality"; the river Euphrates is "divine Science encompassing the +universe and man"; evening "the mistiness of mortal thought"; flesh "an +error, a physical belief"; Ham (Noah's son) is "corporeal belief"; +Jerusalem "mortal belief and knowledge obtained from the five corporeal +senses"; night, "darkness; doubt; fear"; a Pharisee, "corporeal and +sensuous belief"; river is "a channel of thought"; a rock is "a +spiritual foundation"; sheep are "innocence"; a sword "the idea of +Truth."<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Glossary, p. 579—passim.</p></div> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy does not hesitate to make such textual modifications of +passages as suit her purpose and even when she is not dealing with her +texts in such ways as these, she is constantly citing for her proofs +passages which cannot by any recognized canon of interpretation possibly +be made to mean what she says they mean. Beneath her touch simple things +become vague, the Psalms lose their haunting beauty, even the Lord's +Prayer takes a form which we may reverently believe the author of it +would not recognize.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Our Father: Mother God, all harmonious, Adorable One, Thy kingdom +is come; Thou art ever present. Enable us to know—as in heaven, so +on earth—God is omnipotent, supreme. Give us grace for to-day; +feed the famished affections; and love is reflected in love; and +God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, +disease and death. For God is Infinite, all Power, all Life, Truth, +Love, over all and All."</p></div> + + +<p><i>Its Conception of God</i></p> + +<p>It was quite as inevitable that she should undertake to fit her +speculations into the fabric of the theology in which she and most of +her followers had been trained, as that she should try to secure for her +speculation the weight of the authority of the Bible. She would have to +take for her point of departure the centrality of Christ, the +outstanding Christian doctrines, markedly the Incarnation and the +Atonement and she would need somehow to dispose of the Sacraments. All +this is inevitably implied in the persistent designation of her whole +system as a Christian system.</p> + +<p>The chapter headings in "Science and Health" and the sequence of +chapters are the key to the movement of her mind; they are determined by +her association of interests. Marriage is on the same level with Prayer, +Atonement and the Eucharist, and Animal Magnetism with Science, Theology +and Medicine. It is hard to know where to begin in so confused a region. +She is handicapped, to begin with, by the rigidity of her idealism and +actually by her limitation both of the power and personality of God. +This statement would probably be as sharply contradicted by Mrs. Eddy's +apologists as anything in this study, but it is not hastily made. +Philosophically He is for Mrs. Eddy only an exalted ideality into +relation with which we may think ourselves by a change in our system of +belief. Actually, as we shall see, this conception yields to emotional +and devotional needs—it is bound to—but in theory it is unyielding.</p> + +<p>Now the accepted Christian conception of God is entirely different. Both +the Old and New Testaments conceive a God who is lovingly and justly +conscious of all our need, who is constantly drawing near to us in +manifold appeals and approaches and who has, above all, in the +Incarnation made a supreme and saving approach to humanity. He is no +more rigid than love is rigid; His attitude toward us, His children, +changes as the attitude of a father toward the changing tempers of a +child. Now all this may be true or it may be only the dream of our +strangely sensitive personalities, but whether it be true or not, it is +the Christian conception and any denial of this or any radically +different substitution for it cannot call itself Christian save as it +writes into the word Christian connotations to which it has heretofore +been utterly strange.</p> + + +<p><i>Mrs. Eddy's Interpretation of Jesus Christ</i></p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy begins, therefore, with the handicap of a philosophy which can +be adjusted to Christian theology only through fundamental modifications +of that theology. It is hard to systematize the result. Mrs. Eddy +distinguishes between Jesus and Christ. Her conception of Jesus is +reasonably clear whether it be historically true or not, but her +conception of the Christ is vague and fluctuating. Jesus was apparently +the first Christian Scientist, anticipating, though not completely, its +philosophy and demonstrating its practices. His teachings are so +interpreted as to be made to yield a Christian Science content. When He +urged the commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" what He +really meant was, "Thou shalt have no belief of Life as mortal; thou +shalt not know evil, for there is one Life."<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> "He proved by His deeds +that Christian Science destroys sickness, sin and death. Our Master +taught no mere theory, doctrine or belief; it was the divine Principle +of all real being which He taught and practiced."<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> "He taught His +followers the healing power of Truth and Love"<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> and "the proofs of +Truth, Life and Love which Jesus gave by casting out error and healing +the sick, completed His earthly mission."<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> "The truth taught by Jesus +the elders scoffed at because it demanded more than they were willing to +practice."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> They, therefore, crucified Him and He seemed to die, but +He did not. Apparently He was not dead when He was entombed and His +three days in the tomb gave Him "a refuge from His foes, a place in +which to solve the great problem of being." In other words He +demonstrated His own healing in the tomb. "He met and mastered, on the +basis of Christian Science, the power of mind over matter, all the +claims of medicine, surgery and hygiene. He took no drugs to allay +inflammation; He did not depend upon food or pure air to resuscitate +wasted energies; He did not require the skill of a surgeon to heal the +torn palms and bind up the wounded side and lacerated feet, that He +might use those hands to remove the napkin and winding sheet and that He +might employ His feet as before."<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Page 19. All citations from last edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Page 26.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Page 31.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Page 41.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Page 41.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Page 44.</p></div> + +<p>"His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while He was hidden in the +sepulchre, whereas He was alive, demonstrating within the narrow tomb +the power of the spirit to overrule mortal, material sense." His +ascension was a final demonstration in which He "rose above the physical +knowledge of His disciples and the material senses saw Him no more." He +attained this perfection of demonstration only gradually and He left +behind Him an incomplete revelation which was to wait for its full +illumination for the coming of Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science. Perhaps +more justly He left behind Him, according to Mrs. Eddy and her +followers, a body of teaching which could not be clearly understood +until she came to complete the revelation. At any rate, Christian +Science is really His second coming.</p> + + +<p><i>Christian Science His Second Coming</i></p> + +<p>In an advertisement printed in the New York <i>Tribune</i> on January 23, +1921, Augusta E. Stetson says: "Christ in Christian Science is come to +the understanding of those who looked for His reappearing." And if +certain sentences which follow mean anything, they mean that, in the +thought of Mrs. Eddy's followers, she completes what Jesus began and +fulfills the prophecy of His reappearing. "Her earthly experience runs +parallel with that of her Master; understood in a small degree only by +the few who faintly see and accept the truth, she stood during her +earthly mission and now stands on the mount of spiritual illumination +toward whose heights no feet but those of the blessed Master have so +directly toiled, first in agony and finally, like Jesus Christ the +masculine representative of the Fatherhood of God, she as the feminine +representative of the motherhood of God, will appear in triumphant +demonstration of divine power and glory as the combined ideal man in +God's image and likeness."</p> + +<p>And, indeed, there are not wanting intimations in "Science and Health" +which give to Mrs. Eddy a certainty in this region which Jesus Himself +did not possess. He falters where she firmly trod. No need to dwell +upon the significant omissions which such an interpretation of the +historic Jesus as this demands. The immensely laborious and painstaking +scholarship which has sought, perplexedly enough it must be confessed, +to discover behind the Gospel narratives the fundamental facts and +realities of His life, is entirely ignored. Mrs. Eddy has no place for +the social aspects of the teachings of Christ, indeed His whole system +of ethic could be "blacked out"; as far as her teaching is concerned it +would make absolutely no difference.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy distinguishes, in theory at least though there is no +consistency in her use of terms, between Jesus and the Christ. "Jesus is +the human man, and Christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of +Jesus, the Christ" (page 473). "Jesus is the name of the man who, more +than all other men, has presented Christ, the true idea of God, healing +the sick and the sinning and destroying the power of death" (page 473). +"In an age of ecclesiastical despotism, Jesus introduced the teaching +and practice of Christianity ... but to reach His example and test its +unerring Science according to His rule, ... a better understanding of +God as divine Principle, Love, rather than personality or the man Jesus, +is required" (page 473).</p> + +<p>It is difficult enough to know just what this means, but as one stands +far enough back from it all it seems to reduce Jesus historically to the +first outstanding Christian Science teacher and healer. "Jesus +established what He said by demonstration, thus making His acts of +higher importance than His words. He proved what He taught. This is the +Science of Christianity. Jesus <i>proved</i> the Principle, which heals the +sick and casts out error, to be divine" (page 473). He is, therefore, +historically of chiefest value as the demonstrator of Christian Science, +the full philosophy of which apparently awaited a later revelation.</p> + +<p>"Christ is the ideal Truth, that comes to heal sickness and sin through +Christian Science, and attributes all power to God" (page 473). "He +unveiled the Christ, the spiritual idea of divine Love" (page 38). The +Christ of Christian Science, then, is an ideal Truth, a spiritual idea, +apparently an abstraction. But Mrs. Eddy is not consistent in her use of +these two names. On one page Christ is "the spiritual idea of divine +Love"; on the next page "we need Christ and Him crucified" (page 39), +though how an ideal truth or a spiritual idea could possibly be +crucified we are not told. In many of her passages Mrs. Eddy uses the +familiar phrase, Jesus Christ, in apparently its ordinary connotations.</p> + + +<p><i>The Incarnation: Christian Theology and Christian Science Belong Really +to Different Regions</i></p> + +<p>The Incarnation is disposed of in the same vague way. "Those instructed +in Christian Science have reached the glorious perception that God is +the only author of man. The virgin mother conceived this idea of God and +gave to her ideal the name of Jesus."<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> +"The illumination of Mary's spiritual sense put to silence material law +and its order of generation, and brought forth her child by the +revelation of Truth. The Holy Ghost, or divine Spirit, overshadowed the +pure sense of the Virgin-mother with the full recognition that being is +Spirit."<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> "Jesus was the offspring of Mary's self-conscious communion +with God."<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> Now all this is neither honest supernaturalism nor the +honest acceptance of the normal methods of birth. It is certainly not +the equivalent of the Gospel account whether the Gospel account be +accepted or rejected. To use a phrase which has come into use since +"Science and Health" was written, this is a "smoke screen" under cover +of which Mrs. Eddy escapes the necessity of either accepting or denying +the testimony of the Gospels.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Page 29.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Page 29.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Page 30.</p></div> + +<p>Something of this, one must confess, one may find in not a little +religious teaching old and new, but it is doubtful if there is anywhere +so outstanding an instance of what one may call the smoke screen method +in the consideration of the Incarnation, as in the passages just quoted. +As a matter of fact all this is simply the attempt to fit the idealistic +dualism, which is the real philosophic basis of Christian Science and +which, in so far as it is capable of explanation at all, can be as +easily explained in two pages as two hundred, into the theology in which +Mrs. Eddy was nurtured and which was a background common to both herself +and her disciples. Christian Science would carry far less weight in the +race it is running if it frankly cut itself clear of a theology with +which it has fundamentally no affinity. This indoctrination of an +idealistic dualism with a content of Christian theology probably +heightens the appeal of the system to those who are most at home in a +new faith as they discover there the familiar phrases of their older +faith, but it weakens the fundamental Christian Science apologetic. I +think, however, we ought justly to recognize this as simply an +inevitable aspect in the transition of Christian Science from the +orthodox faith and experience of historic Christianity to a faith and +experience of its own.</p> + +<p>Seen as a curious half-truth development made possible by a whole group +of forces in action at the end of the nineteenth century, Christian +Science is reasonably intelligible, but as a system of doctrine built +upon the hitherto accepted bases of Christian fact and teaching, it is +not intelligible at all and the long controversy between the Christian +theologian and the Christian Science lecturer would best be ended by +recognizing that they have so little in common as to make attack and +counter-attack a movement in two different dimensions. The one thing +which they have in common is a certain set of words and phrases, but +these words and phrases have such entirely different meanings on the one +side and the other as to make the use of them hopelessly misleading.</p> + + +<p><i>The Atonement. The Cross of Christian Science and the Cross of +Theology</i></p> + +<p>There are passing references to the Cross in "Science and Health," but +the word is used generally in a figurative and sentimental way. Mrs. +Eddy's cross is simply the pain of being misunderstood and criticised in +the preaching and practice of Christian Science, though indeed the Cross +of Jesus was also the outcome of hostilities and misunderstandings and a +final and terribly fierce method of criticism. One feels that mainly she +is thinking of her own cross as a misunderstood and abused woman and for +such suggestion she prefers the Cup as a figure to the Cross. As for the +Atonement "every pang of repentance and suffering, every effort for +reform, every good thought and deed will help us to understand Jesus' +Atonement for sin and aid its efficacy."<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> "Wisdom and Love require +many sacrifices of self to save us from sin." All this seems to be in +line with the moral theory of the atonement until we see that in such a +line as this there is no recognition of the fact that again and again we +suffer and that largely for others, and when she adds that "Its [the +atonement] scientific explanation is that suffering is an error of +sinful sense which Truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and +suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love" (page 23), those +passages cancel one another, for if suffering be "an error of sinful +sense" it is hard to see how any pang of it can help us to understand +Jesus' atonement unless His suffering be also "an error of sinful +sense," and this is to reduce the atonement to a like error.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Page 19.</p></div> + +<p>In another connection Mrs. Eddy finds the efficacy of the Crucifixion +"in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind." +But this turns out to be nothing more than that the Crucifixion offers +Christ a needed opportunity for the instruction of His disciples to +triumph over the grave. But since in another connection we are told He +never died at all (chapter Atonement and Eucharist, paragraph "Jesus in +the tomb") even this dissolves into unreality. Moreover the "eternal +Christ in His spiritual selfhood never suffered."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> Whichever road she +takes here Mrs. Eddy reaches an impasse. It ought to be said, in justice +to Mrs. Eddy, that her treatment of the atonement reflects the +difficulty she found in the theology in which she had been trained as a +girl and that there are many true insights in her contentions. She was +at least seeking a vital and constructive interpretation and doubtless +her observations, confused as they are, have been for her followers a +real way out of a real difficulty. Here, as in so many other regions, +"Science and Health" is best understood by its backgrounds.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> A curious and far-off echo of early Docetism which also in +its own way reduced Christ's suffering to a simple seeming to suffer.</p></div> + +<p>As a matter of fact there is in Christian Science absolutely no soil in +which to plant the Cross as the Cross is understood in Christian +theology. There is no place in Christian Science for vicarious +atonement, whether by God or man; there is little place in Christian +Science for redemptive suffering; there is a rather narrow region in +which suffering may be considered as instructive, a guide, perhaps, to +lead us out of unhappy or shadowed regions into the regions of physical +and, maybe, spiritual and moral well-being, and to quench the love of +sin.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> Mrs. Eddy sometimes speaks of Christ as the Saviour but if her +system be pressed to a logical conclusion she must empty the word of all +the associations which it has hitherto had and make it simply the +equivalent of a teacher or demonstrator.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Page 36. But this is to recognize the reality of +suffering. Mrs. Eddy is here on the threshold of a great truth—that +suffering is an aspect of education—but she goes no further.</p></div> + + +<p><i>Sin an Error of Mortal Mind</i></p> + +<p>Sin along with sickness and death are the projections of mortal error, +the creations of mortal mind; sin, sickness and death are to be +classified as effects of error. Christ came "to destroy the belief of +sin." All this is to root sin simply in the mind. No intimation at all +here of the part which a perverted will may play in the entanglements of +life; no intimation of the immense force of the emotional side of life; +no intimation here of the immense part which sheer selfishness plays. +Mrs. Eddy's sin is far too simple. There is, once more, a sound reason +for that. Mrs. Eddy is twice-born, if you will, but the struggle from +which she finally emerged with whatever measure of victory she attained +was not fought out with conscience as the field of battle, or in the +final reconciliation of a divided self finding unity and peace on some +high level.</p> + +<p>If Mrs. Eddy's true struggle was of the soul and not of complaining +nerves she has left no record of it anywhere. It was rather the reaction +of a speculative mind against the New England theology. Her experience +is strangely remote from the experience of Saul of Tarsus, or Augustine, +or John Bunyan. This is not to deny that in the practical outcome of +Christian Science as evidenced in the life of its adherents there is not +a very real power of helpful moral adjustment, but the secret of that +must be sought in something else than either its philosophy or its +theology. Christian theologians themselves have been by no means agreed +as to what sin really is. Under their touch it became too often a +theological abstraction rather than entanglement of personality caught +in manifold urgencies and pulled this way and that by competing forces +battling in the will and flaming in passion and desire. But a sin which +has no reality save through a mistaken belief in its existence is +certainly as far from the fact of a world like ours as is a sin which is +only one factor in a scheme of redemption.</p> + +<p>But at any rate, if sin have no reality except our mistaken persuasion +that it be true and if we are delivered from it directly we cease to +believe in it and affirm in the stead of it the reality of love and +goodness, then while there may be in such a faith as this both the need +and possibility of the recasting of our personal lives, there is in it +neither need nor possibility of the Christian doctrine of the atonement. +Naturally since man is incapable of sin, sickness and death, he is +unfallen, nor is "his capacity or freedom to sin any part of the divine +plan." "A mortal sinner is not God's man. Mortals are the counterfeits +of immortals; they are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil +which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo" (page +475).</p> + +<p>Here also is an echo from an early time and a far-off land. It is not +likely that Mrs. Eddy ever heard of Mani or Manicheeism, or knew to what +a travail of soul St. Augustine was reduced when he fought his way +through just a kindred line of teaching which, to save God from any +contact with or responsibility for evil, affirmed our dual genesis and +made us on one side children of darkness and on the other the children +of light, without ever really trying to achieve in a single personality +any reconciliation of two natures drawn from two entirely different +sources. Nor does Mrs. Eddy know that one Eusebius, finding much +evidence of this faith in the Christianity of the fourth century, +dismissed it briefly enough as "an insane heresy." Heresy it certainly +was for all those who were fighting their way out of their paganism into +an ordered Christian faith and whether it be insane or no, it is of all +the explanations which have been offered for the presence of evil in a +world supposedly ruled by the love and goodness of God, the one which +will least bear examination. It has been dead and buried these thousand +years.</p> + +<p>We may deny, if we are so minded, any freedom of the will at all, so +involving ourselves in an inevitable sequence of cause and effect as to +make us also simply weather-vanes driven east or west by winds of +inheritance and environment which we have no power to deflect and to +which we can only choose to respond. But to deny us the freedom to sin +and so to shut us up to a determinism of goodness is no more in accord +with the facts than to deny us the power to be good and shut us up to a +determinism of sin. If we are free at all we are free in all directions.</p> + + +<p><i>The Sacraments Disappear. Mrs. Eddy's Theology a Reaction from the +Rigid Evangelicism of Her Youth</i></p> + +<p>"Science and Health" deals in the same radical way with the sacraments. +Nothing at all, apparently, is made of baptism save that Mrs. Eddy says +our baptism is a purification from all error. In her account of the Last +Supper the cup is mostly dwelt upon and that only as showing forth the +bitter experience of Jesus. The bread "is the great truth of spiritual +being, healing the sick" and the breaking of it the "explaining" it to +others. More is made of what is called the last spiritual breakfast with +the Disciples by Lake Galilee than of the Last Supper in the upper room. +"This spiritual meeting with our Lord in the dawn of a new light is the +morning meal which Christian Scientists commemorate" (page 35). "Our +bread," she says, "which cometh down from heaven, is Truth; our wine, +the inspiration of Love" (page 35). All this is of a piece with the +general allegorical use of the Old and New Testaments in "Science and +Health," but it is a marked departure from the sacrament of the Lord's +Supper even in the simple memorial way in which it is kept by +non-liturgical churches.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy's theology, then, is in part a reaction from the hard phrasing +of the evangelical doctrines in which she was trained and it is indeed +in part a reaching out toward the interpretation of these doctrines in +terms of life and experience, but as a theology it is extraordinarily +loose and even though the familiar phrases of Protestant and Catholic +faiths are employed, what is left is wholly out of the current of the +main movement of Christian theology heretofore. The central articles of +the historic creeds practically disappear under Mrs. Eddy's treatment.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is a philosophy which will not bear examination, a use of +Scripture which can possibly have no standing in any scholarly +fellowship, and a theology which empties the central Christian doctrines +of the great meanings which have heretofore been associated with them. +And yet in spite of all this, Christian Science gets on and commends +itself to so considerable a number of really sincere people as to make +it evident enough that it must have some kind of appealing and +sustaining power. Where, then, is the hiding of its power? Partly, of +course, in its spaciousness. There are times when a half-truth has a +power which the whole truth does not seem to possess. Half truths can be +accepted unqualifiedly; they are capable of a more direct appeal and if +they be skillfully directed toward needs and perplexities they are +always sure of an acceptance; they make things too simple, that is one +secret of their hold upon us. This, of course, is more largely true +among the spiritually undisciplined and the mentally untrained, but even +the wisest folk find it easier upon occasion to accept a half truth +which promises an easy satisfaction or deliverance than a whole truth +which needs to be wrestled with and may be agonized over before it +brings us into some better estate.</p> + + +<p><i>The Real Power of Christian Science is in Neither Its Philosophy Nor +Its Theology</i></p> + +<p>We have already seen what predisposing influences there were in the +breaking down of what we have called the accepted validations of +historic Christianity—due, as we have seen also, to many contributing +causes—to offer unusual opportunity to any new movement which promised +deliverance. But one must seek the conditions which have made possible +so many strange cults and movements in America, not only in the +breakdown of the historic faiths, but also in the state of popular +education. Democracy tends, among other things, to lead us to value a +movement by the number of people whom it is able to attract. We are, +somehow, persuaded that once a majority has accepted anything, what they +have accepted must be true and right. Even a strong minority always +commands respect. Any movement, therefore, which succeeds in attracting +a considerable number of followers is bound to attract others also, just +because it has already attracted so many. One has only to listen to the +current comment on Christian Science to feel that this is a real factor +in its growth.</p> + +<p>Democracy believes in education, but has not commonly the patience to +make education thoroughgoing. Its education is very much more likely to +be a practical or propaganda education than such training as creates +the analytical temper and supplies those massive backgrounds by which +the departures of a day are always to be tested. In America particularly +there is an outstanding want of background. It needs history, +philosophy, economic understanding and a wealth of racial experience to +give to any people either the power to quickly discriminate between the +truth and the half-truth, or to carry itself with poise through a +transitional period. But one may not dispose of the distinct hold of +Christian Science upon its followers by such generalizations. The real +inwardness of no religion can ever be known from its theology. A sincere +devotion may attend a most deficient theology and we need to be +charitable in judging the forms which other people's faith takes. What +seems unreasonable to one may seem quite right to another and whatever +carries a sincere faith deepening into a positive spiritual experience +accomplishes for the moment its purpose. These studies of Christian +Science are severe—for one must deal with it as honestly as he knows +how—but the writer does not mean that they should fail in a due +recognition of the spiritual sincerity of Christian Scientists. We must +therefore go in to what is most nearly vitally central in the system to +find the real secret of its powers. It continues and grows as a system +of healing and a religion.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> + +<h3>CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A SYSTEM OF HEALING AND A RELIGION</h3> + + +<p>Christian Science practice is the application of its philosophy and +theology to bodily healing. This is really the end toward which the +whole system is directed. "Science and Health" is an exposition of Mrs. +Eddy's system as a healing force. Her philosophy and theology are +incidental, or—if that is not a fair statement—they both condition and +are conditioned by her system of healing. There is hardly a page in her +book without its reference to sickness and health. Her statements are +consequently always involved and one needs to stand quite back from them +to follow their outline. Here, as elsewhere, one may read deeply and +indirectly between the lines attitudes and beliefs against which she is +reacting. Her reactions against the environment of her girlhood and +early womanhood affect her point of view so distinctly that without the +recognition of this a good deal of what she says is a puzzle without a +key.</p> + + +<p><i>Christian Science the Application of Philosophy and Theology to Bodily +Healing</i></p> + +<p>She had been taught, among other things, that sickness is a punishment +for sin. One may safely assume this for the theology of her formative +period fell back upon this general statement in its attempt to reconcile +individual suffering and special providence. One ought not justly to say +that Mrs. Eddy ever categorically affirms that she had been taught this, +or as categorically denies the truth of it, but there are statements—as +for example page 366—which seem to imply that she is arguing against +this and directing her practitioners how to meet and overcome it. This +perhaps accounts for the rather difficult and wavering treatment of sin +and sickness in a connection where logically sickness alone should be +considered.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy would not naturally have thus associated sin and sickness had +they not been associated for her in earlier teaching and yet, as has +been said, all this is implicit rather than explicit. The key to a great +deal in "Science and Health" is not in what the author says, but in the +reader's power to discover behind her statements what she is "writing +down." Her system is both denial and affirmation. In the popular +interpretation of it quite as much is made of denial and the recognition +of error as of its more positive aspects, but in the book there is a +pretty constant interweaving of both the denial of evil and the +affirmation of well-being.</p> + +<p>There is a sound element of wisdom in many of her injunctions, but more +needed perhaps fifty years ago than now. We must remember constantly +that Mrs. Eddy is writing against the backgrounds of a somber theology, +a medical practice which relied very greatly on the use of drugs which +was at the same time limited in its materia medica and too largely +experimental in its practice. She was writing before the day of the +trained nurse with her efficient poise. The atmosphere of a sick room is +not naturally cheerful and generally both the medical procedure and the +spiritual comfort of the sick room of the fifties and sixties did very +little to lighten depression. When, therefore, Mrs. Eddy urges, as she +does, an atmosphere of confidence and sympathy she is directly in the +right direction.</p> + + +<p><i>Looseness of Christian Science Diagnosis</i></p> + +<p>As we pass beyond these things which are now commonplace, what she says +is not so simple. It is difficult to say how far the healing which +attends upon Christian Science is in her thought the result of Divine +Power immediately in exercise, and how far it is the outcome of +disciplines due to the acceptance of her theology and philosophy. It is +hard also to distinguish between the part the healer plays and the +contribution of the subject. There is no logical place in Christian +Science practice for physical diagnosis. "Physicians examine the pulse, +tongue, lungs, to discover the condition of matter, when in fact all is +Mind. The body is the substratum of mortal mind, and this so-called mind +must finally yield to the mandate of immortal Mind" (page 370).</p> + +<p>The result of this in practice is that the Christian Science healer +accepts either the diagnosis of the medical schools, reported +second-hand or else the patient's own statement of his condition. +Needless to say there is room for very great looseness of diagnosis in +such a practice as this. The actuality of sickness must be recognized +neither directly nor indirectly. The sickness must not be thought or +talked. Here also, as far as the patient is concerned, is a procedure of +undebated value. It all comes back, as we shall see presently, to +suggestion, but any procedure which frees the patient from depressing +suggestion and substitutes therefor an encouraging suggestion is in the +right direction. At the same time those who are not Christian Scientists +would rather stubbornly believe that somebody must recognize the fact of +sickness or else we cannot begin to set in action the machinery for +curing it, even if that machinery be Christian Science itself, and we do +not change this rather stubborn fact by covering sickness with the blank +designation Error. Even the error is real for the time being.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> The writer once received an unexpected sidelight on the +practice of the Christian Science healer in this connection. He once +enjoyed the friendship of a Christian Science healer with whom he often +played golf. He called this healer up one morning to make an +appointment. His voice was not recognized over the telephone and he was +mistaken for a patient. The reply came back in professional tones—"And +what error are you suffering from this morning?" When he answered that +his own particular error was his persuasion that he could play golf the +telephone atmosphere was immediately changed.</p></div> + +<p>The results of fear are constantly dwelt upon and this too is in the +right direction. Much is made of the creative power of mind in that it +imparts purity, health and beauty (page 371). When Mrs. Eddy says on +page 373 that disease is expressed not so much by the lips as in the +functions of the body she is making one of those concessions to common +sense which she makes over and over again, but when she attempts to +explain how erroneous or—as one may venture to call it—diseased belief +expresses itself in bodily function one is reminded of Quimby. +Temperature, for example, is wholly mental. Mrs. Eddy's reason for +believing this is apparently because "the body when bereft of mortal +mind at first cools and afterward it is resolved into its primitive +mortal elements." "Mortal Mind produces animal heat and then expels it +through the abandonment of a belief or increases it to the point of +self-destruction" (page 374). Fever is a mental state. Destroy fear and +you end fever.</p> + +<p>In all this there is a profound ignorance of the real causes of fever +which helps us to understand the marked deficiencies of the whole +system. There is nowhere any recognition of the body as an instrument +for the transformation and conservation and release of energy real as a +dynamo. There is nowhere any recognition of the commonplaces of modern +medical science in the tracing of germ infections. True enough, medical +science had hardly more than begun when "Science and Health" was first +written to redefine fevers in terms of germ infection and the consequent +disorganization of the balance of physical functionings, and the +oxidation of waste materials real as fire on a hearth, but that is no +reason why such ignorance should be continued from generation to +generation.</p> + + +<p><i>The Power of Mental Environment</i></p> + +<p>In general, Christian Science practice as indicated in "Science and +Health" is a strange mingling of the true, the assumed and the false; +its assumptions are backed up by selected illustrations and all that +challenges it is ignored. Disease is unreal because Mind is not sick and +matter cannot be (page 393). But Mind is "the only I, or Us, divine +Principle, ... Life, Truth, Love; Deity, which outlines but is not +outlined" (page 591). In other words Mind is an ideal affirmation which +Mrs. Eddy assumes to underlie human experience and possibly to reveal +itself through human experience, and it certainly does not follow that +while an ideal affirmation is not sick, a human being involved in the +necessary relationships of our present material existence may not be. +Mrs. Eddy never clearly distinguishes between what a speculative mind +may affirm and actual experience report. Her dialectic is a constant +wrestling with reality in a range of statement which involves her in +many contradictions. She recognizes what she denies and denies what she +recognizes and, in a lawyer's phrase, constantly changes the venue.</p> + +<p>But through and behind it all is an intelligible method. Confidence is +to be reëstablished, fear is allayed, the sufferer from error led to +commit himself to healing forces. These healing forces are not +consistently defined. Sometimes they are the "power of the mind to +sustain the body" (page 417); sometimes "the power of Christian Science" +(page 412), or "the power of Truth" (page 420) or divine Spirit, or her +book itself. "Continue to read and the book will become the physician, +allaying the tremor which Truth often brings to error when destroying +it" (page 422).</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy sometimes anticipates in a vague way the reaction of thought +and emotion upon physiological function to which Cannon has given such +careful attention, but her definite statements are strangely inadequate. +"What I term <i>chemicalization</i> is the upheaval produced when immortal +Truth is destroying erroneous mortal belief. Mental chemicalization +brings sin and sickness to the surface, forcing impurities to pass away, +as is the case with a fermenting fluid" (page 401).<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> She recognizes +the limits of Christian Science practice when she advises her followers +to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to +the fingers of a surgeon until the advancing age admits the efficacy and +supremacy of mind (page 401).</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Compare "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 118.</p></div> + +<p>Great care is to be taken as to the patient's mental environment. Mrs. +Eddy's constant emphasis upon this explains the excessive separatist +nature of Christian Science. More than almost any other of its cults it +separates its followers from those who do not belong to the cult. They +cannot, naturally, attend churches in which the reality of disease is +recognized; they must have their own nurses as well as their own +healers; in certain regions they must confine their reading to their own +literature; their children must be educated, on their religious side, in +their own cult schools and they cannot consistently associate themselves +with remedial movements which assume another philosophy as their basis. +It is difficult for a detached observer to see how a consistent +Christian Scientist reconciles the general conclusions of a modern +scientific education with the presuppositions of his cult. That he does +this is one more testimony to a power which indeed is exercised in many +other fields than the field of Christian Science to keep in the +practical conduct of life many of our governing conceptions in different +and apparently water-tight compartments.</p> + + +<p><i>Christian Science Defines Disease as a Belief Which if Treated as an +Error Will Disappear</i></p> + +<p>The answer to such a line of criticism is, of course, in the familiar +Christian Science phrase that perfect demonstration has not yet been +achieved in the regions in which the Christian Scientist appears to be +inconsistent. But beyond this is the rather stubborn fact that in some +of these regions demonstration never will be realized; Christian Science +is confined to the field in which suggestion may operate. Mrs. Eddy is +most specific about diseases, concerning which the medical practice of +her time was most concerned and in the light of later medical science +most ignorant—fever, inflammation, indigestion, scrofula, consumption +and the like. These are all beliefs and if treated as error they will +disappear. Even death is a dream which mind can master, though this +doubtless is only Mrs. Eddy's way of affirming immortality. She hardly +means to say that death is not a fact which practically has to be +reckoned with in ways more final and unescapable than any other fact in +life. As Dr. Campbell Morgan once said: "If you have the misfortune to +imagine that you are dead, they will bury you."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy concludes her chapter on Christian Science Practice with an +allegory which she calls a mental court case, the suggestion of which is +to be found in one of the Quimby manuscripts.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> Since this manuscript +is dated 1862 it anticipates Mrs. Eddy by almost thirteen years. The +setting is like the trial of Faithful and Christian in the town of +Vanity Fair as recorded in Bunyan's "Pilgrim Progress." Doubtless +memories of Mrs. Eddy's reading of that deathless allegory are +reproduced in this particular passage which the author is inclined to +believe she wrote with more pleasure than anything else ever turned out +by her too facile pen. Personal Sense is the plaintiff, Mortal Man the +defendant, False Belief the attorney for Personal Sense, Mortal Minds, +Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, Hypnotism, Envy, Greed and +Ingratitude constitute the Jury. The court room is filled with +interested spectators and Judge Medicine is on the bench. The case is +going strongly against the prisoner and he is likely to expire on the +spot when Christian Science is allowed to speak as counsel for the +defense. He appeals in the name of the plaintiff to the Supreme Court of +Spirit, secures from the jury of the spiritual senses a verdict of "Not +Guilty" and with the dismissal of the case the chapter on Christian +Science Practice ends.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 172.</p></div> + + +<p><i>Christian Science Has a Rich Field to Work</i></p> + +<p>Now what can finally be said of the whole matter? In general, two +things. Recognizing the force and reality of psycho-therapy Christian +Science gets its power as a healing system from the great number of +people who are open to its appeal and the shrewd combination of elements +in the appeal itself. In spite of our great advance in medical knowledge +and practice and in spite of the results of an improved hygiene there +remains in society at large a very great deposit of physical ill-being +sometimes acute, sometimes chronic, sometimes clearly defined, sometimes +vague, badly treated cases, hopeless cases and a great reach of cases +which are due rather to disturbed mental and moral states than to +ascertainable physical causes. Illness has its border-land region as +well as thought and the border-land faiths make their foremost appeal to +those who, for one reason or another, live in border-land physical +states.</p> + +<p>And, to repeat, the number of those who belong to this group is +unexpectedly large. Naturally such as these grasp at anything which +offers help; they supply to the manufacturer of cure-all drugs their +clientele; they fill printed pages with testimonials of marvellous cures +achieved where the regular medical faculty had been helpless; they crowd +about every faith healer; they are the comrades of the pilgrims to +Lourdes and Ste. Anne de Beaupré; they belong to the fellowship of those +who, in the Middle Ages, haunted shrines and sought out relics and asked +to be touched by kings. We discover their forebears in the pages of the +Gospels and as far back as any records go we see this long, pathetic +procession of the hopeless or the handicapped seeking help. And again +and again they get it, for we have also seen that, given faith enough +either in a saint or a shrine or a system, psycho-therapy with certain +subjects and in certain cases does heal. But this type of healing +depends upon no one philosophy or no single force except indeed those +obscure forces which are released by suggestion.</p> + +<p>While this was being written certain evangelistic faith healers in the +city of Detroit were sending out broadsides of testimonials to their +healings, as definite in detail as the testimonials in "Science and +Health," or the <i>Christian Science Journal</i>, and yet the basal +principles by which these men have claimed to work are as different from +the basal principles of Christian Science as east is from west. While +this is being revised Coué, the apostle of suggestion according to the +Nancy school, is besieged in New York by those who have been led to hope +for healing through the success of his method. Whether the relic be true +or false does not matter if only the relic be believed in.</p> + + +<p><i>One of the Most Strongly-Drawn Systems of Psycho-therapy Ever Offered</i></p> + +<p>Now Christian Science is one of the most strongly drawn +psycho-therapeutic agencies ever offered. Most faith healing systems +heretofore have depended upon some place, some thing, some healer. Here +is a system capable of the widest dissemination and dependent only upon +a book and its interpreters. It universalizes what has heretofore, for +one reason or another, been localized. It is shrewdly organized, as far +as propaganda goes, and effectively directed. It is widely advertised by +its friends—and its critics. Its temples, for beauty and dignity, put +to shame most Protestant churches. Its rituals combine in an unusual way +the simple and the dramatic. It is so fortunately situated as to be able +to keep finance—which is a trying element in Protestant Church life—in +the background. Its followers have that apostolic fervour which attaches +to movements sure of their divine commission and not yet much worn by +time. It possesses distinctly one of Sir Henry Jones' hall-marks of +religion. "It impassions the spirit of its disciples and adds +consequence to the things it sanctions or condemns."</p> + +<p>It draws upon deeply established Christian reverences and faiths. It +secures for its authority the persistent but perplexed faith in the +Bible which the average Protestant inherits and for those who believe in +it the force of this authority is no wise weakened by the fact that by +every sound canon of Biblical interpretation it is illicit. Its very +dogmatism is an asset. It could not do its work if it were less sure. +The confusions of the systems which try the critically minded are a +contribution to the devout who find in them an added opportunity for +faith. Its experience meetings create enthusiasm and confidence. It is, +in short, more than any one of the movements we are here considering, a +clearly defined cult whose intensities, limitations and mystic +assurances all combine to produce among its disciples the temper most +favourable to suggestion and it locks up on its force as a system of +healing.</p> + +<p>An accurate analysis of what it actually accomplishes would require an +immense and probably impossible labour—a knowledge of each case, an +accurate diagnosis when even for the trained diagnostician the thing is +difficult enough, and the following up of all reported cases. The +medical faculty would probably have done better to have taken such +movements as these more seriously and to have brought to them a trained +investigation which, except in the case of Lourdes, has never even been +attempted. Doubtless there is looseness and inconsistency in the whole +system. Almost any one who has had a practical observation of the +working of Christian Science has knowledge enough not only of looseness +and inconsistency but of what seems to the non-Christian Science mind +positive untruth. Something, however, must always be allowed here for +the way in which the mind acts under excitement and for the way in which +delusion deludes. All this combines to make any final judgment in this +region difficult, but there still remains, after all qualification, an +arresting solidity of achievement. Christian Science does work, +especially with the self-absorbed, the neurotic and those who have +needed, above all, for their physical deliverance, a new access to faith +and courage. Christian Science practitioners have also an unusual +opportunity in what may be called moral rehabilitation with physical +consequences. The physician has a better chance with the bodies of his +patients than with their souls; the minister a better chance with the +spiritual needs of his parishioners than with their bodies and habits; +the Christian Science practitioner to an unusual extent has the whole of +life under his control and it ought in all fairness to be conceded that +this power is helpfully employed.</p> + +<p>The very discipline of Christian Science is itself a therapeutic. There +are really a good many things which become non-existent directly you +begin to act as if they did not exist. An atmosphere in which no one +refers to his ailment and every one to his well-being is a therapeutic +atmosphere. Psychologists have taught us that if we go through the +motions of being happy we are likely to have an access of happiness; if +we go through the motions of being unhappy we have an access of misery. +If we go through the motions of being well, very often we achieve a +sound measure of health.</p> + + +<p><i>But it is Fundamentally a System of Suggestion</i></p> + +<p>All this has been so strongly dwelt upon of late as to make any extended +consideration of it unnecessary here, as indeed any extended +consideration is impossible for any one save a specialist. What we are +more concerned with is the way in which the discipline and philosophy of +Christian Science produce their results. The answer to this question is +as plain as anything can be in our present state of knowledge, for +essentially, as a healing force, Christian Science stands or falls with +the therapeutic power of suggestion. It is a strongly drawn system of +psycho-therapy because it is a strongly drawn system of suggestion. Its +suggestion involves assumptions which are sometimes philosophy, +sometimes theology, and more commonly a baffling interplay of the two.</p> + +<p>But the outcome of it all is the practical persuasion on the part of the +patient that he is not sick and does not need so much to get well as to +demonstrate that he is well, and that in this demonstration he has an +absolute force on his side. To this end the whole body of affirmation, +persuasion, assumption, suggestion and technique of Christian Science is +directed. As one tries to analyze these separate elements they are, +taken singly, inconsistent, often unverifiable and often enough, by any +tests at all save the tests of Christian Science, positively untrue. But +as Mrs. Eddy has combined them and as they are applied in practice they +do possess an undeniable power. They are not dependent, as has been +said, fundamentally upon persons or things or places. Here is a coherent +system, the force of which may be felt when it is not understood and it +bears upon the perplexed or the impressionable with very great power. It +would be appreciably weakened if any one of its constituent elements +were taken out of it. But fundamentally it can do no more than any other +system of suggestion, unquestionably accepted, can do.</p> + + +<p><i>It is Bound to be Affected by Our Growing Understanding of the Ranges +of Suggestion</i></p> + +<p>A deal of water has gone under the bridge since Mary Baker Eddy began +her work. What was then almost wholly involved in mystery is now +beginning to be reduced to law. The psychology of suggestion is by no +means clear as yet, nor are the students of it agreed in their +conclusions, but we do know enough about the complex character of +consciousness, the actuality of the subconscious and the reaction of +strongly held attitudes upon bodily states to be in the way, generally, +of freeing this whole great matter from the priest, the healer, the +charlatan or the prophet of strange cults and referring it hereafter for +direction and employment to its proper agents—the physician, the expert +in disordered mental conditions and the instructed spiritual adviser.</p> + +<p>It is now generally agreed that suggestion, however induced, may +positively affect bodily function. If it is a wrong suggestion its +effects are hurtful, right suggestion its effects are helpful. Now since +a vast range of physical maladjustments—and this may be broadened to +include nervous maladjustments as well—is functional, suggestive +therapeutics have a far-reaching and distinct field. When Christian +Science or any other healing cult reports cures in this field, those +cures, if verified by sufficient testimony, may be accepted as +accomplished. Those who have accomplished them may take what credit they +will for their own agency in the matter, but for all that the cure is no +testimony at all to the truth or falsity of their system. It proves only +that those helped have believed it.</p> + +<p>The matter of organic healing is more difficult. Medical Science does +not generally admit the possibility of organic change through +suggestion. There may be, however, a real difference of opinion as to +whether a particular trouble is functional or organic. Here is a +border-land not so much of fact as of diagnosis. A cure may be reported +as of an organic trouble when the basal diagnosis was wrong and it was +only functional, but the body possesses undoubtedly the power of +correcting or at least of limiting organic disease. Tuberculosis is an +organic disease but it is again and again limited and finally overcome +without the knowledge of the subject. Post-mortem examinations may +reveal scars in the lungs and so reflect processes only thus brought to +light.</p> + +<p>Whatever serves general physical well-being may greatly help the body in +eliminating disease and securing a going measure of physical health. In +such indirect ways as these suggestion may, therefore, while not acting +directly upon diseased organism, contribute most distinctly to arrest +organic disease. Thoughtful physicians are ready to concede this and +thus open a door for a measure of organic healing which technically +their science denies. A very revealing light has been let in upon this +whole region by hypnotism. Some of the students of hypnotism are +inclined to go as far as to admit organic change under hypnotic +suggestion. "Strong, persistent impressions or suggestions made on the +reflex organic consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their +functional disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic +structures."<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Sidis, "The Psychology of Suggestion," p. 70.</p></div> + +<p>Christian Science, then, as a healing agency has a great field for there +are always folk enough to heal. It has a method, a discipline highly +effective in producing changed mental and spiritual states and, +strangely enough, it is all the more effective because it is so narrowly +true. Those to whom it makes its appeal are, for the most part, not +capable of analyzing through to their sources its fundamental +inveracities, nor would they be inclined to do that if they were able. +Its vagueness and its spacious rhetoric really give it power. It does +produce results and probably one case of physical betterment has a +prevailing power which a chapter of criticisms cannot overcome and, more +than that, one case of physical betterment may screen a dozen in which +nothing happened at all.</p> + +<p>For Christian Science has in this region two alibis which can always be +brought into action, the most perfect ever devised. If it fails to cure +it is either because the one who was not cured lacked faith, or because +of the erroneous belief of some one else. A system which believes that +the toxic effect of poisons depends upon the vote of the majority in +that arsenic will cease to be a poison when everybody ceases to think of +it as a poison and will be a poison as long as anybody believes it is, +is perfectly safe even if it should fail to cure a case of arsenical +poison, for until facts and experience cease to weigh at all there will +always be some one somewhere believing that arsenic is a poison and that +one will be the scapegoat for the system.</p> + + +<p><i>As a Religion it is Strongest in Teaching That God Has Meaning for the +Whole of Life</i></p> + +<p>Christian Science is, however, more than a system of mental +therapeutics, it is also a religion and due allowance must be made in +any just appraisal of it for the way in which it has made religion real +to many for whom religion had ceased to have a working reality. It needs +to be said on one side that a good deal of Christian Science religion is +really taking the Ark of God to battle, using religion, that is, for +comfort, material prosperity, health and just such tangible things. But +Christian Science meets a demand of the time also just here. Our own +age, deeply entangled in material satisfactions, has no mind to postpone +the satisfactions of religion to a future life. The monk and, indeed, +the generality of the devout in the medieval Church sought in +self-limited earthly joy a proper discipline for the soul and a state in +contrast to which the felicities for which they paid so great a price +should be the more welcome. The devout of Mary Baker Eddy's time, though +inclined to find in material well-being a plain mark of divine favour, +none the less accepted sickness and sorrow as from the hand of God and +prayed that with a meek and lowly heart they might endure this fatherly +correction and, having learned obedience by the things they suffered, +have a place amongst those who, through faith and patience, inherit His +presence.</p> + +<p>But our own time is not so eager to inherit promises as to enter into +possession. A religion which does not demonstrate itself in actual +well-being is under suspicion. The social passion now much in evidence +among the churches grows out of this as well as the many cults which +seek the proof of the love of God in health, happiness and prosperity. +And indeed all this is natural and right enough. If religion be real the +fruits of it should be manifest, though whether these are the more +significant and enduring fruits of the spirit may be questioned. A +religion which demonstrates itself in motor-cars and generous incomes +and more than comfortable raiment may be real enough to those who +profess it, but its reality is not quite the reality of the religion of +the Sermon on the Mount.</p> + +<p>Christian Science is in line with a distinct contemporaneous demand to +demonstrate God's love in about the terms of Jacob's famous vow at +Bethel—"If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, +and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that I come again +to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God." This is a +far cry from the noble protestation of Job which sounds still across the +years: "Though he slay me, still will I trust in him."</p> + +<p>And yet the more sensitive and richly endowed among the followers of +Mary Baker Eddy have found in Christian Science other values than these. +They have passed, by a sort of saving instinct, beyond its +contradictions and half-truths to what is centrally best in the whole +system. God, that is, has a meaning for life not hereafter but now, not +in creeds but in experience, not alone in hard disciplinary ways, but in +loving and intimate and helpful ways. True enough, this is no monopoly +of Christian Science; Christianity holds this truth in fee simple. But +unfortunately, in ways which it is perfectly possible to trace, the +great emphases of Christianity have in the past been too largely shifted +from this.</p> + +<p>There has been and still is in most Protestant churches too much +reticence about the meaning of God for the individual life and maybe too +great hesitation in really using to the full the proffer of divine +power. The accepted understandings of the place of pain and suffering in +life have been, as it were, a barrier between the perplexed and their +God; His love has not, somehow, seemed sufficiently at the service of +men, and though Christian Science secures the unchallenged supremacy of +the love of God by emptying it of great ranges of moral meaning and +shutting away therefrom all the shadowed side of life, it has probably +justified the love of God to multitudes who have, for one reason and +another, heretofore questioned it and they have discovered in this +new-found sense of God's love and presence, a reality and wealth of +religious experience which they had never known before.</p> + + +<p><i>It Exalts the Power of Mind But Ignores Too Largely the Processes by +Which Mind Realizes Its Ideals</i></p> + +<p>There is also in Christian Science practice and philosophy the +apprehension of a real truth which New Thought formulates much more +clearly. Mind is creative. (Not alone mind with a capital "M" but our +own every-day, human, small "m" mind.) The trouble is that Christian +Science hopelessly short-circuits the creative process. Our human world +is finally what we make it through our insight, our understanding and +above all by our sense of values, but the actual achievement of changed +purposes in a changed world is a process whose immensity is not even so +much as hinted at in "Science and Health." Christian Science too largely +ignores and seems commonly to deny the whole disciplinary side of life +with its inevitable accompaniment of failure, fault and pain. Pain is no +delusion; pain is the sign of something gone wrong in the great business +of normal physical life. Nor is sin only an unreality which "seems real +to human erring belief"; sin is a sign that something has gone wrong in +the struggle for a normal, disciplined, moral life. Nor is the whole +body of evil simply a shadow to be dismissed as easily as one turns +one's back upon some darkness and faces toward the light; evil is the +sign of something gone wrong, or something not yet attained in the +massive progress of a humanity which combines in itself so many +discordant elements, which has so long a way to go and so much to learn +and so many things to conquer as it struggles upward toward a happier +state.</p> + +<p>Christian Science cannot in the end be true to the great facts of +experience, which have a power beyond the force of any assertion to +countervail, unless it is false to Mary Baker Eddy's philosophy, nor can +it be true to its philosophy without impoverishing moral and spiritual +endeavour. It is hard to find a place in the system—taken rigidly—for +sympathy or tenderness or the richest of human qualities, or for those +elements of wealth in character contributed by pain bravely borne or +sorrow uncomplainingly accepted. There is little place in Christian +Science for the Beatitudes and less still for that fine courage which is +itself the one assured victory which the hard beset may win on any field +of battle. The writer believes that while this severe judgment is +justified by "Science and Health," it is not justified by the practical +outcome of the cult in the lives of many of its disciples. They are in +devotion and kindness the equal of many in the Church and superior to +some. Their loyalty to their Church rebukes a good deal of orthodox +easy-going. All of which proves at least that life is bigger than our +theories about it and in the end subdues those who would make the best +of it, to communities of experience and understanding in which we are +all strangely kin. For, after all, unpleasant things cannot be thought +out; they must be fought out and dug out and lived out. The whole +redemptive force of society in thoroughgoing and far-reaching ways must +be brought to bear upon the very sources of all the evil side of life, +and the bare philosophy of Christian Science is not equal to this task.</p> + + +<p><i>Is Not Big Enough for the Whole of Experience</i></p> + +<p>It is doubtful if Christian Science has ever made an appreciable change +in the mortality statistics of any city and yet if the Public Health +Department were to permit for forty-eight hours the milk or water supply +of a city to be polluted, statistics would disclose that within ten +days. This is only an illustration but it does illustrate. We must work +if we are to dig up the roots of evil things and get a better growth in +their stead and anything which attempts to substitute for this a denial +of the reality of the evil, a mystical religious attitude and a mere +formula of faith, no matter how oft repeated or how sincerely accepted, +or indeed no matter how efficacious in certain selected regions among +certain selected groups, is on the whole not a contribution to human +well-being.</p> + +<p>Very likely Mrs. Eddy's followers in the practical conduct of their +lives are already recognizing this and gradually, and maybe +unconsciously, adapting themselves to it. There are already signs of +certain processes of conformity to the necessities of experience; these +are likely to go farther. If Christian Science follows the history of +such movements in the past, it will, after having made its own distinct +assertion of whatever measure of truth it contains, be gradually swept +back into the main current of religion and practice. It will maintain a +nominal distinctness, but in the general conduct of life it will lose +its more outstanding characteristics and become largely a distinction +without a difference. Milmine, in her thoughtful criticism of Christian +Science at the end of her history says that the future of Christian +Science stands or falls with psycho-therapy.</p> + +<p>That is true only on the one side. As far as Christian Science has true +religious insights and approaches it will go on in spite of what happens +to psycho-therapy, though there is enough in psycho-therapy to assure +its future within well-defined regions if that were all. Something +bigger than psycho-therapy will finally judge and dismiss Christian +Science to its own place—life and experience will do that—and it is +safe to say that in the end Christian Science will have to come to terms +with a truth bigger than its own, with a body of experience which cannot +be dealt with on the selective process of taking what you want and +denying the rest, and more than that, it will have to come to terms with +the whole great matter of an intellectual, moral and spiritual struggle +governed by law and conditioned by the vaster world of which we are a +part. This is not to deny that Christian Science and allied teachings +have made contributions of real value to our common problem. It is only +to affirm that here is something not big enough for the whole either of +truth or experience.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> + +<h3>NEW THOUGHT</h3> + + +<p>New Thought has been defined as "an attitude of mind, not a cult." It is +really both. It is necessary to include it in this study because it is a +cult; it is hard justly to appraise it because it is an attitude of +mind. Attitudes of mind are as elusive as the play of light on running +water. We can estimate their force and direction only as we have an +understanding of the main currents of thought by which they are carried +along and as far as New Thought goes these main currents are far older +than the cult itself.</p> + + +<p><i>New Thought Difficult to Define; "An Attitude of Mind, Not a Cult"</i></p> + +<p>New Thought has never had an apostolic succession or a rigid discipline +or a centralized organic form. This has given to it a baffling looseness +in every direction, but has, on the other hand, given it a pervasive +quality which Christian Science does not possess. It has a vast and +diffuse literature and so merges into the general movement of +contemporaneous thought as to make it difficult to find anywhere a +distinct demarcation of channels.</p> + +<p>New Thought is either a theology with a philosophic basis or a +philosophy with a theological bias. It is centrally and quite distinctly +an attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science +and philosophy, a reaction against old theologies and perhaps a kind of +nebula out of which future theologies will be organized. For a great +theology is always the systematic organization of a complex of forces, a +massive structure wrought through the years by manifold builders +subduing a rich variety of material to their purposes.</p> + +<p>The teaching of the Scriptures, old traditions, the needs of worship and +organization, political and social circumstances, changing moral ideals, +the trend of philosophies and sciences, the challenge of schisms and +heresies, the sanctifying power of blind custom and the mystical +authority of the Church itself all combine to make a theology. Once a +great theology is so constituted it possesses an immense power over +life. It shapes character and ideals and gives direction to faith, +orders effort and so becomes, as it were, a mould into which souls and +societies are cast.</p> + +<p>Theologies may be changed, in fact they are always in the way of being +changed, but they yield slowly to transforming forces. Nothing is so +persistent as organized faith and yet the very strength of a great +theology is always its weakness. It is never really anything else than a +crystallization of past forces. The experiences which voice themselves +in theology have cooled and hardened down; the philosophy which is +implicit in theology is past philosophy; the science implicit in +theology is senescent science.</p> + +<p>There is always in evidence, then, in the regions of theology a +disturbing pressure occasioned by the reaction of contemporaneous +movements in science and philosophy and understandings of life generally +upon these old and solidly established inherited forms. Currents of +thought are always, as it were, running past the great formulæ since +thought is free and formulæ are rigid, and then returning upon them. +From time to time this movement gathers great force. The old has been +rigid so long, the new is so insistent that the conflict between them +fills an age with its clamour, stresses souls to its travail, breaks +down ancient forms without immediately building up their equivalent, and +contributes uncertainties and restlessnesses everywhere in evidence.</p> + +<p>Now this is exactly what has been happening in the region of religion in +the last thirty years. An inherited order, strongly fashioned and +organized and long essentially unchanged, has been compelled to take +account of the forces about it. Certainly theology is not so static as +an earlier paragraph would seem to indicate, none the less the great +theological centralities do possess an immense power of resistance. We +have already seen how little Protestantism had changed since the +Reformation until it met the full impact of modern science and +philosophy. We have had really until our own time and still largely +continue a theology with the Creation story of the ancient Hebrews, the +outlook upon life of the age of the Apostles, the philosophy of the +Greek fathers, St. Augustine's conception of human nature and the +expectation of the end of the world and the issues of history of the +Jewish apocalypse given a Christian interpretation.</p> + +<p>True enough, there are in all this precious and timeless qualities but +there is also through all the fabric of our formulated faith the +interweaving of such understandings as those who shaped our creeds had, +of law and history and truth. Any far-reaching change, then, in +philosophy or science was bound to profoundly affect religion and even +forty years ago far-reaching modifications of the old order were +overdue.</p> + +<p>New Thought is just one outcome of the tremendous impact of +contemporaneous thought upon our inherited theology; a detached fragment +or rather group of fragments, for even as a cult New Thought, as has +been said, is loosely organized and its varying parts have in common +only a common drift. Yet that drift is significant for it has beneath it +the immense force of a philosophy which has been gathering head for more +than a century. It is to this, therefore, that we ought to address +ourselves for any understanding of the changed outlook upon life which +is carried, as it were, from the surface of profounder tides.</p> + + +<p><i>"The Rediscovery of the Inner Life"</i></p> + +<p>Josiah Royce dismisses the whole of philosophy from Spinoza to Kant in +one single pregnant phrase. He calls it "the rediscovery of the inner +life." It is along this line that modern philosophy and religion +approach each other. Religion has always been the setting forth of the +inner life in terms of its relationship to God and the proofs of the +reality of religion have always been found in the experiences of the +soul. The mystic particularly made everything of the inner life; he +lived only in its realities. For the sake of its enrichment and its +empowerment he subjected himself to rigorous disciplines. Its +revelations were to him all sufficient, for having found God therein he +asked for nothing beside.</p> + +<p>Wherein, then, is this new mysticism, or better, this new cult of the +inner life different from the old? It is not easy to answer that +question in a paragraph, though it is easy to feel the answer in any +comparison of the great classics of mysticism—which are mostly +spiritual autobiographies—and New Thought literature. To turn from St. +Augustine to Dresser, or from St. Theresa to Trine is to change +spiritual and intellectual climates. There is in the modern literature +little reflection of such spiritual struggle as fills the great +Confessions with the agony of embattled souls, nor any resolution of +such struggle into the peace of a soul "fully awake as regards God but +wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect of +herself." This testimony of St. Theresa is illuminating as a contrasting +background for New Thought. There the soul is very much awake, both as +regards things of this world and in respect of herself.</p> + +<p>These new cults of the inner life are far more self-conscious than the +old and far more self-analytical. They seek to discern the laws in +answer to which they act and utilize those laws in the practical conduct +of life. They are always either appealing to underlying philosophies or +else trying to make a philosophy of their own. Mysticism made +everything of God and nothing of itself. It plotted its mystic way but +knew nothing of psychology. New Thought seeks to discover in psychology +a road to God. The centers of mysticism were emotional; the centers of +New Thought are intellectual. All these cults are far more akin to +Gnosticism than mysticism, though they are saved, yet not wholly, from +the lawlessness of Gnosticism by a pretty constant return to the +outstanding conclusions of science and philosophy.</p> + + +<p><i>Spinoza's Quest</i></p> + +<p>Now if we seek to discover the real genesis of the movement and trace +its development we would better begin, so deep are the roots of things, +with Spinoza rather than Quimby. Here the deeper currents, upon the +surface of which New Thought moves, take their rise and here also we +return to Royce's phrase—"the rediscovery of the inner life"—and the +philosopher who inaugurated the philosophic quest for just this +discovery.</p> + +<p>Spinoza was one of the last of the mystics and the first of the modern +philosophers. He shared with the mystics of an earlier time a consuming +sense of the futility of life save as life perfected itself in +contemplations of an eternal excellency and communion with something far +greater than itself. "After experience had taught me," he says (and this +is quoted from Royce's "Spirit of Modern Philosophy"), "that all the +usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile, seeing that none +of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good +or bad except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally +resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good which would +affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else, whether there +might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me +to enjoy continuous, supreme and unending happiness."</p> + +<p>Now there is in all this a strangely modern note—dissatisfaction with +what is offered by the commonplace and the accepted, a great emphasis +upon the mind as the key to the readjustments of life, a quest for some +single formula which would offer "continuous, supreme and unending +happiness." This is exactly what Mary Baker Eddy and all the other +perplexed and bodily broken "seekers" who gathered about Quimby were +really wanting and this is what, for one reason or another, the +proffered religious experiences of their time failed to secure them. +"This was, then," to quote Royce, "the beginning of Spinoza's Pilgrim's +Progress." (As indeed it is the beginning of every Pilgrim's Progress.) +"But now, for what distinguishes him from other mystics and makes him a +philosopher and not a mere exhorter, he has his religious passion, he +must reflect upon it ... the philosopher must justify his faith."</p> + +<p>We have no need here to follow Spinoza along all the way, difficult and +misty enough, by which he sought to justify his faith. The outstanding +fact is enough. He is a mystic who reasons his way through where the +elder mystic has felt his way through, and the goal which he finally +reaches, though it be the goal which the earlier mystics had found by +other roads,—the loss of self in God—is none the less such an +achievement of reason as Spinoza was able to compass.</p> + + +<p><i>Kant Reaffirms the Creative Power of Mind</i></p> + +<p>So this polisher of lenses bequeathed to the century which followed him +its greatest inheritance and set for it its greatest task: the inner +life as the supreme concern of the philosopher and the discovery of its +laws and the interpretations of its realities the supreme task of +philosophy. Those who continued his work began far enough, apparently, +from the point where he left off and went a road strangely remote from +his. Having taken the inner life for their study they sought to lay bare +its very foundations. Nowadays, if we are so minded, we dictate to +machines which write our words curiously enough in shallow lines upon +wax cylinders and when the cylinders are full shave off the fragile +record and begin again.</p> + +<p>This is what the eighteenth century did for the mind. It reduced it to a +virgin surface, it affirmed the reality of nothing except the +impressions thereupon registered by what sense supplied. We owe to +experience and to experience only "all that vast store which the busy +and boundless fancy of man has painted on it [the white paper of the +mind] with an almost endless variety." We have nothing with which to +begin but sensation; we have nothing to go on with but reflection. +"These two, namely external, material things as the objects of +sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of +reflection, are the only originals from whence all our ideas take their +beginnings."<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> Such things as these are perhaps enough to begin with, +but they are not enough to go on with as our thinkers soon enough +discover. Some way must be found to relate the material thus supplied +and to build it up into a glowing, continuous, reasonable and conscious +inner life.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Locke, "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding."</p></div> + +<p>So in turn the philosophers laboured at their problem. They made much +not only of reflection but of association; they found a place for memory +and imagination; they discovered that we may as truly define experience +in terms of ideas as of sensation; they discovered finally that by no +possible process even of the most ingenious reasoning can you get the +full wealth of life out of a mind which was nothing more to begin with +than a piece of white paper, any more than you can get Hamlet (if we may +suppose Shakespeare to have used a dictaphone) out of a wax cylinder, a +needle and a diaphragm.</p> + +<p>So Kant ended what Spinoza began, by reaffirming the creative power of +the mind itself. It does far more than passively receive, it interprets, +organizes, contributes, creates. True enough, it is not an unconditioned +creator, it has laws of its own in obedience to which it finds both its +freedom and its power. It must take the material which experience +supplies and yet, in its higher ranges, in the regions of conduct and +faith, that is, where conscience has become the guide and the +necessities of the soul the law, we do possess the power in +enfranchising obediences and splendid adventures of faith to make a +world rich in goodness, power and peace. And here, once more, there is a +strangely modern note. Life is a pilgrim's progress. We are set out to +discover "whether there might be some real good, the discovery and +attainment of which would enable us to enjoy continuous, supreme and +unending happiness." And we do possess the power within ourselves, if +only we may discover the controlling laws and release effective forces, +to come at least a stage nearer our goal. All this makes for that +exaltation of the creative self which is so marked a characteristic of +present-day attitudes and which is perhaps the distinctive affirmation +of New Thought.</p> + + +<p><i>Utilitarianism, Deism and Individualism the Practical Outcome of a +Great Movement</i></p> + +<p>But it needed time for all this to work itself out. The philosophic +basis for it had been supplied but it is a far cry from philosophy to +the practical conduct of life. Kant's transcendental philosophy needed a +deal of working over before it became practicable for the man in the +street. And to begin with what was deepest in the philosophy of the +Enlightenment led in unexpected directions. "While the practical +tendencies of all speculative thought inevitably appear in the opinions +and customs of a general public far removed from their sources, it is +particularly true of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, that its +influences had no small part in shaping the popular point of view +concerning the moral, religious and political convictions of that +age."<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Utilitarianism, Deism and Individualism were, says Hibben, the +popular and practical outcome of the whole movement,—Utilitarianism in +Ethics, Deism in Religion, Individualism in Politics. These three +growths—and they have borne a deal of bitter fruit in the last one +hundred years—grow out of one soil. In general they are due to Locke's +sensationalism, Hume's skepticism, a new emphasis upon reason as opposed +to revelation and the self-sufficiency of the individual. If conscious +life is nothing but sensation worked over and built up, then pleasurable +sensations are the best we can aspire to, happiness is the end of the +quest. So Utilitarianism defined goodness in terms of happiness and gave +to conduct generally a grasping, greedy quality for which we have paid +over and over again in the disappointments and disillusionments of an +age, which, supposing itself to have discovered the true secret of +well-being, found too much of its seeming happiness only Dead Sea fruit.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Hibben, "The Philosophy of the Enlightenment," p. 253.</p></div> + + +<p><i>They Bear a Bitter Fruit: the Reactions Against Them</i></p> + +<p>Deism in its reaction against Religion as merely revelation and in its +endeavour to find a rational basis for faith set God apart from His +world, detached, unheeding and offering no real recourse to a travailing +humanity between whom and Himself it built a rigid fabric of impersonal +law. The Individualism of the eighteenth century was partly a reaction +against old despotisms of Church and State—and a Declaration of +Independence. It was in part a pride of accomplishment and a new +affirmation of the self-sufficiency of the questing reason. There was in +it also a sound recognition of the worth of personality of which the +world then stood in need and which has since supplied a foundation for a +saving passion for education and human well-being. But Individualism as +practically applied by the first three-quarters of the nineteenth +century—unexpectedly reinforced as it was by aspects of +Darwinism—stressed the right of the strong and the doom of the weak. It +made competition the law of economic development, the survival of the +fittest the goal of a life of struggle.</p> + +<p>Consciously or unconsciously the politics, industry and religion of the +nineteenth century were greatly influenced by these outstanding +conceptions. No need to say how utterly they have broken down. They have +made for the deepening strife of classes and of nations, they have +essentially defeated the bright promise of a time which seemed to have +more to hope for than almost any other great period of history.</p> + +<p>And yet they were never unchallenged. They were challenged by the +essential spirit of Christianity; they were challenged by the poets who +found that they could shape no songs out of such stuff as this; they +were challenged by philosophers who sought to build for themselves and +for us a world more free and true; they were challenged by a group of +great novelists who created out of the wealth of their imagination +characters and situations in which love and human worth had their way +in spite of a thousand obstacles. They were challenged by prophets of a +better world, the Ruskins and Carlyles who soundly rated the ethics of +selfishness and the political economies of competition and the politics +of self-assertion and who stirred deeply the more sensitive of their +time. And finally they were challenged, and here we begin to approach +again the genesis of New Thought, by a philosophic movement which found +its point of departure in certain great aspects of earlier thinking +which had been much obscured by the difficult forms in which it had been +stated: the supremacy, that is, of the soul over all its surroundings.</p> + +<p>Now this return to what we may call the creative and controlling power +of spiritual forces is the key to the modern approach to life. We do not +understand, it may be, the meaning of our own terms. Spirit is a vague +enough word but we do know that the initiative is with desire and +purpose and understanding. These are positive and masterful; they are by +no means free; they are conditioned by the vaster order of which they +are a part, none the less our human world is plastic to their touch and +our material world as well. Carlyle has chanted all this gustily enough +but there is kindling truth in his stormy music. "Thus, like some wild +flaming, wild thundering train of heaven's artillery does this +mysterious mankind thunder and flame in long-drawn, quick succeeding +grandeur through the unknown deep. Earth's mountains are levelled and +her seas filled up in our passage. Can the earth which is but dead in a +vision resist spirits which have reality and are alive?"</p> + + +<p><i>New England Transcendentalism. Quimby Again and the Dressers</i></p> + +<p>Curiously enough this quotation from a book which nowadays nobody likely +reads save perhaps in some college course on early Victorian literature, +brings us within sight of the beginnings of New Thought. A little group +of English and American thinkers, part philosophers, part poets, part +rebels against the established order, anticipated trained students in +their return upon the higher and more positive side of an older +philosophy. They made much of the inner life, its powers and its +possibilities; they affirmed the creative power of the soul; they +conceived life to lie plastic to the touch of vision and desire; they +thought themselves to be standing upon the threshold of a new world. +They were impatient of discipline; they dreamed impossible things and +gave their dreams the authority of reality. They were hard enough to +understand and they sorely tried practical plodding folk, but they +kindled their time and released forces which are yet in action.</p> + +<p>New England, through a group of adventurous thinkers of whom Emerson was +the most distinguished, responded strongly to Transcendentalism. Another +group, as has been said, responded strongly to mesmerism and spiritism, +which were also a part of the ferment of the time in which Christian +Science and New Thought (I use New Thought here in the technical sense) +find their source. And finally, Quimby, who is a rather unexpectedly +important link in a long chain,—important, that is, to the student of +modern cults—reacted against mesmerism, felt and thought his way toward +some understanding of the force of suggestion in abnormal states, +applied his conclusion to faith and mental healing and gathered about +him—as has been said before—a little group of disciples who have +between them released far-reaching movements.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eddy and the Dressers were the outstanding members of this little +group of disciples. Mrs. Eddy soon dissociated herself from the others +and she supplied in "Science and Health" a distinctive philosophy to her +movement. She organized it into a church; she imposed upon it a +distinctive discipline. No little of the power of Christian Science is +due to this narrow rigidity which is itself the projection of the +personality of Mary Baker Eddy. But Christian Science did not carry with +it the whole of the group which had come under Quimby's influence, nor +indeed all of those who came under Mary Baker Eddy's influence. There +was during all the formative period of these modern cults a perpetual +process of schism.</p> + +<p>We have as a result, then, two divergent movements related in +underground ways, though as marked in difference as in resemblance, both +of them beginning about the same time, both of them reactions against +accepted religious forces and validations, both of them with a marked +therapeutic content, both of them adventures in the conduct of life.</p> + +<p>In the summary which follows I am in debt to Dresser's recent "History +of the New Thought Movement." The name New Thought was chosen as the +title of a little magazine devoted to mental healing, published in 1894 +in Melrose, Mass. "The term became current in Boston through the +organization of the Metaphysical Club in 1895. About the same time it +was used by Mr. C.P. Patterson in his magazine <i>Mind</i> and in the title +of two of his books." Other names were suggested—in England, Higher +Thought; in Boston, Higher Life; in New York the little group was for a +time known as the Circle of Divine Ministry; in the west the movement +was known as Divine Science or Practical Christianity. There were groups +also which called themselves the Home of Truth or the Society of Silent +Unity.</p> + + +<p><i>New Thought Takes Form</i></p> + +<p>New Thought, as has been said, lacks the definite direction which +Christian Science has always had. Its organizations have grown up +quietly, more or less irregularly and have had always a shifting +character. "The first New Thought Society with a regular leader and +organization in Boston was the Church of the Higher Life established in +1894."<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> The Metaphysical Club was an outgrowth of the New Thought +group in Boston. Dresser gives a list of the original members, chiefly +significant through the presence among them of some of Quimby's +disciples and others whose books have since held a high place in New +Thought literature. There were manifest connections between the +movement and liberal (particularly Unitarian) theology.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> All citations in this section are from Dresser's "History +of New Thought," unless otherwise indicated.</p></div> + +<p>The first New Thought convention was held in Boston in 1899 (there had +been earlier conventions of the Disciples of Divine Science—a related +movement—in western cities) and the second in New York City in 1900. +The New York convention was the first to make any general statement of +the "purposes" of the League. We find on the New York program one Swami +Abhedananda, lecturer on the Vedanta philosophy. Here is an early +indication of the return of Eastern religions upon the West which is +also one of the marked characteristics of the religious development of +our time. We do not need to follow through in detail the list of +successive conventions with their topics and their speakers. The group +is not so large but that the same names reappear. There are marked +attempts in the earlier conventions to associate leaders in recognized +schools of philosophy and theology with the movement. One does not +discover this tendency in the later convention lists.</p> + +<p>The local groups throughout the country have had varying fortunes. They +have from time to time changed their names and naturally their leaders. +The west has responded perhaps more strongly than the Atlantic seaboard. +The movement is particularly strong on the Pacific Coast. There are no +available statistics and generalizations are of doubtful value. The +Cincinnati and Kansas City groups are offered by Dresser as typical +organizations, but they seem on the whole to be exceptional rather than +typical. The strength of the New Thought movement is not in its +organization but in its influence. "In England as in America interest +was aroused by Christian Science, then came a gradual reaction and the +establishment of independent branches of the movement." "It is +difficult," says Dresser, "to obtain information pertaining to the +influence of New Thought literature in foreign languages." The more +significant New Thought books, however, have been variously translated +and widely sold. New Thought leaders sometimes advise their disciples to +retain their old church associations and the movement has naturally +tended to merge in religious liberalism generally and to become only an +aspect of the manifold religious gropings of a troubled time.</p> + +<p>In the Constitution and By-Laws of the New Thought Alliance, published +in 1916, the purposes of the society are "to teach the infinitude of the +Supreme One, Divinity of Man and his Infinite possibilities through the +creative power of constructive thinking and obedience to the voice of +the Indwelling Presence which is our source of Inspiration, Power, +Health and Prosperity." We discover here the same tendency toward the +deification of capital letters which we have already noted in Christian +Science.</p> + + +<p><i>Its Creeds</i></p> + +<p>In 1917 the International New Thought Alliance went further than at any +other time before in the direction of a creed and set forth the +following series of affirmations: "We affirm the freedom of each soul +as to choice and as to belief, and would not, by the adoption of any +declaration of principles, limit such freedom. The essence of the New +Thought is Truth, and each individual must be loyal to the Truth he +sees. The windows of his soul must be kept open at each moment for the +higher light, and his mind must be always hospitable to each new +inspiration.</p> + +<p>"We affirm the Good. This is supreme, universal and everlasting. Man is +made in the image of the Good, and evil and pain are but the tests and +correctives that appear when his thought does not reflect the full glory +of this image.</p> + +<p>"We affirm health, which is man's divine inheritance. Man's body is his +holy temple. Every function of it, every cell of it, is intelligent, and +is shaped, ruled, repaired, and controlled by mind. He whose body is +full of light is full of health. Spiritual healing has existed among all +races in all times. It has now become a part of the higher science and +art of living the life more abundant.</p> + +<p>"We affirm the divine supply. He who serves God and man in the full +understanding of the law of compensation shall not lack. Within us are +unused resources of energy and power. He who lives with his whole being, +and thus expresses fullness, shall reap fullness in return. He who gives +himself, he who knows, and acts in his highest knowledge, he who trusts +in the divine return, has learned the law of success.</p> + +<p>"We affirm the teaching of Christ that the Kingdom of Heaven is within +us, that we are one with the Father, that we should judge not, that we +should love one another, that we should heal the sick, that we should +return good for evil, that we should minister to others, and that we +should be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. These are not +only ideals, but practical, every-day working principles.</p> + +<p>"We affirm the new thought of God as Universal Love, Life, Truth, and +Joy, in whom we live, move and have our being, and by whom we are held +together; that His mind is our mind now, that realizing our oneness with +Him means love, truth, peace, health and plenty, not only in our own +lives but in the giving out of these fruits of the Spirit to others.</p> + +<p>"We affirm these things, not as a profession, but practice, not in one +day of the week, but in every hour and minute of every day, sleeping and +waking, not in the ministry of the few, but in a service that includes +the democracy of all, not in words alone, but in the innermost thoughts +of the heart expressed in living the life. 'By their fruits ye shall +know them.'</p> + +<p>"We affirm Heaven here and now, the life everlasting that becomes +conscious immortality, the communion of mind with mind throughout the +universe of thought, the nothingness of all error and negation, +including death, the variety of unity that produces the individual +expressions of the One-Life, and the quickened realization of the +indwelling God in each soul that is making a new heaven and a new +earth."</p> + +<p>We discover in this creed a more distinct recognition of ideals and +truths which inherited Christianity supplied than in the earlier +statements of purpose. In the annual address of the President there is +distinct reference to the relation of the New Thought gospel to the +churches. "I am asked often: What is the relation of this movement to +the Church? This is not a new religion. It is not an institution seeking +to build itself up for the mere sake of the institution. We do not ask +anybody to leave the church. We ask them to become better members of +their churches than before. New Thought is designed to make people +better and more efficient in whatever relation of life they may find +themselves. In other words: 'New Thought teaches men and women only the +old common-sense doctrine of self-reliance and belief in the integrity +of the universe and of one's own soul. It dignifies and ennobles manhood +and womanhood.' The main idea on which Christianity is founded is that +of communion with God, that of worshipping God in spirit and in truth. +This is the very corner-stone of those modern movements that recognize +men and women as the living temples of the God within.... I predict that +this new interpretation and new understanding will become universal in +the new age which is now dawning."</p> + +<p>A further paragraph, however, reveals the synthetic character of the +movement. "It is the realization in practical affairs of the teachings +not only of the Nazarene, but of every other great religious teacher +since the world began; for in their essence these teachings are +fundamentally alike; and the New Thought and other new spiritual +movements are but the efforts to apply, in our relations one with +another, these simple and sublime truths."</p> + + +<p><i>The Range of the Movement</i></p> + +<p>I have quoted at length from these programs, affirmations and this one +address to indicate the range of the movement as it has found official +expression. We must look, however, to the literature of the movement as +a whole for a full understanding of its reach and influence. The +literature in general falls into three classes: (1) books concerned +mostly about healing; (2) books which instruct as to character, +spiritual states and fullness of life; (3) what one may call success +books which apply New Thought to business and the practical conduct of +life. The lines of demarcation between these three types of books is, of +course, not clear and there is a material which is common to all of +them, but the distinction thus suggested is real.</p> + +<p>As a principle of healing New Thought differs from Christian Science in +almost the whole range of its assumptions. It does not deny the reality +of matter, not the reality of suffering, nor does it distinguish, as +does Christian Science, between the Divine Mind and the mortal mind. +There are, according to New Thought, healing forces which may be trusted +to do their remedial work in us, if only we surrender ourselves to them +and let them have their way. There is nothing in New Thought which quite +corresponds to the "demonstration" of Christian Science. It would seem +to an impartial observer that Christian Science asks of its disciples +an intensity of positive effort which New Thought does not demand. +Dresser, for example, believes all suffering to be the result of +struggle. Directly we cease to struggle we cease to suffer, provided, of +course, that our cessation is in the direction of relaxation and a trust +in a higher power. In some regions, however, Christian Science and New +Thought as therapeutic agents work along the same line, but where +Christian Science denies New Thought ignores. Here New Thought makes +more use of psychological laws; it follows James generally in its +psychology, as it follows Emerson in its thought of the over-soul, +though in this region Emerson's detached serenity of faith is given body +in an insistence upon the divine immanence for which New Thought is in +debt to the suggestions and analogies of modern science.</p> + +<p>New Thought makes much of the shifting of attention and its disciplines +are rather the disciplines of the mystic than the disciplines of the +Christian Scientist. It seeks in substance to ascertain the laws of mind +in action and then, through the utilization of this knowledge, to secure +health, happiness and prosperity. It makes much, of course, of the +centrality of mind both in well-being and pain. It hardly goes so far as +to say that pain is an error in belief, but it does say that pain is a +matter of consciousness and that as we are masters of consciousness we +are masters of pain. It believes in thought transference and absent +treatment, but it is perhaps more conservative in the cases which it is +willing to undertake than Christian Science and recognizes the +limitations of the healer.</p> + + +<p><i>The Key-Words of New Thought</i></p> + +<p>Its key-words are Harmony, Realization, Affirmation and Poise. Just here +New Thought is a strangely interwoven web. It makes much of "vibration" +and "friction." It is evidently under the spell of the wave theory of +light and heat. It is most dependable in its analysis and application of +laws of mental action, most undependable in trying to account for the +relation of mind to body and in its explanation of the physical +phenomena of disease. Fatigue, for example, "is evidently due to the +calling of power into a new direction. It [evidently the power] comes +into contact with dense matter, with an uncultivated portion of the +being, physical as well as mental, and meeting with resistance friction +of some sort is the natural result." One has only to compare a statement +like that with Cannon's careful study of bodily changes under emotional +states, to see the difference between speculation controlled by analogy +and the illuminating experimental methods of modern science.</p> + +<p>When Dresser adds that "we shall eliminate disease not by fighting it, +not by studying its causes, or doctoring its physical effects, but by +seeing the wisdom of the better way," he is on dangerous ground, for if +we are not to study the causes of disease but to take as our guide the +serene generalizations of a speculative mind we are shutting in our +faces one of the doors by which we enter into that knowledge of the mind +of God, of which New Thought makes so much. How shall we know the mind +of God except as we ask endless patient and careful questions of every +revelation of the divine method, whether in sickness or health?</p> + +<p>New Thought, however, takes a far more constructive view of suffering +than Christian Science. For New Thought suffering is at least +disciplinary and instructive: it compels reflection: it brings us to a +knowledge of the law. It is certainly, therefore, just and it may be +kind. Indeed, New Thought occasionally goes so far as to say that +suffering is also a revelation of love and must be so accepted and +entertained. Its general conclusions in this region are far more safe +than its insistence upon vibration and friction and its spacious +technicalities.</p> + +<p>When Dresser says that there is a difference "between ignoring a +trouble, between neglecting to take proper care of ourselves and that +wise direction of thought which in no way hinders while it most surely +helps to remedy our ills," he is on perfectly safe ground. When he adds +that there is a strong reason for believing that "there is a simple, +natural way out of every trouble, that kind nature, which is another +name for an omniscient God, is ever ready to do her utmost for us" he is +speaking with a wise and direct helpfulness, though here as generally +New Thought errs on the side of too great a simplification. There is a +way out of every trouble but it is not always simple, it is often +laborious and challenging. We have accomplished marvels in the matter of +tropical sanitation but the way out has been anything but simple. It has +involved experimentations which cost the lives of physicians who offered +themselves for humanity as nobly as any soldier on any battlefield; it +involved the sweat of hard driven labour digging drainage ditches, the +rebuilding of the foundations of cities and a thousand cares and +safeguards. If New Thought wishes to dismiss such a process as this with +the single adjective "simple" it may do as it pleases, but this is not +simplicity as the dictionary defines it.</p> + + +<p><i>Its Field of Real Usefulness</i></p> + +<p>All that way of thinking of which New Thought is just one aspect is +fatally open to criticism just here. It ignores the immense travail of +humanity in its laborious pilgrimage toward better things and it is far +too ready to proclaim short-cuts to great goals when there never have +been and never will be any short-cuts in life. None the less, trust and +quietness of mind and soul and utter openness to healing, saving forces +are immense healing agents and in its emphasis thereupon New Thought has +recalled us to that which in the very intensity of life's battles we are +in the way of forgetting. And beyond doubt, in that obscure range of +diseases which are due to the want of balanced life—to worry, fear, +self-absorption and over-strain—the methods of New Thought have a +distinct value.</p> + +<p>In general, as one follows the history and literature of New Thought one +finds that, though it began with a group more interested in healing than +anything else, healing has come to play a progressively less important +part in the development of the movement and the larger part of its +literature deals with what one might call perhaps the laws of mental +and spiritual hygiene. The principles implicit in New Thought as a +healing cult carry of their own weight into other regions. It is +important enough to get well—that goes without saying—but it is more +important to keep well. Good health on the whole is a kind of +by-product. We suffer as distinctly from spiritual and mental +maladjustments as from physical. We suffer also from the sense of +inadequacy, the sense, that is, of a burdening disproportion between our +own powers and the challenge of life. New Thought has addressed itself +increasingly to such states and problems as this. Here it ceases to be a +cult or a method of healing and has become a most considerable influence +and here also it in general takes the direction of and is identified +with what is truest in the Christian religion, what is sanest and most +clear visioned in present-day thinking. The typical books just here are +Trine's "In Tune with the Infinite" and a similar literature.</p> + + +<p><i>Its Gospel of Getting On</i></p> + +<p>Another application of New Thought is in the direction of personal +efficiency. There is a considerable literature in this region. It does +not specifically call itself New Thought but it is saturated with the +New Thought fundamentals and has distinctly the New Thought outlook. +Marden is the most popular and prolific writer in this connection and +the titles of his books are suggestive—"Keeping Fit," "Selling Things," +"The Victorious Attitude," "Training for Efficiency," "Getting On," +"Self-Investment," "Be Good to Yourself," "He Can Who Thinks He Can," +"Character," "Opportunity," "An Iron Will." Something like this has, of +course, been done before but the modern efficiency literature moves +along a wider front than earlier books and makes a fuller use of the new +psychology. All this literature dwells strongly upon the driving power +of a self-assertive personality strongly controlled by will, single +visioned and master of its own powers. It suggests lines of approach by +which other people's wills can be overcome, their interest aroused or +their coöperation secured.</p> + +<p>Quotation is almost impossible—there is such an abundance of material +and much of it is commonplace. It takes a deal of padding to make +shelves of books out of the familiar and generally accepted truisms +which are the "Sermon on the Mount" and the "Beatitudes" of this gospel +of personal efficiency. Keep fit, keep at it, assert yourself, never +admit the possibility of failure, study your own strength and weakness +and the strength and weakness of your competitor and success is yours. +Look persistently on the bright side of every situation, refuse to dwell +on the dark side, recognize no realities but harmony, health, beauty and +success.</p> + +<p>It is only just to say that success is generously defined and the +disciples of this New Thought are asked also to live in the finer +senses—the recognition of beauty and friendship and goodness, that +is—but on the whole the ideal character so defined is a buoyant +optimist who sells his goods, succeeds in his plans and has his own way +with the world. It is the apotheosis of what James called "The Religion +of Healthy-Mindedness"; it all fits easily into the dominant temper of +our time and seems to reconcile that serving of two masters, God and +Getting On, which a lonely teacher long ago thought quite impossible.</p> + +<p>Naturally such a movement has a great following of disciples who +doubtless "have their reward." So alluring a gospel is sure to have its +own border-land prophets and one only has to study the advertisements in +the more generally read magazines to see to what an extent all sorts of +short-cuts to success of every sort are being offered, and how generally +all these advertisements lock up upon two or three principles which +revolve around self-assertion as a center and getting-on as a creed. It +would be idle to underestimate the influence of all this or, indeed, to +cry down the usefulness of it. There is doubtless a tonic quality in +these applications of New Thought principles of which despondent, +hesitating and wrongly self-conscious people stand greatly in need.</p> + + +<p><i>The Limitations and Dangers of Its Positions</i></p> + +<p>But there is very great danger in it all of minimizing the difficulties +which really lie in the way of the successful conduct of life, +difficulties which are not eliminated because they are denied. And there +is above all the very great danger of making far too little of that +patient and laborious discipline which is the only sound foundation upon +which real power can possibly be established. There is everywhere here +an invitation to the superficial and, above all, there is everywhere +here a tendency toward the creation of a type of character by no means +so admirable in the actual outcome of it as it seems to be in the +glowing pages of these prophets of success. Self-assertion is after all +a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us +into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to +give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less +mischievous, though it wear the garment of sunny cheerfulness and +proclaim an unconquerable optimism.</p> + +<p>But at any rate New Thought, in one form or another, has penetrated +deeply the whole fabric of the modern outlook upon life. A just +appraisal of it is not easy and requires a careful analysis and +balancing of tendencies and forces. We recognize at once an immense +divergence from our inherited forms of religious faith. New Thought is +an interweaving of such psychological tendencies as we have already +traced with the implications and analogies of modern science. The God of +New Thought is an immanent God, never clearly defined; indeed it is +possible to argue from many representative utterances that the God of +New Thought is not personal at all but rather an all-pervading force, a +driving energy which we may discover both in ourselves and in the world +about us and to which conforming we are, with little effort on our own +part, carried as upon some strong, compelling tide.</p> + +<p>The main business of life, therefore, is to discover the direction of +these forces and the laws of their operation, and as far as possible to +conform both character and conduct, through obedience to such laws, into +a triumphant partnership with such a master force—a kind of conquering +self-surrender to a power not ourselves and yet which we may not know +apart from ourselves, which makes not supremely for righteousness +(righteousness is a word not often discovered in New Thought literature) +but for harmony, happiness and success.</p> + + +<p><i>It Greatly Modifies Orthodox Theology</i></p> + +<p>Such a general statement as this must, of course, be qualified. Even the +most devout whose faith and character have alike been fashioned by an +inherited religion in which the personality of God is centrally +affirmed, find their own thought about God fluctuating. So great a thing +as faith in God must always have its lights and shadows and its changing +moods. In our moments of deeper devotion and surer insight the sense of +a supreme personal reality and a vital communion therewith is most clear +and strong; then there is some ebbing of our own powers of apprehension +and we seem to be in the grip of impersonal law and at the mercy of +forces which have no concern for our own personal values. New Thought +naturally reflects all this and adds thereto uncertainties of its own. +There are passages enough in New Thought literature which recognize the +personality of God just as there are passages enough which seem to +reduce Him to power and principle and the secret of such discrepancies +is not perhaps in the creeds of New Thought, but in the varying +attitudes of its priests and prophets. One may say, then, that the God +of New Thought is always immanent, always force and law and sometimes +intimate and personal. However this force may be defined, it carries +those who commit themselves to it toward definite goals of well-being. +The New Thought of to-day reflects the optimistic note of the scientific +evolution of a generation ago. It is not exactly "God's in His heaven, +all's right with the world," but it is the affirmation of streams of +tendency whose unfailing direction is toward happiness and success.</p> + +<p>If an element of struggle be implied in the particular sort of salvation +which New Thought preaches, it is not at least clearly brought out. +There has been amongst us of late a new and a very dearly bought +recognition of the element of struggle which seems to be implicit in all +life. The optimistic evolutionary philosophy in which New Thought roots +itself is on the whole justified neither by history nor the insight of +those who have been most rich in spiritual understanding, nor, indeed, +by the outcome of that philosophy in our own time. The happy confidence +that we do not need to struggle, but rather to commit ourselves to +forces which make automatically for happiness and well-being, has only +involved us more deeply in a struggle where in some ways the smug +happiness and well-being of representative New Thought literature seem +more remote than ever.</p> + +<p>This elimination of the element of moral struggle and the need for +deliverance which has so greatly coloured the older theologies gives a +distinct character to New Thought theology. There is no place in it for +a scheme of redemption; there is no place in it for atonement, save as +atonement may be conceived as a vicarious sharing of suffering incident +to all struggle for better things; there is no place in it for the old +anthropologies of Christian theology. It has on the whole little to say +about sin. Says Allen, in a very thoughtful short article on New Thought +in Hastings' "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics," "New Thought +excludes such doctrines as the duality of man and God, miracles in the +accepted sense, the forgiveness of sins and priestly mediation. It seeks +to interpret the world and nature as science has recorded them, but also +to convey their finer and esoteric meanings to the human understanding. +The fundamental purpose of religion and science is the same—namely, the +discovery of truth." "New Thought does not teach the moral depravity of +man. Such thoughts demoralize and weaken the individual. Miracles, in +the accepted sense, New Thought does not conceive as possible in a +universe of law. The only miracles are phenomena not understood, but +nevertheless the result of law. It applies the pragmatic test to every +religion and philosophy. Are you true? What do you give to a man to +carry to his daily task?" "New Thought recognizes no authority save the +voice of the soul speaking to each individual. Every soul can interpret +aright the oracles of truth."</p> + + +<p><i>Tends to Become a Universal and Loosely-Defined Religion</i></p> + +<p>Worship becomes, therefore, contemplation rather than adoration, and a +vast deal of the liturgical material which Christianity specifically has +heretofore supplied becomes useless for this cult. Christian hymnology +would need much editing before it would serve New Thought purposes; the +whole conception of prayer would need to be altered. Naturally, then, on +its more distinctly religious side New Thought is at once fluctuating +and incomplete. It is the proclamation, to quote one of its spokesmen, +of a robust individualism and, in the individual, mind is supreme. Right +thinking is the key to right living. New Thought affirms the limitless +possibilities of the individual. Here perhaps it is more loose in its +thinking than in any other region. It makes free use of the word +"infinite" and surrounds itself with an atmosphere of boundless hope as +alluring as it is vague.</p> + +<p>The interest of New Thought is most largely in the present tenses of +life; its future in an eternal progress which should, of course, imply +immortality. New Thought is hospitable to truth from whatever source +derived. It is particularly hospitable to the suggestions of oriental +religions and, as far as it has taken form as a distinct religious +movement, it is becoming more and more markedly a kind of syncretism, a +putting together of religious elements drawn from widely universal +sources and it patently seeks nothing less than a universal religious +fellowship in which the values of all true faith are recognized and +which is to be under the control of what science has to say about the +world without and psychology of the world within. In a sentence New +Thought is an outstanding aspect of the unconquerably religious in human +nature, seeking to subdue to its own ends and inform with its own spirit +the new material which science, psychology and comparative religion have +put at our service in the last two generations.</p> + +<p>If New Thought diverges from the accepted Christian theology in many +ways, it runs parallel in other regions with what is enduringly true in +the Gospels, and it runs parallel also with not a little of that +endeavour after theological reconstruction which is loosely known as the +New Theology. We are generally under a compulsion to reconstruct our +creeds and adapt our religious thinking to whatever is true about us in +our understanding of our world and its history and its mechanism and the +laws of our own lives. Theology must take account of a creative +evolution and a humanity which has struggled upward from far-off +beginnings along a far-flung front and the findings of Science and the +intimations of Psychology.</p> + +<p>It will need a deal of pioneering to find roads through these new +regions and such adventurous souls as seek new paths, with a daring +disregard for ancient landmarks and a true passion to find religious +meanings in new facts and forces, are really serving us all. There is +the danger, however, that in the very freedom of their speculation they +may be too impatient of old experiences and hallowed certainties, for +these old experiences themselves are deeply rooted and testify to +realities which we may be compelled to let in by the window, once we +have put them out at the door.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2> + +<h3>THE RETURN OF THE EAST UPON THE WEST</h3> + +<h4>THEOSOPHY AND KINDRED CULTS</h4> + + +<p><i>Historic Forces Carried Early Christianity West and Not East. The +Far-Reaching Results of This Process</i></p> + +<p>Christianity in its beginning belonged neither to the East nor the West; +it was born where they met and its subsequent development was greatly +governed by the direction of the dominant tides of historical +development. But from the beginning of the Christian era the main +currents of human action flowed West and they carried Christianity with +them. It is, therefore, outstandingly an occidental development. This is +not to minimize the influence of the East in the earlier phases of +Christianity. There was doubtless a measure of give and take, some +blowing of the winds of the spirit in changing directions across vast +regions and a confused time, which carried the germinal forces from one +religion to another. But in the main, Christianity, to use Gardner's +fine phrase, was baptized into the forms and forces of the West. I say +in the main, for Asia Minor was in the time of St. Paul the meeting +place of manifold religions and his first Gentile converts brought with +them into their new faith a very great deal of what their old faiths had +made them.</p> + +<p>There was, generally, in the Apostolic world a very great longing for a +spiritual deliverance and a mystic temper which easily took over and +transformed those elements in Christianity which lent themselves to +mystic interpretations. Something of this we discover in the Pauline +Epistles themselves; Paul's use of the word "mystery" shows how he +adapted his teaching to the understanding of those to whom he addressed +himself. To quote Gardner: "In the growth and spread of popular +superstition, if we may call them by so harsh a name, we may well +discern a gradual preparation for Christianity.... These religions stand +toward Christianity, to continue my biological comparison, as the wings +of a penguin stand toward those of an eagle, and it is surely no slight +on Christianity to say that it met the blind longings of a pagan nation +and showed them a path toward which they had, for long generations, been +trying to find their way. The religious needs which were very +imperfectly met by the initiations and ceremonies and prayers of the +cults of the pagan saving deities found a complete and perfect +satisfaction from faith in an exalted Christ."<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> </p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> "The Growth of Christianity," Gardner, p. 136. For fuller +treatment with suggestive detail see Fraser "The Golden Bough," chapter +37.</p></div> + +<p>Christianity could not do this really very great thing without at the +same time being affected by that which it, in a measure, took over and +completed. The influence of Asia upon Christianity is, therefore, a +very real influence. One can only wonder what would have happened had +the course of empire been East instead of West. Christianity might then +have been carried into India and China and through long centuries been +given so distinctly an oriental content as to have taken on a character +radically different from its Western form. But this did not happen. To +follow Gardner's figure still farther, it was baptized into Greek +philosophy and Roman imperialism and the power of the nascent nations of +western Europe, and into the medieval spirit, and so we have become its +heirs. More than that, the East took its own way, uninfluenced by the +West, until two entirely different types of culture, civilization, +religion and approach to reality had been developed, as far apart as the +East is from the West, and each, until almost our own time, +substantially uninfluenced by the other.</p> + + +<p><i>The West Rediscovers the East; the East Returns Upon the West</i></p> + +<p>Given the contacts of the modern world this massive isolation of +cultures could not continue. The East and the West were bound to meet +and religion was bound to be affected by their meeting. Western +Christianity has for more than a hundred years now been sending its +missionaries to the Orient and oriental religions are beginning to send +their missionaries to the West. More justly the return of the East upon +the West is not so much in a missionary propaganda, though there is a +measure of that, as in a more subtle indoctrination of Western +speculation by the fascination and mystery of the Eastern cults. It is +not possible to follow this process in detail but it has gone on long +enough now for us to begin to see the outcome of it and to appraise its +force. It began with New Thought. One discovers oriental names on the +programs of New Thought conventions; the Vedanta Philosophy was +expounded by East Indian speakers at the Greenacre conference in Maine +in the late nineties; B.F. Mills was lecturing on Oriental Scriptures in +1907; and a lecture on the Vedanta Philosophy appears on the program of +the second convention of the International Metaphysical League held in +New York City in the year 1900. The New Thought movement in England +naturally reflected the same tendency to look for light to Eastern +speculation even more markedly than the American movement.</p> + +<p>All this was natural enough because New Thought, once divorced from +inherited Christianity and committed to pure speculation about the +sources and meanings of life, was sure to find out that the Orient had +been doing just this for a thousand years. Two things happened. First, +New Thought welcomed Eastern teachers to its conventions in the hope of +receiving thereby some measure of enlightenment, and second, many of +these seekers, finding that the East had a wealth of speculation +compared with which the West is poor indeed, took over the Eastern cults +bodily, gave themselves up to their study and became their ardent +devotees and missionaries.</p> + +<p>Generalizations are always dangerous and though the East has, until the +West began to exploit it, remained practically unchanged, the West has +changed so often that whatever one may say about it must immediately be +qualified. But, on the whole, Eastern and Western life are organized +around utterly different centers. The West in its present phase is +predominantly scientific. Our laboratories are perhaps the +distinguishing hall-mark of our civilization. We are always asking +questions of the outside world; we are hungry for facts; we are always +seeking to discover the law and direction of physical force; we have +taken small account, comparatively, of our own inner states, but we have +taken immense account of the universe of which we are a part and the +forces which play around us. Our realities are what we touch and see. We +have given to our sight an immense increase of searching power through +the microscope and telescope, but we are slow to venture beyond what +they reveal to us. We have increased the sensitiveness of our touch +through the instruments of our laboratories. We have organs to sensibly +register the vibrations of an etheric force and even to weigh light. But +we are slow to recognize any range of reality not thus revealed to us.</p> + +<p>We have gained in such ways a really illuminating understanding of the +physical universe; we have formulated its laws, chronicled its sequence +and made it in a marvellous way the instrument of our material +well-being. If we have speculated at all it has been rather in the +direction of the ultimate nature of matter and force, as these have +supplied us material for speculation, than in any other direction. We +have been generally and soundly suspicious of conclusions which cannot +be verified by the scientific method, and so have built about ourselves +restraining limitations of thought which we are wholesomely unwilling to +pass. We have found our real joy in action rather than meditation. Our +scientific achievements have supplied material for our restless energy +and our restless energy has urged us on to new achievement.</p> + +<p>True enough, there has been of late signs of a changing temper. We are +beginning to discover that science has marked limitations; there are +ranges of reality of which our laboratories can make no possible report +which we are beginning to take into account. But in a large way the +matured Western outlook upon life has been conditioned by the scientific +interpretation of the universe.</p> + + +<p><i>Chesterton's Two Saints</i></p> + +<p>The East has taken an entirely different line; its laboratories have +been the laboratories of the soul. The East has had little concern about +outside things; it has had an immense concern for its own inner life. +The East has made little attempt to master outer forces; it has been +generally content to let them have their way with it, realizing, maybe, +that after all what the outside world can do for the inner life is +negligible compared with what the soul can do for itself. Race and +climate and the sequence of history have all conspired to produce this +temper. The history of the East is a strange combination of drive and +quiescence; its more vigorous races have had their periods of conquest +and fierce mastery, but sooner or later what they have conquered has +conquered them and they have accepted, with a kind of inevitable +fatalism, the pressure of forces which they were powerless to subdue to +their own weakening purposes. They have populated their lands to the +limit and accepted the poverty which a dense population without +scientific resource, on a poor soil and in a trying climate, inevitably +engenders. The more helpless have fallen back upon fate and accepted +with a pathetic resignation their hard estate, asking only to be freed +from the weariness of it. "It is better," says an Eastern proverb, "to +sit than to stand, it is better to lie than to sit, it is better to +sleep than to lie, and death is the best of all."</p> + +<p>There is an immensity of weariness and disillusionment in such an +interpretation of life, which needs no comment. But the Eastern mind is +subtle and speculative, possessing a peculiar penetrating power; and, +for the want of any other field in which to act, it turned in upon +itself.</p> + +<p>Chesterton has both hit and missed the immense difference between the +East and the West in one of his brilliant paragraphs.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> "No two ideals +could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and +a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every +point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist +saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has +them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious +body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The medieval saint's +body is wasted to crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There +cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced +symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are +extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real +divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist +is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards; the Christian is staring +with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we +shall find some interesting things."</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> "Orthodoxy," p. 243.</p></div> + +<p>But to follow Chesterton's own method, the saint with the open eyes may +still be blind while the saint with his eyes shut may really see a vast +deal, and the East has seen much. Whether what it sees be true or not, +is another matter, but there is no denying the range of his conjecture. +The Eastern saint has sought to answer for himself and in his own way +those compelling questions which lie behind all religion—Whence? and +Whither? and Why? He, too, has sought to come into right relations with +the power which manifests itself in the universe and he has sought, with +an intensity of effort to which the West is strange, for a real +communion with the power he has discovered. And above all, he has sought +deliverance.</p> + + +<p><i>Why the West Questions the East</i></p> + +<p>He has not been so conscious of the need of forgiveness, since +forgiveness plays no great part in his understanding of the sequences of +life, but he is anxious enough to be set free from pain and weariness +and at his best he has traced the relation of moral cause and effect far +more analytically than his Western brother. He has, indeed, introduced +greatly speculative elements in his balancing of life's accounts, but +the West has done that also, for the accounts of life persistently +refuse to be balanced unless something beyond ordinary experience is +taken into account. The longing of the East for deliverance has, on the +whole, however, been less theological and more simple than the longing +of the West. The West has been led to turn to the East for teaching and +deliverance through a combination of forces. I have noticed already the +very direct way in which New Thought, once committed to free speculation +about life and God, found congenial guidance in the Eastern cults, but +other elements enter. The West has begun to share something of the +disillusionment of the East; so many things which promised to deliver us +have seemingly failed us. Our sciences have immeasurably enlarged our +knowledge and increased our power; they have added to our material +well-being; they have worked their miracles for us; but they have +brought us neither peace nor true happiness. They have instead added +their own disturbances to our other perplexities and they have +ultimately simply extended the frontiers of the mysterious and given a +new and vaster quality to our problems.</p> + +<p>Our democracies and our humanitarian movements have shown us that the +keys both to liberty and progress are still in human nature and not in +forms of organization and government. As our civilizations have grown +older and particularly as they have wasted themselves in war, some +shadow of the age-old weariness of the East has begun to fall across our +Western world. We have also reacted strongly against materialism in +thought and life; we have begun to see, as has been said, how the need +and force of personality have the right to assert themselves against the +dominance of things. We are beginning to recognize the right of religion +and philosophy to suggest terms to science, and all these tendencies +have combined to produce a considerable group of people who, having +found, for one reason or another, no real satisfaction in their +inherited Christianity, have welcomed the Eastern solution of the +problems of life, or else have positively turned to the East in the hope +of discovering what Western Christianity has not been able to give them. +One should add also that the pure love of speculation which is one of +the phases of modern thought has made an opening in the West for the +East. If unlimited speculation is the main business of life, the East +has certainly everything to offer us, and for warning, as we shall +presently see, as well as for guidance.</p> + + +<p><i>Pantheism and Its Problems</i></p> + +<p>The older Eastern religions are, to begin with, Pantheistic. We have +seen how religion generally in its development takes form and content +from its governing conception of God. We have seen also that there are +three governing conceptions of God: He is conceived as Transcendent or +Immanent, or else He is simply identified with the range and force of +the universe. Pantheism is generally the creation of brooding wonder and +uncritical thought; Pantheism feels rather than thinks; it accepts +rather than seeks to explain. It may be devout enough but its devotion +is passive rather than active. Pantheism is never scientific in the +accepted sense of that term; it has little concern for law; it explains +by personalizing the forces with which it has to deal; it is akin to the +temper which finds some animating spirit in all natural phenomena. The +flow of waters, the growth of things, the drift of clouds across the sky +are all, for Pantheism, simply the revelation of the action of some +indwelling spirit or other, without which they could neither exist nor +go on.</p> + +<p>At its worst Pantheism issues in a grotesque mythology and an +inconceivable multiplication of divinity; the gods in the Hindu Pantheon +are numbered by the thousands. At its best Pantheism issues in a kind of +mystic poetry and creates a devotee sensitive as Tagore to the fugitive +gleams of beauty through the murk of things, voicing his prayers and +insights in rare phrases which are, on the whole, in arresting contrast +to the actuality of life about him. Western devotion has been caught by +the mystic and poetical character of Pantheism and is, on the whole, +strangely blind to its actual outcome in the life of its devotees.</p> + +<p>We all feel the suggestion of it in certain of our tempers. If we should +take out of much of our finest poetry suggestions akin to the +suggestions of Pantheism at its best, we should leave even Western +poetry strangely poor, and we have beside, particularly in the +contemplation of rare natural beauty, a feeling of kinship with the +spirit which clothes itself in dawn and twilight, or speaks through the +rhythmic beat of sea waves, or lifts itself against the skyline in far +blue mountain summits, which helps us to understand this old, old faith. +And if modern cults had done nothing more than appropriate the poetry of +Pantheism they would have lent only a touch of oriental colour to the +somberness of Western life.</p> + +<p>But Theosophy and kindred cults have gone farther, since Pantheism +itself must go farther. Directly you have identified creation and the +creative power so intimately as Pantheism does, then you are under +bonds, if you have any curiosity at all or any speculative force, to try +to explain the ways in which a God, who is just to begin with all that +there is, has managed to reveal Himself in such an infinitude of minute +and sometimes ungodlike ways. So Pantheism has its own scheme, not of +creation, for there is no place in Pantheism for creation, but rather of +emanation. Eastern thought substitutes for the cosmogony of the Old +Testament which simply carries the world back to a creative God and +seeks to go no farther, and for the methods of Western science which +carries creation back to ultimate force and is unable to go any farther, +an entirely different system.</p> + + +<p><i>How the One Becomes the Many</i></p> + +<p>A paragraph in Mrs. Besant's "The Ancient Wisdom" (page 41) may help us +here. "Coming forth from the depths of the One Existence, from the One +beyond all thought and all speech, a Logos, by imposing on Himself a +limit, circumscribing voluntarily the range of His own Being, becomes +the manifested God, and tracing the limiting sphere of His activity thus +outlines the area of His universe. Within that sphere the universe is +born, is evolved, and dies; it lives, it moves, it has its being in Him; +its matter is His emanation; its forces and energies are currents of His +life; He is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, +all-evolving; He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, +its centre and circumference; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, +it breathes in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything and +everything in Him. Thus have the Sages of the Ancient Wisdom taught us +of the beginning of the manifested worlds."</p> + +<p>It is not, of course, fair to say that here is something entirely +different from the line of Western scientific and philosophic thought or +wholly alien to elements in modern Christianity.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> The real problem of +modern Theism is to connect what science discovers with what faith +assumes. The broader generalization of science resolves action and +existence into the unities of an underlying and self-conserving force +which grows more and more subtle and tenuous as we follow it from +molecules to atoms, from atoms to eons and electrons, and even discern +beneath these something more impalpable than themselves, and there must +be some way in which a creative power conceived by faith in terms of +personality has released the forces which have built themselves into the +universe. The difference is, however, that Christian Theism refuses +completely to identify God and His universe.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> Indeed this is a better commentary on the prologue to the +Gospel of John and certain passages of Colossians than most of the +orthodox theologies, and the self-limitation of God is the key to the +moral freedom of the individual.</p></div> + +<p>There is, after all, a profound distinction between creating and +becoming. Theosophy undertakes to explain for us how "the One beyond all +thought and all speech" has become us and our universe. It attempts also +to provide a way by which we, who are entangled, to our pain and sorrow, +in the web of things thus woven, may escape from it and lose ourselves +again in the One. It takes the wheel for its symbol in more senses than +one. Everything is a turning and returning and we ourselves are bound +upon the wheel, carried down or up and finally to be set free, only by +the acceptance of a certain discipline of life.</p> + +<p>Theosophy, then, is both speculative and practical. Its speculations +take an immense range necessarily; it is no simple thing to follow the +One from the depths of His hidden existence to our earth-born lives and +the forces which flow about them. Only an expert deeply versed in +Eastern literature would be able to say whether Mrs. Besant follows her +Eastern masters faithfully in reporting their conclusions, but she has +plainly availed herself of many of the terms and suggestions of modern +science in interpreting them to us. If one could use a figure borrowed +from electricity, the One is "stepped-down" through a series of planes +and manifestations. Theosophy makes much of sevens—no use to ask +why—and bridges the gulf between ultimate and present realities by a +series of seven planes in which what is coarsest in the plane above +becomes the germ of what is finest in the plane beneath. Even so, the +One does not directly touch even the highest of these seven planes. +(Theosophy is, first of all, a study in descents and not in ascents; +ascent comes later.) There are between the One and the topmost plane +three emanations (but perhaps we would better let Mrs. Besant speak to +us herself): "The self-unfolding of the Logos in a threefold form: the +first Logos the root of all being, from Him the second manifesting the +two aspects of life and form, then the third Logos, the universal mind, +that in which all archetypically exists, the source of beings, the fount +of fashioning energies."<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> "The Ancient Wisdom," p. 41.</p></div> + + +<p><i>Evolution and Involution</i></p> + +<p>It would seem to the uninitiated that all this is a kind of smoke-screen +of words to conceal our real ignorance of what we can never know and +really have no need to know. It is evidently just an attempt to bridge +the abyss between the immaterial and the material. If Theosophy wishes +to bridge this abyss with conjecture, well and good, but its conjectures +really leave us more deeply perplexed than we should be if we frankly +recognized and accepted the limitations of our ignorance. Once within +sight of the topmost of her seven planes, Mrs. Besant goes on a little +more definitely though she confesses "of what occurs on the two higher +planes of the universe, the seventh and the sixth, we can form but the +haziest conception." Each plane has what she calls its own "spirit +matter"; this spirit matter becomes coarser as we descend; each plane is +an emanation from the plane above it and the spirit matter of each plane +winds one more veil around those emanations of the immaterial One in +whom or which the whole process took its beginning.</p> + +<p>Theosophy does not speak of evolution as it attempts to account for our +material world, it speaks of involution. Here it reverses what is most +distinctive in modern Western religious thought as far as modern Western +religious thought has accepted evolution. For us evolution, if we seek +to give it a Theistic content, is God making manifest, in the vast +ascent of form and existence, an always fuller revelation of Himself. +Our familiar phrase "the self-revelation of God" posits a power which +can never for a moment be contained in all that is, but which may always +be more clearly known as we follow His creative record from stage to +ascending stage. A grass blade is a richer revelation than a crystal, a +bird than a grass blade; personality is almost infinitely richer than +the lower forms, some personalities are more perfectly the instruments +of the divine self-revelation than others, and Christian faith accepts +in Jesus Christ the supreme self-revelation of God in terms of human +experience.</p> + + +<p><i>Theosophy Undertakes to Offer Deliverance to the Entangled Soul</i></p> + +<p>But Theosophy reverses all this. As the One comes down from emanation to +emanation and from plane to plane He is always more deeply entangled in +the veil of things, until on our last and lowest plane He is seven times +enwrapped and smothered. We must not, however, confuse this last and +lowest plane with our little world, or even our universe; these are but +sensible aspects of it and they are really the manifestation of the +deeply enwrapped Divine trying to struggle up and out again and so +building our realities about us and eventually bringing us, with all our +conscious powers, into being. (Here the theosophist has more in common +with the evolutionist than one or two of the preceding paragraphs would +seem to indicate.) If we follow the figure of the wheel our present +plane, the last and lowest of them all, is really the turning point of +the wheel; now it begins to turn back upon that from which it descended, +and according to Theosophy our practical human task is so to avail +ourselves of its upward movement as to be carried back with it toward +the high planes of perfect being.</p> + +<p>Theosophy undertakes to account for personality as it accounts for our +sensible universe and along much the same line of speculation. Just as +the whole physical plane on which our world exists has really somewhere +deep wrapped up within it some emanation of the One from whom everything +flows out, so our true selves, which have really come down from the One +and should thence return, are wrapped up so deeply as also to be near +lost and smothered with, nevertheless, the power to get themselves +unwrapped. Our wrappings are our bodies, but we do not begin to +understand Theosophy if we think of body in the ordinary sense; our +physical body is only one and that the coarsest of the seven veils, for +there are seven here also, in which the true soul is enmeshed. We have +really seven bodies and we are not any one of them though each of them +is useful and each one of them puts us in touch with a certain order of +existence. Some of these bodies are mortal, others of them belong to the +truly enduring order.</p> + +<p>Now we are lost here unless we recognize the profound difference between +all our usual ways of thinking or talking and the wisdom of Theosophy. +Theosophy begins at the top and comes down, at least until it reaches +our present world; it also begins at the inside and works out. We think +of our physical bodies as the instruments, on one side at least, through +which the physical world communicates with us, but for the theosophist +they are only instruments through which we communicate with the world. +Not quite so, however, for Theosophy recognizes the give and take of +experience. The soul may slip out of the physical body in sleep and +it—our physical body—is at the best a stupid, imprisoning, misleading +sort of a husk which has its practical uses but ought by no means to be +taken too seriously.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> Its coarse matter may be refined by discipline +and diet and apparently the physical body of a vegetarian is a finer +instrument than the physical body of one who feeds on the flesh of +animals.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> For a striking modern phrasing of this see Edward +Carpenter's Free Verse "The Stupid Old Body."</p></div> + + +<p><i>But Becomes Deeply Entangled Itself</i></p> + +<p>The physical body has also an etheric double which duplicates in a more +subtle way the constitution of the physical body. This is the vehicle of +the life force, whatever that means. The physical body and its double +are in a rough way the vehicles of the give and take of physical +existence, but for the experiences of pain and pleasure and for the +dwelling place of the passions, desires and emotions, we have an astral +body. Here the theosophist makes much use of vibrations and colours, and +apparently our changing play of emotion is reflected in a play of colour +which puts the chameleon to shame and makes us in our most excited +moment rivals of the rainbow itself. The astral body shows upon occasion +browns, dark reds and greens and their combinations, lit from time to +time with flashes of scarlet. Our better feelings reveal themselves in +finer colours; rose indicates love, blue, religious feeling, yellow, +intelligence, and violet, spirituality. The Theosophist believes that we +can be trained to see all this and illustrates it in coloured plates +which are, to the uninitiated, not over convincing. Beside the body of +physical existence and the astral body we possess also a mental body. +This is the seat of thought and mental action. In a sentence, maybe, the +theosophist is trying to say that we have a body for each phase of +personality through which we come into contact with the finer realities +of the ascending planes of existence, and that the matter of these +bodies is more subtly refined as we pass from mere sensation to higher +spiritual states.</p> + +<p>So within the astral body there is the mental body which, says Mrs. +Besant, is of finer material than the astral as the astral is finer than +the physical. This is the body which answers by its vibrations to our +changes of thought. The mental body may be refined by fitting +disciplines as it is coarsened by evil thoughts. These thoughts may +become "veritable diseases and maimings of the mental body incurable +during its period of life." These bodies we discard in due time, the +physical at death and the astral when ready to enter the heaven world. +What becomes of the mental body Mrs. Besant does not say.</p> + +<p>Beyond these are bodies which belong to man's timeless existence, +curiously named and obscurely defined. There is apparently a causal body +which is possibly the vehicle of will and, more involved still, a +super-spiritual body which is the reality of God deep within us, and the +carrier and vehicle of our supreme and enduring personal values. All +this is a curious enough mingling of psychology, a subtle materialism, +and unbounded speculation; it is equally beyond proof and denial, though +for the proof of it the theosophist offers the testimony of those whose +senses are so refined by peculiar disciplines as to see in and about +physical form a play of light and colour which are themselves the +revelation of mental and emotional states. We literally go about, +according to this testimony, "trailing clouds of glory" or of gloom. +While for the denial of it there is the deep-seated protest of Western +reason, that personality, complex as it is, cannot possibly be so +bafflingly complex as this.</p> + + +<p><i>The West Accepts Suffering as a Challenge and Looks to Personal +Immortality for Victory</i></p> + +<p>We are, therefore, according to the theosophist, emanations from the +Divine; deeply enveiled and much enshrouded within us is a timeless and +changeless self descended from the mysterious All which lies back of all +things and under high compulsion to seek again, in some vast turning of +the wheel of Being, that from which we sprang. Theosophy becomes more +understandable in its practical reaction upon life, for this many veiled +self is deeply involved in forces and states to which it is not really +akin, and since it suffers greatly in being so involved the end of +existence is, in discipline and ascent, to be set free from the pain and +weariness of conscious existence, and to be absorbed in the changeless +peace of that ultimate reality out of which we have issued and back +again to which we are destined to go. We cannot be insensible to the +vast scope of such a speculation as this for in one form or another +there are, in all religion and in the deeper yearnings of life, elements +akin to it.</p> + +<p>The order of which we are a part bears hard upon the soul. No one who +meditates deeply upon the strangeness of human destiny can fail to +recognize the arresting estate of sensitive personality enmeshed in laws +and forces which drive on with so little apparent consideration for +those who are caught in the turning of their wheels, or ridden down in +their drive. Western faith has generally seen in this situation a +challenge to personality to assert its own supremacy over the impersonal +and subject its encompassing order to the high purposes of the soul. If +we are wounded in the fight we take our wounds as good soldiers; if the +forces which face us are challengingly strong we fall back upon our +deeper resources and in the end assert our own vaster powers.</p> + +<p>We accept the conditions of the struggle as a part of the discipline of +life and in our braver moments win from the fight itself those elements +of personal steadfastness which, matured in character, give moral +meaning to the endeavour, and though we anticipate an ultimate release +and blessed compensation for the present travail of our souls, we find +that release and those compensations in a personal immortality which +attends the termination of the individual life in the present order, and +continues that life conscious, free and triumphant in an immortal order, +and even there we ask neither to be released from effort nor denied +progress. We challenge the fortunes of the Unknown in the poet's phrase, +and seek "other heights in other lives, God willing."</p> + + +<p><i>The East Balances the Accounts of Life in a Series of Reincarnations</i></p> + +<p>But just as the East casts the glamour of its speculation over the +processes by which we have come to be where and what we are, so it casts +the glamour of its speculation over the process of our release. The +West stakes everything on the issue of one individual life even if death +ends it, or else it assumes a conscious continuity of life rich in +memory and persistent in individuality in whatever progress lies beyond +the grave. Those whom Dante saw ascending from terrace to terrace of the +Mount of Purgation were in all stages continuously and truly themselves. +They knew the faults for which they made atonement and looked back with +unclouded vision along all the stages by which they had climbed. The +East makes little of the continuity of individual life and everything of +the sequence of individual lives. It offers for the solution of our +problem of ultimate destiny and also for its solution of the problem of +pain and sorrow and manifest inequality in human states, two simple and +unescapable laws—the law of moral consequence and the law of +reincarnation. The East and the West both believe that "whatsoever a man +soweth that shall he also reap" but the West believes he gathers his +harvests of pain or punishment in a continuity of conscious existence, +the vaster part of which is lived beyond death, with no rebirth and with +no travelling again the light or shadowed ways of earth and time. The +Christian West believes also in redemption which is just that sharing of +God in the process which makes faith and repentance definite and saving +elements in the struggle of the soul.</p> + +<p>The East believes in a series of reincarnations, each reincarnate state +taking its character from the quality of the life before. The fact that +the doors of recollection are shut and locked between each incarnate +existence makes no difference to the East. If a man has lived well and +justly and followed his light, he will hereafter be born higher up; if +he has loved darkness because his deeds are evil, he will be born into +some low estate; he may descend into the beast or ascend into the saint. +He will pay for present injustice with future suffering—</p> + +<p class="indented"> +"Or reach a hand through time to catch<br /> +The far-off interest of tears"<br /> +</p> + +<p>even though he have no conscious remembrance of the faults for which he +atones, or the sorrow for which he is recompensed. If he is steadfast +through countless rebirths, the slow turning wheel will bear him higher +and higher until he begins to ascend the successive planes, discovering +in each plane for which he has fitted himself a new wealth and reality +of existence, until at last he is lost in the Infinite Existence and his +struggle is ended.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the word "struggle" as here used is wrong. Deliverance for the +East is not so much struggle as acquiescence. For the theosophist desire +is the master mischief maker. Desire leads us in wrong directions, +complicates our spiritual problems and thrusts us against the turn of +the wheel. We are rather, according to the theosophist, to reduce desire +to its simplest terms, thereby freeing ourselves from restlessness, +above all taking care not to hurt or embitter others.</p> + + +<p><i>Theosophy Produces a Distinct Type of Character</i></p> + +<p>There is no denying that here is a faith capable of producing a +distinctive type of character. It tends at its best toward an extreme +conscientiousness and an always excessive introspection; it creates also +a vast and brooding patience. "In countries where reincarnation and +karma [the law of Cause and Effect] are taken for granted by every +peasant and labourer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of +inevitable troubles that conduces much to the calm and contentment of +ordinary life. A man overwhelmed by misfortunes rails neither against +God nor against his neighbours, but regards his troubles as the result +of his own past mistakes and ill-doings. He accepts them resignedly and +makes the best of them.... He realizes that his future lives depend on +his own exertions and that the law which brings him pain will bring him +joy just as inevitably if he sows the seed of good. Hence a certain +large patience and philosophic view of life tending directly to social +stability and to general contentment."<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> "The Ancient Wisdom," Besant, p. 273.</p></div> + +<p>If such a faith as this be informed with humaneness and be deeply +tempered with the principle of sacrifice, it may, and does, result in a +distinct type of real goodness. It is possibly a good faith for helpless +and more or less despairing folk, though it likely creates many of the +evils from which it desires to escape. The very reach and subtlety and +even splendour of its speculation will make a strong appeal to minds of +a certain type.</p> + +<p>Two elements in the whole system doubtless account for what hold it has +upon the Western mind. It does offer, to begin with, a coherent +explanation of the problem of pain and sorrow. As we have seen more than +once in this study, Western Christianity has been deficient just here. +The accepted explanations of the shadowed side of life have not been +great enough to meet the facts. Practically every cult we have studied +has found its opportunity just here. Christian Science solves the +problem by denying the essential reality of pain and disease. New +Thought believes in an underlying and loving good to which life may be +so attuned as to bring us generally into the current of health and +happiness. Theosophy accepts pain, sorrow and all unhappy forces and +explains them as the inevitable result of wrong action either in this or +a previous existence.</p> + + +<p><i>Theosophy a "Tour de Force" of the Imagination</i></p> + +<p>Christian Science saves the justice and affirms the love of God by +making Him just a God with apparently no concern for and no +participation in the shadowed side of life. New Thought saves the love +and justice of God by discovering in pain and unhappiness our lack of +harmony with Him. Theosophy meets the whole shadowed order along its +full front and explains everything in terms of compensation. Now there +is much in this to appeal to our modern temper. Directly we recognize +the scales in which the consequences of our actions are weighed as being +so sensitive that not even a thought can be thrown in the one balance +without disturbing the equilibrium, directly we recognize ourselves as +involved in a sweep of law from whose consequences there is no possible +escape, we have at least a consistent scheme in which there is room for +no evasion, and if we balance the manifold inequalities of one life by +what has been done or left undone in some previous life, we are always +able to add weight enough to the scales to make them hang level. True +enough, there is nothing to guide us here but imaginative ingenuity, but +it is always possible to imagine some fault in a previous existence +which we pay for in pain or loss or disappointment, or some good deed +done in a previous existence which accounts for our happy fortune in +this. And so justice is saved if only by a tour de force of the +imagination. (Mrs. Besant, for example, explains the untimely death of a +child as a penalty due the parents for unkindness to a child in an +earlier incarnation.)</p> + +<p>The speculative aspects of Theosophy also appeal to tempers which love +to dream without accepting the laborious discipline of a truly reasoned +speculation. To quote a phrase of Macaulay's quoted in turn by William +James in one of his letters, there is a type of mind "utterly wanting in +the faculty by which a demonstrated truth is distinguished from a +plausible supposition," and there has been amongst us of late a marked +increase of this type of mind. There has been up to our own time no +great amount of such speculation as this in the West. It is not native +to the occidental temper and it has been held in control by our +scientific approach to the facts of our world and our experiences +therein. We have demanded for our speculations generally the +demonstration of fact and this has heretofore held us to a rather +narrow range, but that widening of the frontiers of the possible which +has attended the new psychology with its emphasis upon the subconscious, +along with the rather baffling character of psychic phenomena, has +opened the flood gates and released a tide of speculation which goes far +beyond the proved fact and accepts no limits but its own ingenious +audacity. We have already seen how evident deficiencies in the +discipline of present-day education and the loose state of mind too much +in evidence amongst us has contributed to all this. There are everywhere +a great number of perplexed people who want to believe something and +find it far easier to believe in dreams and guesses and cloud-built +systems than in restraining facts or even the rather clearly +demonstrated realities of the moral order, and such as these have found +a wealth of material in Eastern speculation.</p> + + +<p><i>A Bridge of Clouds</i></p> + +<p>In trying to appraise the truth of Theosophy we have to disentangle the +system and the needs and the seekings which lead its adherents to accept +it. These needs and seekings are, after all, near and familiar; they are +only our old questions Whence? and Whither? and Why? Theosophy is at +least the attempt to really answer some of the questions which Western +science is either content or compelled to leave unanswered. The creative +point of contact between personality and matter and force is deeply +enwrapped in mystery. Orthodox Christianity has been content to affirm +the facts of creation without asking any questions at all as to its +methods. It has affirmed the omnipotence of the Creator and has found in +His omnipotence a satisfactory resting place. God is great enough to do +what has been done and the detail of it is rather an affair for God than +man. Scientific speculation generally has gone back as far as it can go +in the resolution of its forces and laws and recognized its own +limitations, leaving the rest to the theologian and the philosopher. The +result has been a gap which has not been bridged over. Theosophy has +undertaken to bridge that gap. But, examined more carefully, one sees +that the abyss has been crossed by nothing more solid than a fabric of +cloudy speculation. True enough these speculations are ingenious and +touched with suggestive light, but they are strangely insubstantial. +After all they do absolutely nothing more than our Western affirmation +of the immanence of God in life and force and law, and our Western +thought has the advantage alike in simplicity, in scientific basis and +reverent self-restraint.</p> + +<p>We might as well recognize, and be done with it, that there are +questions here which in all human probability are insoluble. There are +elements of mystery in life and the universe beyond our present and +likely our future power to definitely resolve. In the end faith can do +nothing more than rest in God and accept as an aspect of life itself the +necessary limits of our position. Our organized knowledge all too +quickly brings us to regions where faith and faith alone completes the +inquiry. But on the other hand, a faith which too far outruns either in +the reach or audacity of its speculation those elements which organized +knowledge supplies and reason validates, loses itself in futilities or +else misleads us altogether. Eastern speculation is too far beyond +either ordered knowledge or right reason to be of any practical use in +the fruitful conduct of life. Believing too much does just as much harm +as believing too little.</p> + +<p>Theosophy's seven planes and ascending emanations and sevenfold veils +and all the rest really explain nothing. On the other hand they tempt +their faithful to take conjecture for reality; they create a credulous +and uncritical temper; they are hostile to that honest dealing with fact +which is just one condition of getting on at all. A brave confession of +ignorance is often more truly reverent than knowing too many things +which are not so. As we approach more nearly the reality of things as +they are we find them always unexpectedly simple. The burden of proof is +always upon the murky and the complex. Those who try to escape the +difficulties in which our deeper understanding of the world order and +our own personalities involve us, by taking refuge in Eastern occultism +are on the wrong line.</p> + + +<p><i>The Difficulties of Reincarnation</i></p> + +<p>The same criticism holds true of Reincarnation. It is involved in +hopeless difficulties. There are apparent injustices and inequalities in +life—so much is beyond debate—but we have in general, if we are honest +enough to follow it through, the clue to even these. We are all parts +of a struggling and, we trust, ascending order, an order which on the +whole is not so greatly concerned for the individual as we are concerned +for ourselves. We are hampered by our ignorance and we are deeply +involved one with the other. The orthodox theology which blames +everything upon sin as an abstraction is not convincing, but sin as the +projection of wrong desires, through self-will, into the field of human +action is a fact to be constantly reckoned with. The individual and +social consequences of it are enormous, nor can they be confined either +to one individual or one generation. Heredity continues weakness as well +as strength. A vast deal of our bitter reaping is due to the wrong or +foolish sowing of others, though fortunately we share the good as well +as the bad. The laws of heredity will account for a vast deal in any one +generation; the laws of social action and reaction for a great deal of +the rest, and there is finally not a little for which we ourselves are +responsible. A good many of our problems ought to be approached from the +point of view of the well-being of humanity generally and not our own +individual destiny.</p> + +<p>We may safely trust our individual destiny to brave and unselfish +living. I ought not to test what I do or leave undone by its effect upon +me in some future reincarnation; I ought to test it by the effect which +it has now upon the world of which I am a part, upon the generation +which is to follow me and upon the quality of my own present life. True +enough, the theosophist and myself find ourselves here in substantial +agreement as to many of the things which a man ought practically to do +to secure a happier future, but I maintain that the motives just named +are far more solid and worthy motives than the camouflaged selfishness +of Theosophy, and they are certainly in far deeper accord with the +ascertained facts of life. If we recognize that the more shadowed side +of life is partly the result of social and individual development +conditioned by weakness, ignorance and sin, if we recognize that the +present reaps what the past has sown, if we recognize that we suffer for +the faults of others and that no one of us may hope to climb far until +his neighbour climbs with him, if we recognize that pain and suffering +are disciplinary, illuminating, educative, and finally, if we recognize +that we do possess the power to take all the more difficult elements in +experience and subdue them to an increased wealth of personality, we +have really all the elements in hand for the solution of the problem of +pain and sorrow in terms of action and understanding, and we do not need +a series of reincarnations to help us out.</p> + +<p>Reincarnation really explains, as it claims to explain, neither the +exceptional individual nor the apparently unmerited sufferings of the +individual, and it has beside inescapable difficulties of its own. It +has to parallel the course of human existence with a range of supernal +existence for which there is absolutely no proof; it has to numerically +equalize birth and death—and these are not equal in an increasing +terrestrial population—or else it has to assume, as it does of course, +on other planes a storehouse of souls from which to draw. And more than +that, it involves itself in a perfect tangle of heavenly bookkeeping. +Here is the best Mrs. Besant can do to explain the difficulties of +reincarnation. "We have seen that man during his passage to physical +death loses, one after the other, his various bodies.... These are all +disintegrated and their particles remixed with the materials of their +several planes.... At this stage, then, only the man himself is left, +the labourer who has brought his harvest home and has lived upon it till +it is all worked up into himself. The dawn of a new life begins."<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> "The Ancient Wisdom," p. 202—passim.</p></div> + +<p>To condense, he now proceeds to build up for himself a new body for his +coming life on the lower mental level. "This again exactly represents +his desire nature, faithfully reproducing the qualities he evolved in +the past; ... thus the man stands fully equipped for his next +incarnation.... Meanwhile action external to himself is being taken to +provide him with a physical body suitable for the expression of his +qualities.... All this is done by certain mighty spiritual Intelligences +often spoken of as the lords of Karma because it is their function to +superintend the working out of causes continually set going by thoughts, +desires and actions. They hold the threads of destiny which each man has +woven, and guide the reincarnating man to the environment determined by +his past. The race, the nation, the family thus determined, what may be +called the mould of the physical body ... is built within the mother's +womb by the agency of an elemental, the thought of the Karmic lords +being its motive power." The difficulties which this statement evades +are enormous, its conjectures are even more enormous.</p> + +<p>This is the subversion of all the facts of biology and heredity to a +capricious scheme, built up just to answer a few practical +questions—Why do we differ? Why do we suffer? Why are we happy? Surely +there are far more simple and reasonable answers to these questions than +the answer of Theosophy, and the willingness of so many people to rest +in such an answer as this can prove only one of two things—the capacity +of the mind for credulity or the arresting failure of those whose +business it is to interpret life to the perplexed, to have even begun +their task.</p> + + +<p><i>Immortality a Nobler, Juster and Simpler Balancing of Life's +Account-Book</i></p> + +<p>If there be a want of opportunity in our present existence for a true +balancing of the scales of justice, and if some future existence be +needed to make things right, then the Christian doctrine of immortality +has an immense advantage over the reincarnations of Theosophy. We have +no right to underestimate the difficulties of a reasonable faith in +immortality, but they are simplicity itself as compared with the +difficulties of reincarnation, for reincarnation must answer every +question which the possibility of immortality raises and answer even +more difficult questions of its own. It is far simpler to believe that +having survived the shock of death we go on with the same essential +individuality we had before death, than to believe that having survived +we are sent back again through the gates of birth and are really +reincarnated in another individuality. More than that, the Christian +belief in immortality is more ethical. The action and reaction of life +have real meaning for me only as I know and remember. No theosophic +evasion can take the force out of this.</p> + +<p>If I consciously connect to-day's pain with yesterday's pain with the +folly or fault of a previous existence of which I am really unconscious, +the chain has been broken and no speculative question can supply the +missing link. Very likely the accepted Christian doctrine of the +finality of life after death has given Theosophy an opportunity in the +West. Protestantism particularly has allowed absolutely no place after +death for repentance, has offered no new chance to the adventuring soul; +its Hell and its Heaven have been final states. Catholicism has eased +the strain of this with purgatory, a belief wholly without Scriptural +basis, but nevertheless evolved in answer to great necessities of life. +We need neither purgatory nor reincarnation; we need only the +recognition of what is so centrally a part of any conception of +immortality as to make one wonder why we have so greatly missed it; the +reasonable confidence, that is, that we really go on very much as we +left off here.</p> + +<p>If there be in a future existence—and there must be if there be a +future existence—any room for repentance born of a clearer recognition +of fault and new and holier purposes born of a clearer understanding of +the true values of life, then we shall go on in a truly moral process of +growth, availing ourselves always of the teachings of experience and +working toward the true well-being of our souls, and if the mercy and +justice of God be not the figment of our imagination those who have been +hardly dealt with here will be given new opportunity, the deficient and +the handicapped released from what weighed them down will find a new +departure, and the justices of eternity complete what time began. All +this will be accomplished not in a series of existences, separated one +from the other by abysms of forgetfulness, but in a remembered +continuity of life deepening through endless growth. If this be only +faith and speculation it is at least a far more reasonable faith and +speculation than the alternative which Theosophy offers. Theosophy is a +side issue in the real solution of the problems of life.</p> + + +<p><i>Pantheism at Its Best—and Its Worst</i></p> + +<p>Finally, though this is possibly unfair, Eastern Pantheism generally +must be tested by its fruits. We ought not, if we are to deal justly +with it, to ignore its better side. The East at its best has been strong +in a type of life wanting in the West; the East has been rich in +patience and gentleness and in consideration for every kind of life, +even the ant in the dust or the beast in the jungle. The East at its +best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of +cause and effect in character far, far beyond the West; it has been +content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life. +It has willingly, for the sake of truth and goodness, subjected itself +to disciplines, some of which are admirable, others of which are +loathsome. It has at its best ventured everything for the well-being of +the soul, even when it has misconceived that well-being. It has had +little of the hard driving quality of the West. Not a little of the +teaching of Jesus fits in better with the temper and devotion of the +Orient than the competitive materialism of the Occident. It is easily +possible to pass not a little of the Gospels through the interpretation +of Eastern mysticism and find therein arresting correspondences. For +example, a little book called "At the Feet of the Master" by a young +Indian student, has in it a wealth of insight and an understanding of +the balanced conduct of life which is wanting in a good many of the +Western interpretations of life, but none the less, things must be +judged by their massed outcome and the massed outcome of Eastern +Pantheism does not commend itself.</p> + +<p>The larger part of the religious literature of the East is upon a +distinctly lower level than those parts of it which are brought to us by +its devotees, and when Pantheism—and the basis of all Eastern +speculation is Pantheistic—comes down from its high places and begins +practically to express itself in worship and the conduct of the crowd, +then it is such as to give us pause. What Kipling calls "the sculptured +horrors" of the carved fronts of the temples in Benares are no accident; +they are simply the logical outcome of a faith which lifts the whole to +the level of the divine and has nothing beyond to correct what is by +what ought or ought not to be. Almost inevitably Pantheistic religions +unduly exalt those powers which make for fertility of field and the +increase of life. As they do this they have on their side the elemental +forces in human nature. When we begin to make gods of what after all +must be sternly subordinated to higher things, and the East has done +this in spite of its mystics and its dreamers, then we are not only in +danger of sculpturing symbolic horrors on the fronts of our temples but +of setting up therein strange altars to strange gods who are best +worshipped by strange rites. All this, inevitably enough, has given to +Eastern worship a more than earthly character, and has invested with the +sanction of religion forces which it must always be the business of +religion to subordinate and control.</p> + +<p>Along with all this has gone a grotesque mythology and an inconceivable +multiplication of divinity. Since no one but an expert can hope to +understand the complexities of a faith like this, the East has developed +a priestly class which bears harder upon its devotees and at the same +time more contemptuously separates itself from them than perhaps any +priestly class in the world. If the East is to return upon the West in +substituting a refined and more or less mystic Pantheism for the sterner +forms of Western faith, we ought at least to understand what it is +which, with all its implications, is beginning to set up its altars +amongst us. No one can follow the theosophic religion of the West +without recognizing how largely Western Theosophy avails itself of +Western science and informs itself with what Christianity has given to +the West. If these were taken out of it it would be hopeless. Since, +therefore, its speculations carry us beyond reason or science, since its +solution of the problems of life is far too complex, since whatever is +good in it may be found more richly and simply in what we already +possess and since the practical outcome of it in the East itself is an +arrested civilization which has many depths but few heights, one must +inevitably conclude that Theosophy has no real meaning for those who +possess already the knowledge which we have so laboriously gained and +the faith and insight which Christianity has brought us.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2> + +<h3>SPIRITUALISM</h3> + + +<p>Practically all the newer cults are quests in one general direction but +down more or less specific roads. Christian Science and New Thought are +endeavours after health and well-being and the endeavour also to +reconcile the more shadowed experiences of life with the love and +goodness of God. Theosophy and kindred cults are quests for illumination +and spiritual deliverance along other than the accepted lines of +Christian "redemption." Spiritualism is practically the quest for the +demonstration of immortality through such physical phenomena as prove, +at least to those who are persuaded by them, the survival of discarnate +personality.</p> + +<p>All these movements involve in varying degrees the abnormal or the +supernormal. They imply generally another environment for personality +than the environment which the ordered world of science supplies, and +other laws than the laws of which it takes account. They are one in +affirming the mastery of the psychical over the physical. They either +affirm or imply faculties which do not depend upon the senses for their +material; they suggest a range of personality which, if the facts which +they supply are sound, demands a very considerable recasting of our +accepted beliefs about ourselves.</p> + +<p>Christian Science and New Thought confine themselves largely to the +present term of life, though Christian Science affirms strongly enough +that death is an error of the mortal mind. New Thought places a shifting +emphasis upon immortality. Spiritualism centers wholly upon the +phenomena of the discarnate life, upon the power of the discarnate to +communicate with us and upon our power to receive and interpret their +communications.</p> + +<p>Spiritualism, or Spiritism, the name its adherents prefer, is, however, +by no means so simple as this definition of it. It may be anything from +the credulity which accepts without question or analysis the trick of a +medium, to the profound speculation of Meyer or Hyslop or the new +adventures in psychology of Émile Boirac and his French associates. It +may be a cult, a philosophy or an inquiry; it may organize itself in +forms of worship and separate itself entirely from the churches. It may +reinforce the faith of those who remain in their old communions. +Spiritism has a long line of descent. The belief that the spirit may +leave the body and maintain a continued existence is very old. Mr. +Herbert Spencer finds the genesis of this belief in dreams. Since +primitive men believed themselves able, in their dreams, to wander about +while the body remained immobile and since in their dreams they met and +spoke with their dead, they conceived an immaterial existence. The +spirit of a dead man, having left the body, would still go on about its +business. They, therefore, set out food and drink upon his grave and +sacrificed his dogs, his horses or his wives to serve him in his +disembodied state. All this is familiar enough and perhaps the whole +matter began as Mr. Spencer suggested, though it by no means ends there.</p> + +<p>The animism which grew out of this belief characterizes a vast deal of +early religion, penetrates a vast deal of early thinking. Primitive man +lived in a world constantly under the control of either friendly or +hostile spirits and the really massive result of this faith of his is +registered in regions as remote as the capricious genders of French +nouns and the majestic strophes of the Hebrew Psalms, for the genders +are the shadowy survivals of a time when all things had their spirits, +male or female, and the Psalms voice the faith for which thunder was the +voice of God and the hail was stored in His armoury. It would take us +far beyond the scope of our present inquiry to follow down this line in +all its suggestive ramifications. Animism, medieval witchcraft and the +confused phenomena of knocks, rappings and the breaking and throwing +about of furniture and the like reported in all civilized countries for +the past two or three centuries, supply the general background for +modern Spiritualism. (The whole subject is fully treated in the first +and second chapters of Podmore.)</p> + + +<p><i>The Genesis of Modern Spiritualism</i></p> + +<p>Modern Spiritualism does not, however, claim for itself so ancient an +ancestry. In 1848 mysterious knockings were heard in the family of John +D. Fox at Hydesville, N.Y. They appeared to have some purpose behind +them; the daughters of the family finally worked out a code: three raps +for yes, one for no, two for doubt, and lo, a going concern was +established. It is interesting to note that mysterious noises had been +about a century before heard in the family of the Wesleys in Epworth +Rectory, England. These noises came to be accepted quite placidly as an +aspect of the interesting domestic life of the Wesleys. It has usually +been supposed that Hattie Wesley knew more about it than she cared to +tell and, as far as the illustrious founders of Methodism were +concerned, there the matter rests.</p> + +<p>But the Fox sisters became professional mediums and upon these simple +beginnings a great superstructure has been built up. The modern interest +in Spiritualism thus began on its physical side and in general the +physical phenomena of Spiritualism have become more bizarre and complex +with the growth of the cult. Raps, table tiltings, movements of articles +of furniture, playing upon musical instruments, slate writing, automatic +writing, of late the Ouija Board, materialization, levitation, apparent +elongation of the medium's body, are all associated with Spiritism. It +was natural that the voice also should become a medium of communication, +though trance mediumship belongs, as we shall see, to a later stage of +development.</p> + +<p>Incidentally the movement created a kind of contagious hysteria which +naturally multiplied the phenomena and made detached and critical +attitudes unduly difficult. For reasons already touched upon, America +has been strongly predisposed to phases of public opinion which in their +intensity and want of balance have the generally accepted +characteristics of hysteria. Some of them have been religious, great +awakenings, revivals and the like. These in their more extreme form have +been marked by trances, shoutings and catalepsy and, more normally, by a +popular interest, strongly emotionalized, which may possess a real +religious value. Other religious movements have centered about the +second coming of Christ and the end of the world. Many of these peculiar +excitements have been political. The whole offers the psychologists a +fascinating field and awaits its historian.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> Yet the result is always +the same. The critical faculty is for the time in abeyance; public +opinion is intolerant of contradiction; imposture is made easy and +charlatans and self-appointed prophets find a credulous following. +Movements having this genesis and history are in themselves open to +suspicion.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Sidis has a résumé of Social Epidemics in part three of +his work on the "Psychology of Suggestion."</p></div> + + +<p><i>It Crosses to England and the Continent</i></p> + +<p>The American interest in Spiritualism from 1848 to 1852 belongs +distinctly to this region. The Fox sisters have been generally +discredited, but what they began carried on. In 1852 a Mrs. Hayden and a +little later a Mrs. Roberts introduced raps and table turnings to +England. There, and more particularly on the Continent, Spiritualism met +and merged with a second line of development which in turn reacted upon +American Spiritualism, and, in America, released movements on the +surface wholly unrelated to Spiritism. In France to a degree and in +Germany strongly Mesmerism lent itself to spiritistic interpretations. I +quote Podmore, who is commenting upon the trance utterances of a Mrs. +Lindquist: "It is to be noted that the ascription of these somnambulic +utterances to spirit intelligences was in the circumstances not merely +easy but almost inevitable. The entranced person was in a state +obviously differing very widely from either normal sleep or normal +wakefulness; in the waking state she herself retained no recollection of +what happened in the trance; in the trance she habitually spoke of her +waking self in the third person, as of some one else; the intelligence +which manifested in the trance obviously possessed powers of expression +and intellectual resources in some directions far greater than any +displayed by the waking subject. Add to this that the trance +intelligence habitually reflected the ideas in general and especially +the religious orthodoxy of her interlocutors; that on occasion she +showed knowledge of their thoughts and intentions which could not +apparently have been acquired by normal means; that she was, in +particular, extraordinarily skillful in diagnosing, prescribing for, and +occasionally foretelling the course of diseases in herself and +others—the proof must have seemed to the bystanders complete."<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. I, p. 77.</p></div> + + +<p><i>The Beginnings of Trance-Mediumship</i></p> + +<p>We have here plainly enough the beginnings of trance mediumship. It +needed only unstable personalities, capable of self-induced trance +states, so to widen all this as to supply the bases of spiritistic +faith and the material for the immensely laborious investigation of the +Society for Psychical Research. In the main, however, French interest in +Mesmerism and animal magnetism took a more scientific turn and issued in +the brilliant French studies in hypnotism. Spiritualism has made little +headway in Catholic countries. The authority of the Church is thrown so +strongly against it as to prohibit the interest of the credulous and the +penetrating minds of the southern European scientists have been more +concerned with the problems of abnormal personality than the continued +existence of the discarnate.</p> + +<p>The interest in Germany took another line. There was less scientific +investigation of hypnotism and trance states as abnormal modifications +of personality and far more interest in clairvoyance and spirit +existence. Men whose names carried weight accepted the spiritistic +explanation of phenomena ranging from broken flower pots to ghosts. Very +likely the German tendency toward mysticism and speculation explains +this. Jung followed Swedenborg and the mystics generally in affirming a +psychic body, but was a pioneer in associating it with the luminiferous +ether in a range of speculation which in our time supplies an +hypothetical scientific basis for the environment of the discarnate. (So +Sir Oliver Lodge.) Podmore concludes that the foundations of modern +Spiritualism were laid by the German magnetists of the first half of the +nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>The movement developed along these lines till 1875. Once broadly in +action it touches at one point or another the whole region of the +occult. Many spiritualists found in Theosophy, for which existence is +the endless turning of a wheel, a cycle of death and rebirth, a +pseudo-philosophic support for their belief. Spiritualism appealed +naturally to the lovers of the mystic and the unusual and it associated +itself, to a degree, with extreme liberalism in the general development +of religion. (On the whole, however, as far as religion goes, +Spiritualism has created a religion of its own.) Its advocates were +likely to be interested in phrenology, advanced social experiments, or +modification of the marriage laws. Spiritualistic phenomena themselves +became more varied and complex; trance mediumship became a profession +with a great increase of performers; slate writing was introduced and +finally materialization was achieved. All this might mean that the +spirits were growing more adept in "getting through," the mediums more +adept in technique, or else, which is more likely, that latent abnormal +aspects of personality were being brought to light through suggestion, +imitation and exercise. But no concerted effort was made by trained and +impartial observers to eliminate fraud, collect data and reach +dependable conclusions. This has been finally attempted by the Society +for Psychical Research and the results of their laborious investigations +are now at the service of the student of the occult.</p> + + +<p><i>The Society for Psychical Research Begins Its Work</i></p> + +<p>The weight which attaches to the names of many English and some +American members of the Society, the carefully guarded admission of some +of them that there is in the whole region a possible residue of +phenomena which indicate communication between the living and the +discarnate and the profoundly unsettling influence of the war, really +account for the renewed interest in Spiritualism in our own time. In +1875 a few Englishmen, one of them a famous medium—Stainton +Moses—formed a Psychological Society for the investigation of +supernormal phenomena. (In general all this account of the history of +Spiritualism is greatly condensed from Podmore and Hill and the reader +is referred to their works without specific reference.)</p> + +<p>This first group dissolved upon the death of one of its members—though +that would seem to have been a good reason for continuing it—and in +1882 Professor (afterward Sir) William Barrett, who had already done +some experimenting and had brought hypnotism and telepathy to the notice +of the British association for the advancement of science, consulted +Stainton Moses with the view of founding a society under better auspices +and the Society for Psychical Research was organized, with Professor +Henry Sidgwick as first president. The Society undertook, according to +its own statement:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>1. An examination of the nature and extent of any influence which +may be exerted by one mind upon another, otherwise than through the +recognized sensory channels.</p> + +<p>2. The study of hypnotism and mesmerism, and an inquiry into the +alleged phenomena of clairvoyance.</p> + +<p>3. A careful investigation of any reports, resting on testimony +sufficiently strong and not too remote, of apparitions coinciding +with some external event (as for instance a death) or giving +information previously unknown to the percipient, or being seen by +two or more persons independently of each other.</p> + +<p>4. An inquiry into various alleged phenomena apparently +inexplicable by known laws of nature, and commonly referred by +Spiritualists to the agency of extra-human intelligences.</p> + +<p>5. The collection and collation of existing materials bearing on +the history of these subjects.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> "Spiritualism," Hill, p. 100.</p></div> + +<p>They sought also "to approach these various problems without prejudice +or prepossession of any kind and in the same spirit of exact and +unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many +problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated."</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact the region is the most obscure which inquiry has +ever been called to enter. A noble rationality pervades the whole normal +material order, causes can be controlled, effects anticipated, laws +formulated and above all, the hypotheses of science are, if true, always +capable of a luminous and splendid verification. The disciplined +intellect moves through it all with a sense of "at-homeness" which is +itself a testimony to profound correspondences between the human mind +and the order with which, during its long, long unfolding, it has been +associated in intimacies of action and reaction too close to be +adequately set forth in words. But the mind does not rest easily in the +region which Spiritism claims for its own.</p> + + +<p><i>The Difficulties It Confronts</i></p> + +<p>Of course this is to beg the whole question. The more scientifically +minded spiritualists might fairly enough answer that they are attempting +to discover the laws of the occult and reduce an anarchical system to +order, that our feeling of strangeness in these regions is only because +of our little contact with them. There are, they claim, undeveloped +aspects of personality which we have had as yet little occasion to use, +but which would, once they were fully brought into action, give us the +same sense of rapport with a super-sensible order that we now have in +our contact with the sensible order. The crux of the whole contention is +probably just here and in view of what has heretofore been accomplished +in discovering and formulating the laws of the physical universe and in +reducing an immense body of apparently unrelated facts to order, there +is doubtless possible a very great systematization of psychical +phenomena, even the most obscure. Nor may we readily set bounds to the +measure of human development. But at any rate the statement with which +this paragraph began is true. The region which the Society for Psychical +Research set out to explore is obscure and is, as yet, so far from +yielding to investigation that the investigators are not even agreed as +to their facts, let alone the conclusions to be drawn from.</p> + +<p>The proceedings of the Society literally fill volumes (thirty-two); it +would require a specialist to follow them through and an analysis here +impossible, rightly to evaluate them. When such careful investigators as +Hill and Podmore, dealing with the same body of fact, differ constantly +and diametrically in their conclusions, it is evident that the facts so +far collected have not cumulative force enough to establish in the +generality of disciplined minds a substantial unanimity of conviction. +There are far too many alternatives in the interpretation of the facts +and, in general, the personal equation of the investigator colours the +conclusions reached. Of course this is, in a measure, true in every +field of investigation, but it is outstandingly true in psychical +research.</p> + + +<p><i>William James Enters the Field</i></p> + +<p>For some years the Society was mainly occupied with hypnotism and +thought transference, with occasional reports on "apparitions, haunted +houses, premonitions, automatic writing, crystal vision and multiple +personality." Professor William James' experiment with Mrs. Piper +carried the Society over into the field of trance mediumship. James had +a sound scientific interest in every aspect of the play of human +consciousness and was earlier than any of his contemporaries awakened to +the psychological value of abnormal mental states. He also loved fair +play. He made his first report on Mrs. Piper in 1886. He was unable, he +said, "to resist the conviction that knowledge appeared in her trances +which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes, ears +and wits.... What the source of this knowledge may be, I know not, and +have not a glimmer of explanatory suggestion to make, but from admitting +the fact of such knowledge I can see no escape."</p> + +<p>In a letter to Flourney dated August 9, 1908, James says of later +investigations: "It seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in +the history of automatism.... Evidently automatism is a word that covers +an extraordinary variety of fact." The reports of Mrs. Piper's sittings +fill a large place in the Society's records. Dr. Richard Hodgson and +Professor Hyslop were finally led to accept her trance utterances and +writings as spiritistic revelations. Podmore, after a most careful +analysis, concludes that "Mrs. Piper's trance utterances indicate the +possession of some supernormal power of apprehension, at least the +capacity to read the unspoken and even unconscious thoughts and emotions +of other minds."<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> He is willing to admit that if any case in the +whole history of Spiritualism points at communication with the spirits +of the dead, hers is that case, but he adds, "to other students of the +records, including the present writer, the evidence nevertheless appears +at present insufficient to justify the spiritualistic view even of a +working hypothesis." "I cannot point to a single instance in which a +precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished, of a +kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working +upon the materials provided in the hints let drop by the sitter."<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, pp. 342-343.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, p. 345.</p></div> + + +<p><i>The Limitations of the Scientist in Psychical Investigation</i></p> + +<p>It is impossible in this study to follow through the records of the +Society. A representative group of its members, some of them men whose +names carry weight in other regions, have been led by their +investigations to adopt the spiritistic hypothesis. Significantly, +however, it is generally the scientist and not the psychologist who +commits himself most strongly to Spiritism. He is strongly impressed, as +was Sir William Crookes, by phenomena of one sort or another which do +not come under his laws, and he assigns to them causes which lie +altogether out of his field. Indeed the temper and training of the +scientist handicap him in all psychical investigations. He has only one +of two alternatives: to explain what he sees in terms of what his +laboratories have told him, or else in terms of forces with which he is +not familiar. His training in careful experimentation may fit him to +test and isolate physical phenomena, but if they cannot be explained in +terms of the forces and laws with which he is familiar his conclusions +are no more authoritative than the conclusions of any other reasonably +intelligent man. He may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to +conclusions—or conjectures—entirely outside his own province. The +element of trickery in the ordinary professional séance is +notorious.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost +without exception been duplicated by conjurers—many of whom have +mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most +unusual phenomena, such as Home's apparent ability to handle fire +unburnt and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the +performance of Indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritistic +explanation is attached. In many instances a trained conjurer would be +far more apt to detect fraud than a trained scientist. He would at least +know where to look for a probable explanation.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Carrington, "The Psychical Phenomena of Spiritualism," pp. +6 and 7.</p></div> + + +<p><i>The Society for Psychical Research Gives Intellectual Standing to Their +Investigations</i></p> + +<p>If the explanations of the whole group of phenomena is not in the known +resident forces about us it is presumably in powers or aspects of +personality not yet fully known. Here the psychologist is a better +witness than the scientist and it is significant that psychologists have +been slower to accept the spiritistic hypothesis than the scientist. +Hyslop is an exception but the extent to which Hyslop has of late gone +in some of his reported utterances would seem to indicate that he has +passed far beyond the bonds of the scientific. And indeed, the whole +tendency of those who let themselves go strongly with the spiritistic +tide is exactly in this direction. It ought, however, to be said that +even these members of the S.P.R. who have become spiritistic have +generally been savingly conservative in their conclusions.</p> + +<p>At any rate, the work of the Society for Psychical Research has given +intellectual standing to what was before a sort of hole and corner +affair under suspicion twice: first, because of the character of those +involved, second, because of the character of what they revealed. It is +difficult for one not predisposed toward the occult and even strongly +prejudiced against it to deny in alleged spiritistic phenomena a +challenging residuum which may in the end compel far-reaching +modifications in the conclusions both of science and psychology. By one +set of tests this residuum is unexpectedly small. One of the canons of +the S.P.R. is to reject the work of any medium once convicted or +strongly suspected of fraud. There is a vast literature in this region +through whose outstanding parts the writer has for a good while now been +trying to find his way, often enough ready to quote the Pope in the Ring +and the Book.</p> + +<p class="indented"> +"I have worn through this sombre wintry day<br /> +With winter in my soul ...<br /> +Over these dismalest of documents"<br /> +</p> + +<p>The reports of sittings cover weary pages of murky statement; the +descriptions of the discarnate life are monotonously uniform and +governed almost without exception by old, old conceptions of planes and +spheres. There is always a preponderance of the trivial—though the +advocates of spiritism claim, and the justice of this claim must be +allowed, that this is inevitable and that only through the veridical +character of the inconsequential can the consequential be established. +Moreover, the impartial student working over the records should at least +recognize the pathetic importance which those, believing themselves to +be in touch with their own dead, naturally attach to even the most +trivial instances. This sense of really being in touch, itself entirely +subjective, probably carries over ninety-nine out of every hundred who +finally become spiritists. It would be foolish to ignore the +contributive force of this sense. In one form or another it is the last +element in our recognition of our friends, and it never can be judged +externally. But on the other hand a recognition of the unwarranted +lengths to which—with lonely longing behind it—it may carry even the +best poised minds, must give us pause in accepting any conclusion thus +reached.</p> + + +<p><i>The Very Small Number of Dependable Mediums</i></p> + +<p>Spiritistic literature is endlessly diffuse, but on the other hand the +more dispassionate students rest their case on an unexpectedly small +body of undiscredited evidence. Mrs. Piper, Home and Stainton Moses are +the mediums with whom the case of the S.P.R. really stands or falls. +Home was never detected in fraud and was non-professional. Sir William +Crookes' experiments in these physical phenomena were carried on with +him as medium. His work, however, was generally done for a small group +of already convinced followers and their testimony, while sincere and +generally consistent, may often have been influenced in ways of which +they themselves were not conscious. Podmore thinks them to have been +unduly suggestible and offers hallucinations as an alternative +hypothesis. Stainton Moses was respected in his private life, a teacher, +a clergyman and a private tutor. His specialties were the introduction +of a great variety of articles—apports as they are called—at his +sittings, levitation, table-tipping and automatic writing and the direct +voice. His control was known as "Imperator" and this ghostly commander +fills a large place in the S.P.R. literature. "Imperator" had a strong +homiletic instinct (remember that Moses was a clergyman) and +communicated first and last through automatic writing, a considerable +exposition of the spiritualistic creed, the larger part of which could +have been preached from any liberal pulpit with no other effect on the +hearers than to win their assent to blameless commonplaces—or, +possibly, put them to sleep.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Piper affords the strongest evidence of what Podmore calls "Some +supernormal power of apprehension" in the entire history of trance +mediumship. She was for years under the constant observation of a +capable group by no means unanimously sympathetic with the spiritistic +hypothesis, and has never been detected in fraud. She contributed a very +great amount of information to her sitters which she apparently could +not and did not obtain from known sources. There are no physical +phenomena in connection with her work. The records of her séances fill a +large place in the proceedings of the S.P.R. and the case for spiritism +could be more safely rested with her than any other medium.</p> + +<p>But the point here is that these three—Home, Moses and Mrs. +Piper—supply the larger part of material which the really trained +investigators of the last forty years are at all willing to take +seriously. If there have been only three mediums in forty years who have +commanded the general confidence—and Podmore does not feel absolutely +sure of Home—of the group whose judgment the rest of us have to depend +upon, we have a situation in which the average untrained seeker dealing +with the average medium can have no sound confidence at all. The whole +region is shot through and through with uncertainties, deceits and +alternative hypotheses.</p> + + +<p><i>Spiritism a Question of Testimony and Interpretation</i></p> + +<p>It is all fundamentally a matter of testimony. We have, or we have not, +a body of fact for which we are in debt to observation. The observation +may be first hand—as in Sir Oliver Lodge's sittings where he reports +what he saw and heard. It may be second hand as the cases reported in +the larger part of the authoritative literature of psychic phenomena. +(Second hand, that is, for the authors and those who depend upon them.) +Trustworthy observation is probably more difficult here than in any +region of investigation. The whole situation is unfavourable; low lights +and high emotion, the instinctive tendency to read into the facts a +desired content even in watching them, the possibility of hallucinations +and forms of hypnosis, all combine to render human testimony unreliable +and introduce errors of observation. Nowhere can we be less sure of our +facts and even when the facts are admitted the interpretation of them +still remains, and here the room for difference is equally great. At +best we are dealing with forces not yet subdued to law, phenomena for +which normal experience supplies no parallel. It is all a region of +intimations and possible permissions, but never for a moment of +inevitable conclusions. One must go slow enough in offering any opinion +at all. The writer recognizes and accepts, to begin with, a +preponderance of dependable testimony for physical phenomena not to be +explained in terms of any force with which science is now familiar.</p> + +<p>In this he goes beyond Podmore who would eliminate all physical +phenomena from the problem, and fully as far as Carrington. But Sir +William Crookes never admitted entire error in this region,<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> and the +conclusions of Geley (though he cites in part Eusapia Palladino, who is +more or less discredited) point in the same direction. His studies of +materialization are so vivid as to be uncanny and his photographs a +series of documents which still await explanation.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> There would seem +to be a possible exercise of personal force not dependent upon muscular +pull or pressure, bodily movements operating against known laws and even +the building of this mysterious force into complete or fragmentary +body-like forms.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> See Carrington, "The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism," +p. 377.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Geley, "From the Unconscious to the Conscious."</p></div> + +<p>On the psychical side there is dependable evidence for information +conveyed by supernormal means across considerable spaces—possibly long +distances and the power to secure and report information not gained in +any normal way. These are bare statements capable of great +amplification. But they cover the ground.</p> + + +<p><i>Three Possible Explanations of So-Called Spiritistic Phenomena</i></p> + +<p>Admitting the facts, there are three possible explanations. First, the +Daimonistic. There are, according to this theory, in the unseen +world—wherever and whatever that may be—an order of beings akin to +ourselves, either less or more highly developed, mischievous or benign. +This is an old, old belief; it has pervaded animistic religions, +fathered witchcraft, persisted in the belief of demoniac control, +enriched folk lore, filled the friendly silences of the night with +terror and haunted humanity. Now it has found its renaissance in the +full blaze of Twentieth Century Science.</p> + +<p>"It seems not improbable," says Sir William Barrett, "that many of the +<i>physical</i> manifestations witnessed in a spiritualistic séance are the +product of human-like but not really human intelligence—good or bad +daimonia they may be, <i>elementals</i> some have called them, which +aggregate round the medium; drawn from that particular plane of mental +and moral development in the unseen which corresponds to the mental and +moral plane of the medium."<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> This is, with little enough alteration, +the very point from which we set out in the remote dawn of our endeavour +to interpret the mystery of the world about us. The only difference is +that Sir William has his daimon for a tipping table and the savage had +his for a flowing spring. Sir William may be right but primitive man was +wrong. The whole trend of science heretofore has been to eliminate +capricious and isolated elements from observed phenomena and include +them in a sweep of law for whose operation the resident forces in the +universe and human personality are seen to be sufficient. The +daimonistic hypothesis has always up to this time been proved not only +unnecessary but positively misleading. It belongs to a region where +proof and disproof are equally impossible, but the weight of experience +and especially all our truer understandings of ourselves and our world, +dearly bought through the intellectual travail of our race, are against +it. To accept it is really to turn back the clock and populate the +unseen again with the creation of our fears or our fancies. It is at the +best the too easy solution of a challenging problem, at the worst an +aspect of that renaissance of superstition which is one of the strangest +characteristics of our own time.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> "On the Threshold of the Unseen," p. 113.</p></div> + +<p>The second explanation is spiritistic. There are unseen presences but +they are the discarnate who seek in the more trivial phenomena to bring +themselves to our attention and in the more important to assure us of +their continued existence and satisfy their longing and ours in renewed +personal contacts. Given a faith in immortality, this explanation is +natural enough—even inevitable. If the discarnate still live they must +remember and desire. Death does not end affection on our side. It should +not end affection on their side. There must be, moreover, what one may +call a discarnate status—an order, that is, of relationships and +activities in which discarnate personality realizes and expresses +itself. Our racial curiosities about the state of the dead are +quenchless. Every religion has its creeds, its dreams, its assurances. +From the Nirvana of the Buddhist to the ardent paradise of the +Mohammedan, faith and longing have built their structure and peopled it +with their dead. Great ranges of literature are coloured by such +speculations. Christian hymnology is instinct with them and not a little +of our noblest poetry. We have set our hells over against our heavens +and opposed their terror to celestial splendours. Modern Spiritualism +has to head it the whole drive of such speculations as these. For if the +generality have been content to leave the solution of the very great +difficulties which any faith in immortality involves, to the +demonstrations of eventual experience, and rest in what is really the +poetry of their faith, others either more curious or more credulous seek +the testimony of the senses. Such as these naturally find what they seek +in the phenomena of trance mediumship. They believe that the discarnate +are constantly seeking to penetrate the veil between their order and +ours and avail themselves of every opportunity to recall themselves to +the memory of the incarnate.</p> + + +<p><i>Myers' Theory of Mediumship</i></p> + +<p>F.W.H. Myers undertakes to describe how this may be done from the point +of view of the spirit. "Seeking then for some open avenue, it discerns +something which corresponds to a <i>light</i>—a glimmer of translucency in +the confused darkness of our material world. This 'light' indicates a +<i>sensitive</i>—a human organism so constituted that a spirit can +temporarily <i>inform</i> or <i>control</i> it, not necessarily interrupting the +stream of the sensitive's ordinary consciousness; perhaps using a hand +only, or perhaps, as in Mrs. Piper's case, using voice as well as hand, +and occupying all the sensitive's channels of self-manifestation."</p> + +<p>There are, naturally, in all this unescapable elements of speculation. +As a matter of fact anything which we may imagine about the discarnate +life may be almost unbelievably wide of the mark. Memory more than +anything else is the binding force in personality. We know ourselves to +be in the morning what we were when we went to sleep the night before, +simply because memory reassembles immediately the continuing elements of +our individual existences. More than that, we are greatly helped by our +surroundings; everything which meets us in the morning has associations +by which memory is served and, therefore, by the almost automatic +process of putting together what we remember and surrendering ourselves +to the suggestions of what we see and meet we find our places in a +waking, working world and go about our business.</p> + +<p>If we were to awake in a totally strange world where nothing was in any +degree at all similar to the world in which we went to sleep, we might +find ourselves so sadly puzzled as to doubt our own identity, even +though memory persisted in its identifying suggestion. And if in +addition to this we found ourselves without the contribution of physical +sensation to which we have always been used—sightless, soundless, +touchless—one can easily imagine a shock in the face of which even the +most strongly centered personality would give way. And yet such changes +as this probably only faintly indicate the adjustments which the +discarnate are called upon to meet. It is as if we were asked to argue +or to imagine from one dimension to another.</p> + +<p>These are difficulties, of course, which attend any conception of +immortality, but we usually escape them by refusing to follow through +what they involve and taking refuge in a free poetic imagination +sustained by faith and enriched by tradition. In the face of all this +Myers' supposition, ingenious as it is, can do no more than repeat the +more prosaic assumption which is the basis of spiritism, and that is +that the discarnate naturally desire to communicate with those whom they +have left, one hardly dares say behind them for even that simple word +introduces suppositions which may have no meaning at all, and would +naturally avail themselves of any possible opportunity. The whole +process, if it be a process, must lie in the region of suggestion. If +there be a telepathy between the living it is not impossible that there +should be a telepathy between the living and the discarnate.</p> + + +<p><i>Telepathy: Between the Living or the Living and the Discarnate?</i></p> + +<p>There might be thus a kind of eager pressing of the departed against +the doors which had been shut and not quite locked behind them, taking +the form of more or less obscure suggestion to which the medium would be +sensitive and so recreate in ways at which we can only guess some hint +of the voice or presence of the discarnate. The suggestion would come +from the other side. The form in which it is given to our world would be +the contribution of the medium. As far as there is any possible +explanation of the facts of trance mediumship as a revelation from the +dead it is somewhere here.</p> + +<p>Telepathy between the living is fairly well enough established to make +this a not impossible hypothesis, and even materialization might be +accounted for in the same way. Sir Oliver Lodge is inclined to discover +in the luminiferous ether an environment in which discarnate personality +could function. But this is pure supposition, though others have adopted +it. Walker, for example, in his extremely suggestive work on Monism and +Christian Theism. But he suggests the ether only as a help to the +imagination in meeting the difficulties of an immortal existence—the +old Heaven and Hell having been made astronomically and geologically +impossible. But if Einstein should upset the hypothesis of the ether all +this would go the way of the Heaven and Hell of Dante.</p> + +<p>We cannot eliminate, however, in a supposition so vague as this the +contributive elements supplied by the friends themselves to whom the +communication is supposed to be addressed and by whom it is certainly +interpreted, for if the trance medium is open to suggestion from the +discarnate side, the medium must be equally open to suggestion from the +living, a suggestion likely to be very much stronger, more distinct, +more compelling.</p> + +<p>The real crux of the whole problem is the disentanglement of these +possible lines of suggestion and the assignment of them to their true +sources. We may, the writer believes, eliminate as far as their +evidential value is concerned, all physical phenomena. In doing this we +need not necessarily deny the reality of some of the physical phenomena +but the larger part of the residue which might possibly be left after +the elimination of fraud on the part of the medium and unintentional +misrepresentation on the part of the witnesses is so utterly meaningless +as to have no value at all. The only physical phenomena which can have +any direct bearing on spirit communication are the tappings and table +tippings which can by a deal of ingenuity be made to spell out a message +or answer questions yes or no. The same question as to the source of the +suggestion enters here. Even if we admit the taps to spell out a +message, we have still to decide from whom the message comes and the +messages alleged to be contributed through the voice are so much more +full and intelligible as to leave the whole question standing or falling +with the credibility of voice trance mediumship.</p> + + +<p><i>Controls</i></p> + +<p>The usual machinery of a séance creates suspicion. Most mediums have +controls. Nothing is more capricious than these controls. They may be +people who really never existed at all. The genesis of Mrs. Piper's +control, Dr. Phinuit, is suggestive. "It would appear that Mrs. Piper in +1884 had visited for advice a professional clairvoyant whose leading +control claimed to be a Frenchman named Finné, or Finnett."<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> When +Mrs. Piper was later seen by William James, a French doctor had +succeeded in obtaining almost exclusive control and his name was +reported to be Phinuit. Beyond debate, as far as name goes, here is a +kind of transmuted suggestion. The Finnett of the French clairvoyant, +who may or may not have really lived, becomes the Phinuit of Mrs. Piper, +for whose existence there is apparently no testimony at all.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Podmore's "Modern Spiritualism," Vol. II, p. 333.</p></div> + +<p>The controls have sometimes been Indians and indeed almost any one may +appear as a control—Longfellow, for example, or Mrs. Siddons, or Bach +or Vanderbilt. In a region where disproof and proof are equally +impossible this element of capricious control is suspicious. It is much +more likely to be some obscure casting up of the medium's mind, through +lines of association of which the medium is utterly unconscious, than to +represent the personalities so named. In Raymond the control is one +Moonstone, or a little Indian girl called Freda or Feda, who speaks of +herself in the third person and who reports a great many silly things in +a very silly way.</p> + +<p>It is possible, of course, to say that these thus named are spirit +mediums as necessary for the transfer of suggestion from the discarnate +order as mediums seem to be in the incarnate order, and that abnormal +personalities are as much needed on one side as the other through the +abnormality of the whole process. But this is patently to beg the +question. There is room in the whole process for the trivial, even the +inconsequential. As the advocates of spiritism have urged, +identification very often turns on apparently trivial things but it is +difficult to justify the very great element of the capricious and +actually foolish which enters so largely into the records of all +sittings. It would seem as if death robbed grave personalities of their +gravity, the strong of their force and the wise of their wisdom, and +this is so hard to believe as to make us wonder whether we are not +really dealing with something which belongs to an entirely different +region and is open to an entirely different line of explanation.</p> + +<p>But beyond such considerations as these, which may or may not have +force, there remains the graver question still—the question of the +identification of the sources from which the intelligible residue of +communications is received. If we fall back upon suggestion there are +always two general sources of suggestion—the incarnate and the +discarnate, and among the incarnate themselves there are manifold +sources of suggestion. The sitter may be unconsciously supplying the +material which the medium is receiving, recasting and giving back again, +or the medium may be reporting what is received from other incarnate +sources than the sitter. (This, of course, when we have eliminated all +that might possibly be contributed by the medium.)</p> + + +<p><i>The Dilemma of Spiritism</i></p> + +<p>Anything, therefore, which is known to the living may be the source of +the medium's information. Only those things, therefore, which are +utterly unknown to the living anywhere, which cannot possibly have been +known by the medium himself or herself, can be finally and conclusively +a testimony to communications from the dead. But unless the information +thus received is known to the living, its truth or falsity can never be +proved or disproved. This is the dilemma which spiritism is finally +brought to face and from this dilemma there is absolutely no escape. It +does not forbid the conclusions which may be drawn from a seeming +preponderance of evidence, but it does forbid absolute certainty, for, +to repeat, if the information is to be verified it must be verified by +the living, which proves that some one does possess it and may have +communicated it—if we assume such communication to be possible—to the +medium. On the other hand, if no one at all possesses the information, +then we may never be sure that it is real information, or anything else +than a creation of an excited imagination.</p> + +<p>There is one test here which, if it were really made under absolutely +dependable conditions, conditions, that is, in no wise open to suspicion +or misunderstanding, might be final. If a message written before death +and so sealed as to be unknown to any one save the one who wrote it, +could be correctly reported, it would have, everything else being +right, an immense force. (Though even here clairvoyance—for which, on +the whole, there is a pretty dependable evidence—might afford the true +explanation.) F.W.H. Myers left such a message as this. In January, +1891, he sent Sir Oliver Lodge a "sealed envelope, in the hope that +after his death the communication contained in the envelope would be +able to be given by means of a medium. Many different messages obtained +by a well-known medium, Madame Verrall, and coming supposedly from +Frederick Myers, led them to believe that they represented this +communication. The envelope was opened in December, 1904, and 'it was +found that there was no resemblance between its actual contents and what +was alleged by the script to be contained in it.'"<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> If there is any +authentic case of this final test being successfully maintained, the +writer does not know it. There are instances of hidden articles +discovered, but these tests by no means possess the same force of +testimony.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 278.</p></div> + +<p>We may assume, then, that we have no absolute demonstration of spirit +communication. We have only a very complex group of phenomena capable of +varying explanations. Any fair-minded student of the whole subject must +recognize that men who have had ample opportunity for first hand +investigation, not hasty in their conclusions and in some instances of +very great intellectual force, have taken an opposite view. They have +felt the testimony to be both sound and sufficient. There is an +unescapable personal equation here which probably finally determines +divergent attitudes. As has been said before, those generally who have +accepted the spiritistic explanation have been led to do so through +communications in which they discovered some personal note or touch, to +which they themselves would be hospitably susceptible and which would +have far less weight with those whose affections and previous +associations were not thus involved. This does not necessarily prove +their conclusions to have been false. Perhaps just this personal element +is necessary to give final meaning to what otherwise is so perplexing +and even contradictory. The dogmatism which shuts the door squarely in +the face of spiritism is as unreasonable, as unscientific, as the +credulity which opens the door wide and accepts everything which comes +through.</p> + + +<p><i>The Influence of Spiritism Upon Its Adherents</i></p> + +<p>There are other considerations which bear more or less indirectly upon +this difficult matter, but which have their weight. In general, those +who have whole-heartedly accepted spiritism have been unable thereafter +to maintain the balanced detachment which they urge upon others. They +tend to become unduly credulous; they force their explanation beyond its +necessary limits; they tend to become persons of the idée fixe type; +they become sponsors for extravagant stories, and, in general, lead +those who are influenced by their position or name far beyond the limits +which impartial investigation, even on the part of those sympathetic, +has as yet justified. Those descriptions of the discarnate state, +moreover, which reach us through mediums are undependable.</p> + +<p>There is a machinery of planes and spheres and emanations and +reincarnations which is not at all peculiar to spiritism but belongs to +the fringes of the occult in every manifestation of it, which is +perpetually recurrent in modern spiritualistic literature. We are on the +frontiers of a region where the reason which steadies us in the +practical conduct of life and guides us in an order with which we are +familiar through age-old inheritances, has no value at all. Our very +terminology ceases to have any meaning. A generous creative imagination +may build for itself what cities it will of habitation, furnish them as +it desires and try to conceive, as it has power, the experiences and +progressions of the discarnate, but to invest these imaginations with +evidential accuracy is to break down all the limits between the +dependable and the undependable.</p> + +<p>And finally, though this is rather a commonplace observation than an +aspect of our investigation, there is little to be gained in the +necessary business of solid living by such an interweaving of the two +worlds as spiritism carries with it. One life at a time is plainly +enough all that we are equal to. Those who surrender themselves to such +conclusions and inquiries are in very great danger of being so detached +from the actualities of the present order as to become themselves errant +and eccentric spirits, finding their true interests in endless séances +and investigations which have no practical bearing upon life as it now +is.</p> + + +<p><i>The Real Alternative to Spiritism</i></p> + +<p>The writer's observation of the effect of much going to mediums upon +those whom he has personally known leads him to distrust the whole +matter and possibly to react too strongly against it. A discriminating +critic has said that Spiritualism is not Spiritualism at all, but a +subtle materialism, in that it is the effort to verify the reality of +the spiritual in terms of the material. It is, therefore, just one more +unexpected aspect of the hard skepticism of the time, which trusts +nothing it cannot hear, or see, or touch. A faith which is not solidly +established in reason, which does not continue and complete in its own +regions what we know and understand, is a cloud-built faith, but a +faith, on the other hand, which refuses to adventure beyond the limits +of the senses is a faith too largely empty of any noble content.</p> + +<p>If the phenomena under examination, then, cannot be explained in terms +of animism and if the spiritistic hypothesis is gravely open to +question, what explanation is left? In what follows the writer has been +greatly influenced by the suggestion of the students of abnormal +personality generally, and partly by the work of certain Frenchmen who, +with French logic and brilliancy of insight, are working toward +far-reaching psychological restatements and even to recasting of the +accepted scientific understandings of matter and force. Maeterlinck says +somewhere in substance that our universe is as tightly sealed as a +sphere of steel and that whatever happens inside must be explained in +terms of its own resident forces, and, in general, the whole of science +and the weight of experience are on Maeterlinck's side. Of course this +assumes that a good many things have been put inside this sphere to +begin with. Speaking in terms of religion, this does not shut God out of +the world, but it does shut up life and experience to conformity with +their own laws and forces them to explain their phenomena in terms of +their own content.</p> + +<p>In a sentence, just as the resident forces of the outside world have +been heretofore sufficient, in the measure that we have been able to +discover them, to explain all the phenomena of the outside world, it is +reasonable to believe that the content of personality is sufficient to +explain all personal phenomena, whether normal or abnormal, and that it +is to ourselves and not to the discarnate that we have to look for the +explanation of the phenomena of alleged spiritism.</p> + + +<p><i>The Investigations of Émile Boirac</i></p> + +<p>The men who are working along this line, particularly Geley and Émile +Boirac, by no means deny the phenomena, but they offer another solution. +Boirac, particularly, finds his point of departure in hypnotism and +suggestibility. Now here is a continuation of the line of approach and +interpretation which cleared up the whole confused matter of mesmerism. +We have already seen how the French investigators found the explanation +of what Mesmer and those who followed him have been able to accomplish, +not in magnetic influence or any such thing, but in the remarkable +changes produced in personality by exterior or autosuggestion, and just +as this was the key to the phenomena of mesmerism, it is more likely +than anything else to prove the key to the explanation of the phenomena +of spiritualism, for these are really nothing more than simply aspects +of the trance state, however induced.</p> + +<p>It is not necessary to follow, in this connection, Boirac's analysis of +the phenomena attendant upon the trance state, or to consider his +theories as to hypnosis itself. He believes that there are in our +personalities hidden forces which, in the normal conduct of life, are +not brought into action. They are no necessary part of our adjustment to +our working environment; on the whole they complicate rather than +simplify the business of living and they are best—though this is not +his statement but the writer's conclusion from the whole matter—they +are best left unawakened. What we are normally is the outcome of the +adjustment of personality to those creative and shaping forces in +response to which life is most happily and usefully carried on. But when +the waking self and normal self is for the moment put in abeyance and +new forces are evoked from the "vasty deep" of our souls, we are capable +of an entirely different set of manifestations. First of all, those +usually associated with the hypnotic state which do not need to be +further considered here—a great docility to suggestion, unconsciousness +to pain and the like. We have also the possibility of powers which +Boirac calls magnetoidal. "These appear to involve the intervention of +forces still unknown, distinct from those that science has so far +discovered and studied, but of a physical nature and more or less +analogous to the radiating forces of physics: light, heat, electricity, +magnetism, etc."<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 24. Some recent +French investigations seem to indicate that this force—Myers' +Telekinesis—operating through barriers, changes the magnetic properties +of that through which it passes. Carrington, the most skeptical student +in this region, is inclined to admit its existence. See "The Physical +Phenomena of Spiritualism," p. 359.</p></div> + +<p>Under this general head he considers Animal Magnetism, what is known +generally as mesmerism, the power, that is, to create hypnotic states in +others; the phenomena of Telepathy "comprising numerous varieties, such +as the transmission or penetration of thought, the exteriorization of +the sensitiveness, psychometry, telepathy, clairvoyance or lucidity, +etc.," and finally states "where physical matter appears to exert over +animate beings, especially human beings, an action that does not seem to +be explicable by any physical or chemical properties already known." He +believes also that there is in human beings a radiating influence +susceptible of being exercised at a distance over other animate beings +or else upon inanimate objects. He finds in trance mediumship all the +elements which enter into any hypnotic state. "The trance is produced +and developed spontaneously, without the intervention of any visible +operator, under the sole effect of the nervous and mental conditions in +which the medium is placed, and among which the <i>belief in spirits</i> and +the expectation of their intervention would appear to play a +considerable part."<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> The italicized words "a belief in spirits" are +extremely significant. In the entranced personality there is the +suggestion, already strongly established, that whatever is experienced +during the trance will be due to spirit intervention or revelation. This +introduces the element of expectant attention. We know on the physical +side of what expectant attention is capable. It becomes a real factor in +all faith healing; it may produce, either for the better or the worse, +far-reaching changes in physical states and it is perfectly possible for +such an expectant attention once fully in action in the trance—given of +course, to begin with, the attitude and interests of the medium in a +waking state—to create all the machinery of controls, revelation and +the like, which characterize trance mediumship.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 271.</p></div> + +<p>Boirac finds, therefore, in spiritism a complex determined by certain +particular nervous and mental states into which there enter, in one form +or another, almost all the facts of abnormal psychology and he believes +that science, faithful to the principle of economy, should consider the +alleged phenomena of spiritism, until proved to the contrary, reducible +to facts of the preceding orders. He does not call the spiritistic +hypothesis impossible; he does believe it ought not to be called in +until every other explanation has been examined and found inadequate and +he is not inclined to believe that we have as yet exhausted other +possible explanations.</p> + +<p>One man's authority here is by no means final. F.W.H. Myers has taken +into consideration many of the facts upon which Boirac dwells and on the +whole has reached a different conclusion. But, in general, the more +deeply we advance into the region of abnormal personality and the +phenomena of hypnotic and related states, the more reason there seems to +be for believing that there are resident in human personality powers +which, if at once evoked and released, are sufficient to account for all +mediumistic revelations without assuming that they come from the +discarnate.</p> + + +<p><i>Geley's Conclusions</i></p> + +<p>Geley has gone much farther in some directions here than any one else. +He is more concerned with the physical phenomena. He has a striking +series of photographs of materialization, the authenticity of which it +is difficult to doubt. He finds an ascending series in abnormal +psychology from neuropathic states to mediumship with gradations which +intensify the abnormal or the supernormal, but in which the continuity +of development is never broken. His analyses here are both keen and +suggestive and tend to confirm the conclusions of other students that we +have resident in human personality elements which are adequate to the +explanation of any phenomena which have been as yet presented.</p> + +<p>As far as the physical phenomena go, he cites experiments which seem to +reveal "threads of substance and rigid rods, sometimes visible, +sometimes invisible, proceeding from the fingers of the medium" and +serving as a real mechanism for the movement of distant and sometimes +quite heavy articles. He argues from this that there is a possible +exteriorization of power which may itself be governed by ideas and +believes also that such facts as this will eventually compel us to +recast our conceptions of matter and force and profoundly affect biology +and all evolutionary theories. The whole matter is necessarily obscure, +but such studies do give a new direction and a larger significance to +our whole subject matter.</p> + +<p>In substance the spiritistic hypothesis is inadequate; it is too simple, +too easy. We are evidently only upon the threshold of the whole subject. +All conclusions are necessarily inconclusive; there is no region in +which one has less right to be dogmatic. The bearing of it all upon +immortality seems to the writer to be not at all where the spiritists +place it. If human personality has in itself such latent powers, if +there are these extensions of a mysterious force which operate beyond +our normal mechanism, if there are contacts of consciousness deeper than +consciousness itself in which information is given and received outside +normal methods of communication, we are led to conceive that what for +want of a better name we call spirit has an unexpected range and force. +We are by no means so shut in by the walls of the material and the +sensible as we have heretofore supposed. There is a transcendence of +spirit over matter and materially imposed conditions which must give us +pause. If, in the murky ways which have been brought to our attention, +spirit can transcend matter, we have at least one more reason for +affirming its supremacy and one more suggestion of a force or a reality +which may be able to survive even the dissolution of matter itself. In +other words, here is a line of testimony, richly suggestive, though by +no means clear, to the power of the soul to make its own conditions, and +what is immortality but just this?</p> + +<p>The phenomena of so-called spiritism, while not as yet justifying +Spiritualism, certainly make a dogmatic materialism increasingly +different. Those of us who are as anxious for a sustaining faith in +immortality as any of our comrades in the great quest may possibly be, +but who are as yet unwilling to accept their conclusions, may +nevertheless find in this subject matter which is common both to us and +to them, the permission to believe that that which is most distinctly +ourselves possesses enduring possibilities. If it may from time to time +break through in curious ways the walls which now shut it in, may it not +in some very real way pass through the gate which Death opens and still +continue in such a richness of consciousness and identity as to organize +for itself another life beyond the grave?</p> + + +<p><i>The Meaning of Spiritism for Faith</i></p> + +<p>Faith may find its permissions and witnesses in many regions. The writer +believes that faith in immortality finds an added permission in this +region also. Beyond debate, there are laws which we now but dimly +discern and possible forces which only now and again touch the coasts of +our present experience, as tides which sweep in from distant and +mysterious seas. Beyond debate, we may not confine the interplay of mind +with mind to purely physical channels, and under exceptional +circumstances effects may be produced whose causes we have not yet been +able to tabulate. Our conscious lives are rooted deeper than we dream. +They reach out in directions which we do not ourselves know. It may well +be, therefore, that they ascend to heights whose summits we do not see, +and possess a permanence independent of the body which they inhabit, or +the things of seeming sense which surround them, and it may be also that +what is now occult and perplexing and capricious may in the future +become as truly an organized science as the alchemy and the astrology of +the Middle Ages have become the chemistry and astronomy of our own time. +Beyond this one may assert the wholesome commonplace that the main +business of living is in the region of the known and the normal. It is +for our own well-being that the veil hangs dark between this world and +the next. An order in which there was constant passing and repassing +would be impossible. It would be either one thing or the other. It does +demoralize us to be always searching after the secrets of the unseen. +Might it not demoralize those who have passed through the veil to be +always trying to come back? Surely the most fitting preparation for what +awaits us hereafter is the brave conduct of life under those laws and +conditions which are the revelation of the whole solid experience of our +race. Beyond this it is difficult to go and beyond this it is not +necessary to go.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2> + +<h3>MINOR CULTS: THE MEANING OF THE CULTS FOR THE CHURCH</h3> + + +<p><i>Border-land Cults</i></p> + +<p>The cults which we have so far considered are the outstanding forms of +modern free religious movements, but they do not begin to exhaust the +subject matter. Even the outstanding cults have their own border-lands. +New Thought is particularly rich in variants and there are in all +American cities sporadic, distantly related and always shifting +movements—groups which gather about this or that leader, maintain +themselves for a little and then dissolve, to be recreated around other +centers with perhaps a change of personnel. The Masonic Temple in +Chicago is said to be occupied on Sundays all day long by larger or +smaller groups which may be societies for ethical culture or with some +social program or other, or for the study of Oriental religions. One +would need to attend them all and saturate himself far more deeply than +is possible for any single investigator in their creeds or their +contentions to appraise them justly. Their real significance is neither +in their organization, for they have little organization, nor in their +creed, but in their temper. They represent reaction, restlessness and +the spiritual confusion of the time. They can be explained—in part at +least—in terms of that social deracination to which reference has +already been made. They represent also an excess of individualism in the +region of religion and its border-lands.</p> + +<p>An examination of the church advertisement pages in the newspapers of +New York, Detroit, Chicago or San Francisco reveals their extent, their +variety and their ingenuity in finding names for themselves. On Sunday, +February 25th, the Detroit papers carried advertisements of Vedanta, +Spiritist and Spiritualist groups (the Spiritist group calls itself "The +Spirit Temple of Light and Truth"), The Ultimate Thought Society, The +First Universal Spiritual Church, The Church of Psychic Research, The +Philosophical Church of Natural Law, Unity Center, The Culture of +Isolan, Theosophy, Divine Science Center, and Lectures on Divine +Metaphysics. Their leaders advertise such themes as: The Opulent +Consciousness, The Law of Non-Attachment, Psychic Senses and +Spirituality, The Continuity of Life, The Spiritualism of Shakespeare, +The Voiceless Code of the Cosmos, The Godlikeness of Divine Metaphysics +in Business. Their themes are not more bizarre, it must be confessed, +than some of the topics announced for the orthodox churches. (Indeed the +church advertisement page in cities whose churches indulge generously in +display advertisements is not altogether reassuring reading.) But, in +general, this list which can be duplicated in almost any large city is +testimony enough to a confusion of cults and a confusion of thought. As +far as they can be classified, according to the scheme of this study, +they are variants of New Thought, Theosophy and Spiritualism. If they +were classified according to William James' "Varieties of Religious +Experience" they would be seen as mystical rather than rational, +speculative rather than practical.</p> + +<p>Fort Newton, who speaks of them perhaps more disrespectfully than they +deserve as "bootleggers in religion," finds in these lesser movements +generally a protest against the excessively external in the life of the +Church to-day and a testimony to the quenchless longing of the soul for +a religion which may be known and lived out in terms of an inner +experience. But this certainly is not true of all of them.</p> + + +<p><i>Bahaism</i></p> + +<p>There is, however, one other larger and more coherent cult, difficult to +classify, which deserves a more extended notice. That is Bahaism, which, +as it is now taking form, is a leaven rather than a cult. It is an +attempt after spiritual unity and the reduction of religion to very +simple and inclusive forms and a challenge to the followers of religions +widely separated on the surface to be more true to what is deepest in +their faith. It has a long and stirring history and curiously enough is +drawn from Mohammedan sources. Its basal literatures are Arabic and +Persian, "so numerous and in some cases so voluminous that it would +hardly be possible for the most industrious student to read in their +entirety even those which are accessible, a half dozen of the best known +collections in Europe."</p> + +<p>We find its genesis, historically, in certain expectations long held by +Persian Mohammedans akin to Jewish Messianic expectations held before +and at the time of Christ. There has been, we know, a tradition of +disputed succession in Mohammedanism ever since the death of the +prophet. Persian Mohammedans believed the true successor of Mohammed to +have been unjustly deprived of his temporal supremacy and they trace a +long line of true successors whose divine right would some day be +recognized and reëstablished. Perhaps we might find a parallel here +among those Englishmen who believe that the true succession of the +English throne should be in the house of the Stuarts, or those royalists +in France who champion the descendants of one or the other former +reigning houses. But the Persian faithful have gone farther than that. +They believe that the last true successor of Mohammed who disappeared in +the tenth century never died, but is still living in a mysterious city, +surrounded by a band of faithful disciples and "that at the end of time +he will issue forth and 'fill the earth with justice after it has been +filled with iniquity.'" A parallel here would be the old stories of +Frederick Barbarossa who waits in his cave for the proper time to come +forth and reassert his imperial power. This curious Persian belief has +worked itself out in a time scheme much like the time schemes of other +Apocalyptic beliefs, the detail of which is difficult enough.</p> + +<p>But in substance this hidden and true successor of the prophet has had +from time to time those through whom he reveals himself to the faithful +and makes known his will, and these are known as Babs or gates; "the +gate, that is, whereby communication was reopened between the hidden one +and his faithful followers." The practical outcome of this would be that +any one who could convince Persian Mohammedans that he was the Bab or +"gate" would possess a mystic messianic authority. Such a confidence +actually established would give him an immense hold over the faithful +and make him a force to be reckoned with by the Mohammedan world.</p> + + +<p><i>The Bab and His Successors</i></p> + +<p>As far as our own present interest is concerned, the movement dates from +1844 when a young Persian merchant announced himself as the Bab. If we +are to find a parallel in Christianity he was a kind of John the +Baptist, preparing the way for a greater who should come after him, but +the parallel ends quickly, for since the Mohammedan Messiah did not +appear, his herald was invested with no little of the authority and +sanctity which belonged to the hidden one himself. The career of the +first Bab was short—1844 to 1850. He was only twenty-four years old at +the time of his manifestation, thirty when he suffered martyrdom and a +prisoner during the greater part of his brief career. The practical +outcome of his propaganda was a deal of bloody fighting between +antagonistic Mohammedan factions. The movement received early that +baptism of blood which gives persistent intensity to any persecuted +movement. His followers came to regard him as a divine being. After his +execution his body was recovered, concealed for seventeen years and +finally placed in a shrine specially built for that purpose at St. Jean +d'Acre. This shrine has become the holy place of Bahaism.</p> + +<p>During one period of his imprisonment he had opportunity to continue his +writings, correspond with his followers and receive them. He was thus +able to give the world his message and we find in his teachings the germ +of the gospel of Bahaism. Before his death he named his successor—a +young man who had been greatly drawn to him and who seemed by his youth, +zeal and devotion to be set apart to continue his work. To this young +man the Bab sent his rings and other personal possessions, authorized +him to add to his writings and in general to inherit his influence and +continue his work. This young man was recognized with practical +unanimity by the Babis as their spiritual head. Owing to his youth and +the secluded life which he adopted, the practical conduct of the affairs +of the Babi community devolved chiefly on his elder half-brother +Baha'u'llah. What follows is a confused story of schism, rival claimants +and persecution but the sect grew through persecution and the control of +it came in 1868 into the hands of Baha'u'llah.</p> + +<p>During the greater part of his life Baha'u'llah was either an exile or a +prisoner. From 1868 until his death in 1892 he was confined with seventy +of his followers in the penal colony of Acca on the Mediterranean coast. +Meanwhile the faith which centered about him changed character; he was +no longer a gate or herald, he was himself a "manifestation of God" +with authority to change all earlier teaching. He really universalized +the movement. Beneath his touch religion becomes practical, ethical, +less mystic, more universal. He was possessed by a passion for universal +peace and brotherhood. He addressed letters to the crowned heads of +Europe asking them to cooperate in peace movements. It has been +suggested that the Czar of Russia was influenced thereby and that we may +thus trace back to Baha'u'llah the peace movement which preceded the +war.</p> + +<p>Pilgrims came and went and through their enthusiasms the movement +spread. After his death there was the renewal of disputes as to the +proper succession and consequent schisms. The power came finally into +the hands of Abdul-Baha who was kept under supervision by the Turkish +government until 1908. He was freed by the declaration of the New +Constitution and carried on thereafter with real power a worldwide +propaganda. He had an unusual and winning personality, spoke fluently in +Persian, Arabic and Turkish and more nearly than any man of his time +filled the ideal rôle of an Eastern prophet. He died in November, 1921, +and was buried on Mt. Carmel—with its memories of Elijah and +millenniums of history—his praises literally being sung by a most +catholic group of Mohammedans, Jews and Eastern Christians.</p> + + +<p><i>The Temple of Unity</i></p> + +<p>Bahaism as it is held in America to-day is distilled out of the writings +and teachings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha. Naturally enough, in the +popularization of it its contradictions have been reconciled and its +subtleties disregarded. What is left fits into a variety of forms and is +in line with a great range of idealism. The twelve basic principles of +Bahaism as announced in its popular literature are:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The Oneness of Mankind.<br /> Independent investigations of truth.<br /> The +Foundation of all religions is one.<br /> Religion must be the cause of +unity.<br /> Religion must be in accord with science and reason.<br /> Equality +between men and women.<br /> Prejudice of all kinds must be forgotten.<br /> +Universal Peace.<br /> Universal Education.<br /> Solution of the economic +problem.<br /> An international auxiliary language.<br /> An international +tribunal.</p></div> + +<p>A program inclusive enough for any generous age. These principles are +substantiated by quotations from the writings of Abdul-Baha and the +teachings of Baha'u'llah. Many things combine to lend force to its +appeal—the courage of its martyrs, its spaciousness and yet at the same +time the attractiveness of its appeal and its suggestion of spiritual +brotherhood. Since the movement has borne a kind of messianic +expectation it adjusts itself easily to inherited Christian hopes. There +are real correspondences between its expected millennium and the +Christian millennium.</p> + +<p>How far its leaders, in their passion for peace and their doctrine of +non-resistance and their exaltation of the life of the spirit, are in +debt to the suggestions of Christianity itself, or how far it is a new +expression of a temper with which the Orient has always been more in +sympathy than the West, it would be difficult to say, but in some ways +Bahaism does express—or perhaps reproduces—the essential spirit of the +Gospels more faithfully than a good deal of Western Christianity as now +organized. Those members of Christian communions which are attracted to +Bahaism find in it a real hospitality to the inherited faith they take +over. It is possible, therefore, to belong to the cult and at the same +time to continue one's established religious life without any very great +violence and indeed with a possible intensification of that life.</p> + +<p>It is difficult, therefore, to distinguish between Bahaism as it is held +by devout groups in America, so far as ethics and ideals go, from much +that is distinctive in the Christian spirit, though the influence of +Bahaism as a whole would be to efface distinctions and especially to +take the force out of the Christian creeds.</p> + +<p>Chicago, or rather Wilmette, is now the center of the movement in +America and an ambitious temple is in the way of being constructed +there, the suggestion for whose architecture is taken from a temple in +Eskabad, Russia. This is to be a temple of universal religion, +symbolizing in its architecture the unities of faith and humanity. "The +temple with its nine doors will be set in the center of a circular +garden symbolizing the all-inclusive circle of God's unity; nine +pathways will lead to the nine doors and each one coming down the +pathway of his own sect or religion or trend of thought will leave at +the door the dogmas that separate and, under the dome of God's oneness, +all will become one.... At night it will be brilliantly lighted and the +light will shine forth through the tracery of the dome, a beacon of +peace and unity rising high above Lake Michigan."</p> + +<p>This study has led us into many curious regions and shown to what +unexpected conclusions the forces of faith or hope, once released, may +come, but surely it has revealed nothing more curious than that the old, +old controversy as to the true successor of Mohammed the prophet should +at last have issued in a universal religion and set the faithful to +building a temple of unity on the shores of Lake Michigan.</p> + +<p>If this work were to be complete it should include some investigation of +the rituals of the cults. They are gradually creating hymns of their +own; their public orders of service include responsive readings with +meditations on the immanence of God, the supremacy of the spiritual and +related themes. In general they dispense with the sacraments; they have +no ecclesiastical orders and hardly anything corresponding to the +Catholic priesthood or the Protestant ministry, though the Christian +Science reader has a recognized official place. They meet in +conferences; they depend largely upon addresses by their leaders. +Spiritualistic movements organize themselves around séances. They use +such halls as may be rented, hotels, their own homes; they have not +generally buildings of their own save the Christian Science temples +which are distinctive for dignity of architecture and beauty of +appointment in almost every large city.</p> + + +<p><i>General Conclusions; the Limitations of the Writer's Method</i></p> + +<p>It remains only to sum up in a most general way the conclusions to which +this study may lead. There has been a process of criticism and appraisal +throughout the whole book, but there should be room at the end for some +general statements.</p> + +<p>The writer recognizes the limitations of his method; he has studied +faithfully the literature of the cults, but any religion is always a +vast deal more than its literature. The history of the cults does not +fully tell their story nor does any mere observation of their worship +admit the observer to the inner religious life of the worshippers. Life +always subdues its materials to its own ends, reproduces them in terms +of its own realities; there are endless individual variations, but the +outcome is massively uniform. Religion does the same thing. Its +materials are faiths and obediences and persuasions of truth and +expectations of happier states, but its ultimate creations are character +and experience, and the results in life of widely different religions +are unexpectedly similar. Both theoretically and practically the truer +understanding or the finer faith and, particularly, the higher ethical +standards should produce the richer life and this is actually so. But +real goodness is everywhere much the same; there are calendared saints +for every faith.</p> + +<p>There is an abundant testimony in the literature of the cults to rare +goodnesses and abundant devotion, and observation confirms these +testimonies. Something of this is doubtless due to their environment. +The Western cults themselves and the Eastern cults in the West are +contained in and influenced by the whole outcome of historic +Christianity and they naturally share its spirit. If the churches need +to remember this as they appraise the cults, the cults need also to +remember it as they appraise the churches. Multitudes of Catholics and +Protestants secure from a religion which the cults think themselves +either to have corrected or outgrown exactly what the cults secure—and +more. Such as these trust God, keep well, go happily about their +businesses and prove their faith in gracious lives. There is room for +mutual respect and a working measure of give and take on both sides.</p> + +<p>The writer is inclined to think the churches at present are more +teachable than the more recent religious movements. For a long +generation now the churches have been subject to searching criticism +from almost every quarter. The scientist, the sociologist, the +philosopher, the publicist, the discontented with things as they are and +the protagonist of things as they ought to be, have all taken their turn +and the Church generally, with some natural protest against being made +the scapegoat for the sins of a society arrestingly reluctant to make +the Church's gospel the law of its life, has taken account of its own +shortcomings and sought to correct them. The cults are as yet less +inclined to test themselves by that against which they have reacted. But +this is beside the point. The movements we have been studying can only +be fairly appraised as one follows through their outcome in life and +that either in detail or entirety is impossible. But it is possible to +gain from their literature a reasonable understanding of their +principles and interrelations and this the writer has sought to do.</p> + + +<p><i>The Cults Are Aspects of the Creative Religious Consciousness of the +Age</i></p> + +<p>Certain conclusions are thus made evident. These movements are the +creation of the religious consciousness of the time. They are aspects of +the present tense of religion. Since religion is, among other things, +the effective desire to enter into right relationships with the power +which manifests itself in the universe there are two variants in its +content; first, our changing understanding of the power itself and +second, our changing uses of it. The first varies with our knowledge and +insight, the second with our own changing sense of personal need. Though +God be the same yesterday, to-day and forever, our understandings of Him +cannot and ought not to be the same yesterday, to-day and forever. Our +faith is modified by, for example, our scientific discoveries. When the +firmament of Hebrew cosmogony has given way to interstellar spaces and +the telescope and the spectroscope plumb the depths of the universe, +resolving nebulæ into star drifts, faith is bound to reflect the change. +The power which manifests itself in the universe becomes thereby a +vaster power, operating through a vaster sweep of law. Our changed +understandings of ourselves must be reflected in our faith and our +ethical insights as well. And because there is and ought to be no end to +these changing understandings, religion itself, which is one outcome of +them, must be plastic and changing.</p> + +<p>What we ask of God is equally subject to change. True enough, the old +questions—Whence? Whither? and Why? are constant. As we know ourselves +to be living in a world which is less than a speck in an immensity +wherein the birth and death of suns are ephemeral, we may rightly +distrust our own value for the vaster order. We shall, therefore, the +more insistently ask Whence? and Whither? and Why? But, none the less, +there is always a shifting emphasis of religious need. Our own time is +manifestly more concerned about well-being in the life that now is than +a happy issue in the life which is to come. Temperament also qualifies +experience. The mystic seeks conscious communion with God as an end in +itself; the practical temper asks the demonstration of the love of God +in happy material conditions. In general, action and reaction govern +this whole region. The Puritan was supremely concerned about his own +salvation and the struggle consequent thereto; his descendants were +chiefly interested in the extension of knowledge and the conquest of the +physical order and we react against this in a new return upon ourselves +and the possibilities of personality.</p> + +<p>Now these changing understandings of the power which manifests itself in +the universe on the one side and our own changing senses of need on the +other, give to religion a constantly fluctuating character and what is +most distinctively religious in any period must be the outcome of the +combination of these two variants. What an age asks of the God whom it +knows colours the whole of its religious life. These cults and movements +do not wholly represent the creative religious consciousness of our +time, of course; a great deal of that same creative religious +consciousness has given new quality to the organizations and orthodoxies +of the churches. But within the frontiers of historic Christianity it +has been rather the working over of the deposit of faith than an actual +adventure in the making of religion. The cults and movements have not +been thus limited. They have challenged old understandings, broken away +from the older organizations and taken their own line, using such +material as seems proper for their purpose.</p> + +<p>They are not wholly independent of the past; some of them have taken the +immemorial speculations of the East for their point of departure though +introducing therein a good many of the permissions or conclusions of +modern science and something of the spirit of Christianity itself. Those +taking their departure from Christianity have claimed rather to +reinterpret and modernize it than to supplant it by their own creations. +Yet when all this is recognized these cults and movements are +particularly the creation of our own time. So accepted, they reveal +strongly the persistence of religion. All these conjectures and +confidences and reachings through the shadows are just a testimony that +few are content to go on without some form of religion or other.</p> + +<p>All religion has, in one phase or another, gone through much the same +process. There has been for every religion a time when it took new form +out of older elements, a time when the accepted religions had little +enough sympathy for and understanding of what was taking place about +them while those committed to new quests were exultant in the +consciousness of spiritual adventure and discovery and heard the morning +stars sing together for joy. What is thus begun must submit always to +the testimony of time. In the end a religion is permanent as it meets +the great human needs and adjusts itself to their changing phases. It is +imperial and universal as it meets these needs supremely. If in addition +it be capable of organization, if there be within it room for expansion, +and if, on the whole, it justifies itself by the outcome of it in life +and society it will persist, and if it persists through a long period of +time and creates for itself literatures, dogmas and authorities, it +becomes as nearly fundamental as anything can be in this world. It +creates cultures, shapes civilizations, colours art, establishes ideals +and fills the whole horizon of its devotees.</p> + +<p>If a religion is to endure it must meet a wide range of need; it must be +plastic and yet invest itself with the sanctions of History. For the +conservative it must possess the note of authority and at the same time +promise freedom to the liberal. It must persuade the forward-looking +that it holds within itself the power to meet changing conditions. It +must offer a satisfying experience to the mystic and the practically +minded and deliverance to the despairing. It must be able to build into +its structure new sciences and philosophies and yet it must touch the +whole of life with some sense of the timeless, and above all, it must +include the whole of life, nor depend upon particularized appeals or +passing phases of thought. Historic Christianity has more nearly met all +these tests than any other religion, for though under the stress of +meeting so great a variety of needs and conditions it has organized +itself into forms as different as Latin Catholicism and the Society of +the Friends, so losing catholicity of organization, it has secured +instead a catholicity of spirit and a vast elasticity of appeal which +are the secret of its power and the assurance of its continuing and +enduring supremacy.</p> + + +<p><i>Their Parallels in the Past</i></p> + +<p>Now by such tests as these what future may one anticipate for such cults +as we have been studying? Are they likely to displace the historic forms +of Christianity, will they substantially modify it, or will they wear +away and be reabsorbed? Evidently one of these three things must happen. +This is not the first time in the Western world that historic and +authoritative Christianity has been challenged. We should have, perhaps, +to go back to the fourth century to find an exact parallel and then we +should find in the vast and confused movement of Gnosticism an +unexpected parallel to a great deal of what is happening about us. +Gnosticism was the effort of a reason excessively given to speculation, +undisciplined and greatly unrestrained by any sense of reality to +possess and transform the Church. Various forces combined to build its +fabric of air-born speculation and though for the time it gave the +patristic Church the hardest fight of its existence, the discipline of +the Church was too strong for it. Its own weaknesses proved eventually +its undoing and Gnosticism remains only as a fascinating field of study +for the specialist, only a name if even so much as that for the +generality of us and valuable chiefly in showing what speculation may do +when permitted at will to range earth and sky, with a spurious +rationalism for pilot and imagination for wings.</p> + +<p>There have been, beside, in the history of the Church many other +movements possessing a great staying power and running in some cases for +generations alongside the main current of religious development, until +they finally disappeared with the changing centuries. Arguing from such +historical precedents as these one might easily assume a like fate for +the Gnosticism of our own time, and yet a note of caution is needed here +for there are divisive religious movements which have as yet neither +failed nor been absorbed in that from which they took their departure. +The expectation of the Catholic Church that Protestantism will spend its +force and be lost again in the majestic fabric of Latin Catholic +Christianity as it is continued amongst us, is as far from realization +to-day, or farther, than at any time in the last 300 years. We need to +remember also that conditions change. The right of individual initiative +and judgment once secured in the region of religion is not likely ever +to be lost. A good many divergent movements have literally been whipped +back into line or else put out in fire and blood. Nothing of that sort +is likely to happen now.</p> + +<p>No student of history should be blind to the sequence of action and +reaction. A period of excessive dependence upon authority may follow a +period of undue self-assertion, but it is not likely that we shall ever +find recreated exactly the conditions of the past or that religion can +hereafter be held, as it has heretofore, in relatively well marked +channels under the stress of accepted authorities. Prophecy is hazardous +business but it is safe to assume that these modern religious cults and +movements represent the beginnings of a freer, more diffused, less +formal religious faith. The peculiar cults themselves may reach their +term but the temper which produced them is likely to continue and with +other groupings of forces produce something in the future which will at +least be their parallel.</p> + + +<p><i>The Healing Cults Likely to be Adversely Influenced by the Scientific +Organisation of Psycho-therapy</i></p> + +<p>As far as the fortunes of the distinctive cults themselves go, one's +conclusions may be less tentative. For the most part the foundations +upon which they are built are not big enough to carry an ample and +secure structure. They have been made possible not only by marked +limitations in historic religion itself, but also by contemporaneous +tempers which, one may sincerely hope, are self-limiting, and this is +said not through undue prejudice against the cults themselves, but +simply because one is loath to believe that the want of critical +faculty which has made some of these cults possible will not in the end +yield to experience and a really sounder education. Since, moreover, +some of them—and Christian Science, preëminently—depend upon faith and +mental healing, whatever helps us to a clearer understanding of the +nature and limits of psycho-therapy will greatly affect their future. +All faith healing cults have heretofore depended very greatly upon the +atmosphere of mystery with which they have been able to surround +themselves. The fact that they have been able to secure results with no +very clear understanding of the way in which the results have been +secured has invested them with awe and wonder, so essential to every +religion.</p> + +<p>But as psycho-therapy itself becomes organized, works out its laws, +develops its own science and particularly as the knowledge of all this +is extended and popularized, they will lose their base of support. For +this reason the writer believes that the final explanation of all faith +and mental healing in terms of some form of suggestion which is just now +strongly in evidence will prove a distinct service to us all.</p> + +<p>The intimate association of religion and healing has, on the whole, been +good neither for religion nor health. Of course, this statement will +probably be sharply challenged but it is maintained in the face of +possible challenge. As far as religion goes it has withdrawn the +interest of the religious, thus influenced, from the normal expressions +of the religious life to border-land regions; it has stressed the +exceptional rather than the sweep of law, and the occult rather than the +luminously reasonable. Where it has failed in individual cases, as it +is bound to fail, it has left those thus disillusioned without any sound +basis for their faith and generally has driven them away from religion +altogether. It has tempted religious teachers to win a hearing by signs +and wonders. Even the Founder of the Christian religion grew weary of +this, as the records show plainly enough, in that He saw His true work +to be thereby not helped but hindered, and if this be true of the +Founder it is by so much the more true of His followers.</p> + +<p>On the scientific side this temper has hindered honest thinking, +laborious investigation and that specialization which is absolutely +necessary to the furtherance of any great division of human effort. +Medicine made little progress until it got itself free of the Church. +Specifically the average minister is neither by training nor temperament +fitted for healing work and those laymen who have assumed that office +have generally been wanting in balance and self-restraint. This is not +to deny the reality of a power not ourselves making for health and +well-being generally, or the power of faith, or the efficacy of prayer. +Least of all is God, upon this understanding, to be shut out of life. +But the power not ourselves which makes for faith and healing is best +known through laborious investigation, the discovery of methods and +obediences to ascertained law. When we have clearly come to see the +nature of psycho-therapy, the occult authority of healing cults will in +the end yield to this understanding and the cults themselves be greatly +weakened or displaced.</p> + +<p>One must recognize, on the other hand, the staying power of any +well-established religious system. Through nurture and those profound +conservatisms which hold more tenaciously in the region of religion than +anywhere else, it is possible to continue from generation to generation +the unreasonable or the positively untrue, and this holds in the Church +as well as outside it. None the less, the most coherent systems must +reckon with their own weaknesses. Christian Science may have before it a +long period of solid going or even marked growth, but its philosophy +will at last yield to the vaster sweep of a truer philosophic thought. +Its interpretations of historic Christianity will come up again and +again for examination until their fallacies become apparent and its +force as a system of psycho-therapy will be modified by simpler and more +reasonable applications of the same power.</p> + + +<p><i>New Thought Will Become Old Thought</i></p> + +<p>New Thought is likely to take a different course but it also will have +to reckon with changing sciences and philosophies. What is New Thought +to-day will be old thought to-morrow; it will be challenged by new +expressions of the spirit which begot it. It will endure, therefore, +only as it is open, flexible and possesses a great power of +accommodation. But as long as understandings and ideals are fluid, as +long as religion is under bonds to take account of all the elements +which must be incorporated in it in order to enlarge and continue it, as +long, in short, as the human spirit outgrows fixed forms in any region +there is likely to be in religion itself something corresponding to the +New Thought of to-day, but this will be true only as New Thought is not +a cult at all but something larger—a free and creative movement of the +human spirit.</p> + +<p>Of all these cults it has made the soundest contribution to religion as +a whole. It is also more easily assimilated, more easily absorbed. Its +own distinct field will be limited by the increasing hospitality of +Christian thought to contemporaneous truth. A wholly open-minded church +will go a long way toward taking from New Thought its raison d'être. Its +future depends, therefore, very largely upon the open-mindedness of the +older and more strongly established forms of religion.</p> + +<p>The future of Spiritualism is greatly open to conjecture. We have +already seen the alternatives which Spiritualism is called upon to face +and the uncertainties which attend its conclusions. A fuller +understanding of the possibilities of abnormal personality and the reach +of automatism are likely to work against Spiritualism. If we find +ascertainable causes for its phenomena resident within personality +itself there will be no need of calling in the other world in order to +explain what is happening in this. On the other hand, if there should +evidence an increasing and tested body of facts which can be explained +only in terms of spiritistic communications, Spiritualism will naturally +make headway. But we are certainly standing only upon the threshold of a +scientific interpretation of spiritistic phenomena and until the whole +region has been very much more carefully worked through and far more +dependable facts are in hand, one can only say that Spiritism is a +hypothesis which may or may not be verified, and attend the outcome.</p> + +<p>It is hard to believe that Theosophy and kindred speculation will ever +get a strong hold upon the practical Western mind. It owes what force it +has either to an excessive love of the speculative on the part of a few, +or else to that particular temper which always wants something else and +something new, or else to wearinesses and misunderstandings of the more +shadowed side of life. Theosophy is greatly at the mercy of the +positive, practical temper; it will always find a prevailing competitor +in the Christian doctrine of immortality. Whatever, moreover, explains +the apparent inequalities of life in more simple and reasonable terms +will cut the roots of it. The movement toward religious syncretism of +which Bahaism is just now the expression will not be so easy to dispose +of. There will always be a temper impatient of the past, eager for +unity, anxious for something big and interpenetrating. Historically this +temper has from time to time emerged, particularly in the latter phases +of Roman paganism, and there is likely to be a larger interchange of +religious faith and understanding in the future than there has been in +the past.</p> + +<p>In general, this desire for a universal religion, simple and wanting in +distinctive characters, follows a weakening of conviction, a loss of +passion for accepted forms. If anything should deepen again amongst us +in religion what corresponds just now to the passion for nationality +these more general religious quests would suffer. A strong feeling for a +church or a creed or one's own movement would displace them. They have, +on the other hand, in their favour the general tendency of all religion +toward simplicity, the reduction of faith, that is, to a few broad and +generally shared elements. But there is no reason to anticipate a speedy +breakdown of what one may call particularist religion and the +substitution therefor of a faith built up out of many diverse elements +and held in common by widely separated tempers.</p> + + +<p><i>There is Likely to be Some Absorption of the Cults by a Widening +Historic Christianity</i></p> + +<p>If the past supplies analogy or suggestion there will be some tendency +for the cults and movements to be reabsorbed by the dominant religious +forms from which they have broken off. A careful analysis of this +statement would involve the consideration of a finality of Christianity +as now held in the Western world. That is impossible in the range of a +study like this. Any general statement is of course coloured by the +temper of the one who makes it and to a certain extent begs the whole +great question. But a careful and dispassionate examination of +present-day cults would seem to indicate that they really have nothing +to offer which the dominant Christianity does not possess either +explicitly or implicitly. There is a solidity of human experience behind +its forms and creeds which cannot be lightly left out of account. They +represent the travail of twenty centuries and have behind them far +older confidences and hopes. If Christianity should widen itself to the +full limit of its possibilities, it would leave little room for that +which seeks to supplant it and would meet the needs which have begotten +the cults in far richer and more reasonable ways.</p> + +<p>As far as the cults are mistakenly distinctive, as far as they cannot +stand a careful examination, they represent what must be corrected and +cannot be absorbed. Christianity can absorb New Thought far more easily +than Christian Science. Theosophy in its extremer forms it cannot absorb +at all. It is more hospitable to the quest for a universal religion for +it seeks itself to be a universal religion and can never achieve its +ideal unless it takes account of the desire for something big enough to +include the whole of life, East as well as West, and to make room within +itself for a very great variety of religious tempers.</p> + + +<p><i>But Christianity is Being Influenced by the Cults</i></p> + +<p>If Christianity is not to reabsorb the cults in their present form, it +must, as has been said over and over again, take account of them and it +is not likely to go on uninfluenced by them. Already it has yielded in +some directions to their contentions. If it feels itself challenged by +them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the +correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its +most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is +need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The +necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to +make the message of the Church far less vital than it ought to be. +Preaching is too much declamation and far too much a following of narrow +and deeply worn paths.</p> + +<p>The cults themselves represent a craving for light, especially in the +regions of pain and loss. Historic Christianity has lost out because it +has made religion too self-centered, not that the cults are a corrective +here, for they are even more self-centered—that is one of their great +faults. The individual is not the center of the world; he is part of a +larger order concerned for great ends for which his life can only be +contributory. The Church and the cults together have forgotten too +largely that life is sacred only as we lose it. We need in the churches +generally a braver personal note and a very much larger +unself-centeredness.</p> + +<p>It is interesting to note that the movement of the cults, with the +possible exception of New Thought, has been away from rationalism rather +than in the direction of it. This is a consideration to be taken into +account. It would seem on the surface of it to indicate that what people +are wanting in religion is not so much reason as mysticism and that for +the generality religion is most truly conceived in terms not of the +known but of the unknown. If the Christian Church is to meet the +challenge of the cults with a far more clearly defined line of teaching, +it is also to meet the challenge of the cults with a warmer religious +life, with the affirmation of an experience not so much tested by crises +and conversions as by the constant living of life in the sense of the +divine—to use Jeremy Taylor's noble phrase: in the Practice of the +Presence of God. The weakness of the cults is to have narrowed the +practice of the presence of God to specific regions, finding the proof +of His power in health and well-being. If we can substitute therefor the +consciousness of God in the sweep of law, the immensity of force, the +normal conduct of life, in light and understanding, in reason as well as +mysticism and science as well as devotion, we shall have secured a +foundation upon which to build amply enough to shelter devout and +questing souls not now able to find what they seek in the churches +themselves and yet never for a moment out of line with what is truest +and most prophetic in Christianity itself.</p> + +<p>Sir Henry Jones has a paragraph in his "Faith that Enquires" distinctly +to the point just here. "The second consideration arises from the +greatness of the change that would follow were the Protestant Churches +and their leaders to assume the attitude of the sciences and treat the +articles of the creeds not as dogmas but as the most probable +explanation, the most sane account which they can form of the relation +of man to the Universe and of the final meaning of his life. The +hypothesis of a God whose wisdom and power and goodness are perfect +would then be tried and tested, both theoretically and practically, and, +I believe, become thereby ever the more convincing. The creed would be +not merely a record of an old belief to be accepted on authority, but a +challenge to the skeptic and the irreligious. The Church, instead of +being a place where the deliverances of ancient religious authorities +are expounded, and illustrated by reference to the contents of one book +and the history of one nation—as if no other books were inspired and +all nations save one were God-abandoned—the Church would be the place +where the validity of spiritual convictions are discussed on their +merits, and the application of spiritual principles extended; where +enquiring youths would repair when life brings them sorrow, +disappointment or failure, and the injustice of man makes them doubt +whether there be a God, or if there be, whether he is good and has +power, and stands as the help of man. Recourse to their certified +spiritual guides, knowing that full and sympathetic justice will be done +to all their difficulties, ought to be as natural to them as their +recourse to the physical laboratory or the workshop of the mechanician +when an engine breaks down."<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> "A Faith that Enquires," p. 82.</p></div> + + +<p><i>Medical Science Should Take a More Serious Account of the Healing +Cults</i></p> + +<p>Not only the churches but the schools and particularly Medical Science +need to take account of the cults. They constitute perhaps one of the +sharpest indictments of present-day education. Many of their adherents +are nominally educated above the average. They have secured for what +they follow the authority which always attaches, in the American mind, +to the fact that those who champion any movement are college bred, and +yet the want of clear vision, the power to distinguish and analyze, +along with the unexpected credulities which are thus made manifest, +seem to indicate arresting deficiencies in popular education. It has +left us unduly suggestible, much open to mass movement, at the mercy of +the lesser prophets and wanting in those stabilities and understandings +upon which a sound culture is to be built. When we consider what they +are capable of believing who have had college or university training, we +must conclude either that contemporaneous education is wanting in the +creation of sound mental discipline, or else that we have a strange +power of living in water-tight compartments and separating our faith +wholly from our reason.</p> + +<p>The cults which are organized around faith and mental healing at once +challenge and in a measure indict modern medical science. In many +directions all these movements are reactions against an excessive +materialism; they affirm the power of personality as against its +environment, testify that the central problems of life may be approached +from the spiritual as well as from the physical and material side. It +would not for a moment be fair to say that modern Medicine is ignoring +this. There has probably always been a considerable element of mental +healing in any wise medical practice. But on the whole, the marvellous +successes and advances in Medical Science within the last thirty years +and the very great success which has attended the definition of all +diseases in terms of physical disarrangement has led physicians +generally unduly to underestimate or ignore the undoubted power of faith +and mind over bodily states.</p> + +<p>Even as a matter of scientific investigation medicine as a whole has not +taken this line of approach seriously enough. The Society for Psychical +Research has something to teach the medical faculties just here. That +Society, as we have seen, set out in the most rigorous and scientific +way possible to find out first of all just what actual facts lay behind +the confused phenomena of Spiritualism. They have given a long +generation to just that. As they have finally isolated certain facts +they have, with a good deal of caution, undertaken to frame hypotheses +to account for them and so, with the aid of the students of abnormal +personality, they are gradually bringing a measure of order into the +whole region. Medical Science on the whole has not done this in the +region of faith and mental healing. We are, therefore, far too uncertain +of our facts. A good deal of this is open to correction. If a Society +for Psycho-Therapeutic Research should be organized, which would follow +up every report of healings with an accurate care, beginning with the +diagnosis and ending with the actual physical state of the patient as +far as it could be ascertained by the tests at their disposal, they +could greatly clarify the popular mind, prevent a vast deal of needless +suffering, save the sick from frustrated hope and secure for their own +profession a distinct reinforcement and an increased usefulness.</p> + + +<p><i>A Neglected Force</i></p> + +<p>If they thus find—as is likely—that the real force of Psycho-therapy +has been largely overestimated, that imagination, wrong diagnosis and +mistaken report as to the actual physical condition have all combined to +produce confidences unjustified by the facts, we should begin to come +out into the light. And if, on the other hand, they found a body of +actual fact substantiating Psycho-therapy they would do well to add +courses therein to the discipline of their schools.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> The whole thing +would doubtless be a matter for specialization as almost every other +department of medicine demands specialization. Every good doctor is more +or less a mental healer, but every doctor cannot become a specialist in +Psycho-therapy, nor would he need to.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> But this is already being done.</p></div> + +<p>Temperamental elements enter here very largely. But we might at least +take the whole matter out of the hands of charlatans and the +half-informed and establish it upon a sound scientific basis. There is, +beyond debate, a real place for the physician who utilizes and directs +the elements of suggestion. They have gone farther, on the whole, in +this direction in France and Switzerland than we have in America. +Evidently we are standing only upon the threshold of marked advances +along these lines. Psycho-therapy can never be a substitute for a +medical science which deals with the body as a machine to be regulated +in its processes, defended against hostile invasion or reinforced in its +weaknesses, but there is also another line of approach to sickness. A +catholic medical science will use every means in its power.</p> + + +<p><i>The Cults Must be Left to Time and the Corrections of Truth</i></p> + +<p>Beyond such general considerations as these there is little to be said. +The Christian churches will gain nothing by an intolerant attitude +toward expressions of faith and spiritual adventures beyond their own +frontiers. Just as there is a constant selective process in answer to +which the historic churches maintain their existences, a selective +process controlled by association and temper, in that some of us are +naturally Catholics and some Protestants, there are tempers which do not +take kindly to inherited organization, authority or creed. Such as these +are seekers, excessive perhaps in their individuality, but none the less +sincere in their desire for a faith and religious contact which will +have its own distinct meaning for their own lives. And if there may seem +to some of us elements of misdirection or caprice or unreason in their +quests, it is perhaps in just such ways as these that advances are +finally made and what is right and true endures.</p> + +<p>If nothing at all is to be gained by intolerance, nothing more is to be +gained by an unfair criticism and, in general, all these movements must +be left to the adjustments of time and the corrections of truth.</p> + +<p>We began this study by defining religion as the effective desire to be +in right relation with the power which manifests itself in the universe. +How vast this power is we are just beginning to find out. How various we +are in our temperaments and what unsuspected possibilities there are in +the depths of personality we are also just beginning to find out. There +is possible, therefore, a vast variation of contact in this endeavour to +be in right relation with the power which faith knows and names as God. +In an endeavour moving along so wide a front there is room, naturally, +for a great variety of quest. When we have sought rightly to understand +and justly to estimate the more extreme variants of that quest in our +own time, we can do finally no more than, through the knowledge thus +gained, to try in patient and fundamental ways to correct what is false +and recognize and sympathize with what is right and leave the residue to +the issue of the unresting movements of the human soul, and those +disclosures of the Divine which are on their Godward side revelation and +on their human side insight, understanding and obedience.</p> + +<p><i>Printed in the United States of America</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h5>STRIKING ADDRESSES</h5> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>JOHN HENRY JOWETT, D.D.</i></p> + +<p class="center">God Our Contemporary</p> + +<p>A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50.</p> + +<p>Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr. Jowett has been given a high +place. Every preacher will want at once this latest product of his +fertile mind. It consists of a series of full length sermons which are +intended to show that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can +we find the resources to meet the needs of human life.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>SIDNEY BERRY, M.A.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Revealing Light $1.50.</p> + +<p>A volume of addresses by the successor to Dr. Jowett at Carr's Lane +Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim of which is to show what the +Christian revelation means in relation to the great historic facts of +the Faith and the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts +of men to-day. Every address is an example of the best preaching of this +famous "preacher to young men."</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>FREDERICK C. SPURR</i></p> + +<p><i>Last Minister of Regent's Park Chapel, London.</i></p> + +<p class="center">The Master Key</p> + +<p>A Study in World-Problems $1.35.</p> + +<p>A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of the Christian +Gospel and its relation to the travail through which the world is +passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in the vanguard of religious thought, yet +just as emphatically as any thinker of the old school, he insists on one +Physician able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D.</i></p> + +<p><i>Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadelphia.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Unused Powers $1.25.</p> + +<p>To "Acres of Diamonds," "The Angel's Lily," "Why Lincoln Laughed," "How +to Live the Christ Life," and many other stirring volumes, Dr. Conwell +has just added another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. +Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the experimental +knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who having long faced the stark +realities of life, has been exalted thereby.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D.</i></p> + +<p><i>Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Michigan.</i></p> + +<p class="center">The Undiscovered Country $1.50.</p> + +<p>A group of addresses marked by distinction of style and originality of +approach. The title discourse furnishes a central theme to which those +following stand in relation. Dr. Atkins' work, throughout, is marked by +clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing.</p> + + +<p>TIMELY ESSAYS AND STUDIES</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<p class="space"><i>NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS</i></p> + +<p><i>Author of "Great Books as Life-Teachers."</i></p> + +<p class="center">Great Men as Prophets of a New Era $1.50.</p> + +<p>Dr. Hillis' latest book strikes a popular chord. It fairly pulses with +life and human sympathy. He has a large grasp of things and relations, a +broad culture, a retentive memory and splendid imagination, and there +are few writers to-day with so large an audience assured in advance. The +subjects include: Dante; Savonarola; William the Silent; Oliver +Cromwell; John Wesley; John Milton; Garibaldi; John Ruskin, etc.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>THOS. R. MITCHELL, M.A., B.D.</i></p> + +<p class="center">The Drama of Life</p> + +<p>A Series of Reflections on Shakespeare's "<i>Seven Ages</i>." Introduction by +Nellie L. McClung. $1.25.</p> + +<p>A fresh, stimulating discussion of old themes. Mr. Mitchell handles his +subject with unusual directness, bringing to its discussion clarity of +thought and lucidity of expression which has already won the +enthusiastic endorsement of Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Chas. W. +Gordon, D.D., (Ralph Connor) Archdeacon Cody and Prof. Francis G. +Peabody.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>D. MACDOUGALL KING, M.B.</i></p> + +<p><i>Author of "The Battle with Tuberculosis."</i></p> + +<p class="center">Nerves and Personal Power</p> + +<p>Some Principles of Psychology as Applied to Conduct and Health. With +Introduction by Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King. $2.00</p> + +<p>Premier King says: "My brother has, I think helped to reinforce +Christian teaching by showing wherein recent medical and scientific +researches are revealing the foundations of Christian faith and belief +in directions hitherto unexplored and unknown.—The world needs the +assurance this book can scarcely fail to bring."</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>REV. R.E. SMITH Waco, Texas.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Christianity and the Race Problem $1.25.</p> + +<p>A sane, careful study of the Race problem in the South, written by a +born Southerner, the son of a slave-owner and Confederate soldier. Mr. +Smith has lived all his life among negroes, and feels that he is capable +of seeing both sides of the problem he undertakes to discuss.</p> + +<p>PROBLEMS OF TODAY</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<p class="space"><i>GEORGE McCREADY PRICE, M.A.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Poisoning Democracy</p> + +<p>A Study of the Present-Day Socialism. $1.25</p> + +<p>Professor Price shows that the conditions prevailing to-day are due +largely to the acceptance of various socialistic and evolutionary +theories termed "New" Theology. No more terrific moral and religious +indictment of Socialism has ever been presented.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>ALBERT CLARKE WYCKOFF</i></p> + +<p class="center"> The Non-Sense of Christian Science $1.75</p> + +<p>A deadly, withering attack on Christian Science enfilading its every +position. Mr. Wyckoff's searching analysis of the pretensions, errors, +follies, and non-sense of so-called Christian Science should prove as +convincing as it is unanswerable.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>ALLEN W. JOHNSTON</i></p> + +<p class="center">The Roman Catholic Bible and the Roman Catholic Church</p> + +<p>Foreword by David J. Burrell, D.D. $1.25</p> + +<p>A book that examines the cardinal doctrines as taught by the Church of +Rome, such as the Invocation of Saints, Purgatory, Indulgences, Worship +of Mary, the Holy Eucharist, etc. etc., and indicates the dissimilarity +between this body of teaching and Holy Writ.</p> + +<p>New Editions.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>I.M. HALDEMAN</i></p> + +<p class="center">Can the Dead Communicate with the Living? $1.25</p> + +<p>"Needless to say, Dr. Haldeman holds no brief for Spiritism. A book that +is awakening everyone to the peril of 'spiritualism' among +Christians."—<i>Christian Work.</i></p> + + +<p class="space"><i>JAMES M. GRAY, D.D.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Spiritism and the Fallen Angels</p> + +<p>From a Biblical Viewpoint. $1.25</p> + +<p>"Beginning with a review of the present-day revival of Spiritism and how +to meet it, Dr. Gray harks back to origins, the baleful influence of the +cult from the earliest recorded history of the human race." <i>S.S. +Times.</i></p> + +<p>STANDARD REFERENCE WORKS</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>G.B.F. HALLOCK Editor of "The Expositor."</i></p> + +<p class="center">A Modern Cyclopedia of Illustrations for All Occasions</p> + +<p>Nineteen Hundred and Thirty-eight Illustrations. $3.00.</p> + +<p>A comprehensive collection of illustrative incidents, anecdotes and +other suggestive material for the outstanding days and seasons of the +church year. The author, well-known to the readers of "<i>The Expositor</i>," +has presented a really valuable handbook for Preachers, Sunday School +Superintendents and all Christian workers.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>JAMES INGLIS</i></p> + +<p class="center">The Bible Text Cyclopedia</p> + +<p>A Complete Classification of Scripture Texts. New Edition. Large 8vo, +$2.00</p> + +<p>"More sensible and convenient, and every way more satisfactory than any +book of the kind we have ever known. We know of no other work comparable +with it in this department of study."—<i>Sunday School Times.</i></p> + + +<p class="space"><i>ANGUS-GREEN</i></p> + +<p class="center">Cyclopedic Handbook to the Bible</p> + +<p><i>By Joseph Angus. Revised by Samuel G. Green.</i></p> + +<p>New Edition. 832 pages, with Index, $3.00.</p> + +<p>"The Best thing in its line."—<i>Ira M. Price, Univ. of Chicago.</i></p> + +<p>"Holds an unchallenged place among aids to the interpretation of the +Scriptures."—<i>Baptist Review and Expositor.</i></p> + +<p>"Of immense service to Biblical students."—<i>Methodist Times.</i></p> + + +<p class="center">The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge <i>Introduction by R.A. Torrey</i></p> + +<p>Consisting of 500,000 Scripture References and Parallel Passages. 788 +pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00.</p> + +<p>"Bible students who desire to compare Scripture with Scripture will find +the 'Treasury' to be a better help than any other book of which I have +any knowledge."—<i>R.R. McBurney, Former Gen. Sec., Y.M.C.A., New York.</i></p> + + +<p class="space"><i>A.R. BUCKLAND, Editor</i></p> + +<p class="center">Universal Bible Dictionary</p> + +<p>511 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00.</p> + +<p><i>Dr. Campbell Morgan</i> says: "Clear, concise, comprehensive. I do not +hesitate to say that if any student would take the Bible, and go through +it book by book with its aid, the gain would be enormous."</p> + +<p>CHURCH WORK</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<p><i>ROGER W. BABSON Author of "Fundamentals of Prosperity," etc.</i></p> + +<p class="center">New Tasks for Old Churches</p> + +<p>Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 60c.</p> + +<p>Suggestions for the solution of to-day's problems, clear-cut and +courageous. Babson has little sympathy with the arguments of +self-interest of business men or with the outworn methods of the church +in industrial communities. His sole interest is in the physical, social, +and spiritual salvation of the men, women, and children in our +industrial centres.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>PRES. WILLIAM ALLEN HARPER</i></p> + +<p><i>Author of "The New Church For The New Time" etc.</i></p> + +<p class="center">The Church in the Present Crisis $1.75.</p> + +<p>Hon. Josephus Daniels says: "Dr. Harper has ably presented the demand +that the church shape the thought and life of the future. The world, +having tried everything else, is becoming convinced that no Golden Rule +alone will be the savior. Dr. Harper wisely stresses study of the Bible, +the Christian leaven in education, the duty to look difficult problems +in the face and solve them by application of the Christian religion. It +is a book of faith with wise directions and guidance."</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>REV. ALBERT F. McGARRAH</i></p> + +<p><i>Author of "Modern Church Management."</i></p> + +<p class="center">Money Talks</p> + +<p>Stimulating Studies in Christian Stewardship. $1.25.</p> + +<p>Ministers and laymen, who desire to present convincingly the principles +and practices which should govern Christians in getting and using money, +will find here a wealth of fresh material, popular in style, yet deeply +inspiring in tone. A companion volume to "Modern Church Finance" and +"Modern Church Management."</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>LYMAN EDWYN DAVIS, D.D., LL.D.</i></p> + +<p><i>Editor "Methodist Recorder."</i></p> + +<p class="center">Democratic Methodism in America</p> + +<p>A Topical Survey of the Methodist Protestant Church. $1.50.</p> + +<p>A history of the Methodist Protestant church from its founding in 1830, +pointing out the various links in the chain of circumstances which lead +to the organization of the Methodist Protestant Church and the +fundamental principles which prompted and justified the movement. It +constitutes a vigorous and ably-argued plea for "mutual rights" +Methodism.</p> + +<p>BIBLE STUDY</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<p class="space"><i>P. WHITWELL WILSON</i></p> + +<p><i>Author of "The Christ We Forget"</i></p> + +<p class="center">The <i>Church</i> We Forget.</p> + +<p>A Study of the Life and Words of the Early Christians. 8vo, cloth, net</p> + +<p>The author of "The Christ We Forget" here furnishes a companion-picture +of the earliest Christian Church—of the men and women, of like feelings +with ourselves, who followed Christ and fought His battles in the Roman +world of their day. "Here again," says Mr. Wilson, "my paint-box is the +Bible, and nothing else—and my canvas is a page which he who runs may +read."</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>C. ALPHONSO SMITH, Ph.D., LL.D.</i></p> + +<p><i>Head of the Department of English in the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. +Md.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Key-note Studies in Key-note Books of the Bible 12mo, cloth, net</p> + +<p>The sacred books dealt with are Genesis, Esther, Job, Hosea, John's +Gospel, Romans, Philippians, Revelation. "No series of lectures yet +given on this famous foundation have been more interesting and +stimulating than these illuminating studies of scriptural books by a +layman and library expert."—<i>Christian Observer.</i></p> + + +<p class="space"><i>GEORGE D. WATSON, D.D.</i></p> + +<p class="center">God's First Words</p> + +<p>Studies in Genesis, Historic, Prophetic and Experimental. 12mo, cloth, +net</p> + +<p>Dr. Watson shows how God's purposes and infinite wisdom, His plan and +purpose for the race, His unfailing love and faithfulness are first +unfolded in the Book of Genesis, to remain unchanged through the whole +canon of Scripture. Dr. Watson's new work will furnish unusual +enlightment to every gleaner in religious fields, who will find "God's +First Words" to possess great value and profit.</p> + + +<p class="space"><i>EVERETT PEPPERRELL WHEELER, A.M.</i></p> + +<p><i>Author of "Sixty Years of American Life," etc.</i></p> + +<p class="center">A Lawyer's Study of the Bible</p> + +<p>Its Answer to the Questions of To-day. 12mo cloth, net</p> + +<p>Mr. Wheeler's main proposition is that the Bible, when wisely studied, +rightly understood and its counsel closely followed, is found to be of +inestimable value as a guide to daily life and conduct. To this end Mr. +Wheeler examines its teachings as they relate to sociology, labor and +capital, socialism, war, fatalism, prayer, immortality. A lucid, helpful +book.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern Religious Cults and Movements, by +Gaius Glenn Atkins + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS CULTS *** + +***** This file should be named 19051-h.htm or 19051-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/0/5/19051/ + +Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Graeme Mackreth and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Modern Religious Cults and Movements + +Author: Gaius Glenn Atkins + +Release Date: August 15, 2006 [EBook #19051] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS CULTS *** + + + + +Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Graeme Mackreth and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +Modern Religious Cults and Movements + + + +Works by + +Gaius Glenn Atkins + +_Modern Religious Cults and Movements_ + +Dr. Atkins has written a noteworthy and valuable book dealing with the +new cults some of which have been much to the fore for a couple of +decades past, such as: Faith Healing; Christian Science; New Thought; +Theosophy and Spiritualism, etc. $2.50 + +_The Undiscovered Country_ + +Dr. Atkins' work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation, +polished diction and forceful phrasing. A firm grasp of the elemental +truths of Christian belief together with an unusual ability to interpret +mundane experiences in terms of spiritual reality. $1.50 + +_Jerusalem: Past and Present_ + +"One of the books that will help to relieve us of the restless craving +for excitement, and to make clear that we can read history truly only as +we read it as 'His Story'--and that we attain our best only as the hope +of the soul is realized by citizenship in 'the City of God.'"--_Baptist +World._ $1.25 + +_Pilgrims of the Lonely Road_ + +"A very unusual group of studies of the great mystics, and shows real +insight into the deeper experience of the religious life."--_Christian +Work._ $2.00 + +_A Rendezvous with Life_ + +"Life is represented as a journey, with various 'inns' along the way +such as Day's End, Week's End, Month's End, Year's End--all suggestive +of certain experiences and duties." Paper, 25 cts. + + + + +Modern Religious Cults and Movements + +By + +GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D., L.H.D. + +_Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Mich. + +Author of "Pilgrims of the Lonely Road," "The Undiscovered Country," +etc._ + +New York Chicago + +Fleming H. Revell Company + +London and Edinburgh + +Copyright, 1923, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY + +New York: 158 Fifth Avenue +Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. +London: 21 Paternoster Square +Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street + +_To E.M.C._ + +_Whose constant friendship through changing years has been like the fire +upon his hearthstone, a glowing gift and a grateful memory_ + + + + +Introduction + + +The last thirty years, though as dates go this is only an approximation, +have witnessed a marked development of religious cults and movements +largely outside the lines of historic Catholicism and Protestantism. One +of these cults is strongly organized and has for twenty years grown more +rapidly in proportion than most of the Christian communions. The +influence of others, more loosely organized, is far reaching. Some of +them attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science +and philosophy, and, generally, they represent the free movement of what +one may call the creative religious consciousness of our time. + +There is, of course, a great and constantly growing literature dealing +with particular cults, but there has been as yet apparently no attempt +to inquire whether there may not be a few unexpectedly simple centers +around which, in spite of their superficial differences, they really +organize themselves. + +What follows is an endeavour in these directions. It is really a very +great task and can at the best be only tentatively done. Whoever +undertakes it may well begin by confessing his own limitations. +Contemporaneous appraisals of movements upon whose tides we ourselves +are borne are subject to constant revision. One's own prejudices, no +matter how strongly one may deal with them, colour one's conclusions, +particularly in the region of religion. The really vast subject matter +also imposes its own limitations upon even the most sincere student +unless he has specialized for a lifetime in his theme; even then he +would need to ask the charity of his readers. + +Ground has been broken for such an endeavour in many different +directions. Broadly considered, William James' "Varieties of Religious +Experience" was perhaps the pioneer work. Professor James' suggestive +analyses recognize the greatly divergent forms religious experience may +take and establish their right to be taken seriously as valid facts for +the investigator. The whole tendency of organized Christianity--and +Protestantism more largely than Catholicism--has been to narrow +religious experience to accepted forms, but religion itself is impatient +of forms. It has its border-lands, shadowy regions which lie between the +acceptance of what Sabatier calls "the religions of authority" on the +one hand and the conventional types of piety or practical goodness on +the other. Those who find their religion in such regions--one might +perhaps call them the border-land people--discover the authority for +their faith in philosophies which, for the most part, have not the +sanction of the schools and the demonstration of the reality of their +faith in personal experience for which there is very little proof except +their own testimony--and their testimony itself is often confused +enough. + +But James made no attempt to relate his governing conceptions to +particular organizations and movements save in the most general way. +His fundamentals, the distinction he draws between the "once-born" and +the "twice-born," between the religion of healthy-mindedness and the +need of the sick soul, the psychological bases which he supplies for +conversation and the rarer religious experiences are immensely +illuminating, but all this is only the nebulae out of which religions are +organized into systems; the systems still remain to be considered. + +There has been of late a new interest in Mysticism, itself a border-land +word, strangely difficult of definition yet meaning generally the +persuasion that through certain spiritual disciplines--commonly called +the mystic way--we may come into a first-hand knowledge of God and the +spiritual order, in no sense dependent upon reason or sense testimony. +Some modern movements are akin to mysticism but they cannot all be +fairly included in any history of mysticism. Neither can they be +included in any history of Christianity; some of them completely ignore +the Christian religion; some of them press less central aspects of it +out of all proportion; one of them undertakes to recast Christianity in +its own moulds but certainly gives it a quality in so dealing with it +which cannot be supported by any critical examination of the Gospels or +considered as the logical development of Christian dogma. Here are +really new adventures in religion with new gospels, new prophets and new +creeds. They need to be twice approached, once through an examination of +those things which are fundamental in religion itself, for they have +behind them the power of what one may call the religious urge, and they +will ultimately stand as they meet, with a measure of finality, those +needs of the soul of which religion has always been the expression, or +fall as they fail to meet them. But since some limitation or other in +the types of Christianity which are dominant amongst us has given them +their opportunity they must also be approached through some +consideration of the Christianity against which they have reacted. +Unsatisfied needs of the inner life have unlocked the doors through +which they have made their abundant entry. Since they also reflect, as +religion always reflects, contemporaneous movements in Philosophy, +Science, Ethics and Social Relationship, they cannot be understood +without some consideration of the forces under whose strong impact +inherited faiths have, during the last half century, been slowly +breaking down, and in answer to whose suggestions faith has been taking +a new form. + +A rewarding approach, then, to Modern Religious Cults and Movements must +necessarily move along a wide front, and a certain amount of patience +and faith is asked of the reader in the opening chapters of this book: +patience enough to follow through the discussion of general principles, +and faith enough to believe that such a discussion will in the end +contribute to the practical understanding of movements with which we are +all more or less familiar, and by which we are all more or less +affected. + +G.G.A. + +_Detroit, Michigan._ + + + + +Contents + + +I. FORMS AND BACKGROUNDS OF INHERITED CHRISTIANITY 13 + +Certain Qualities Common to All Religions--Christianity +Historically Organized Around a +Transcendent God and a Fallen Humanity--The +Incarnation; the Cross the Supreme Symbol of +Western Theology--The Catholic Belief in +the Authority of an Inerrant Church--The +Protestant Church Made Faith the Key to +Salvation--Protestantism and an Infallibly Inspired +Bible--The Strength and Weakness of +This Position--Evangelical Protestantism the +Outcome--Individual Experience of the Believer +the Keystone of Evangelical Protestantism--Readjustment +of Both Catholic and +Protestant Systems Inevitable. + +II. NEW FORCES AND OLD FAITHS 46 + +The Far-reaching Readjustments of Christian +Faith in the Last Fifty Years--The Reaction of +Evolution Upon Religion--The Reaction of +Biblical Criticism Upon Faith--The Average +Man Loses His Bearings--The New Psychology--The +Influence of Philosophy and the +Social Situation--An Age of Confusion--The +Lure of the Short Cut--Popular Education--The +Churches Lose Authority--Efforts at Reconstruction--An +Age of Doubt and a Twilight-Zone +in History--The Hunger of the +Soul and the Need for Faith--Modern Religious +Cults and Movements: Their Three +Centers About Which They Have Organized +Themselves. + +III. FAITH HEALING IN GENERAL 82 + +The Bases of Faith and Mental Healing--Cannon's +Study of Emotional Reactions--The +Two Doors--The Challenge of Hypnotism--Changed +Attention Affects Physical States--The +Power of Faith to Change Mental Attitudes--Demon +Possession--The Beginnings of +Scientific Medicine--The Attitude of the Early +and Medieval Church--Saints and Shrines--Magic, +Charms, and the King's Touch: The +Rise of the Faith Healer. + +IV. THE APPROACH TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MARY BAKER EDDY 108 + +Mesmerism--The Scientific Investigation of +Mesmerism--Mesmerism in America; Phineas +Quimby an Important Link in a Long Chain--Quimby +is Led to Define Sickness as Wrong +Belief--Quimby Develops His Theories--Mary +Baker Eddy Comes Under His Influence--Outstanding +Events of Her Life: Her +Early Girlhood--Her Education: Shaping Influences--Her +Unhappy Fortunes. She is +Cured by Quimby--An Unacknowledged Debt--She +Develops Quimby's Teachings--Begins +to Teach and to Heal--Early Phases of +Christian Science--She Writes "Science and +Health" and Completes the Organization of +Her Church. + +V. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A PHILOSOPHY 136 + +Christian Science a Philosophy, a Theology, a +Religion and a System of Healing--The +Philosophic Bases of Christian Science--It +Undertakes to Solve the Problem of Evil--Contrasted +Solutions--The Divine Mind and +Mortal Mind--The Essential Limitations of +Mrs. Eddy's System--Experience and Life--Sense-Testimony--The +Inescapable Reality of Shadowed Experience. + +VI. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A THEOLOGY 163 + +Science and Health Offered as a Key to the +Scriptures--It Ignores All Recognized Canons +of Biblical Interpretation--Its Conception of +God--Mrs. Eddy's Interpretation of Jesus +Christ--Christian Science His Second Coming--Christian +Science, the Incarnation and the +Atonement--Sin an Error of Mortal Mind--The +Sacraments Disappear--The Real Power +of Christian Science. + +VII. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A SYSTEM OF HEALING AND A RELIGION 185 + +Christian Science the Application of Philosophy +and Theology to Bodily Healing--Looseness +of Christian Science Diagnosis--The +Power of Mental Environment--Christian +Science Definition of Disease--Has a Rich +Field to Work--A Strongly-Drawn System +of Psycho-therapy--A System of Suggestion--Affected +by Our Growing Understanding +of the Range of Suggestion--Strongest in +Teaching That God Has Meaning for the +Whole of Life--Exalts the Power of Mind; +the Processes--Is Not Big Enough for the +Whole of Experience. + +VIII. NEW THOUGHT 210 + +New Thought Difficult to Define--"The Rediscovery +of the Inner Life"--Spinoza's Quest--Kant +Reaffirms the Creative Power of Mind--Utilitarianism, +Deism and Individualism--The +Reactions Against Them--New England +Transcendentalism--New Thought Takes +Form--Its Creeds--The Range of the Movement--The +Key-Words of New Thought--Its +Field of Real Usefulness--Its Gospel of Getting +On--The Limitations and Dangers of Its +Positions--Tends to Become a Universal and +Loosely-Defined Religion. + +IX. THE RETURN OF THE EAST UPON WEST. +THEOSOPHY AND KINDRED CULTS 245 + +Historic Forces Carried Early Christianity +West and Not East--The West Rediscovers +the East; the East Returns Upon the West--Chesterton's +Two Saints--Why the West +Questions the East--Pantheism and Its Problems--How +the One Becomes the Many--Evolution +and Involution--Theosophy Undertakes +to Offer Deliverance--But Becomes +Deeply Entangled Itself--The West Looks to +Personal Immortality--The East Balances the +Accounts of Life in a Series of Reincarnations--Theosophy +Produces a Distinct Type of Character--A "Tour de Force" +of the Imagination--A Bridge of Clouds--The Difficulties +of Reincarnation--Immortality Nobler, Juster and +Simpler--Pantheism at Its Best--and Its Worst. + +X. SPIRITUALISM 284 + +The Genesis of Modern Spiritualism--It +Crosses to Europe--The Beginnings of Trance-Mediumship--The +Society for Psychical Research Begins Its Work--Confronts +Difficulties--William James Enters the Field--The +Limitations of Psychical Investigation--The Society +for Psychical Research Gives Intellectual Standing to +Spiritism--The Very Small Number of Dependable +Mediums--Spiritism a Question of Testimony and +Interpretation--Possible Explanations of Spiritistic +Phenomena--Myers' Theory of Mediumship--Telepathy--Controls--The +Dilemma of Spiritism--The Influence of Spiritism--The Real +Alternative to Spiritism--The Investigations of Emile +Boirac--Geley's Conclusions--The Meaning of Spiritism for +Faith. + +XI. MINOR CULTS: THE MEANING OF THE CULTS FOR THE CHURCH 326 + +Border-land Cults--Bahaism--The Bab and +His Successors--The Temple of Unity--General +Conclusions--The Cults Are Aspects of +the Creative Religious Consciousness of the +Age--Their Parallels in the Past--The Healing +Cults Likely to be Adversely Influenced by +the Scientific Organization of Psycho-therapy--New +Thought Will Become Old Thought--Possible +Absorption of the Cults by a Widening +Historic Christianity--Christianity Influenced +by the Cults--Medical Science and the +Healing Cults--A Neglected Force--Time and +the Corrections of Truth. + + + + +I + +THE FORMS AND BACKGROUNDS OF INHERITED CHRISTIANITY + + +Chronologically the point of departure for such a study as this is the +decade from 1880 to 1890. This is only an approximation but it will do. +It was a particularly decorous decade. There was no fighting save on the +outposts of colonial empires, the little wars of Soldiers Three and +Barrack Room Ballads--too far away for their guns to be heard in the +streets of capital cities, but lending a touch of colour to newspaper +head-lines and supplying new material for rising young writers. It was +the decade of triumphant Democracy and triumphant Science and triumphant +Industrialism and, among the more open-minded, of triumphant Evolution. +Western Civilization was sure of its forces, sure of its formulae, sure +of its future; there were here and there clouds no bigger than a man's +hand against particularly luminous horizons, but there was everywhere a +general agreement that they would be dissolved by the force of benign +development. The world seemed particularly well in hand. + +The churches generally shared this confidence. Catholicism and +Protestantism had reached a tacit working agreement as to their spheres +of influence and were even beginning to fraternize a little. The +divisive force of Protestantism seemed to have spent itself. Since +Alexander Campbell--dead now for a decade and a half--no Protestant sect +of any importance had been established. The older denominations had +achieved a distinctive finality in organization and doctrine. Evolution +and Biblical criticism were generally the storm centers of controversy +and though these controversies were severe enough they produced no +schisms in the churches themselves. A few religious leaders were urging +a more thoroughgoing social interpretation and application of the +teachings of Jesus; such as these were really looked upon with more +suspicion than the propagandists of a liberal theology. + +We see now with almost tragic clearness that, beneath the surface of the +whole interrelated order of that tranquil afternoon of the Victorian +epoch, there were forces in action working toward such a challenge of +the accepted and inherited as cultures and civilizations are asked to +meet only in the great crises of history and bound to issue, as they +have issued in far-flung battle lines, in the overthrow of ancient +orders and new alignments along every front of human interest. It will +be the task of the historians of the future who will have the necessary +material in hand to follow these immense reactions in their various +fields and they will find their real point of departure not in dates but +in the human attitudes and outlooks which then made a specious show of +being final--and were not final at all. + +Just there also is the real point of departure for a study like this. We +may date the rise of modern religious cults and movements from the last +decades of the nineteenth century, but they are really reactions not +against a time but a temper, an understanding of religion and a group of +religious validations which had been built up through an immense labour +of travailing generations and which toward the end of the last century +were in the way of being more seriously challenged than for a thousand +years (and if this seems too strong a statement the reader is asked to +wait for at least the attempted proof of it). We shall have to begin, +then, with a state of mind which for want of a better name I venture to +call the representative orthodox religious consciousness of the end of +the nineteenth century. That this consciousness is Christian is of +course assumed. It is Protestant rather than Catholic, for Protestantism +has supplied the larger number of followers to the newer religious +movements. + +To begin with, this representative religious consciousness was by no +means simple. Professor James Harvey Robinson tells us that the modern +mind is really a complex, that it contains and continues the whole of +our inheritances and can be understood only through the analysis of all +the contributive elements which have combined to make it what it is and +that the inherited elements in it far outweigh more recent +contributions. The religious mind is an equally complex and deep-rooted +inheritance and can best be approached by a consideration of the bases +of religion. + + +_Certain Qualities Common to All Religions_ + +We are but pilgrims down roads which space and time supply; we cannot +account for ourselves in terms of what we know to be less than +ourselves, nor can we face the shadow which falls deeply across the end +of our way without dreaming, at least, of that which lies beyond. +Whence? Whither? and Why? are insurgent questions; they are voices out +of the depths. A very great development of intelligence was demanded +before such questions really took definite shape, but they are implicit +in even the most rudimentary forms of religion, nor do we outgrow them +through any achievement of Science or development of Philosophy. They +become thereby, if anything, more insistent. Our widening horizons of +knowledge are always swept by a vaster circumference of mystery into +which faith must write a meaning and beyond which faith must discern a +destiny. + +Religion begins, therefore, in our need so to interpret the power +manifest in the universe[1] as to come into some satisfying relationship +therewith. It goes on to supply an answer to the dominant +questions--Whence? Whither? Why? It fulfills itself in worship and +communion with what is worshipped. Such worship has addressed itself to +vast ranges of objects, fulfilled itself in an almost unbelievable +variety of rites. And yet in every kind of worship there has been some +aspiration toward an ideal excellence and some endeavour, moreover, of +those who worship to come into a real relation with what is worshipped. +It would need a detailed treatment, here impossible, to back up so +general a statement with the facts which prove it, but the facts are +beyond dispute. It would be equally difficult to analyze the elements in +human nature which lead us to seek such communion. The essential +loneliness of the soul, our sense of divided and warring powers and the +general emotional instability of personality without fitting objects of +faith and devotion, all contribute to the incurable religiosity of human +nature. + +[Footnote 1: I have taken as a working definition of Religion a phrase +quoted by Ward Fowler in the introduction to his Gifford Lectures on +"The Religious Experience of the Roman People." "Religion is the +effective desire to be in right relationship to the power manifesting +itself in the Universe." This is only a formula but it lends itself to +vital interpretations and is a better approach to modern cults, many of +which are just that endeavour, than those definitions of religion just +now current which define it as a system of values or a process of +evaluation.] + +The value which religion has for those who hold it is perhaps as largely +tested by its power to give them a real sense of communion with God as +by any other single thing, but this by no means exhausts the value of +religion for life. All religions must, in one way or another, meet the +need of the will for guidance and the need of the ethical sense for +right standards. Religion has always had an ethical content, simple +enough to begin with as religion itself was simple. Certain things were +permitted, certain things prohibited as part of a cult. These +permissions and prohibitions are often strangely capricious, but we may +trace behind taboo and caste and the ceremonially clean and unclean an +always emerging standard of right and wrong and a fundamental +relationship between religion and ethics. Religion from the very first +felt itself to be the more august force and through its superior +authority gave direction and quality to the conduct of its devotees. It +was long enough before all this grew into Decalogues and the Sermon on +the Mount and the latter chapters of Paul's great letters to his +churches and our present system of Christian ethics, but we discover the +beginning of the lordship of religion over conduct even in the most +primitive cults. + +We shall find as we go on that this particular aspect of religion is +less marked in modern religious cults and movements than either the +quest for a new understanding of God or new answers to the three great +questions, or the longing for a more satisfying communion with God. They +accept, for the most part, the generally held standards of Christian +conduct, but even so, they are beginning to develop their own ethical +standards and to react upon the conduct of those who hold them. + +As has been intimated, however, the appeal of religion goes far deeper +than all this. If it did no more than seek to define for us the "power +not ourselves" everywhere made manifest, if it did no more than answer +the haunting questions: Whence? and Whither? and Why?, if it did no more +than offer the emotional life a satisfying object of worship and +communion with the Divine, supplying at the same time ethical standards +and guiding and strengthening the will in its endeavour after goodness, +it would have done us an immense service. But one may well wonder +whether if religion did no more than this it would have maintained +itself as it has and renew through the changing generations its +compelling appeal. More strong than any purely intellectual curiosity +as to a first cause or controlling power, more haunting than any wonder +as to the source and destiny of life, more persistent than any +loneliness of the questing soul is our dissatisfaction with ourselves, +our consciousness of tragic moral fault, our need of forgiveness and +deliverance. This longing for deliverance has taken many forms. + +Henry Osborn Taylor in a fine passage has shown us how manifold are the +roads men have travelled in their quest for salvation.[2] "For one man +shall find his peace in action, another in the rejection of action, even +in the seeming destruction of desire; another shall have peace and +freedom through intellectual inquiry, while another must obey his God or +love his God and may stand in very conscious need of divine salvation. +The adjustment sought by Confucius was very different from that which +drew the mind of Plato or led Augustine to the City of God. Often quite +different motives may inspire the reasonings which incidentally bring +men to like conclusions.... The life adjustment of the early Greek +philosophers had to do with scientific curiosity.... They were not like +Gotama seeking relief from the tedious impermanence of personal +experience any more than they were seeking to insure their own eternal +welfare in and through the love of God, the motive around which surged +the Christian yearning for salvation. Evidently every religion is a +means of adjustment or deliverance." + +[Footnote 2: "Deliverance," pp. 4 and 5.] + +Professor James in his chapter on The Sick Souls deals most suggestively +with these driving longings and all the later analyses of the psychology +of conversion begin with the stress of the divided self. The deeper +teaching of the New Testament roots itself in this soil. The literature +of confession is rich in classic illustrations of all this, told as only +St. Augustine more than a thousand years ago or Tolstoy yesterday can +tell it. No need to quote them here; they are easily accessible for +those who would find for their own longings immortal voices and be +taught with what searching self-analysis those who have come out of +darkness into light have dealt with their own sick souls. + +Every religion has in some fashion or other offered deliverance to its +devotees through sacrifice or spiritual discipline, or the assurance +that their sins were atoned for and their deliverance assured through +the sufferings of others. All this, needless to say, involves not only +the sense of sin but the whole reach of life's shadowed experiences. We +have great need to be delivered not only from our divided selves but +from the burdens and perplexities of life. Religion must offer some +explanation of the general problem of sorrow and evil; it must, above +all, justify the ways of God with men. + +Generally speaking, religion is very greatly dependent upon its power so +to interpret the hard things of life to those who bear them that they +may still believe in the Divine love and justice. The generality of +doubt is not philosophical but practical. We break with God more often +than for any other reason because we believe that He has not kept faith +with us. Some of the more strongly held modern cults have found their +opportunity in the evident deficiency of the traditional explanation of +pain and sorrow. Religion has really a strong hold on the average life +only as it meets the more shadowed side of experience with the +affirmation of an all-conquering love and justice in which we may rest. + +Broadly considered, then, the elements common to all religions are such +as these: a satisfying interpretation of the power manifest in the +universe, the need of the mind for an answer to the questions Whence? +and Whither? and Why?, the need of the emotional life for such peace as +may come from the consciousness of being in right relationship and +satisfying communion with God, the need of the will and ethical sense +for guidance, and a need including all this and something beside for +spiritual deliverance. The representative religious consciousness of the +end of the nineteenth century in which we find our point of departure +for the religious reactions of the last generation naturally included +all this, but implicitly rather than explicitly. The intellectually +curious were more concerned with science and political economies than +the nature or genesis of religion, while the truly devout, who are not +generally given to the critical analysis of their faith, accepted it as +a Divine revelation needing no accounting for outside their Bible. +Moreover such things as these were not then and never can be held +abstractly. They were articulate in creeds and organized in churches +and invested with the august sanction of authority, and mediated through +old, old processes of religious development. + + +_Christianity Historically Organized Around the Conception of a +Transcendent God and a Fallen Humanity_ + +For in its historic development religion has naturally taken distinctly +divergent forms, conditioned by race, environment, the action and +reaction of massed experience and by the temper and insight of a few +supremely great religious leaders. But centrally, the whole development +of any religion has been controlled by its conception of God and, in the +main, three different conceptions of God give colour and character to +the outstanding historic religions. Pantheistic religions have thought +of God as just the whole of all that is; they widen the universe to the +measure of the Divine, or narrow the Divine to the operations of the +universe. Pantheism saturates its whole vague content with a mystical +quality of thought, and colours what it sees with its own emotions. The +religions of the Divine Immanence conceive God as pervading and +sustaining all that is and revealing Himself thereby, though not +necessarily confined therein. The religions of the Divine Transcendence +have believed in a God who is apart from all that is, who neither begins +nor ends in His universe, and from whom we are profoundly separated not +only by our littlenesses but by our sin. + +All this is a bare statement of what is almost infinitely richer as it +has been felt and proclaimed by the devout and we shall see as we go on +how the newer religious movements take also their colour and character +from a new emphasis upon the nature of God, or else a return to +understandings of Him and feelings about Him which have been lost out in +the development of Christianity. + +Historically Christian theology, particularly in the West, has centered +around the conception of a Transcendent God. As far as doctrine goes +Christianity took over a great inheritance from the Jew, for arrestingly +enough the Jew, though he belongs to the East, had never anything in +common with Eastern Pantheism. On the contrary we find his prophets and +lawgivers battling with all their force against such aspects of +Pantheism as they found about them. The God of the Old Testament is +always immeasurably above those who worshipped Him in righteousness and +power; He is their God and they are His chosen people, but there is +never any identification of their will with His except in the rare +moments of their perfect obedience. + +True enough, through the insight of the prophets and particularly the +experience of psalmists, this conception of the Apart-God became +increasingly rich in the persuasion of His unfailing care for His +children. None the less, the Hebrew God is a Transcendent God and +Christianity inherits from that. Christianity took over what Judaism +refused--Jesus Christ and His Gospel. But out of the immeasurable wealth +of His teaching apostolic thinking naturally appropriated and made most +of what was nearest in line with the prophets and the lawgivers of their +race. Judaism refused Christ but the Twelve Apostles were Jews and the +greatest of the group--St. Paul--was a Jewish Rabbi before he became a +Christian teacher. He had been nurtured and matured in the schools of +his people and though he was reborn, in renunciations and obediences +distinctly Christian, there were in his very soul inherited rigidities +of form in conformity to which he recast his faith. + +More distinctly than he himself could ever have known, he particularized +the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Doubtless his own experience was the deeper +directing force in all this. Theologies always, to begin with, are the +molten outpouring of some transforming experience and they are always, +to begin with, fluid and glowing. + +Such glowing experiences as these are hard to communicate; they, too, +soon harden down and we inherit, as cold and rigid form, what was to +begin with the flaming outcome of experience. St. Paul's own struggle +and the bitterness of a divided self which issued in his conversion +naturally gave content to all his after teaching. He worked out his +system strangely apart from the other group of disciples; he had +probably never heard a word of Christ's teaching directly from Christ's +lips; he naturally fell back, therefore, upon his Jewish inheritance and +widened that system of sacrifices and atonements until he found therein +not only a place for the Cross but the necessity for it. He made much, +therefore, of the sense of alienation from God, of sin and human +helplessness, of the need and possibility of redemption. + + +_The Incarnation as the Bridge Between God and Man; the Cross as the +Instrument of Man's Redemption. The Cross the Supreme Symbol of Western +Theology_ + +Here, then, are the two speculative backgrounds of historic +Christianity,--God's apartness from man in an inconceivable immensity of +lonely goodness, man's alienation from God in a helpless fallen estate. +For the bridging of the gulf between God and His world Christianity +offers the incarnation; for the saving of man from his lost estate +Christianity offers the Cross. The incarnation is the reentry of God +into a world from which, indeed, according to the Christian way of +thinking, He has never been entirely separate, but from which He has, +none the less, been so remote that if ever it were to be rescued from +its ruined condition there was needed a new revelation of God in +humanity; and the Atonement is just the saving operation of God thus +incarnated. + +Eastern Christianity has made most of the incarnation. The great Greek +theologies were built around that. They exhausted the resources of a +language particularly fitted for subtle definition in their endeavour to +explain the mystery of it, and, after more than a century of bitter +debate about the nature and person of Christ, contented themselves with +affirming the reality both of the human and divine in His nature, +neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance, nor indeed +making clear in any truly comprehensible way the truth which they so +sought to define, or the faith to which they so passionately held. But +though their keen dialectic broke down under the burden they laid upon +it, they did, nevertheless, keep alive just that confidence in God as +one come into human life and sharing it and using it, without which +there would have been in all the faith and thinking of the West for more +than a thousand years an unbridged and unbridgeable gulf between God and +man. + +Indeed, when we turn back again to the great Greek symbols with that +conception of the immanence of God which the truer insights of our own +time have done so much to supply, we find these old forms and phrases +unexpectedly hospitable to our own interpretations. If the Western +Church had been more strongly influenced by the philosophical insight of +the early Eastern Church, Western Christendom might have been saved from +a good deal of that theological hardness from which great numbers are +just now reacting. + +But Western Christendom took the Cross for the central symbol of its +faith. What would have happened to Western Christendom without Augustine +we do not know, and it is idle to try to guess, but Europe in its +religious thinking followed for a thousand years the direction he gave +it. His theology is only the travail of his soul, glowing and molten. +His Confessions reveal to us more clearly than any other record we have +Paganism becoming Christian. In the travail of his spirit we see +something vaster than his own conversion, we see the formulation of new +spiritual experiences, the birth of new spiritual relationships, the +growth of new moral orders and consecrations. He bridges for us the +passages between Paganism and Christianity. He reveals what rebirth +meant for men to whom it was no convention but an agonizing recasting of +both the inner and outer life. He shows us what it meant to put aside +the inheritances and relationships of an immemorial order and to stand +as a little child untaught, undisciplined and unperfect in the presence +of the new. The spiritual attitude which Augustine attained was to be +for long the dominant spiritual attitude of Europe, was to govern +medieval conceptions, inspire medieval actions, colour with its flame +the mystic brooding of the medieval mind. + +In the end the sovereignty of God became for Augustine supreme and over +against this he set with strong finality man's hopeless fallen state. He +was doubtless in debt to St. Paul for these governing conceptions but +they took new character as they passed through the alembic of his own +experience. "The one pervading thought of the Greek fathers concerning +the redemptive work of Christ is that men are thereby brought into unity +with God. They do not hesitate to designate this unity to be as a +deification ... they dwell on the idea that we become partakers of the +Divine nature."[3] The emphasis here is not so much upon sin to be +atoned for or punishment to be avoided, as reconciliation to be +achieved. + +[Footnote 3: Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," p. 162.] + +After Augustine the interpretations of the Cross take a new direction. +Now men are thereby not so much to be made partakers of the divine +nature as to be saved from hell. The explanations of the way in which +this salvation is really achieved change with the changing centuries but +through shifting theologies there is one constant. All men are lost and +foredoomed to an eternal punishment from which they are saved only in +that Christ suffered for them and they, through their faith and +obedience, have availed themselves of His vicarious death. The varying +theological interpretations are themselves greatly significant as if +here were something whose meanings no single explanation could exalt, +something to be felt rather than understood. The Cross so seen is the +symbol at once of love and need, of moral defeat and moral discipline, +of suffering helplessness and overcoming goodness. We cannot overstate +the influence of this faith upon the better part of Western +civilization. + +It has kept us greatly humble, purged us of our pride and thrown us back +in a helplessness which is, after all, the true secret of our strength, +upon the saving mercy of God. The story of it, simply told, has moved +the hard or bitter or the careless as nothing else can do. Its +assurances of deliverance have given new hope to the hopeless and a +power not their own to the powerless. It has exalted as the very message +of God the patient enduring of unmerited suffering; it has taught us how +there is no deliverance save as the good suffer for the bad and the +strong put their strength at the service of the weak; it has taught us +that the greatest sin is the sin against love and the really enduring +victories for any better cause are won only as through the appeal of a +much enduring unselfishness new tempers are created and new forces are +released. Nor is there any sign yet that its empire has begun to come to +an end. + + +_The Catholic Church Offered Deliverance in Obedience to the Authority +of an Inerrant Church_ + +Nevertheless the preaching of the Cross has not commonly taken such +forms as these; it has been rather the appeal of the Church to the +individual to escape his sinful and hopeless estate either through an +obedient self-identification with the Church's discipline and an +unquestioning acceptance of the Church's authority, or else through an +intellectual acceptance of the scheme of redemption and a moral +surrender to it. Here are really the two lines of approach through the +one or the other of which Christianity has been made real to the +individual from the time of St. Paul till our own time. During the early +formative period of the Church it was a matter between the individual +and his God. So much we read in and between the lines of the Pauline +Epistles. As far as any later time can accurately recast the thought and +method of a far earlier time evangelical Protestant theology fairly +interprets St. Paul. Faith--a big enough word, standing for both +intellectual acceptance and a kind of mystic receptivity to the love and +goodness and justice of God revealed in the Cross of Christ--is the key +to salvation and the condition of Christian character. It is also that +through which religion becomes real to the individual. But since all +this lays upon the individual a burden hard enough to be borne (as we +shall see when we come back to Protestantism itself) the Church, as her +organization became more definite and her authority more strongly +established, took the responsibility of the whole matter upon herself. +She herself would become responsible for the outcome if only they were +teachable and obedient. + +The Catholic Church offered to its communicants an assured security, the +proof of which was not in the fluctuating states of their own souls but +in the august authority of the Church to which they belonged. As long, +therefore, as they remained in obedient communion with their Church +their souls were secure. The Church offered them its confessional for +their unburdening and its absolutions for their assurance, its +sacraments for their strengthening and its penances for their discipline +and restoration. It took from them in spiritual regions and maybe in +other regions too, the responsibility for the conduct of their own lives +and asked of the faithful only that they believe and obey. The Church, +as it were, "stepped down" religion to humanity. It did all this with a +marvellous understanding of human nature and in answer to necessities +which were, to begin with, essential to the discipline of childlike +peoples who would otherwise have been brought face to face with truths +too great for them, or dismissed to a freedom for which they were not +ready. + +It was and is a marvellous system; there has never been anything like it +and if it should wholly fail from amongst us there will never be +anything like it again. And yet we see that all this vast spiritual +edifice, like the arches of its own great cathedrals, locks up upon a +single keystone. The keystone of the arch of Catholic certainty is the +acceptance of the authority of the Church conditioned by belief in the +divine character of that authority. If anything should shake the +Catholic's belief in the authority of his Church and the efficacy of her +sacraments then he is left strangely unsheltered. Strongly articulated +as this system is, it has not been untouched by time and change. To +continue our figure, one great wing of the medieval structure fell away +in the Protestant Reformation and what was left, though extensive and +solid enough, is still like its great cathedrals--yielding to time and +change. The impressive force and unity of contemporaneous Catholicism +may lead us perhaps to underestimate the number of those in the Catholic +line who, having for one reason or another lost faith in their Church, +are now open to the appeal of the newer movements. For example, the +largest non-Catholic religious group of Poles in Detroit are +Russellites. There are on good authority between three and four thousand +of them. + + +_The Protestant Church Made Faith the Key to Salvation with Conversion +the Test for the Individual of the Reality of His Religious Experience_ + +If religion has been made real to the Catholic through the mediation of +his Church, Protestantism, seeking to recreate the apostolic Church, has +made the reality of religion a matter between the individual and his +God. And yet Protestantism has never dared commit itself to so simple a +phrasing of religion as this, nor to go on without authorities of its +own. Protestantism generally has substituted for the inclusive authority +of the Catholic Church the authority of its own creeds and fundamentally +the authority of the Bible. As far as creeds go Protestantism carried +over the content of Latin Christianity more largely than we have +generally recognized. Luther was in direct line with Augustine as +Augustine was in direct line with St. Paul, and Luther's fundamental +doctrine--justification by faith--was not so much a rewriting of ancient +creeds as a new way of validating their meaning for the individual. +Faith, in our common use of the term, has hardened down into an +intellectual acceptance of Protestant theologies, but certainly for St. +Paul and probably for Luther it was far more vital than this and far +more simple. It was rather a resting upon a delivering power, the +assurance of whose desire and willingness to deliver was found in the +New Testament. It was an end to struggle, a spiritual victory won +through surrender. + +The Latin Catholic system had come to impose upon such tempers as +Luther's an unendurable amount of strain; it was too complex, too +demanding, and it failed to carry with it necessary elements of mental +and spiritual consent. (St. Paul had the same experience with his own +Judaism.) What Luther sought was a peace-bringing rightness with God. He +was typically and creatively one of William James' "divided souls" and +he found the solution for his fears, his struggles and his doubts in +simply taking for granted that a fight which he was not able to win for +himself had been won for him in the transaction on the Cross. He had +nothing, therefore, to do but to accept the peace thus made possible and +thereafter to be spiritually at rest. + +Now since the whole of the meaning of the Cross for Christianity from +St. Paul until our own time is involved in this bare statement and since +our theologies have never been able to explain this whole great matter +in any doctrinal form which has secured universal consent, we must +simply fall back upon the statement of the fact and recognize that here +is something to be defined in terms of experience and not of doctrine. +The validating experience has come generally to be known as conversion, +and conversion has played a great part in evangelical Protestantism ever +since the Reformation. It has become, indeed, the one way in which +religion has been made real to most members of evangelical churches. So +sweeping a statement must be somewhat qualified, for conversion is far +older than Luther;[4] it is not confined to Protestantism and the +Protestant churches themselves have not agreed in their emphasis upon +it. Yet we are probably on safe ground in saying that religion has +become real to the average member of the average Protestant Church more +distinctly through conversion than anything else. + +[Footnote 4: But rather in the discipline of the Mystic as an enrichment +of the spiritual life than as a door to the Communion of the Church.] + +Conversion has of late come up for a pretty thoroughgoing examination by +the psychologists, and their conclusions are so generally familiar as +to need no restatement here. William James, in a rather informal +paragraph quoted from one of his letters, states the psychologist's +point of view more simply and vividly than either he or his disciples +have defined their position in their more formal works. "In the case of +conversion I am quite willing to believe that a new truth may be +supernaturally revealed to a subject when he really asks, but I am sure +that in many cases of conversion it is less a new truth than a new power +gained over life by a truth always known. It is a case of the conflict +of two self-systems in a personality up to that time heterogeneously +divided, but in which, after the conversion crisis, the higher loves and +powers come definitely to gain the upper hand and expel the forces which +up to that time had kept them down to the position of mere grumblers and +protesters and agents of remorse and discontent. This broader view will +cover an enormous number of cases psychologically and leaves all the +religious importance to the result which it has on any other theory."[5] + +[Footnote 5: Letters of William James, Vol. II, p. 57.] + +In Luther, Augustine and St. Paul, and a great fellowship beside, this +stress of the divided self was both immediate and intense. Such as these +through the consciousness of very real fault--and this is true of +Augustine and St. Paul--or through a rare spiritual sensitiveness and an +unusual force of aspiration--and this is true of many others--did not +need any conviction of sin urged upon them from the outside. They had +conviction enough of their own. But all these have been men and women +apart, intensely devout by nature, committed by temperament to great +travail of soul and concerned, above all, for their own spiritual +deliverance. But their spiritual sensitiveness is by no means universal, +their sense of struggle not a normal experience for another type of +personality. The demand, therefore, that all religious experience be +cast in their particular mould, and that religion be made real to every +one through the same travail of soul in which it was made real to them, +carries with it two very great dangers: first, that some semblance of +struggle should be created which does not come vitally out of +experience; and second, that the resultant peace should be artificial +rather than true, and therefore, should not only quickly lose its force +but really result in reactions which would leave the soul of the one so +misled, or better perhaps, so mishandled, emptier of any real sense of +the reality of religion than to begin with. + + +_Protestantism Found Its Authority in an Infallibly Inspired Bible_ + +Now this is too largely what has happened in evangelical Protestantism. +The "twice-born" have been set up as the standard for us all; they have +demanded of their disciples the same experience as those through which +they themselves have passed. Since this type of religious experience has +always been the more ardent and vivid, since the churches in which least +has been made of it have generally tended to fall away into routine and +some want of real power, we have had, particularly since Jonathan +Edwards in America and the Wesleys in England, a recurrent insistence +upon it as the orthodox type of religious experience. Partly through +inheritance and partly in answer to its own genius Protestantism has +built up a system of theology tending to reproduce the sequence of +conviction of sin, aspiration, repentance, and conversion by doctrinal +pressure from the outside. The foundations of it all are in the New +Testament and somewhat in the Old, but what has been built upon these +foundations has been either too extended or too one-sided. In order to +include in one general sense of condemnation strong enough to create an +adequate desire for salvation, all sorts and conditions of people, +theology has not only charged us up with our own sins which are always a +sad enough account, but it has charged us up with ancestral and imputed +sins. + +This line of theology has been far too rigid, far too insistent upon +what one may call the facts of theology, and far too blind to the facts +of life. It has made much of sin in the abstract and sometimes far too +little of concrete sin; it has made more of human depravity than social +justice; it has failed to make allowance for varieties of temper and +condition; it is partly responsible for the widespread reaction of the +cults and movements of our own time. + +Since so strongly an articulate system as this needed something to +sustain it, Protestantism has constantly supported itself in the +authority of the Old and New Testaments. It displaced one authority by +another, the authority of the Church by the authority of the Book, and +in order to secure for this authority an ultimate and unquestioned power +it affirmed as the beginning and the end of its use of the Scriptures +their infallibility. The growth of Protestant teaching about the Bible +has necessarily been complicated but we must recognize that Protestant +theology and Protestant tradition have given the Bible what one may call +read-in values. + +At any rate after affirming the infallibility of the text Protestantism +has turned back to the text for the proof of its teaching and so built +up its really very great interrelated system in which, as has already +been said, the power of religion over the life of its followers and the +reality of religion in the experiences of its followers locked up on +just such things as these: First, the experiences of conversions; +second, conversion secured through the processes of Protestant +indoctrination, backed up by the fervent appeal of the Protestant +ministry and the pressure of Protestant Church life; and third, all this +supported by an appeal to the authority of the Bible with a proof-text +for every statement. + +All this is, of course, to deal coldly and analytically with something +which, as it has worked out in religious life, has been neither cold nor +analytical. Underneath it all have been great necessities of the soul +and issuing out of it all have been aspirations and devoutnesses and +spiritual victories and new understandings of God and a wealth of love +and goodness which are a part of the imperishable treasures of humanity +for three centuries. This faith and experience have voiced themselves +in moving hymns, built themselves into rare and continuing fellowships, +gone abroad in missionary passion, spent themselves for a better world +and looked unafraid even into the face of death, sure of life and peace +beyond. But behind the great realities of our inherited religious life +one may discover assumptions and processes less sure. + + +_The Strength and Weakness of This Position_ + +Once more, this inherited faith in the Bible and the systems which have +grown out of it have been conditioned by scientific and philosophic +understandings. The Protestant doctrine of the infallibility of the +Bible assumed its authority not only in the region of religion but in +science and history as well. The inherited theologies really went out of +their way to give the incidental the same value as the essential. There +was no place in them for growth, correction, further revelation. This +statement may be challenged, it certainly needs to be qualified, for +when the time for adjustment and the need of adjustment really did come +the process of adjustment began to be carried through, but only at very +great cost and only really by slowly building new foundations under the +old. In fact the new is not in many ways the old at all, though this is +to anticipate. + +It is directly to the point here that the whole scheme of religion as it +has come down to us on the Protestant side till within the last fifty +years was at once compactly interwrought, strongly supported and +unexpectedly vulnerable. The integrity of any one part of its line +depended upon the integrity of every other part; its gospel went back +to the Fall of Man and depended, therefore, upon the Biblical theory of +the Creation and subsequent human history. If anything should challenge +the scientific or historical accuracy of the book of Genesis, the +doctrine of original sin would have either to be discarded or recast. If +the doctrine of original sin were discarded or recast, the accepted +interpretations of the Atonement went with it. With these changed or +weakened the evangelical appeal must either be given new character or +lose force. A system which began with the Fall on one side went on to +heaven and hell on the other and even heaven and hell were more +dependent upon ancient conceptions of the physical structure of the +world and the skies above it than the Church was willing to recognize. +The doctrine of eternal punishment particularly was open to ethical +challenge. + + +_Evangelical Protestantism the Outcome of the Whole Process_ + +Of course all this is rather an extreme statement of the situation fifty +years ago. The churches did not all agree in insisting upon a +conversion; some evangelic churches were beginning to place their +emphasis upon Christian nurture; they sought what is secured for the +emotionally twice-born through guided growth and a larger dependence +upon normal spiritual conditions, though they were at least one with +their brethren in believing that those who come into Christian +discipleship must in the end be greatly changed and conscious of the +change; they too must possess as an assurance of the reality of their +religious life a sense of peace and spiritual well-being. + +The high Anglican Church approached the Latin Catholic Church in its +insistence upon sacramental regeneration. This wing of the Church +believed and believes still that baptism truly administered and the Holy +Communion also administered in proper form and accepted in due obedience +by priests belonging to some true succession, possess a mystic saving +power. Just why all this should be so they are perhaps not able to +explain to the satisfaction of any one save those who, for one reason or +another, believe it already. But those who cannot understand +sacramentarianism may dismiss it far too easily, for though there be +here danger of a mechanical formulism, the sacraments themselves may +become part of a spiritual discipline through which the lives of men and +women are so profoundly changed as in the most clear case of conversion, +manifesting often a spiritual beauty not to be found in any other +conception of Christian discipleship. Our differences here are not so +great as we suppose them. + +There have always been liberal reactions within the Church herself, +tending either toward relaxation of discipline or the more rational and +simple statements of doctrine. What has been so far said would not be +true of Unitarianism and Universalism in the last century. But these +movements have been somehow wanting in driving power, and so, when all +these qualifications are made, evangelical Protestantism has resulted in +a pretty clearly recognizable type. The representative members of the +representative evangelical churches all had a religious experience; some +of them had been converted after much waiting at the anxious seat, or +long kneeling at the altar rail; others of them had been brought through +Christian teaching to the confession of their faith, but all of them +were thereby reborn. They were the product of a theology which taught +them their lost estate, offered them for their acceptance a mediatorial +and atoning Christ, assured them that through their faith their +salvation would be assured, and counselled them to look to their own +inner lives for the issue of all this in a distinct sense of spiritual +peace and well-being. If they doubted or questioned they were answered +with proof-texts; for their spiritual sustenance they were given the +services of their churches where preaching was generally central, and +exhorted to grow in grace and knowledge through prayer and much reading +of their Bible. + + +_The Individual Experience of the Believer the Keystone of Evangelical +Protestantism. Its Openness to Disturbing Forces_ + +Now fine and good as all this was it was, as the event proved, not big +enough to answer all the needs of the soul, nor strong enough to meet +the challenge of forces which were a half century ago shaping themselves +toward the almost entire recasting of great regions of human thought. It +was, to begin with, unexpectedly weak in itself. Evangelical +Protestantism, as has been noted, throws upon the members of Protestant +churches a larger burden of individual responsibility than does the +Catholic Church. The typical evangelical Protestant has had little to +sustain him in his religious life save his sense of reconciliation with +God, from whom possibly he never vitally thought himself to have been +estranged, and a consequent spiritual peace. + +His church promises him nothing except teaching, inspiration, +comradeship, an occasion for the confession of his faith and some +opportunity for service. His ministers are only such as he; they may +exhort but they dare not absolve. He is greatly dependent, then, for his +sense of the reality of religion upon his own spiritual states. If he is +spiritually sensitive and not too much troubled by doubt, if he +possesses a considerable capacity for religious understanding, if his +Bible is still for him the authoritative word of God, if his church +meets his normal religious needs with a reasonable degree of adequacy, +if he is resolute in purpose and if he has no excessively trying +experiences in the face of which his faith breaks down, and if the cares +of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, or the strain of poverty do +not too much distract him (and this is a long and formidable list of +ifs) then he is faithful in his church relationships and personally +devout. He grows in grace and knowledge and the outcome of it all is a +religious character admirable in manifold ways, steadfast and truthful +in good works. + + * * * * * + +The fact that in spite of all hindrances the Protestant churches do go +on, registering from decade to decade a varying statistical growth with +a strongly organized life and a great body of communicants who find in +the religious life thus secured to them the true secret of interior +peace and their true source of power, is itself a testimony to the +massive reality of the whole system. And yet the keystone of the great +structure is just the individual experience of the individual believer, +conditioned upon his longing for deliverance and his personal assurance +that he has found, through his faith in his church's gospel, what he +seeks. + +If anything should shake the Protestant's confidence in his creed or his +Bible, or if his own inner experiences should somehow fail in their +sense of sustaining reality, then all the structure of his religion +begins to weaken. + +If one may use and press a suggestive figure, here is a religious +structure very much like Gothic architecture; its converging arches of +faith and knowledge lock up upon their keystones and the thrust of the +whole great structure has been met and conquered by flying buttresses. +In other words, sustaining forces of accredited beliefs about science, +history and human nature have been a necessary part of the entire system +and the temple of faith thus sustained may be weakened either through +some failure in the keystone of it which is inner experience, or the +flying buttresses of it which are these accepted systems of science, +history, philosophy and psychology. + + +_Readjustment of Both Catholic and Protestant Systems Inevitable_ + +Out of such elements as these, then, through such inheritances and +disciplines the representative religious consciousness of American +Protestantism of the end of the nineteenth century had been created. It +rooted itself in elements common to all religion, it inherited +practically the whole content of the Old Testament, it invested Hebraic +systems of sacrifice with typical meanings and Jewish prophecy with a +mystic authority. It was in debt to St. Paul and Augustine for its +theology. Its cosmogony was 4,000 years old and practically uninfluenced +by modern science, or else at odds with it. It was uncritical in its +acceptance of the supernatural and trained on the whole to find its main +line of evidence for the reality of religion in the supernatural. It +made more of the scheme of deliverance which St. Paul found in the +Crucifixion of Jesus than the ethics of the Gospels. It was mystic in +its emphasis upon an inner testimony to the realities it offered. For +the Protestant it locked up unexpectedly upon the infallible authority +of the Bible and for the Catholic upon the inerrancy of the Church. It +was out of the current of the modern temper in science and philosophy +generally. Its conceptions of the probable fate of the world were Jewish +and of the future life were medieval, and perhaps the strangest thing in +it all was the general unconsciousness of its dependence upon +assumptions open to challenge at almost every point and the process of +profound readjustment upon the threshold of which it stood. + +It is almost impossible to disentangle the action of the two sets of +strain which have within the last half century been brought to bear upon +it. Each has reacted upon the other. Perhaps the best thing to do is to +consider the forces which for the last two generations have been +challenging and reshaping inherited faiths, and then to consider the +outcome of it all in the outstanding religious attitudes of our own +time. + + + + +II + +NEW FORCES AND OLD FAITHS + + +Within the last fifty years particularly the fundamentals of the +Christian faith have not only come up for reexamination but have been +compelled to adapt themselves to facts and forces which have gone +farther toward recasting them than anything for a millennium and a half +before. The Reformation went deep but it did not go to the bottom. There +are differences enough in all reason between Protestantism and +Catholicism, but their identities are deeper still. The world of Martin +Luther and John Calvin was not essentially different in its outlook upon +life from the world of Augustine and Athanasius. The world of Jonathan +Edwards was much the same as the world of John Calvin and the world of +1850 apparently much the same as the world of Jonathan Edwards. There +was, of course, an immense difference in the mechanism with which men +were working but an unexpectedly small difference in their ruling ideas. + + +_The Readjustments of Christian Faith More Far-reaching in the Last +Fifty Years Than for a Thousand Years Before; Science Releases the +Challenging Forces_ + +We should not, of course, underestimate the contribution of the +Reformation to the breaking up of the old order. It left the theologies +more substantially unchanged than Protestantism has usually supposed, +but it did mark the rise of changed attitudes toward authority. The +reformers themselves did not accept without protest the spirit they +released. They imposed new authorities and obediences upon their +churches; they distrusted individual initiative in spiritual things and +the more democratic forms of church organization. John Calvin sought in +his Institutes to vindicate the law-abiding character of his new gospel; +Luther turned bitterly against the German peasants in their demand for a +most moderate measure of social justice; the Anglican leaders exiled the +Pilgrims; the Puritan drove the Quaker out of Boston through an +instinctive distrust of inward illumination as a safe guide for faith +and religious enthusiasm as a sound basis for a new commonwealth. But +the spirit was out of the bottle and could not be put back. + +The right of the individual to make his own religious inquiries and +reach his own religious conclusions was little in evidence for almost +two hundred years after the Reformation, partly because the reactions of +the post-Reformation period made the faithful generally content to rest +in what had already been secured, partly because traditional authority +was still strong, and very greatly because there was neither in history, +philosophy nor science new material upon which the mind might exercise +itself. We may take 1859, almost exactly two hundred years after the +final readjustments of the Reformation period, as the point of departure +for the forces which have so greatly modified our outlook upon our +world and our understanding of ourselves; not that the date is +clean-cut, for we see now how many things had already begun to change +before Darwin and the Origin of Species. + +Darwin's great achievement is to have suggested the formula in which +science and history have alike been restated. He had no thought at all +that what he was doing would reach so far or change so much. He simply +supposed himself, through patient and exhaustive study, to have +accounted for the rich variety of life without the supposition of a +special creation for each form. But the time was ripe and longing for +what he supplied and his hypothesis was quickly taken and applied in +almost every field of thought. Nor does it greatly matter that Darwinism +has been and may be still greatly modified. We have come under the spell +of evolution. Our universe is no longer a static thing; it is growing +and changing. Our imaginations are impressed by long sequences of +change, each one of them minute in itself but in the mass capable of +accounting for immense transformations. Darwin's initiative released the +scientific temper which has been the outstanding characteristic of our +own age. The physicist, the chemist and the biologist re-related their +discoveries in the light of his governing principle and supplied an +immense body of fact for further consideration. Geology was reborn, the +records of the rocks came to have a new meaning, every broken fossil +form became a word, maybe a paragraph, for the retelling of the past of +the earth. + +Astronomy supplied cosmic backgrounds for terrestrial evolution and +Physics became a kind of court of appeal for both. The physicist +proclaimed the conservation of energy, reduced seeming solidities to +underlying force and resolved force itself into ultimate and tenuous +unities. The processes thus discovered and related seemed to be +self-sufficient. No need to bring in anything from the outside; unbroken +law, unfailing sequence were everywhere in evidence. Where knowledge +failed speculation bridged the gap. One might begin with a nebula and go +on in unbroken sequence to Plato or Shakespeare without asking for +either material, law or force which was not in the nebula to begin with. +Man himself took his own place in the majestic procession; he, too, was +simply the culmination of a long ascent, with the roots of his being +more deeply in the dust than he had ever dreamed and compelled to +confess himself akin to what he had aforetime scorned. + + +_The Reaction of Evolution Upon Religion_ + +All our old chronologies became incidental in a range of time before +which even imagination grew dizzy. We found fragments of the skulls of +our ancestors in ancient glacial drifts and the traditional 6,000 years +since creation hardly showed on the dial upon which Geology recorded its +conclusions. There is no need to follow in detail how all this reacted +upon religion. The accepted religious scheme of things was an +intricately interlocking system irresistible in its logic as long as the +system remained unchallenged in its crucial points. If these should +begin to be doubted then the Christian appeal would have lost, for the +time at least, a most considerable measure of its force. The inner peace +which we have already seen to be the keystone of the Protestant arch +grew in part out of the sense of a universal condemnation from which the +believer was happily saved; this in turn was conditioned by the +unquestioned acceptance of the Genesis narrative. We can see clearly +enough now that Christianity, and Protestant Christianity especially, +really depended upon something deeper than all this. Still for the time +being all these things were locked up together and once the accepted +foundations of theology began to be questioned far-reaching adjustments +were inevitable and the time of readjustment was bound to be marked by +great restlessness and confusion. + +The evolutionary hypothesis profoundly affected man's thought about +himself. It challenged even more sharply his thought about God. Atheism, +materialism and agnosticism are an old, old trinity, but they had up to +our own time been at the mercy of more positive attitudes through their +inability to really answer those insurgent questions: Whence? Whither? +and Why? Creation had plainly enough demanded a creator. When Napoleon +stilled a group of debating officers in Egypt by pointing with a +Napoleonic gesture to the stars and saying, "Gentlemen, who made all +these?" his answer had been final. Paley's old-fashioned turnip-faced +watch with its analogies in the mechanism of creation had supplied an +irresistible argument for a creation according to design and a designing +creator. But now all this was changed. If Napoleon could have ridden +out from his august tomb, reassembled his officers from the dust of +their battlefields and resumed the old debate, the officers would have +been apparently in the position to answer--"Sire, they made themselves." +Our universe seemed to be sufficient unto itself. + +We have reacted against all this and rediscovered God, if indeed we had +ever lost Him, but this ought not to blind those who have accomplished +the great transition to the confusion of faith which followed the +popularization of the great scientific generalizations, nor ought it to +blind us to the fact that much of this confusion still persists. +Christian theism was more sharply challenged by materialism and +agnosticism than by a frankly confessed atheism. Materialism was the +more aggressive; it built up its own great system, posited matter and +force as the ultimate realities, and then showed to its own satisfaction +how everything that is is just the result of their action and +interaction. Nor did materialism pause upon the threshold of the soul +itself. Consciousness, so conceived, was a by-product of the higher +organization of matter, and we ourselves a spray flung up out of the +infinite ocean of being to sparkle for a moment in the light and then +fall back again into the depths out of which we had been borne. + +Those who so defined us made us bond-servants of matter and force from +birth to death though they drew back a little from the consequences of +their own creeds and sought to save a place for moral freedom and +responsibility and a defensible altruism. It is doubtful if they +succeeded. Materialism affected greatly the practical conduct of life. +It offered its own characteristic values; possession and pleasure became +inevitably enough the end of action, and action itself, directed toward +such ends, became the main business of life. Science offered so +fascinating a field for thought as to absorb the general intellectual +energy of the generation under the spell of it; the practical +application of science to mechanism and industry with the consequent +increase in luxury and convenience, absorbed the force of practical men. + +It naturally went hard with religion in a world so preoccupied. Its +foundations were assailed, its premises questioned, its conclusions +denied, its interests challenged. The fact that religion came through it +at all is a testimony both to the unconquerable force of faith and the +unquenchable need of the soul for something greater than the scientific +gospel revealed or the achievements of science supplied. + + +_The Reaction of Biblical Criticism Upon Faith_ + +The first front along which the older faith met the impact of new forces +was scientific; the second drive was at a more narrow but, as far as +religion goes, an even more strategic front. The Bible had to submit to +those processes of inquiry and criticism which had so greatly altered +the scientific outlook. The Old and New Testaments, as has been said, +supplied really the basal authority for the whole Protestant order, and +speaking merely as a historian one is well within the facts when one +says that even before the enlightenment of the last two generations the +traditional way of thinking about the Bible had not proved satisfactory. +The more free-minded were conscious of its contradictions; they could +not reconcile its earlier and later moral idealisms; they found in it as +much to perplex as to help them. Some of them, therefore, disowned it +altogether and because it was tied up in one bundle with religion, as +they knew religion, they disowned religion at the same time. Others who +accepted its authority but were unsatisfied with current interpretations +of it sought escape in allegorical uses of it. (We shall find this to be +one of the distinct elements in Christian Science.) But after all it did +answer the insistent questions, Whence? and Whither? and Why? as nothing +else answered them. Therefore, in spite of challenge and derelict faith +and capricious interpretations and forced harmonies it still held its +own. Directly science began to offer its own answers to Whence? and +Whither? and Why? curiosity found an alternative. Science had its own +book of genesis, its own hypothesis as to the creation of man, its own +conclusions as to his ascent. These had a marvellously emancipating and +stimulating power; they opened, as has been said, vast horizons; they +affected philosophy; they gave a new content to poetry, for the poet +heard in the silences of the night: + + "AEonian music measuring out + The steps of Time--the shocks of Chance-- + The blows of Death." + +The challenge of science to the book of Genesis specifically and to the +miraculous narratives with which both the Old and the New Testaments are +veined more generally, doubtless stimulated Biblical criticism, but the +time was ripe for that also. The beginnings of it antedate the +scientific Renaissance, but the freer spirit of the period offered +criticism its opportunity, the scientific temper supplied the method and +the work began. + +Inherited faith has been more directly affected by Biblical criticism +than by the result of scientific investigation and the generalizations +based thereon. The Bible had been the average man's authority in science +and history as well as faith. That statement naturally needs some +qualification, for before evolution took the field it was possible not +only to reconcile a fair knowledge of the natural sciences with the +Bible, but even, as in the argument for design, to make them +contributory to Bible teaching. But evolution changed all that and it +was really through the impact of the more sweeping scientific +conclusions upon his Bible that the average man felt their shock upon +his faith. If he had been asked merely to harmonize the genesis of the +new science with the genesis of the Old Testament he would have had +enough to occupy his attention, though perhaps he might have managed it. +The massive mind of Gladstone accomplished just that to its own entire +satisfaction. + +But the matter went deeper. A wealth of slowly accumulated knowledge was +brought to bear upon the Scriptures and a critical acumen began to +follow these old narratives to their sources. There is no need here to +follow through the results in detail. They[6] were seen to have been +drawn from many sources, in some cases so put together that the joints +and seams were plainly discernible. One wonders how they had so long +escaped observation. The Bible was seen to contain contributory elements +from general ancient cultures; its cosmogony the generally accepted +cosmogony of the time and the region; its codes akin to other and older +codes. It contained fragments of old songs and the old lore of the +common folk. It was seen to record indisputably long processes of moral +growth and spiritual insight. Its prophets spoke out of their time and +for their time. It was plainly enough no longer an infallible dictation +to writers who were only the automatic pens of God, it was a growth +rooted deep in the soil out of which it grew and the souls of those who +created it. The fibres of its main roots went off into the darkness of a +culture too long lost ever to be quite completely understood. It was no +longer ultimate science or unchallenged history. + +[Footnote 6: The Old Testament narratives particularly. The results of +New Testament criticism have not yet fully reached the popular mind.] + +We have come far enough now to see that nothing really worth while has +been lost in this process of re-interpretation, and much has been +gained. If, as the French say in one of their luminous proverbs, to +understand is to pardon, to understand is also to be delivered from +doubts and forced apologies and misleading harmonies and the necessity +of defending the indefensible. In our use of the Bible, as in every +other region of life, the truth has made us free. It possesses +still--the Bible--the truth and revelation and meaning for life it +always possessed. We are gradually realizing this and gaining in the +realization. But the Bible has been compelled to meet the challenge of +an immensely expanded scientific and historical knowledge. We have had +to test its supposed authority as to beginnings by Astronomy, Geology +and Biology; we have had to test its history by the methods and +conclusions of modern historical investigation. The element of the +supernatural running through both the Old and New Testaments has been +compelled to take into account that emphasis upon law and ordered +process which is, perhaps more than any other single thing, the +contribution of science to the discipline of contemporaneous thought. + + +_The Average Man Loses His Bearings_ + +The whole process has been difficult and unsettling. There was and is +still a want of finality in the conclusions of Biblical scholars. It +needed and needs still more study than the average man is able to give +to understand their conclusions; it needed and it needs still a deal of +patient, hard, clear-visioned thinking to win from the newer +interpretations of the Bible that understanding and acceptance of its +value which went with the inherited faith. The more liberal-minded +religious teachers doubtless very greatly overestimate the penetration +of popular thought already accomplished, by what seems to them a +familiar commonplace. The New Testament is still, even for the scholar, +a challenging problem. Conclusions are being bitterly contested and +where the specialist is himself in doubt the average man is naturally in +utter confusion. The more conservative communions neither accept nor +teach the results of the higher criticism, and so it reaches the body of +their communicants only as rumour and a half-understood menace to the +truth. + +Religion is naturally the most conservative thing in the world and even +when we think ourselves to have utterly changed our point of view +something deeper than mere intellectual acceptance protests and will not +be dismissed. We pathetically cling to that to which we, at the same +time, say good-bye. The average man somewhat affected by the modern +scientific spirit is greatly perplexed by the miraculous elements in the +Bible and yet he still believes the Bible the word of God with an +authority nothing else possesses. In fact, by a contradiction easy +enough to understand, what puzzles him most seems to him the clearest +evidence of the supernatural character of the narrative itself. His +religion is not so much the interpretation of what he does understand as +the explanation of what he does not understand. If he gives up the +supernatural his faith goes with it, and yet the other side of him--the +scientifically tempered side--balks at the supernatural. + +It is hard to know what to do with such a temper. Indeed, just this +confused temper of believing and doubting, with miracles for the storm +center, has offered a rich field for those interpretations of the +miraculous, particularly in the New Testament, in terms of faith and +mental healing, to which Christian Science and New Thought are so much +given. We may conclude in a sentence by saying that since the +infallibility of the Bible was one of the flying buttresses which upheld +the inherited structure of religion, those changes and confusions which +have grown out of two generations of Biblical criticism have greatly +affected the popular faith. + + +_The New Psychology Both a Constructive and Disturbing Influence_ + +A third influence tending to break up the stability of the old order has +been the new psychology. So general a statement as this needs also to be +qualified, for, suggestively enough, the new psychology has not so much +preceded as followed the modern multiplication of what, using James' +phrase, we may call the "Varieties of Religious Experience." It has +been, in part, a widening of our conclusions as to the mind and its +processes to make room for the puzzling play of personality which has +revealed itself in many of these experiences. Hypnotism necessarily +antedated the interest of psychology in the hypnotic state; it compelled +psychology to take account of it and for the explaining of hypnotism +psychology has been compelled to make a new study of personality and its +more obscure states. The psychologists have been far more hospitable to +the phenomena of mental healing than have the faculties of medicine. +They took them seriously before the average doctor would even admit that +they existed. Their study led them to a pretty thoroughgoing +consideration of the power of suggestion upon bodily states, and +eventually to formulate, as they have been able, both the laws of +suggestion and the secret of its power. Telepathy and psychic phenomena +generally have also offered a rich field to the student of the abnormal +and psychology has broadened its investigations to include all these +conditions. That is to say, the border-land phenomena of consciousness +as stressed and manifested in the more bizarre cults have really +supplied the material upon which the new psychology has been working, +and the psychologist to-day is seriously trying to explain a good many +things which his predecessors, with their hard and fast analyses of the +mind and its laws, refused to take seriously. + +They concede that a complete psychology must have a place in it for the +abnormal as well as the normal, and for the exceptional as well as for +the staid and universally accepted. Those who have been fathering new +religions and seeking to make the abnormal normal have been quick to +avail themselves of the suggestions and permissions in the new +psychology. Once we have crossed the old and clearly defined frontiers, +almost anything seems possible. Personality, we are now taught, is +complex, far-reaching, and is really, like a floating iceberg, more +largely below the sea level of consciousness than above it. How far it +extends and what connections it makes in these its hidden depths, no one +of us may know. Normal consciousness, to change the figure, is just one +brilliantly illuminated center in a world of shadow deepening into +darkness. The light grows more murky, the shadows more insistent, as we +pass down, or out, or back from that illumined center. We cannot tell +how much of the shadow is really a part of us, nor do we dare to be +dogmatic about what may, or may not, there be taking place. + +Indeed, we may fill the shadows with almost anything which caprice or +desire may suggest. Our curiously inventive minds have always loved to +fill in our ignorances with their creations. We formerly had the +shadowed backgrounds of the universe to populate with the creatures of +our fear or fancy, but now, strangely enough, since science has let in +its light upon the universe psychology has given us the subconscious as +a region not yet subdued to law or shot through with light. And the +prophets of new cults and border-land movements have taken advantage of +this. "Since there is," they say in substance, "so much in life of which +we are not really conscious, and since there are hints within us of +strange powers, how can we set limits to what we may either be or do, +and may not one man's caprice be as reasonable as another man's reason?" + +The popularization of the new psychology has thus created a soil finely +receptive to the unusual. Without understanding what has been +accomplished in the way of investigation, and with little accurate +knowledge of what has actually been tested out, there is amongst us a +widespread feeling that almost anything is possible. Here also we may +end in a sentence by saying that present-day psychology with its wide +sweep of law, its recognition of the abnormal, its acceptance of and +insistence upon the power of suggestion, its recognition of the +subconscious and its tendency to assign thereto a great force of +personal action, has broken down old certainties and given a free field +to imagination. It has, more positively, taught us how to apply the laws +of mental action to the more fruitful conduct of life, and so supplied +the basis for the cults which make much of efficiency and +self-development. It has also lent new meaning to religion all along the +line. + + +_The Influence of Philosophy and the Social Situation_ + +How far contemporaneous philosophy has affected inherited faith or +supplied a basis for new religious development, is more difficult to +say. Beyond debate philosophic materialism has greatly influenced the +religious attitude of multitudes of people just as the reactions against +it have supplied the basis for new religious movements. Pragmatism, +affirming that whatever works is true, has tended to supply a +philosophic justification for whatever seems to work, whether it be true +or not, and it has beside tended to give us a world where little islands +of understandings have taken, as it were, the place of a continuous +continent of truth. The tendencies of the leaders of new cults have been +to take the material which science and psychology have supplied and +build them into philosophies of their own; they have not generally been +able or willing to test themselves by the conclusions of more +disciplined thinkers. + +New Thought has undoubtedly been affected by the older +idealisms--Berkeley's for example--while James and Royce have supplied +congenial material. The movements are generally selective. New Thought +uses James' applied psychology and possibly Royce's Absolute, but does +not consistently confine itself to any one system. Philosophy also has +been itself of late working in a pretty rarified region. Its problems +have not been the problems of the common mind. It has been trying to +find out how we know, to relate the inner and the outer world, and in +general to account for things which the average man takes for granted, +and in the understanding of which he is more hindered than helped by the +current philosophy of the schools. It takes philosophy a good while to +reach the man in the street, and even then its conclusions have to be +much popularized and made specific before they mean much for him. We +shall know better fifty years from now what philosophy is doing for +religion and life than we know to-day. There are, however, as has been +said, aspects of philosophy which religion generally is beginning to +take into account. + +The failure of Christianity to create for itself a distinctly Christian +environment has also had much to do with dissolving old religious +stabilities. Strongly felt social injustices are releasing forces of +discontent and creating a fertile soil for revolutionary experiment, +though it must be said that modern religious cults and movements have +not gained so much from this particular form of discontent as have those +movements which look toward radical social readjustment. But the whole +situation has created a shaken state of public opinion. The fierceness +of modern competition, industrially and economically, finally carried +through to the tragic competition of a world war, has put our tempers on +edge. The extremes of wealth and poverty and the baffling fluctuations +in modern industry have brought the existing order into disrepute. The +very great number of the socially unfit and the grievous number of +social misfits, along with crime and poverty and the deposit of human +sediment in our cities, not only trouble men of good will but create a +human element easily misled. Such conditions as these are in such +painful contrast with the ideals of the Gospel, the spirit of +Christianity and even the potential productive force of modern society +as to lead many to believe that something is radically wrong. Many are +persuaded that Christianity as now organized and led is socially +sterile; they have withdrawn themselves from the church; many of them +have become its mordant critics; the more extreme of them have disowned +religion as well as its organized form, and the violently radical would +dethrone any conception of the Divine and take the word God out of our +vocabulary. This extreme group has not for the most part associated +itself with the new religious movement, but here at least has been a +disintegrating force. + + +_An Age of Confusion_ + +In such ways as these, then, the accepted religious order identified +with historic Catholicism and Protestantism has in the last fifty years +been greatly altered. Science, Biblical criticism, psychology and +philosophy, and social unrest have all had their share in making people +impatient of the inherited order, or doubtful or defiant of it. We have +been asked to relate our old creeds and confidences to new insights and +understandings. The old answers to the questions Whence? and Whither? +and Why? have been challenged by new answers; our horizons have been +pushed back in every direction and a strange sense of mystery both in +personality and the external order has perplexed and stimulated us. +Along with all this and in no little way growing out of it, has gone +impatience of discipline and an undue haste to gain the various goods of +life. + +Evolution misled us, to begin with. If the longing for deliverance be +one of the driving forces in religious life, then the vaster scientific +conclusions of the latter part of the nineteenth century offered a new +definition of deliverance. It was not, after all, so much in the travail +of the soul as in a serene and effortless self-commitment to a power, +not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, that we were to be saved. +We had only to push out upon tides which asked of us neither rudder nor +oar, to be brought to our appointed havens. How greatly we have been +disillusioned in all this and how bitterly we have been taught that life +is not so much a drifting with the tide as making brave headway against +it, we all know well enough to-day. Somewhere back of a vast deal in +these modern religious cults and movements, is the smug optimism, now +taking one form and now another, which was the misleading bequest of +the nineteenth century to the twentieth. + +The great scientific discoveries and their application to the mechanism +of life led the nineteenth century to believe that nothing was +impossible. Everything we touched became plastic beneath our touch save +possibly ourselves; there seemed to be no limit to what man might do and +he consequently assumed that there was no limit to what he might become. +He disassociated his hopes from both his disciplines and experiences; +everything seemed not only possible but easily possible. A general +restlessness of temper, due in part to the breaking up of the inherited +order, in part to the ferment of new ideas and in part to a general +relaxing of discipline, began to manifest itself. + +The demoralizing influence of migratory populations ought not to be +overlooked in this connection. In all the Western nations there has been +an outstanding growth of industrial city populations due to changing +economic conditions. The steadying influences of old environments have +been lost, the influence of the new environment is too stimulating at +its best and demoralizing at its worst. Our cities are not kind to home +life; too often they do not supply a proper physical setting for it. The +specialization of hard driven industries takes the creative joy out of +work and leads to an excess of highly commercialized pleasure. The +result is the modern city worker, never living long enough in one place +to create for himself a normal social environment, always anxious about +his economic future, restless, too largely alternating between +strenuous work and highly coloured pleasure and much open, through +temperament and circumstance, to the appeal of whatever promises him a +new experience or a new freedom. + + +_The Lure of the Short Cut_ + +Dean Inge in a recent study of the contribution of the Greek temper to +religion has drawn a strong, though deeply shadowed picture of the +disorganization of modern life through such influences as these. "The +industrial revolution has generated a new type of barbarism, with no +roots in the past. For the second time in the history of Western Europe, +continuity is in danger of being lost. A generation is growing up, not +uneducated, but educated in a system which has little connection with +European culture in its historical development. The Classics are not +taught; the Bible is not taught; history is not taught to any effect. +What is even more serious, there are no social traditions. The modern +townsman is _deracine_: he has forgotten the habits and sentiments of +the village from which his forefathers came. An unnatural and unhealthy +mode of life, cut off from the sweet and humanizing influences of +nature, has produced an unnatural and unhealthy mentality, to which we +shall find no parallels in the past. Its chief characteristic is +profound secularity or materialism. The typical town artisan has no +religion and no superstitions; he has no ideals beyond the visible and +tangible world of senses."[7] + +[Footnote 7: "The Legacy of Greece," p. 38.] + +Writing as an Englishman Dean Inge did not note the equally unsettling +influence of migratory races. The European peasant in Detroit or Chicago +or New York is still more _deracine_. He has not only left the soil in +whose culture his ancestors had been established for generations, he has +left the tradition and the discipline which have made him what he is. +The necessary readjustments are immensely difficult. For the first +generation they are largely a dumb puzzle, or a dull, aching +homesickness or a gray laborious life whose outcome must be often +strangely different from their dreams, but for the second generation the +whole experience is a heady adventure in freedom not easy to analyze +though social workers generally are agreed that the children of the +immigrant, belonging neither to the old nor the new, are a disturbing +element in American life. A city like Detroit, in which this is being +written, where both movements combine, the American country and village +dweller coming to a highly specialized industrial center and the +European immigrant to an entirely new environment, illustrates the +complex issue of the whole process. + +It is just to note that the Catholic immigrant, finding in his Church +the one homelike thing, is often a better Catholic in America than he +was at home. A Protestant writer without accurate information would not +dare to generalize on the religious dislocation of the second Catholic +generation. But there must be a very great loss. The large non-churched +elements in our population must be in part due to Catholic +disintegration as they are certainly due to Protestant disintegration. +And new movements find their opportunity in this whole group. In +general, society, through such influences, has grown impatient of +discipline, scornful of old methods, contemptuous of experience and +strangely unwilling to pay the price of the best. The more unstable have +surrendered themselves to the lure of the short cut; they are persuaded +that there are quick and easy roads to regions of well-being which had +before been reached only through labour and discipline and much travail +of body, mind and soul. + + +_Popular Education Has Done Little to Correct Current Confusions_ + +Nor has the very great extension of popular education really done much +to correct this; it seems rather to intensify it, for education shared +and shares still the temper of the time. Our education has been more +successful generally in opening vistas than in creating an understanding +of the laws of life and the meaning of experience; it has given us a +love of speculation without properly trained minds; it has furnished us +with the catch words of science and philosophy but has not supplied, in +the region of philosophy particularly, the corresponding philosophic +temper. It has, above all, been fruitful in unjustified self-confidence, +particularly here in America. We have confused a great devotion to +higher education and the widespread taking of its courses with the solid +fruition of it in mental discipline. America particularly has furnished +for a long time now an unusual opportunity for bizarre and capricious +movements. Nothing overtaxes the credulity of considerable elements in +our population. Whatever makes a spacious show of philosophy is sure to +find followers and almost any self-confident prophet has been able to +win disciples, no matter to what extremes he goes. + +This has not been equally true of older civilizations with a more +clearly defined culture or a more searching social discipline. Something +must be lacking in the education of a people in which all this is so +markedly possible. The play of mass psychology (one does not quite dare +to call it mob psychology) also enters into the situation. Democracy +naturally makes much of the verdict of majorities. Any movement which +gains a considerable number of adherents is pretty sure to win the +respect of the people who have been taught to judge a cause by the +number of those who can be persuaded to adopt it. This generally +unstable temper, superficial, restless, unduly optimistic, open to +suggestion and wanting in the solid force of great tradition has joined +with the recasting of Science, Theology, Psychology and Philosophy, to +open the door for the entrance of new religions, and in general, to so +unsettle the popular mind as to make almost anything possible. + + +_The Churches Lose Authority_ + +In the field of religion certain well-defined consequences have either +followed or accompanied the whole process. There has been, to begin +with, a loosening of church ties. The extent of all this has been +somewhat covered up by the reasonable growth of the historic churches. +In spite of all the difficulties which they have been called upon to +face, the statistics generally have been reassuring. The churches are +attended in the aggregate by great numbers of people who are untroubled +by doubts. Such as these have little sympathy with the more restless or +troubled, and little patience with those who try to understand the +restless and troubled; they do not share the forebodings of those who +look with a measure of apprehension upon the future of Christianity. As +far as they recognize disturbing facts at all they are very much like +Carlyle who, when told that Christianity was upon its last legs, said, +"What of that? Christianity has always been upon its last legs." And +perhaps their simple faith and hope are more to the point than many +opposing attitudes. The churches have grown faster than the population, +or at least they had at the last census. More than that, there has been +a marked increase in church activity. The churches are better organized; +they are learning the secret of cooeperation; they are reaching out in +more directions and all of them, even the more democratic, are more hard +driven from the top. + +The result of all this has been a great show of action, though it is +difficult now to say whether the real results of this multiplied +activity have been commensurate in spiritual force and ethical fruitage +with the intensity of their organized life. (The writer thinks not.) But +through all this we discern, nevertheless, a marked weakening of +authority as far as the Church goes and a general loosening of ties; +though the churches in the regions of finance and organization drive +harder than they used to drive, in the matter of creed and conduct they +are driving with an easy rein. Denominational loyalties are relaxed; +there is much changing from one denomination to another and within the +denominations and individual churches there is, of course, a substantial +proportion of membership which is only nominal. + + +_Efforts at Reconstruction Within the Church_ + +There are those who view with apprehension the whole future of religion. +They believe that the foundations of the great deep are breaking beneath +us, that Christianity must be profoundly recast before it can go on +prevailingly, and they are reaching in one direction and another for +constructive changes, but all this within the frontiers of historic +Christianity and the Church. They want church unity but they still want +a church; they want a new theology but still a theology; they want new +applications of religion but still substantially the old religion. There +was more of this during the war than just now. Such a book as Orchard's +"Future of Religion," perhaps the most thoughtful analysis of conditions +given us for a long time, was born of the war itself and already many of +its anticipations seem to miss the point. Such expectations of wholesale +religious reconstruction leave out of account the essential conservatism +of human nature, a conservatism more marked in religion than anywhere +else. + +There is also a strong and telling group which is seeking so to recast +and interpret inherited faiths as to make them more consonant to modern +needs and more hospitable to new understandings. Such as these have +accepted gladly the tested conclusions of science, the results of +Biblical criticism and the revealing suggestion of both psychology and +philosophy; they have sought to disentangle the essential from the +unessential, the enduring from the transient. They have found in science +not the foe but the friend of religion. Those intimations of unfailing +force, those resolutions of the manifold phases of action and reality +toward which science is reaching have seemed to them a discovery of the +very presence and method of God, and they have found in just such +regions as these new material for their faith. They have dealt +reverently with the old creeds, for they have seen that the forms which +Christianity has taken through the centuries have grown out of enduring +experiences and needs never to be outgrown, and that their finality is +the finality of the deep things of the soul itself. They have been able, +therefore, to make new truth tributary to old faith and to interpret the +central affirmations of Christianity in terms of present-day facts. They +have sought to share their conclusions with others and they have really +been able to carry Christianity through the transitional period of the +last fifty years and continue it open-minded, strongly established, +reverent and enriched rather than impoverished. + +What they have done has been doubly hard, once through the sheer +difficulty of the task itself, and once through the hostile and too +often abusive temper with which they and their endeavours have been +opposed. None the less, they have saved for Christendom a reasonable +faith. Science has of late gone half-way to meet them. It is rather +painfully revising a good many of its earlier conclusions and on the +whole walking rather humbly just now before its God, recognizing that +the last word has not yet really been said about much of anything. + + +_An Age of Doubt and a Twilight-Zone in History_ + +But the apparently unchanged traditions of the older forms of faith and +the relatively strong position of the Church must not blind us to the +generally disorganized condition of religion to-day. There is much in +evidence a body of doubt which clouds the outlook of multitudes upon +religion generally. Beyond debate a kind of eclipse of faith began to +draw across the Western world so early as the middle of the last +century. The militant skepticism of the brilliant group of younger poets +who sang their defiances in the first two decades of the nineteenth +century to a world which professed itself duly shocked, is wholly +different from the sadness with which the more mature singers of two +generations later announce their questioning and their disillusionment. +The difference is just the difference between Shelley and Matthew +Arnold. There is a philosophic depth in this later music which the +former wholly lacked. Arnold speaks for his time when he announces +himself as standing between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to +be born. A profound disillusionment expressed itself in great ranges of +later nineteenth century literature and confirmed the more sensitive and +despairing in a positive pessimism, strangely contrasted to the +self-assertive temper of the science and industry of the period. It +would need a pretty careful analysis to follow all this to its roots. +Something of it no doubt was due to the inability of poet and +philosopher to reconcile their new understanding of life and the +universe with the old religious forms but more of it was likely due to +some deep exhaustion of spiritual force, an exhaustion which has from +time to time marked transitional periods in the development of cultures +and civilizations. + +There have always been twilight zones in history, times in which the +force of the old had spent itself and nothing new had come to take its +place. We are beginning to see now that we too have been passing through +a twilight zone whose contrasts are all the more dramatic through the +more than tropic swiftness with which the high lights of the Victorian +period darkened into the distractions and disillusionments of our own +time. The best one can say is that there was on the part of the more +sensitive a widespread anticipation of all this, as if the chill of a +coming shadow had fallen first of all upon them, and beyond debate, not +a little of the doubt which has been so marked a feature of the last two +generations in literature generally, and in the attitude of a great +number of people toward religion, has been due to just this. + + +_The Hunger of the Soul and the Need for Faith Persist_ + +And yet, since religion is so inextinguishable a thing, changing forces +and attitudes have still left untouched the hunger of the soul and the +need of men for faith. Indeed the very restlessness of the time, the +breaking up of the old orders, the failure of the old certainties, has, +if anything, deepened the demand for religious reality and there has +been in all directions a marked turning to whatever offered itself as a +plausible substitute for the old, and above all a turning to those +religions which in quite clearly defined ways promise to demonstrate the +reality of religion through some sensible or tangible experience. If +religion will only work miracles and attest itself by some sign or other +which he who runs may read there is waiting for it an eager +constituency. We shall find as we go on how true this really is, for the +modern religious cult which has gained the largest number of followers +offers the most clearly defined signs and wonders. + +If religion cures your disease and you are twice persuaded, once that +you really are cured and once that religion has done it, then you have +something concrete enough to satisfy anybody. Or if, perplexed by death +and with no faith strong enough to pierce that veil through a persuasion +of the necessity of immortality established in the very nature of +things, you are offered a demonstration of immortality through the +voices and presences of the discarnate, then, once more, you have +something concrete enough, if only you were sure of it, to settle every +doubt. And finally, if the accepted religions are too concrete for you +and if you desire a rather vague and poetic approach to religion made +venerable by the centuries and appealingly picturesque through the +personalities of those who present it, you have in some adaptation of +oriental faith to occidental needs a novel and interesting approach to +the nebulous reality which passes in the Eastern mind for God, an +approach which demands no very great discipline and leaves a wide margin +for the play of caprice or imagination. + + +_Modern Religious Cults and Movements Find Their Opportunity in the +Whole Situation. The Three Centers About Which They Have Organized +Themselves_ + +There has been, then, as the outcome of the complex of forces which we +have been considering, a new approach to religion distinctive in our own +time and in general taking three directions determined by that against +which it has reacted, or perhaps more positively by the varying +character of what it seeks. A pretty careful analysis of modern +religious cults and movements shows that they have organized themselves, +in action and reaction, around three centers definitely related to three +outstanding deficiencies of inherited faith. I say deficiencies, though +that is of course to beg the question. We saw earlier in this study how +religion everywhere and always grows out of some of the few central and +unexpectedly simple, though always supremely great, needs and how the +force of any religion waxes or wanes as it meets these needs. Religion +is real to the generality of us as it justifies the ways of God to man +and reveals the love and justice of God in the whole of personal +experience. Religion is always, therefore, greatly dependent upon its +power to reconcile the more shadowed side of experience with the Divine +love and power and goodness. It is hard to believe in a Providence whose +dealings with us seem neither just nor loving. Faith breaks down more +often in the region of trying personal experience than anywhere else. + +All this is as old as the book of Job but it is none the less true +because it is old. + +The accepted theology which explained sin and sorrow in terms of the +fall of man and covered each individual case with a blanket indictment +justified by the condemnation of the whole of humanity has lost its +force. It depended, to begin with, on a tradition of human beginnings +which has not borne examination, and it was beside, in spite of all the +efforts to defend it, profoundly unethical. Calvinistic theology, +moreover, made a difficult matter worse by assuming for every individual +a predestined fate reaching beyond death itself which a man was +powerless to escape. Those chapters in the long story of theology which +record the turning and groping of minds--and souls--enmeshed in this web +of their own weaving and more deeply entangled still in the challenging +experiences of life itself are among the most pathetic and arresting +in the whole story of human thought. We ought to recognize more clearly +than we have generally done and confess more frankly that our inherited +explanations of the problems of pain and sorrow have been markedly +unsatisfactory and have greatly contributed to the justifiable reaction +against them. + +One group of modern religious cults and movements, then, has found its +opportunity just here. Christian Science and kindred cults are just an +attempt to reconcile the love and goodness of God with pain, sickness, +sorrow, and to a lesser degree with sin. How they do this remains to be +seen, but the force of their appeal depends upon the fact that a very +considerable and constantly growing number of people believe that they +have really done it. Such cults as these have also found a place for the +New Testament tradition of healing; they have also appealed strongly to +those who seek a natural or a pseudo-natural explanation for the +miraculous elements in religion generally. They have been expectedly +reinforced by the feeling for the Bible which strongly persists among +those who are not able to find in the inherited Protestant position that +real help in the Bible which they had been taught they should there +find, and who are not, on the other hand, sufficiently acquainted with +the newer interpretations of it to find therein a resolution for their +doubts and a vital support for their faith. Finally, Christian Science +and kindred cults offer a demonstration of the reality of religion in +health and happiness, and generally, in a very tangible way of living. +Here, then, is the first region in which we find a point of departure +for modern religious cults and movements. + +Spiritualism organizes itself around another center. Religion generally +demands and offers a faith in immortality. We are not concerned here +with the grounds which various religions have supplied for this faith +or the arguments by which they have supported it. Generally speaking, +any religion loses ground as it fails to convince its adherents of +immortality, or justify their longings therefor. Any religion supplying +clear and indisputable proof of immortality will command a strong +following and any seeming demonstration of immortality not particularly +associated with this or that religious form will organize about itself a +group of followers who will naturally give up pretty much everything +else and center their entire interests upon the methods by which +immortality is thus supposed to be demonstrated. Now modern Spiritualism +comes in just here. It professes to offer a sure proof of immortality to +an age which is just scientific enough to demand something corresponding +to scientific proof for the support of its faith and not scientific +enough to accept all the implications of science, or to submit to its +discipline. Theosophy and kindred cults are generally a quest for +deliverance along other than accepted Christian lines; they substitute +self-redemption for Christian atonement, and deliverance through +mystical disciplines for that forgiveness of sin and assurance of +salvation in which Christianity has found its peace. + +There is, of course, a vast deal of action and reaction between the +newer movements themselves and between the new faith and the old. There +are elements common to all religions; there are frontiers where all +religions meet and somewhat merge; at some point or other almost every +faith touches its contrary or becomes uncertain and shifts its emphasis. +Religion is always dependent upon changing tempers and very greatly +upon varying personalities; it is always in flux, impatient of +definitions and refusing the rigid boundary lines within which we +attempt to confine it. Though it be clearly possible, therefore, to find +three distinct points of departure for the whole of the border-land +cults and religions, there is running through them all a certain unity +of driving force. They are in general a quest for a new type of +religious reality; they are largely due to certain marked inadequacies +of the more accepted religious teachings and to the want of the more +accepted religious experiences to satisfy certain types. They have come +to light in our own time through the failure of authority in both +Catholicism and Protestantism, through the failure of the accepted +understandings of the Bible to satisfy those who are still persuaded +that it has a real message and through the reaction of the modern spirit +upon religious attitudes. They owe much to the deficiency of the +traditional explanation of sin, sorrow and suffering; they owe something +to the failure of Christianity to create a Christian environment; and +they owe not a little to the natural longing for some positive assurance +of life after death, as well as to the quest of the soul for deliverance +and its longing for a satisfying communion with God. And they are +reinforced in every direction by the restless and unsettled temper of a +time subject to great changes of habit and outlook through the breaking +up of old industrial and social orders and the impact of new forces +driving in from every direction. + +We shall need to relate these conditioning causes more definitely to the +various cults and movements as we go on to study them, but here at least +are the backgrounds against which they must be studied and the lines of +testing down which they must be followed. We shall begin in our more +detailed study of these movements with the modern religious quest for +health and healing. But even here we shall find it worth while to trace +broadly the history of faith and mental healing. + + + + +III + +FAITH HEALING IN GENERAL + + +Those cults which are either founded upon faith healing or involve it +have a long ancestry. George Barton Cutten's very suggestive book[8] +makes that clear enough and supplies an informing mass of detail. +Medical Science and Psychology have been slow to take into account the +facts thus submitted, but they have of late made amends for their +somewhat unaccountable delay, and we have now reached certain +conclusions about which there is little controversy except, indeed, as +to the range of their application. Beneath all faith healing and kindred +phenomena there are three pretty clearly defined bases. First, the +action or reaction of mind upon body; second, the control of mental +attitudes by the complex of faith; and, as an interrelated third, the +control of the lower nerve centers by suggestion. + +[Footnote 8: "Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing."] + + +_The Bases of Faith and Mental Healing_ + +There is an almost baffling interplay of what one may call these three +controlling principles, and the exhaustive discussion of the whole +subject demands the knowledge of the specialist. But we do know, to +begin with, that just as there are demonstrated bodily approaches to +both the mental and spiritual aspects of life, so there are equally +undeniable mental and even spiritual approaches to physical conditions. +We have here to fall back upon facts rather than upon a definite +knowledge of what happens in the shadowy border-land across which the +mind takes over and organizes and acts upon what is presented to it by +the afferent nervous system. Nothing, for example, could be really more +profound than the difference between waves of compression and +rarefaction transmitted through the luminiferous ether and the +translation of their impact into light. Somewhere between the retina of +the eye, with its magic web of sensitive nerve ends, and the proper +registering and transforming regions of the brain something happens +about which Science can say no final word. + +What happens in the case of light is equally true of sound and tactual +sensation. That vivid and happy consciousness of well-being which we +call health is just the translation of normal balances, pressures and +functionings in the mechanism of the body into an entirely different +order of phenomena. Health is a word of manifold meaning and if its +foundations are established in the harmonious cooeperation of physical +processes, its superstructure rises through mental attitudes into what, +for want of a more clearly defined word, we call spiritual states. Two +orders meet and merge within us. Above a world of idea, insight, desire +and subordination of means to ends, the whole driven by the will and +saturated with emotion, a world which has its contacts with the unseen +and eternal and derives its strength from the truly immaterial; below a +world of material and forces in subjection to the laws of physics and +chemistry and involved in the processes of the conservation and +transformation of physical energy, and consciousness the clearing-house +for the whole. + + +_Cannon's Study of Emotional Reactions Upon Physical States_ + +This interplay of body and mind has of late been made the subject of +careful and long continued experimentation with a special reference to +the reactions of strong emotion upon bodily states, particularly as +registered in chemical changes. These experiments have been carried on +with an almost incredible patience and attention to detail under the +most difficult circumstances, and their conclusions seem final. +Professor Walter B. Cannon of Harvard University has recently put the +result of such investigation at our service in a most interesting +way.[9] (It ought to be said, however, that a similar series of +experiments repeated at the laboratories of the University of Chicago +failed to produce the same results.) + +[Footnote 9: "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage," quoted +without page references.] + +Strong emotion affects almost every physical region, modifies almost +every physical function. The normal secretion of digestive fluids is +greatly increased by hunger (though here, of course, hunger itself may +have a physical basis) and also by what the investigator calls sham +feeding--food, that is, taken by an animal and so deflected as not to +pass into the digestive tract at all stimulates the gastric flow quite +as much as if it were actually received into the stomach. On the other +hand unhappy emotional disturbance greatly retards the digestive +processes. Pain, for example, results in pronounced inhibitions of the +secretion of gastric juice while happy emotional states produce +naturally the opposite effect. Pain is often accompanied by nausea, +indeed the nausea of a sick headache may be only secondary, induced by a +pain springing from quite another source than retarded digestion. + +Professor Cannon's experiments are most interesting as he traces the +variations of the flow of adrenal secretion induced by emotion and then +retraces the effect of the chemical changes so produced upon bodily and +mental states. The secretion of adrenin[10] is greatly increased by pain +or excitement. The percentage of blood sugar is also greatly increased +by the same causes. The heaviness of fatigue is due, as we know, to +poisonous uneliminated by-products resulting from long continued or +over-taxing exertion of any sort. Under the influence of fatigue the +power of the muscles to respond to any kind of stimulus is greatly +reduced. (It is interesting to note, however, that muscular fibre +detached from the living organism and mechanically stretched and relaxed +shows after a period the same decrease in contractability under +stimulation.) On the other hand any increase in adrenal secretion +results in renewed sensitiveness to stimulation, that is by an increased +power of the muscle to respond. Falling blood pressures diminish +proportionately the power of muscular response. Rising blood pressure is +effective "in largely restoring in fatigued structures their normal +irritability" and an increase of adrenin seems to raise blood pressure +by driving the blood from the interior regions of the body "into the +skeleton muscles which have to meet, by extra action, the urgent demands +of struggle or escape." + +[Footnote 10: I follow Cannon in the form of this word.] + +Adrenin is of real use in counteracting the effects of fatigue or in +enabling the body to respond to some unusual call for effort. The +coagulation of the blood is also affected by the same agent, that is, it +coagulates very much more rapidly.[11] Coagulation is also hastened by +heightened emotion; a wound does not bleed so freely when the wounded +one is angry or excited. A soldier, then, in the stress of combat is not +only rendered insensible to fatigue and capable of abnormal activity, +but his wounds are really not so dangerous as they would otherwise be. +There are here suggestions of elemental conditions having to do with +struggle and survival, conditions which play their very great part in +the contests of life. + +[Footnote 11: Cannon thinks, however, that this effect is produced +indirectly.] + +Emotions set free, as has been said, larger percentages of sugar which +are immediately utilized by the muscles in heightened or fatiguing +effort. All these experiments point very clearly to reservoirs of power, +both physical and mental, upon which we may draw in times of stress and +under emotional excitement.[12] Such emotionally induced chemical +actions and reactions as have been indicated release these stored +energies, render us for the time being unconscious of fatigue and even +guard us against the too rapid exhaustion of vital power. Whatever +heightens emotion, therefore, modifies the very chemical structure of +the body. + +[Footnote 12: Excessive emotional reactions upon bodily states may +explain, as Cannon suggests, the more obscure phenomena of religious +frenzy such as the ceremonial dances of savages, the "Danse Macabre" of +the Middle Ages, the feats of the whirling dervishes, the jumping and +shouting of revivalism; also, maybe, the modern jazz.] + + +_The Two Doors_ + +There are other changes as well. The breath is quickened, the lungs are +expanded, waste products are very much more rapidly eliminated and so in +answer to summoning states of the soul the body as a whole readjusts +itself in marvellous subtle forms, mobilizing all its forces for the +contests which the emotion anticipates, or indeed which the emotion +itself calls out. And if all this seems unduly technical it is only to +bear out with something like a scientific accuracy the statements made a +little earlier that two orders meet and merge within us and that the +reactions of our loves, our fears, or our longings upon our bodily +processes may be stated in terms of the test tube and the chemist's +scale. + +Such changes as are thus registered react in turn upon mental +attitudes. Fatigue produces mental depression. An accumulation of +uneliminated waste darkens all our horizons; irritability of mind and +soul attend physical irritability; any unhappy modification in the +balance of the physical registers automatically an equally unhappy +modification in the balance of the psychic. Most of us, as we come to +know ourselves better, recognize marked alterations even in spiritual +states which we are taught to refer to physical condition, but just as +truly altered spiritual conditions produce altered physical states. +There is an endless give and take and there are, therefore, two doors of +approach to our pains, wearinesses and sicknesses. + + +_The Challenge of Hypnotism_ + +Medicine, surgery and hygiene as at present organized largely approach +personal well-being from the physical side. They have for their support +a body of fact and a record of accomplishment which cannot be put out of +court without sheer intellectual stultification. Modern medicine has +been so massively successful in dealing with disease on the basis of a +philosophy which makes everything, or nearly everything, of the body and +nothing or next to nothing of the mind, that medicine was in danger of +becoming more sheerly materialistic than almost any other of our +sciences; Physics and Chemistry had their backgrounds in which they +recognized the interplay of realities too great for their formulae and +forces too subtle for their most sensitive instruments. But medicine was +almost in the way of forgetting all this when it was compelled--and +that for its own good--to take account of an entirely different set of +forces. + +This was, to begin with, as far as the modern scientific approach is +concerned, first made clearly apparent in Hypnotism. Hypnotism seems to +be such a modification of normal mental conditions under the power of +commanding suggestion as really for the time being to focus +consciousness and mental action generally in one suggested line. A new +set of inhibitions and permissions are thus imposed upon normal +consciousness. Attention is withdrawn from the usual frontiers (if one +may use the word) to which, consciously or subconsciously, it has always +been directed and centered upon one single thing.[13] + +[Footnote 13: Sidis defines Hypnosis as the disassociation of the +superior and inferior nerve centers. They commonly work in perfect +harmony, their blended unity forming one conscious personality. "In +hypnosis the two systems or nervous centers are disassociated, the +superior centers and the upper consciousness are inhibited or better cut +off, split off from the rest of the nervous system with its organic +consciousness, which is thus laid bare, open to the influence of +external stimuli or suggestions.... In hypnotic trance ... we have +direct access to man's organic consciousness and through it to organic +life itself."... If we broaden this last sentence to include not only +organic consciousness but the deeper strata of personality in which not +only individual but perhaps racial experience is bedded, we have the key +to a vast range of obscure phenomena. Sidis believes that "strong +permanent impressions or suggestions made on the reflex organic +consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their functional +disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic structure" +and this in a sentence is probably what lies behind all faith and mental +healing.--"The Psychology of Suggestion," pp. 69 and 70.] + +The hypnotized person becomes, therefore, unconscious of any reporting +agencies outside the field of his abnormally focused attention. Normal +conditions of pain or pleasure cease for the time to become real. +Attention has been forced entirely out of normal channels and given a +new direction. Then we discover, strangely enough, that though those +messages of the afferent nerves cease to have any effect upon the +subject, the imaginings of the subject carried back along outgoing lines +produce the most unexpected results in physical states. If a postage +stamp be placed upon the hand of the hypnotized subject and he be told +that the stamp is a mustard plaster, the stamp reddens the skin and +presently raises a blister. In other words, heightened and intensified +expectant attention is able to produce the same results as an irritating +agency.[14] + +[Footnote 14: Experiments by Krafft-Ebing and Forel. To be taken with +caution. See Jacoby, "Suggestion and Psycho-Therapy," p. 153.] + + +_Changed Attention Affects Physical States_ + +We are concerned here chiefly with the fact and it is a fact capable of +far-reaching application. Of course the nature and extent of the changes +thus produced are the battlegrounds of the two schools. Medical Science +is quite willing to admit that while functional action may thus be +modified no real organic changes can be produced. There is a border-land +so much still in shadow that no final word can be said about the whole +matter, but it is incontestably true that modifications of attention +have a reflex in the modification of physical states. + +A pain which is not registered does not, for the time being at least, +exist, and if the attention can either through hypnotism or by a +persistent mental discipline be withdrawn from disturbing physical +reports, then the conditions which produce them will at least be left to +correct themselves without interference from consciousness and since the +whole tendency of disturbed physical organism is to correct itself, the +whole process probably goes on more quickly as it certainly goes on with +less discomfort if attention is withdrawn.[15] The assumption of health +is a tremendous health-giving force and if the condition to be remedied +is really due to a mental complex which needs only some strong exertion +of the will or readjustment of attitude to change, then marvellous +results may follow changed mental and spiritual states. The apparently +dumb may speak, the apparently paralyzed rise from their beds, the +shell-shocked pull themselves together and those under the bondage of +their fears and their pains be set free. There are so many illustrations +of all this that the fact itself is not in debate. + +[Footnote 15: Organic changes (the storm center of the controversy) may +possibly be induced through a better general physical tone. Such changes +would not be directly due to suggestion but to processes released by +suggestion. Organic change may certainly be checked and the effect of it +overcome by increased resistance. So much conservative physicians admit. +How far reconstruction thus induced may go is a question for the +specialist.] + + +_The Power of Faith to Change Mental Attitudes_ + +Now since mental attitudes so react upon bodily states, whatever +strongly controls mental attitudes becomes a very great factor in +mental healing. There is a long line of testimony that what may be +called the complex of faith does just this with unique power, for faith +implies supernatural intervention. If there be anywhere an +all-prevailing power whose word is law and we could really be persuaded +that such a power had really intervened--even if it actually had not--on +our behalf and brought its supernatural resource to bear upon our +troubled case, then we should have a confidence more potent in the +immediate transformation of mental attitudes than anything else we could +possibly conceive. If we really believed such a power were ready to help +us, if we as vividly expected its immediate help, then we might +anticipate the utmost possible therapeutic reaction of mind upon body. A +faith so called into action should produce arresting results, and this +as a matter of investigation is true. + +In following through the theories of faith healing we may take here +either of two lines. The devout may assert a direct divine +interposition. God is. He has the power and the will; all things are +plastic to His touch; He asks only faith and, given faith enough, the +thing is done and there is no explaining it. Those who believe this are +not inclined to reason about it; in fact it is beyond reason save as +reason posits a God who is equal to such a process and an order in which +such results can be secured. This is rather an achievement of faith than +reason but the Christian Church generally has held such a faith--a faith +sustained by the testimony which favours it and unaffected by the +testimony which challenges it. The scientific temper which seeks +economy in all its explanations and asks only for a cause sufficient for +the effect and which is, moreover, constantly trying to relate the +unknown to the known, takes another line and finds in faith healing just +one more illustration of the power of mind over body. This does not +exclude God but it discovers Him in resident forces and finds in law the +revelation of His method. The conclusions, then, to which we are +generally coming may not only be reconciled with a devout faith, they +may, when followed through, enrich faith; but they do subdue the whole +great matter to a sequence of cause and effect and they are gradually +finding a satisfactory explanation for what has heretofore been deeply +involved in mystery. + +Just as Hypnotism, through the very dramatic abnormality of it, in +altering the sensitiveness of those physical tracts from which attention +is withdrawn or in producing physical effects through suggestive +focusing, has helped us to understand the part which attention plays in +the flux of physical states, so our later studies of the subconscious +help us here. We do know that a great deal may really take place in +personality of which consciousness takes no account. Consciousness in +its most active phases is alert, purposeful and preoccupied with the +immediate concern of the moment. Consciousness heeds commands and takes +account of such conditions as strongly assert themselves, but does not +in its full drive take much account of suggestion unless the suggestion +possesses unusual force. Suggestions usually need leisurely turning over +in the mind and the mind commonly refers them--often without knowing +it--to those regions of mental action which lie beneath the threshold of +strongly focused consciousness. + +But suggestion does not thereby cease to work. It starts processes all +its own which go on till they are worked through. After a longer or +shorter period of incubation the outcome of suggestion is lifted into +the light of consciousness, often to produce results all the more +striking because we cannot explain them to ourselves or any one else. +All this does not withdraw such phenomena from the realm of law; it only +clothes them with the mystery of the unknown and extends the fields in +which they may operate. Proper suggestion let fall into these unknown +depths or improper suggestion as well, becomes an incalculable force in +shaping the ends of life. We have here, then, well attested truths or +laws--it is difficult to know what to call them--which help us to +understand the bases of faith healing or mental healing by suggestion. +Now directly we turn to such records as remain to us we find that such +forces as these have been in action from the very beginning. All disease +was in early times referred generally to spirit possession. If only the +evil spirit could be exorcised the patient would get well and the priest +was, of course, the proper person to undertake this. Religion and +medicine were, therefore, most intimately united to begin with and +healing most intimately associated with magic. The first priests were +doctors and the first doctors were priests and what they did as priests +and what they did as doctors were alike unreasonable and capricious. +The priest and his church have very unwillingly surrendered the very +great hold over the faithful which this early association of medicine +and religion made possible. Any order or institution which can approach +or control humanity through the longing of the sick for health, has an +immense and unfailing empire. + + +_Demon Possession the Earliest Explanation of Disease_ + +There are, says Cutten, three fairly well defined periods in the history +of Medicine. The first, beginning as far back as anything human begins +and coming down to the end of the second century; the second, ending +with the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries; and the third from perhaps +the sixteenth century on. The second period, he adds, was by far the +most sterile and stationary of the three "largely due to the prohibitive +attitude of the Church. The science of Medicine, then, is almost wholly +the result of the investigations and study of the last period. This +means that medicine is one of the youngest of the sciences, while from +the very nature of the case it is one of the oldest of the arts." + +Demon possession was, as has been said, the earliest explanation of +disease. This would naturally be true of a time almost wholly wanting in +any conception either of law or any relation of cause and effect beyond +the most limited regions of experience. Since the only cause of which +man had any real knowledge was his own effort he peopled his world with +forces more or less like himself, except that they were invisible, who +operated practically the whole of natural phenomena. There was a spirit +for every place and every happening; spirits for fields and hearths, +thresholds and springs. Some of them were friendly, some of them +naturally unfriendly, but they were everywhere in existence, everywhere +in action and naturally if they were unfriendly they would from time to +time and in various most curious ways get into the body itself and there +do any amount of mischief. + +The priest-doctor's task, therefore, was to get them out. He might scare +them out, or scold them out, or pray them out, or trick them out. He +would use his medicine as much to make the place of their temporary +abode uncomfortable for the demon as remedial for the patient and, +indeed, the curious and loathsome things which have been used for +medicines might well disgust even a malevolent demon. One thing stands +out very clearly and that is that whatever the medicine did or left +undone, it worked through its influence upon the mind of the patient and +not through any real medicinal value. + + +_The Beginnings of Scientific Medicine_ + +Of course along with all this would go a kind of esoteric wisdom which +was part of the stock in trade of the healer. There were charms, +incantations and magic of every conceivable sort. The medicine man of +uncivilized or even half-civilized peoples really makes medicine for the +mind rather than the body. There were, however, gleams of scientific +light through all this murky region. The Egyptians knew something of +anatomy though they made a most capricious use of it and there must have +been some knowledge of hygienic methods; the prohibitions of Leviticus, +for example, and of the Jewish law generally for which the Jew must have +been, as far as medical science is concerned, somewhat in debt to the +Egyptian and the Chaldean, really have sound hygienic reasons behind +them. The Greeks began with demons but they ended with something which +approached true science. + +The real contribution of Greece, however, seems to have been on the +positive rather than the negative side. They made much of health as an +end in itself, had gods and goddesses of physical well-being. The Greek +had constantly held before him such an ideal of physical excellence as +had never before been approached and has never since been equalled. He +seems to have been abstemious in eating; he practiced the most strenuous +physical exercises; he lived a wholesome outdoor life, and so created a +civilization in which health very largely took care of itself. An +examination of what records remain to us hardly sustains the accepted +opinion that the Greeks had made substantial advances along purely +scientific lines,[16] but at any rate as far as medicine goes, there is +little to choose between the Greece of the fourth century before Christ +and the Europe of the sixteenth century after, save that the life of the +Greek was far more normal, temperate and hygienic and the mind of the +Greek more open, sane and balanced. + +[Footnote 16: Probably too strong a statement. For an opposite view +strongly supported by a scholar's research see Singer's article in "The +Legacy of Greece" (Oxford Press), p. 201.] + +Plato anticipated conclusions which we are just beginning to reach when +he said, "the office of the physician extends equally to the +purification of mind and body. To neglect the one is to expose the other +to evident peril. It is not only the body which, by sound constitution, +strengthens the soul, but the well regulated soul, by its authoritative +power, maintains the body in perfect health." Whether the best classic +civilization made, consciously, its own this very noble insight of +Plato, the best classic civilization did secure the sound mind and the +sound body to an extent which puts a far later and far more complex +civilization to shame. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Greek to +this whole great subject was his passion for bodily well-being and his +marvellous adaptation of his habits and type of life to that end. + +He did, moreover, separate religion, magic and medicine to some +appreciable extent and he gave us at least the beginnings of a medical +profession, approaching medicine from the scientific rather than the +religious or traditional point of view. Even though his science was a +poor enough thing, his doctors were none the less doctors and the +medical profession to-day is entirely within its right when it goes back +to Hippocrates for the fathering of it. + + +_The Attitude of the Early and Medieval Church_ + +Christianity changed all this and on the whole for the worse. And yet +that statement ought to be immediately qualified, for Christianity did +bring with it a very great compassion for suffering, a very great +willingness to help the sick and the needy. The Gospels are inextricably +interwoven with accounts of the healing power of the founder of +Christianity. All the later attitude of Christianity toward disease must +be considered in the light of this fact. We owe to Christianity the +first real hospitals, the first really compassionate and unselfish care +for the sick and impulses which, as they have finally worked out, have +had more to do with giving quality and direction to medicine and +particularly in investing the whole practice of medicine with its true +atmosphere than any other single force. + +And yet all this has been a long, long time coming true and for almost +1,500 years the Church and its authorities were a hindrance rather than +a help and that for two or three outstanding reasons. Christianity, to +begin with, sadly underestimated physical values in its overinsistence +upon spiritual values. The body was at best but the tabernacle of the +soul and the soul being the chief concern, whatever happened to the body +was of little importance. The body was not only underestimated, it was +scorned and abused, starved and scourged; it was the seat of unholy +influences and impulses; its natural longings were at the best under +suspicion, at the worst under absolute condemnation. Christianity, +speaking through the Church, took immense care for its spiritual +hygiene, though even here it went wrong because it forgot Plato's noble +word, but it failed utterly in physical hygiene. + +Then again sickness and suffering were for the Church but the manifest +punishment of some sin known or concealed. To interfere, therefore, was +in some way to defeat the justice of God. Pestilences were inscrutable +providences; they were the wrath of God made manifest. In the face of so +stupendous a calamity anything man might do was not only futile but +impertinent. + +By a strange contradiction early and medieval Christianity, while making +little of the body, nevertheless strongly opposed any study of anatomy +which depended upon post-mortems or dissection. This probably because of +their belief in the resurrection of the body. Any mutilation of the body +after death would be a real handicap in the day of resurrection. But +behind all this, equally real though intangible, was the desire of the +Church to have the whole of life under its own direct control. It +instinctively feared methods of thought or processes of investigation +not directly a part of its own imperial administration of life. Some +subtle distrust of the human reason went along with all this. As a +result the Church, in the main, threw herself against the more +independent processes of scientific thought, sought to subdue all the +facts of life to her creeds and understandings and so became a real +hindrance to any pursuit of truth or any investigation of fact which lay +outside the region of theological control. How largely all this retarded +growth and knowledge and the extension of human well-being it is +difficult to say, but the fact itself is well established. + + +_Saints and Shrines_ + +For one thing early Christianity continued the belief in demoniac +possession. By one of those accidents which greatly influence history +the belief in demon possession was strongly held in Palestine in the +time of Christ and the Gospel narratives reflect all this in ways upon +which it is not necessary to enlarge. The Gospels themselves lent their +mighty sanction to this persuasion and there was nothing in the temper +of the Church for more than a thousand years afterward to greatly modify +it. Indeed the temper of the Church rather strengthened it. Origen +believed that demons produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the +air and pestilences. They hover concealed in clouds in the lower +atmosphere and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen +offered them as gods. + +According to St. Augustine all diseases of Christians are to be ascribed +to these demons and the church fathers generally agreed with these two, +the greatest of them all. It was, therefore, sinful to do anything but +trust to the intercession of the saints. The objection of the Church to +dissection which is, of course, the indispensable basis for any real +knowledge of anatomy was very slowly worn down. The story of Andreas +Vesalius whom Andrew White calls the founder of the modern science of +anatomy is at once fascinating and illuminating. He pursued his studies +under incredible difficulties and perhaps could never have carried them +through without the protection of Charles V whose physician he was. He +was finally driven out, a wanderer in quest of truth, was shipwrecked +on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and in the prime of his life and +strength "he was lost to the world." But he had, none the less, won his +fight and the opposition of the Church to the scientific study of +anatomy was gradually withdrawn. But every marked advance in medical +science had really to fight the battle over again. The Sorbonne +condemned inoculation, vaccination had slowly to fight its way and even +the discovery of anesthetic, perhaps the greatest single blessing ever +given surgery, met with no little theological obstruction. It is only +fair to say in this connection that so stupid a conservatism has been by +no means the sole possession of the Church and the clergy. Medicine has +been upon occasion almost as conservative and the difficulties which Sir +Joseph Lister encountered in his endeavour to win the London hospitals +for asepsis and anti-sepsis were quite as bitter. The difficulties were +of a piece with the opposition of the Church to scientific advancement. +After all a conservatism of this sort is a matter of temperament rather +than creed or class. + +But if the Church was strangely slow to give place to medicine and +surgery, the Church sought, through agencies and methods of its own, to +cure disease. It is impossible to follow through in detail the long +story though it all bears upon the line we are following through its +massive testimony to the power of mind over body. Since the Church +believed in demon possession it sought to cure by exorcism and there are +in the ritual of the Church, as the ritual has finally taken form, +offices growing out of this long, long battle against evil spirits which +have now little suggestion of their original purpose. The sign of the +Cross was supposed to have commanding power, the invocation of the +triune deity had its own virtue, the very breathing of the priest was +supposed to influence the evil spirit and he fled defeated from the +touch of holy water. + +The Church possessed, as was everywhere then believed, not only a +prevailing power over demons, but a supernatural power all her own for +the healing of disease. This power was associated with saints and relics +and shrines. During the lifetime of the saint this power was exercised +through direct saintly interposition. After the death of the saint it +was continued in some relic which he left behind him, or some shrine +with which he had been particularly associated. There grew up gradually +a kind of "division of labour among the saints in the Middle Ages." Each +saint had its own peculiar power over some bodily region or over some +particular disease. And so the faithful were guarded by a legion of +protecting influences against everything from coughs to sudden death. +There is almost an unimaginable range of relics. Parts of the true Cross +possessed supreme value. St. Louis of France was brought back almost +from death to life by the touch of the sacred wood. The bones and hairs +of saints, rings which they had worn and all such things as these had +value and to prove that the value was not resident in the relic but in +the faith with which the relic was approached we have reported bones of +saints possessing well authenticated healing value, later proved to have +been the bones not of men but of animals. There have been sacred springs +and consecrated waters almost without number. They will still show you +in Canterbury Cathedral stones worn by the feet of countless pilgrims +seeking at the shrine of Thomas a Becket a healing to the reality of +which those who wore away those stones bore testimony in a variety of +gifts which made the shrine of a Becket at one time one of the treasure +houses of Christendom. + +"The two shrines at present best known are those of Lourdes in France +and Ste. Anne de Beaupre in the Province of Quebec. Lourdes owes its +reputed healing power to a belief in a vision of the Virgin received +there during the last century. Over 300,000 persons visit there each +year." Charcot, it is worth noting, had confidence enough not in the +shrine but in the healing power of faith to send fifty or sixty patients +to Lourdes every year. His patients were, of course, the mentally and +nervously unbalanced. The French government supervises the sanitary +conditions at Lourdes and a committee of doctors have undertaken some +examination of the diseased who visit the shrine for the guidance of +their profession. Ste. Anne de Beaupre owes its fame to certain wrist +bones of the mother of Christ. + + +_Magic, Charms, and the King's Touch: The Rise of the Faith Healer_ + +Religious faith is not always necessary--any faith will do. Charms, +amulets, talismans have all played their part in this long compelling +story. The various metals, gems, stones and curious and capricious +combinations of pretty much every imaginable thing have all been so +used. Birth girdles worn by women in childbirth eased their pain. A +circular piece of copper guarded against cholera. A coral was a good +guard against the evil eye and sail-cloth from a shipwrecked vessel tied +to the right arm was a preventive as well as a cure for epilepsy. There +is almost no end to such instances. The list of charms and incantations +is quite as curious. There are forms of words which will cure insomnia +and indeed, if one may trust current observation, forms of words not +primarily so intended may still induce sleepfulness. + +The history of the king's touch as particularly helpful in epilepsy and +scrofula, though useful also for the healing of various diseases, is +especially interesting. This practice apparently began with Edward the +Confessor in England and St. Louis in France and was due to the faith of +those who came to be touched and healed in the divine right and lonely +power of the king. It is significant that the practice began with these +two for they, more than any kings of their time or most kings since, +were really men of rare and saintly character. Curiously but naturally +enough the English have denied any real power in this region to French +kings and the French have claimed a monopoly for their own sovereigns. +The belief in the king's touch persisted long and seems toward the end +to have had no connection with the character of the monarch, for +Charles II did more in this line than any one who ever sat on an English +throne. During the whole of his reign he touched upward of 100,000 +people. Andrew White adds that "it is instructive to note, however, that +while in no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula and so +many cures vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of the +disease." + +Along with the king's touch went the king's gift--a piece of gold--and +the drain upon the royal treasury was so considerable that after the +reign of Elizabeth the size of the coin was reduced. Special coins were +minted for the king's use in that office and these touching pieces are +still in existence. William III refused to take this particular power +seriously. "God give you better health and more sense," he said as he +once touched a patient. In this particular instance the honest +skepticism of the king was outweighed by the faith of the suppliant. We +are assured that the person was cured. The royal touch was discontinued +after the death of Queen Anne. + +The list of healers began early and is by no means ended now. The power +of the healer was sometimes associated with his official station in the +Church, sometimes due to his saintly character and often enough only to +a personal influence, the fact of which is well enough established, +though there can be in the nature of things no finality in the estimate +of his real efficacy. George Fox performed some cures; John Wesley also. +In the seventeenth century one Valentine Greatrakes seems to have been +the center of such excitements and reported healings as Alexander Dowie +and others in our own time and it is finally through the healer rather +than the saint or the king or shrine or relic that we approach the +renaissance of mental and faith healing in our own time. + + + + +IV + +THE APPROACH TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MARY BAKER EDDY + + +There is, however, another stage in this long line of development which +needs to be considered since it supplies a double point of departure; +once for the most outstanding healing cult in our time--Christian +Science--and once for the greatly enlarged use of suggestion in modern +medical practice, and that is mesmerism and "animal magnetism." + + +_Mesmerism a Point of Departure for Modern Healing Cults_ + +Paracelsus[17] may be taken as a starting point just here. He is known +in the history of medicine "for the impetus he gave to the development +of pharmaceutical chemistry, but he was also the author of a visionary +and theosophic system of philosophy." He believed in the influence of +the stars upon men, but he enlarged upon the old astrologic faiths. "He +believed the human body was endowed with a double magnetism, one portion +attracted to itself the planets and was nourished by them, the result of +which was the mental powers, the other portion attracted and +disintegrated the elements, from which process resulted the body." His +world, therefore, was a world of competitive attractions. He believed +the well had an influence over the sick through magnetism and used the +magnet in his practice. + +[Footnote 17: A German-Swiss physician and alchemist, b. 1493, d. 1541. +These quotations, partly from authorities on faith healing and partly +from the history of Spiritualism, illustrate the underground connection +in this whole region.] + +"This dual theory of magnetic cures, that of the magnetic influence of +men on men and of the magnet on man, was prevalent for over a century." +"It is, then, upon these ideas--the radiation from all things, but +especially the stars, magnets and human bodies, of a force which would +act in all things else, and which was in each case directed by the +indwelling spirit, together with the conception of a perpetual contact +between reciprocal and opposing forces--that the mysticism of the +seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly depends."[18] + +[Footnote 18: Podmore, "Modern Spiritualism," Vol. I, p. 45. I am in +debt also to Cutten for general information and some quoted paragraphs.] + +These ideas were adopted by a group of men who are now only names for +us. The phenomena of magnetism fascinated them and supplied them +analogies. There is, they thought, an all-prevailing magnetic influence +which binds together not only celestial and terrestrial bodies, but all +living things. Life and death were for them simply the registry of the +ebbing and flowing of these immaterial tides and they ended by +conceiving a vital fluid which could be communicated from person to +person and in the communication of which the sick could be healed--the +driftwood of their lore has come down to us on the tides of time; we +still speak of magnetic personalities--and they sought in various ways +to control and communicate these mysterious forces. + +One of them invented steel plates which he applied to the body as a cure +for disease. He taught his system to Mesmer who made, however, one +marked advance upon the technique of his predecessors and gave his name +to his methods; he produced his results through physical contacts and +passes. But he shared with his predecessors and stated with that compact +clearness of which the French language is so capable even when dealing +with obscure matters, that there is a "fluid so universally diffused and +connected as to leave nowhere any void, whose subtlety is beyond any +comparison and which by its nature is capable of receiving, propagating +and communicating all impressions of movement.... This reciprocal action +is subject to mechanical laws at present unknown."[19] This fluid in its +action governs the earth and stars and human action. + +[Footnote 19: Price's "Historique de facts relatifs du Magnetisme +Animal," quoted by Podmore.] + +He originated the phrase "Animal Magnetism" and was, though he did not +know it, the originator of hypnotism; until well within our own time +mesmerism was the accepted name for this whole complex group of +phenomena. The medical faculties examined his claims but were not +willing to approve them, but this made no difference in Mesmer's +popularity. He had so great a following as to be unable to deal with +them personally. He deputed his powers to assistants, arranged a most +elaborate apparatus and surrounded his whole procedure with a dramatic +setting of stained glass, mirrored and scented rooms and mysterious +music. The result of it all naturally, as far as his patients were +concerned, was marked excitements and hysterias. They had often to be +put into padded rooms. And yet the result of all this murky confusion +was said to be numbers of marked cures. He was investigated by the +French government and two commissions presented their reports, neither +of which was favourable. Imagination, not magnetism, they said, +accounted for the results. His popularity wore away markedly when he +undertook to explain his method and reveal his secrets. He left Paris in +1815 and lapsed into obscurity. + + +_The Scientific Investigation of Mesmerism in France_ + +As has been said, there are two lines of development growing out of +Mesmer and his methods. Ten years after Mesmer left Paris Alexandre +Bertrand pointed out that after the elimination of errors due to fraud +or mal-observation, the results which Mesmer and his associates had +produced were due not to animal magnetism, but to expectation induced by +suggestion and intensified by the peculiar setting which Mesmer had +contrived for his so-called treatments. The schools of medicine were +slow to follow out Bertrand's discovery and it was not until something +like twenty years later, through the studies of Braid, that hypnotism +began to be taken seriously. + +But once the matter was brought broadly before them, the doctors began +to follow it through. Charcot, in the Salpetriere, used hypnotic +suggestion for the correction of abnormal mental and nervous states. The +psychologists took up the matter and hypnotic suggestion has come to be +not only a legitimate subject for the investigation of the student and +an accepted method in correction of abnormal mental states, but as it +were a window through which we are beginning to see deeply into +unsuspected depths and intricacies of personality. + +Modern faith healing cults, however, have not come to us down this line, +though the studies of Bertrand, Braid, Charcot, Du Bois and their +associates supply the interpretative principles for any real +understanding of them. Mesmerism naturally appealed to the type of mind +most easily attracted by the bizarre and the mysterious. There are +always amongst us the credulous and curious who find little enough +either to awe or inspire them in the broad sweep of law, or in such +facts as lie open to the light of reason. Such as these are impatient of +discipline, eager to free themselves from the sequence of cause and +effect; they are impressed by the occult powers and seek short cuts to +health, or goodness, or wisdom. They delight to build up, out of their +own inner consciousness, systems which have little contact with reality +and which, through their very tenuousness, are as incapable of disproof +as through their disengagement from normal experience they are capable +of verification. They are the people of what the alienist calls the +"idee fixe." Everything for them centers about one idea; they have one +key and one only to the marvellous complexity of life. Such a temper as +this naturally disassociates them from reality and makes them +contemptuous of contradictory experiences. + + +_Mesmerism is Carried to America; Phineas Quimby an Important Link in a +Long Chain_ + +America has been far too rich in such a temper as this and it was never +more so than in the forties and the fifties of the last century. +Mesmerism crossed the ocean and while Braid and later Bernheim and +Charcot were following it through on sound, psychological lines and +bringing to bear upon it great insight and scientific discipline, it +fell here into the hands of charlatans and adventurers. Phineas +Parkhurst Quimby, best known for his connection with Mary Baker Eddy, +hardly deserves the name of charlatan, though he was dangerously near +being just that. He belonged to the border-land regions in thought and +propaganda and he did give to the whole complex movement which we have +been considering a direction which has played a relatively great part in +its later development. He had a shrewd mind which ranged over wide +regions; he is a pretty typical example of the half-disciplined, +forceful and original personality which has played so large a part in +American life. The New England of his time--Quimby was born in New +Hampshire and spent his life in Maine--was giving itself whole-heartedly +to a mysticism bounded on the one side (its higher and more +representative side) by Emerson and the transcendentalists and on the +other by healers, prophets of strange creeds and dreamers of Utopias. +Phrenology, mind reading, animal magnetism, clairvoyance, all had their +prophets. + +Quimby belongs to this succession. His education was meagre, he did not +even know how to spell according to the dictionary or punctuate +according to the grammar.[20] He had his own peculiar use of words--a +use by which Mary Baker Eddy was doubtless greatly influenced. He had +marked mechanical ability and a real passion for facts. He was an +original thinker, little in debt to books for his ideas though he was +undoubtedly influenced by the temper of his environment to which +reference has already been made. He had a speculative, but not a trained +interest in religion and dealt freely with the orthodoxy of his time +constrained by no loyalty to the accepted faith and no critical +knowledge of its content. "Truth" and "Science" were characteristic +words for him and he shared his speculations and conclusions freely with +his disciples. + +[Footnote 20: What is here said of Quimby is condensed from Dresser's +"The Quimby Manuscripts."] + + +_Quimby is Led to Define Sickness as Wrong Belief_ + +In his early thirties he was supposed to be dying of consumption and +suffered much from excessive medication. He recovered through an +emotional crisis but does not seem to have followed out the possible +suggestion of his recovery. He turned instead to mesmerism and travelled +about with one Lucius Burkmer over whom he had strong hypnotic +influence. When hypnotized Burkmer (or Burkman) claimed the power to +look as through a window into the bodies of Quimby's patients and +discover, often with illuminating detail, their condition; a good many +reputed cures followed. The testimonials to these cures and to the +strange powers of Burkmer are themselves an arresting testimony to the +lengths people go in the face of what they do not understand. "I have +good reason to believe that he can discern the internal structure of an +animal body and if there be anything morbid or defective therein detect +and explain it.... He can go from point to point without passing through +intermediate space. He passes from Belfast [Maine] to Washington or from +the earth to the moon ... swifter than light, by a single act of +volition."[21] + +[Footnote 21: "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 38.] + +Quimby had too alert an intelligence to rest content with the merely +occult. He came to believe that Burkmer only saw what the patient +thought, could do no more than describe the patient's idea of his own +state, or else report the "common allopathic belief about the disease in +question," and the cure, he was persuaded, was not in the medicine +prescribed but in "the confidence of the doctor or medium." (Note that +Quimby here associates the cures produced by the medical faculty and his +own cures in one sweeping generalization.) What he was really dealing +with then was "belief." It might be the belief of the doctor or the +patient or the belief of his friends--but sickness was only "belief." +This also was a sweeping generalization but it becomes intelligible as +we follow the process by which Quimby reached his conclusions and it +helps us to understand the significance of Belief as one of the key +words of Christian Science. Quimby was led to identify sickness and +wrong beliefs through this analysis of mesmeric diagnosis and health and +right belief through his own experiences as a healer. He had no training +to help him to an understanding of the real facts which lay behind the +belief in sickness. He became a skillful diagnostician of states of mind +and a healer of such diseases as could be so treated. But he knew, +scientifically, no more of what lay behind it all than a ploughman may +know of what lies beneath the furrows he turns. + + +_Quimby Develops His Theories_ + +Mrs. Eddy took over the catch-words of his system and its loose +assumptions, and a reasonably careful comparison of the Quimby +manuscripts and "Science and Health" shows not only Mrs. Eddy's +fundamental and never honestly acknowledged and finally categorically +denied indebtedness to Quimby, but the confusion which Quimby's rather +striking and original philosophy suffered at her hands. Beginning with +his persuasion that health and sickness are phases of belief Quimby +discarded mesmerism altogether and addressed himself to the minds of his +patients. He had doubtless a keen intuitive knowledge of human nature +and its morbid fancies and he was dealing generally with neurotic +temperaments over which he exercised a strong and helpful power of +suggestion. His explanation of disease--that it is a wrong +belief--becomes grotesque enough when he comes down to detail. This, for +example, is his diagnosis of Bronchitis--"You listen or eat this belief +or wisdom [evidently that Bronchitis is real] as you would eat your +meals. It sets rather hard upon your stomach; this disturbs the error of +your body and a cloud appears in the sky.... The elements of the body of +your belief are shaken, earth is lit up by the fire of your error, the +heat rises, the heaven or mind grows dark ... the lightning of hot +flashes shoot to all parts of the solar system of your belief. At last +the winds or chills strike the earth or surface of the body, a cold +clammy sensation passes over you. This changes the heat into a sort of +watery substance which works its way into the channels and pores to the +head and stomach."[22] + +[Footnote 22: "Quimby Manuscripts," p. 118.] + +This is Quimby at his worst but beneath it is the germ of the method and +philosophy which have attained so luxurious a growth--the explaining, +that is, of disease in terms of wrong belief. Inevitably in the +elaboration of all this Quimby reached out to include religion and +theology and even created his own distinctive metaphysics. He +distinguished between the mind and spirit; he must of course discover in +personality a power superior to fluctuating mental attitudes. He called +his system a science since he was trying to reduce it to a system and +discover its laws. He found a parallel to what he was doing in the +narratives of healing in the Christian Gospels and claimed Christ as the +founder of his science.[23] + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, p. 185.] + +All belief opposed to his was "error"; "Truth" was naturally opposed to +error. He subordinates the testimony of the senses to the necessities of +his system; he defines God variously as Wisdom, as Truth, possibly as +Principle though his use of the word Principle is far more intelligible +than Mrs. Eddy's.[24] He increasingly identifies his system and the +teachings of Jesus and ends by calling it "Christian Science."[25] + +[Footnote 24: "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 309.] + +[Footnote 25: _Ibid._, p. 388.] + +In substance in the more than 400 closely printed pages of the Quimby +manuscripts as now edited we discover either the substance or the +suggestion of all that Mrs. Eddy later elaborated. Now all this, +confused as it is, brings us to the threshold of a distinct advance in +mental and faith healing. + + +_Mary Baker Eddy Comes Under Quimby's Influence_ + +Practically faith and mental healing had depended, till Quimby took it +up, upon persons or objects. The saint or the healer worked through +personal contact; the shrine must be visited, the relic be touched. Such +a system was naturally dependent upon accidents of person or place; it +would not be widely extended nor continued nor made the basis of +self-treatment. But if what lay behind the whole complex group of +phenomena could be systematized and given real power of popular appeal +through its association with religion it would possess a kind of +continuing independence, conditioned only by the willingness of people +to be persuaded of the truth of its philosophy or to answer to its +religious appeal. It would then become a mental and spiritual +discipline to be written into books and taught by the initiated. As far +as it could be associated with religion it would become the basis of a +cult and it would have an immense field. + +All difficult or chronic or obscure illnesses would offer an opportunity +to its propagandists, and the necessary obscurities and irrationalities +of such a system would simply be, for the minds to which it would +naturally appeal, added elements of power. Any system which has sickness +for its field and credulity for its reinforcement and a specious show of +half truth for its philosophic form and religion to give its sanction +and authority is assured, to begin with, of a really great following. +Its very weaknesses will be its strength. It will work best as it is +neither clear nor simple--though it must make a show of being both. And +if, in addition, there is somewhere at the heart of it force and truth +enough to produce a certain number of cures it will go on. What it fails +to do will be forgotten or ignored in the face of what it really does +do. + +Now Quimby, through his own native force and such a combination of +circumstances as occurs only once in long periods of time, stood upon +the threshold of just such a revolution in the history of faith and +mental healing as this. He anticipated the method and supplied the +material, but he either did not or could not popularize it. He was not +selfish enough to monopolize it, not shrewd enough to commercialize it, +and, maybe, not fanatic enough to make it a cult. He was more interested +in his own speculations than in making converts and without one of those +accidents which become turning points in a movement nothing would have +probably come of his work save its somewhat vague and loose continuance +in the thought and teaching of a small group. (It is doubtful if New +Thought, which as we shall see grew out of his work through his +association with the Dressers, would have come to much without the +stimulus of Christian Science against which it reacted.) Some one was +needed to give the whole nebulous system organization and driving force +and above all to make a cult of it. + + +_Outstanding Events of Her Life: Her Early Girlhood_ + +Mary Baker Eddy did just this and Christian Science is the result. It is +idle to calculate the vanished alternatives of life but in all +probability she never would have done it without Quimby. She and her +followers would do far better to honestly recognize this indebtedness. +It would now make little difference with either the position of their +leader or the force of their system but it would take a pretty keen +weapon out of the hands of their critics and give them the added +strength which thoroughgoing honesty always gives to any cause. There +is, on the other hand, little likelihood that Quimby's persuasions would +ever have carried beyond the man himself if he had not found in Mrs. +Eddy so creative a disciple. + +The outstanding facts of Mary Baker Eddy's life are too well known to +need much retelling here. The story of her life and the history of +Christian Science as told by Georgine Milmine in _McClure's Magazine_ +during the years of 1907-8 is final. It is based upon thorough +investigation, original documents and an exhaustive analysis of facts. +The facts brought out in the various litigations in which Mrs. Eddy and +the church have been involved confirm both the statements and +conclusions of this really distinctive work. The official life by Sibyl +Wilbur (whose real name seems to be O'Brien) is so coloured as to be +substantially undependable. It touches lightly or omits altogether those +passages in Mrs. Eddy's life which do not fit in with the picture which +Mrs. Eddy herself and the church desire to be perpetuated. + +Mrs. Eddy was descended from a shrewd, industrious and strongly +characterized New England stock. Her father was strongly set in his +ways, narrow and intense in his religious faith. Mary Baker was a +nervous, high-strung girl, unusually attractive in personal appearance, +proud, precocious, self-conscious, masterful. She was subject to +hysterical attacks which issued in states of almost suspended animation. +Her family feared these attacks and to prevent them humoured her in +every way. In due time she joined the Tilton Congregational Church. She +says herself that she was twelve years old at the time, but the records +of the church make her seventeen. The range of her education is debated. +Mrs. Eddy herself claims a rather ambitious curriculum. "My father," she +says, "was taught to believe that my brain was too large for my body and +so kept me out of school, but I gained book knowledge with far less +labour than is usually requisite. At ten years of age I was familiar +with Lindley Murray's Grammar, as with the Westminster Catechism and +the latter I had to repeat every Sunday. My favourite studies were +Natural Philosophy, logic and moral science. From my brother Albert I +received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. After +my discovery of Christian Science most of the knowledge I gleaned from +school books vanished like a dream. Learning was so illumined that +grammar was eclipsed. Etymology was divine history, voicing the idea of +God in man's origin and signification. Syntax was spiritual order and +unity. Prosody the song of angels and no earthly or inglorious +theme."[26] + +[Footnote 26: "Retrospection and Introspection," 1909.] + + +_Her Education: Shaping Influences_ + +It is not fair to apply critical methods to one who confesses that most +of the knowledge she had gleaned from school books vanished like a +dream, but there is much in Mrs. Eddy's writing to bear out her +statement. Those who knew her as a girl report her as irregular in +attendance upon school, inattentive during its sessions and far from +knowing either Greek or Latin or Hebrew. "According to these schoolmates +Mary Baker completed her education when she had finished Smith's Grammar +and reached Long Division in Arithmetic." The official biography makes +much of an intellectual friendship between the Rev. Enoch Corser, then +pastor of the Tilton Congregational Church, and Mary Baker. "They +discussed subjects too deep to be attractive to other members of the +family. Walking up and down in the garden, this fine old-school +clergyman and the young poetess as she was coming to be called, threshed +out the old philosophic speculations without rancour or irritation."[27] + +[Footnote 27: "The Life of Mary Baker Eddy," Sibyl Wilbur, 4th edition. +Christian Science Publishing Company.] + +There is little reason to doubt her real interest in the pretty rigid +Calvinistic theology of her time. Indeed, we could not understand her +final line of religious development without taking that into +consideration. Milmine suggests other forces which would naturally have +influenced a sensitive and curious girl; for example, the current +interest in animal magnetism, a subject which dominated certain aspects +of her thinking to the end. Milmine suggests also that she may have been +considerably influenced by the peculiar beliefs of the Shakers who had a +colony near Tilton. The Shakers regarded Ann Lee, their founder, as the +female principle of God and greater than Christ. They prayed always to +"Our Father and Mother which art in heaven." They called Ann Lee the +woman of the Apocalypse, the God-anointed woman. For her followers she +was Mother Ann, as Mary Baker was later Mother Eddy. Ann Lee declared +that she had the gift of healing. The Shakers also made much of a +spiritual illumination which had the right of way over the testimony of +the senses. The Shakers called their establishment the Church of Christ +and the original foundation the Mother Church. The Shakers forbade +audible prayer and enjoined celibacy. There are parallels enough here to +sustain Milmine's contention that Mary Baker was at least largely +influenced by suggestions from her peculiar group of neighbours. + + +_Her Unhappy Fortunes. She is Cured by Quimby. An Unacknowledged Debt_ + +Mary Baker married George Washington Glover at the age of twenty-two. +She was soon left a widow and her only son was born after his father's +death. The story of the years which follow is unhappy. She was poor, +dependent upon relatives whose patience she tried and whose hospitality +was from time to time exhausted. Her attacks of hysteria continued and +grew more violent. Her father sometimes rocked her to sleep like a +child. The Tiltons built a cradle for her which is one of the traditions +of this unhappy period of her life. She tried mesmerism and clairvoyance +and heard rappings at night. + +She married again, this time a Dr. Daniel Patterson, a travelling +dentist. He never made a success of anything. They were miserably poor +and his marriage was no more successful than most of his other +enterprises. He was captured, though as a civilian, during the Civil War +and spent one or two years in a southern prison. Futile efforts were +made at a reconciliation and in 1873 Mrs. Patterson obtained a divorce +on the grounds of desertion. Meanwhile she had been separated from her +son, of whom she afterward saw so little that he grew up, married and +made his own way entirely apart from his mother. + +In 1861 Mrs. Patterson's physical condition was so desperate that she +appealed to Quimby. Her husband had had some interest in homeopathy and +she was doubtless influenced by the then peculiar theories of the +homeopathic school. (Indeed she claimed to be a homeopathic practitioner +without a diploma.) She had had experience enough with drugs to make her +impatient and suspicious of current methods of orthodox medication. +Under Quimby's treatment she was physically reborn and apparently +spiritually as well. It is necessary to dwell upon all these well-known +details to understand what follows and the directions which her mind now +took. Milmine's analysis is here penetrating and conclusive. She had +always been in revolt against her environment. Her marriages had been +unhappy; motherhood had brought her nothing; she had been poor and +dependent; her strong will and self-assertive personality had been +turned back upon herself. + +She had found no satisfaction in the rigid theologies of the time. She +had sought help from accepted religion and religion had had nothing to +give her. We have to read between the lines and especially to evaluate +all this period in the light of "Science and Health" itself to +reconstruct the movement of her inner life, but beyond a doubt her +thought had played about the almost tragic discrepancy between her own +experiences and the love and goodness of God. She had known pain and +unhappiness in acute forms and had found nothing in what she had been +taught ample enough to resolve her doubts or establish her faith. + +She found in Quimby's philosophy a leading which she eagerly followed. +Now for the first time she is really set free from herself. A truer +sense of dramatic values would have led Mrs. Eddy herself to have made +more of the unhappy period which began to come to an end with her visit +to Quimby and would lead her disciples now to acknowledge it more +honestly. It is a strong background against which to set what follows +and give colour by contrast to her later life. The twice-born from Saul +of Tarsus to John Bunyan have dwelt much upon their sins and sorrows, +seeking thereby more greatly to exalt the grace of God by which they had +been saved. Mary Baker Eddy came strongly to be persuaded that she had +saved herself and consequently not only greatly underestimated her debt +to Quimby, but emptied her own experiences of dramatic contrasts to make +them, as she supposed, more consistent, and her disciples have followed +her. + +As a matter of fact, though her life as a whole is not an outstanding +asset for Christian Science and is likely to grow less so, one must +recognize the force of a conviction which changed the neurotic Mrs. +Patterson of the fifties and sixties into the masterful and successful +woman of the eighties and nineties. She belongs also to the fellowship +of the twice-born and instead of minimizing the change those who seek to +understand her, as well as those who seek to exalt her, would do well to +make more of it. She did that herself to begin with. No master ever had +for a time a more grateful disciple. She haunted Quimby's house, read +his manuscripts, wrote letters for the paper, "dropped into verse" and +through her extravagance "brought ridicule upon Quimby and herself." + +Quimby died in 1866, accompanied to his last resting place by a tribute +in verse from his grateful pupil. Mrs. Eddy had at the time apparently +no thought of continuing his work except in a most modest way. She wrote +Julius Dresser who had come under Quimby's influence, suggesting that he +would step forward into the place vacated. "I believe you would do a +vast amount of good and are more capable of occupying his place than any +other I know of."[28] She asked Dresser's help in recovering from a fall +which she had just had on the ice and which had so injured her, as she +supposed, to make her the helpless cripple that she was before she met +Quimby. This fall is worth dwelling upon for a bit, for it really marks +a turning place in Mrs. Eddy's life. In her letter to Dresser she says +that the physician attending "said I have taken the last step I ever +should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone and will walk."[29] +Sometime later in a letter to the _Boston Post_ Mrs. Eddy said, "We +recovered in a moment of time from a severe accident considered fatal by +the regular physicians." There is a considerable difference between two +days and a moment of time and the expression of a determination to walk +in the Dresser letter and the testimony to an instantaneous cure in the +_Boston Post_ letter. Dr. Cushing, the physician who attended Mrs. Eddy +at the time, gives still a third account. He treated her, he says, over +a period of almost two weeks and left her practically recovered. He also +attended her in a professional capacity still later and offers all this +in a sworn statement on the basis of his record books. There is a very +considerable advantage in a philosophy which makes thought the only +reality, for, given changing thought and a complacent recollection, +facts may easily become either plastic or wholly negligible. + +[Footnote 28: "A History of the New Thought Movement," Dresser, p. 110.] + +[Footnote 29: _Ibid._] + + +_She Develops Quimby's Teachings Along Lines of Her Own_ + +The real significance of this much debated but otherwise unimportant +episode is that it seems to have thrown Mrs. Eddy upon her own +resources, for now that Quimby was dead she begins to develop what she +had received from him through both experience and teaching along lines +of her own. She had found a formula for the resolution of problems, both +physical and mental, which had hag-ridden her for years. She had a +natural mental keenness, a speculative mind, a practical shrewdness (the +gift of her New England ancestors) and an ample field. The theology, the +medical science and indeed the philosophy or psychology of the New +England of the sixties contributed strongly, through their limitations, +to the growth of bizarre systems which had in them elements of truth. We +shall need to come back to this again in any evaluation of Christian +Science as a whole, but we cannot understand the rapid development of +the movement of which Christian Science was just one aspect without +taking all this into consideration. + +Medicine itself has been greatly revolutionized within the last fifty +years. While Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy was finding her unhappy +way through border-land regions into a cloudy light, Louis Pasteur, +sitting, in the phrase of Huxley, "as humbly as a little child before +the facts of life," was making those investigations in bacteriology +which were to be, in some ways, the greatest contribution of the +nineteenth century to the well-being of humanity. He was following +patiently the action of microscopic organisms, especially in their +relation to health, discovering the secret of contagion and infection, +outlining methods of defense against the attacks of these invisible +armies, finding the true basis for inoculation, extending its operation, +robbing hospitals of their terrors and surrounding surgery with +safeguards heretofore undreamt of, literally performing miracles (in his +control of swine plague and the like), and for the want of another +subject preparing to experiment upon himself for the prevention of +hydrophobia, and in doing it all in the most simple and humble way, +naively unconscious of his own fame and living from first to last in a +noble and comparative poverty which contrasts dramatically with the +material well-being for which Mrs. Eddy was so eager. Nothing of this +had ever come into Mrs. Eddy's field or those whom she addressed. With +all the aid which the modern physician has at his control, diagnosis is +still a difficult matter, physicians confess it themselves. There is +still, with all the resource of modern medical science, a residuum of +hopeless and obscure cases which baffle the physician. That residuum was +very much larger fifty years ago than it is now. + + +_She Begins to Teach and to Heal_ + +The typical Protestant religious experience, as we have seen, was not +great enough to contain all the facts of life. The molten passion of an +earlier Calvinism had hardened down into rigidities which exalted the +power of God at the cost of human helplessness. There was no adequate +recognition among the devout of the sweep of law. Everything that +happened was a special Providence and it was hard enough to fit the +trying facts of life into an understanding of Divine Love when there was +apparently so much in life in opposition to Divine Love. + +A very great deal of the ferment of the time was just the endeavour to +find some way out of all this and the group of which Mrs. Eddy was a +part were really the first to try to find their way out except as roads +of escape which were, on the whole, not ample enough had been sought by +the theological liberalism of the time of which Unitarianism was the +most respectable and accepted form. There are, as has been said, curious +underground connections through all this region. We find homeopathy, +spiritualism, transcendentalism, theological liberalism and faith +healing all tied up in one bundle. + +The line which Mrs. Eddy now came to follow is, on the whole, clear +enough. She becomes in her turn teacher and healer, giving her own +impress and colour to what she called the science she taught, claiming +it more and more as her own and not only forgetting, but denying as she +went on, her indebtedness to any one else. The whole thing gradually +became in her mind a distinct revelation for which the ages had been +waiting and this revelation theory is really the key to the +contradictions and positive dishonesties which underlie the authorized +account of the genesis of Christian Science. She associated herself with +one of the more promising of her pupils who announced himself as Dr. +Kennedy, with Mrs. Eddy somewhat in the background. Kennedy was the +agent, Mrs. Eddy supplied him with the material of what was a mixed +method of teaching and healing. She had always been desperately poor; +now for the first time she had a respectable bank account. + +There were corresponding changes in her personality and even her +physique. She began to give lessons, safeguarding her instructions from +the very first in such ways as to make them uncommonly profitable. Her +pupils paid $100 for the course and agreed also to give her a percentage +of the income from their practice. In the course of litigation which +afterward follows, the courts pronounced that they did not find in her +course of instruction anything which could be "in any way of value in +fitting the defendant as a competent and successful practitioner of any +intelligible art or method of healing the sick." The court, therefore, +was of the opinion that "consideration for the agreement had wholly +failed." In a sense the court was mistaken. Mrs. Eddy was giving her +disciples something which, whether it fitted them to be competent and +successful practitioners of any intelligible art or method of healing +the sick, or no, was of great financial advantage both to them and to +their teacher. She afterward raised her tuition fee to $300 and stated +that God had shown her in multitudinous ways the wisdom of this +decision. + + +_Early Phases of Christian Science_ + +Everything was, to begin with, a matter of personal relationship between +Mrs. Eddy and her students. They constitute a closely related group, the +pupils themselves extravagant in their gratitude to their teacher. There +were, of course, schisms, jealousies, recriminations, litigation, but +none the less, the movement went on. The first attempt at organization +was made at Lynn in 1875. A hall was rented, meetings were held in the +evening, the society was known as the "Christian Scientists" and as an +organization Christian Science came into the world. The first edition of +"Science and Health" was also published in 1875. There was difficulty in +finding a publisher; those who assisted Mrs. Eddy financially were +losers in the enterprise. They were never reimbursed, though "Science +and Health" afterward became the most remunerative single publication in +the world. Two years later Mrs. Glover (for after her divorce from +Patterson she had taken her earlier married name) married Gilbert Eddy +and so took the name by which she is best known to the world. + +There is much in this period of Mrs. Eddy's life to indicate that she +had not yet reached an inner serenity of faith. She was never able to +free herself from a perverted belief in animal magnetism or mesmerism +which showed itself in fear rather than faith. She believed herself +persecuted and if she did not believe in witchcraft she believed in +something curiously like it. Indeed, to Mrs. Eddy belonged the rather +curious distinction of having instigated the last trial for witchcraft +in the United States and with a fitting sense of historic propriety she +staged it at Salem. The judge dismissed the case, saying that it was not +within the power of the Court to control the defendant's mind. The case +was appealed, the appeal waived and the whole matter rests as a curious +instance in the records of the Salem court. + +Mrs. Eddy does not appear as the plaintiff in the case. The complainant +is one of her students, but Mrs. Eddy was behind the complaint, the real +reason for which is apparently that the defendant had refused to pay +tuition and royalty on his practice and was interfering with the work of +the group of which Mrs. Eddy was leader. The incident has value only as +showing the lengths to which the mind may be led once it has detached +itself from the steadying influences of experience-tested reality. It is +interesting also to note that in one way and another Mrs. Eddy and her +church have been involved in more litigation than any other religious +teacher or religious movement of the time. + + +_She Writes "Science and Health" and Completes the Organization of Her +Church_ + +Nothing apparently came of the first tentative organization in 1875. The +first incorporated Church of Christ Scientist was chartered in 1879 with +twenty-six charter members and Boston as its seat. Meetings of this +church were held, to begin with, in Lynn and Boston, but Lynn was not +friendly to the new enterprise and the Boston group became the center of +further growth. Mrs. Eddy left Lynn finally in 1882 and during all the +next period the history of Christian Science is the history of the +Mother Church in Boston and of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. +Mrs. Eddy suffered no dissent, her pupils either followed or left her. +She was the controlling force in the whole movement. She began to +surround herself with a certain mystery and delighted in theatrical +effects. She had written and rewritten "Science and Health" until it +began to take final form. The _Journal of Christian Science_ became the +official organ of Mrs. Eddy's movement as "Science and Health" was its +gospel. + +The movement reached beyond Boston and New England and invaded the West. +It was now so outstanding as to create general public interest. The +churches began to take notice of it and indeed, whatever has been for +the last twenty years characteristic of Christian Science was then +actively in action. What follows is the familiar story of Mrs. Eddy's +own personal movements, her withdrawal to Concord, her growing +detachment from the movement which she nevertheless ruled with an iron +hand, the final organization of the church itself along lines wholly +dictated by its leader, the deepening of public interest in the movement +itself, Mrs. Eddy's removal from Concord to Newton and her death. She +left behind her the strongest and most driving organization built up by +any religious leader of her time. Of all those, who since the Wesleys +have inaugurated and carried through a distinct religious movement, only +Alexander Campbell is in the same class with Mrs. Eddy and Campbell had +behind him the traditional force of the Protestantism to which he gave +only a slightly new direction and colouring. Mrs. Eddy's contributions +are far more distinct and radical. + +We need, then, to turn from her life, upon whose lights and shadows, +inconsistencies and intricacies, we have touched all too lightly, to +seek in "Science and Health" and the later development of Christian +Science at once the secret of the power of the movement and its +significance for our time. + + + + +V + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A PHILOSOPHY + + +Christian science has a considerable group of authorized publications +and a well-conducted department of publicity. Its public propaganda is +carried on by means of occasional lectures, always extremely well +advertised and through its reading rooms and periodicals. Its +unadvertised propaganda is carried on, naturally, by its adherents. +Every instance of obscure or protracted illness offers it an opportunity +and such opportunities are by no means neglected. But the supreme +authority in Christian Science is Mary Baker Eddy's work "Science and +Health." This is read at every Sunday service and is the basis of all +lectures and explanatory advertisements. In general its exponents do not +substantially depart from the teachings of its book, nor, such is the +discipline of the cult, do they dare to. There are doubtless such +modifications of its more extreme and impossible contentions as every +religion of authority experiences. Christian Science cannot remain +unaffected by discussion and the larger movements of thought. But it has +not as yet markedly departed from the doctrines of its founder and must +thereby be judged. + +The book in its final form represents a considerable evolution. The +comparison of successive editions reveals an astonishing amount of +matter which has been discarded, although there has been no real +modification of its fundamental principles. References to malicious +animal magnetism which fill a large place in the earlier editions, are +almost wholly wanting in the last, and there has been a decided progress +toward a relative simplicity of statements. The book is doubtless much +in debt to Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser, Mr. Wiggins, who brought to the +revision of Mrs. Eddy's writings a conscientious fidelity. One needs to +stand a good ways back from the book itself in order at all to get any +balanced view of its philosophy but, so seen, its fundamentals are +almost unexpectedly simple. + + +_Christian Science a Philosophy, a Theology, a Religion and a System of +Healing; General Conditions Which Have Lent it Power_ + +Christian Science is offered as a philosophy, a theology, a religion and +a method for the practical conduct of life and it needs to be considered +under each of these four heads. It demands also for any proper +understanding of it the backgrounds of Mrs. Eddy's peculiar temperament +and checkered history. It is a growth. For her fundamentals Mrs. Eddy +is, beyond reasonable debate, in debt to Quimby and in some ways +Quimby's original insights have suffered at her hands. None the less, in +its final form "Science and Health" is what Mrs. Eddy has made it and it +is what it is because she was what she was. She shared with her own +generation an absorbing interest in fundamental theological problems. +She inherited a religion which has reduced the whole of life to rigid +and on the whole too narrow theological formulae. She was not able to fit +her experience into the formula which her faith supplied and yet, on the +other hand, her faith exercised a controlling influence over her life. +She was in a small and pathetic way a kind of nineteenth century Job +grappling with the old, old question given sin and, above all, pain and +suffering to find God. She could not adjust either Divine love or a just +Divine sovereignty to what she herself had been called upon to bear. A +natural tendency toward the occult and the desperate willingness of the +hopelessly sick to try anything which promises a cure, led her in many +directions. So much her biography explains. + +Quimby was the first teacher she found whose system seemed to offer any +key at all to the intellectual and spiritual puzzle in which she found +herself and when his system seemed to be proved for her by her recovery +from a chronic abnormal state, she thereafter followed and elaborated +what he suggested. Here a certain natural shrewdness and ingenuity of +mind stood her in good stead. She was helped by her own ignorances and +limitations. If she had been a trained thinker, familiar with a wide +range of philosophic speculation, she would never have dared write so +dogmatically; if she had been a great philosopher with the philosopher's +inclusive vision, she would never have dared build so much on +foundations so narrow. + +Mrs. Eddy was, unconsciously to herself, a type. She thought and felt +for multitudes of perplexed people unable to reconcile the more trying +experiences of life with what faith they had in the love and goodness of +God, unable on the other side to find the love and goodness of God in +the wide sweep of law and the orderly sequence of cause and effect, and +incapable under any circumstances of the patient analysis needed to +trace to all their sources the threads of their strangely mingled webs +of life; impressionable folk under the spell of words; speculative; at +once credulous and skeptical; intellectually alert enough to want to do +their own thinking and not intellectually disciplined enough to do it +well; persuaded that the Bible has both a message and authority and +unable to find in their traditional interpretation of it either a +satisfying message or an adequately directing authority; impatient of +discipline and pathetically eager for some short cut to happiness and +well-being. In a very signal way Mrs. Eddy has spoken and written for +this type particularly in American life. Her very style a liability as +it is, when tested by either logic or the accepted standards of good +writing, has, nevertheless, been an asset with those who have made her +their prophetess. + +The secret of Mrs. Eddy's power and the power of her system after her is +most largely in her essential intellectual and spiritual kinship with +such a temper and intellectual status as this, but she possessed also a +real measure of creative capacity, a marked reach of speculative power, +rare shrewdness and a masterful temper. Mrs. Eddy believed herself to +have found her system in the Old and New Testaments--but she did not. +She gradually built it up out of the suggestions which had been given +her to begin with; she gave it colour and direction from her own +experiences; she proved it to her own satisfaction in the healings which +seemed to result from it, then fitted it all as best she could into the +framework of her inherited Christian faith and read its meanings back +into the Scriptures. It is a pseudo-philosophy pseudo-Christianized (if +one may use the word) by a curious combination of ingenuity, devotion, +main strength and even awkwardness. And though Christian Science is +carrying on to-day as a religion rather than as either a philosophy or a +system of healing, it will stand or fall on the intellectual side as a +philosophy and not as a religion. + + +_The Philosophic Bases of Christian Science_ + +It is professedly an idealistic monism based on carefully selected facts +and depending for its proof upon certain results in the experience of +those who accept it. An idealism because there is for Mrs. Eddy no +reality save in mind, a monism because there is for Mrs. Eddy only one +reality and that is God. For a definition of God she offers only +synonyms and affirmations though here perhaps she follows only the usual +procedure of theology. God is divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, +Spirit, Mind--and all these capitalized, for it makes a vast difference +in the philosophy of Christian Science whether such familiar words as +these are spelled with a capital letter or not. It would be possible +from Mrs. Eddy's own words to pretty effectually prove what has been +more than once claimed: that Christian Science does not offer a personal +God, but all our terminology in this region is necessarily somewhat +loose, though hers is excessively so. Some of her definitions of God are +as personal as the Westminster Catechism or the Thirty-nine Articles. +The writer believes, however, after such dispassionate consideration of +the philosophy of Christian Science as he is able to give, that it would +make absolutely no difference in its philosophic basis whether God were +conceived as a person or not. If the God of Christian Science be taken +merely as the exaltation of an abstract idealism or a philosophic +Absolute everything would be secured which is otherwise secured. + +Up to a certain point Christian Science marches with other idealistic +systems. From Plato down we have had philosophers a plenty, who have +sought to build for us a universe whose only realities are mind and its +attributes, or perhaps more technically, consciousness and its content. +It is truly a difficult enough matter to relate the world without and +the world within, once we begin thinking about it (though happily and in +the practical conduct of life this is not so hard as the philosophers +make out, otherwise we should be in a hopeless state), and it is natural +enough for one type of mind to simplify the problem by making the world +within the only world. Nor have there been wanting those who have sought +to reduce everything to a single reality whether matter or mind, and +ever since we have had theology at all a perplexed humanity has been +seeking to reconcile the goodness and the power of God with the sin and +sorrow of our troubled world. + +But Christian Science parts company soon enough with this great +fellowship of dreamers and philosophers and takes its own line. It +affirms consciousness and its content to be the only reality; it affirms +the divine Mind to be the ultimate and all-conditioning reality; it +affirms love and goodness to be the ultimate qualities of the divine +Mind, but it meets the problem of sin and evil by denying them any +reality at all. (Here it is in more or less accord with certain forms of +mysticism.) But even as Christian Science cuts this Gordian knot it +creates for itself another set of difficulties and involves itself in +those contradictions which will eventually be the undoing of it as a +philosophy. + + +_It Undertakes to Solve the Problem of Evil. Contrasted Solutions_ + +What Christian Science is seeking is an ideal order with a content of +unqualified good and it secures this by denying the reality of every +aspect of experience which either challenges or contradicts its own +idealism. What is distinctive, then, in Christian Science is not its +affirmations but its denials. All systems of philosophic idealism face +practically the same problem and offer various solutions. They most +commonly resolve evil of every sort--and evil is here used in so wide a +way as to include sin and pain and sorrow--into an ultimate good. + +Evil is thus an "unripe good," one stage in a process of evolution +which, when it has had its perfect and all-transforming way, will reveal +both moral and physical evil to have been no evil at all but simply +aspects of life, trying enough at the time and puzzling enough when +taken by themselves, but having their own distinct and contributory +value when considered in their relation to the final whole. Such an +approach as this does not in any wise diminish for the individual either +the reality of pain or the unhappy consequences of sin, but it does ask +him to judge the wisdom and love of God not by their passing phases but +by their outcome in the wealth and worth of character. + +Robert Browning sang this sturdily through a long generation riding down +its difficulties by the sheer force of an unconquerable optimism and +subduing argument to lyric passion. + + "The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; + What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; + On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. + + "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence + For the fullness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? + Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? + Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?" + +Others affirm the self-limitation of God.[30] In His respect for that +human freedom which is the basis of self-regulated personal action and +therefore an essential condition of character, He arrests Himself, as it +were, upon the threshold of human personality and commits His children +to a moral struggle justifying the inevitable incidents of moral defeat +by the greatness of the ends to be attained. A vast deal of what we call +evil--broadening evil to include not only moral defeat but also pain--is +either a consequence or a by-product of what Henry Churchill King calls +the fight for character. Such a solution as this is consistent with the +love of God and the moral order; whether it is consistent with a +thoroughgoing monism or not is another question. William James doubted +it and so frankly adopted Pluralism--which is perhaps just a way of +saying that we cannot reconcile the contending forces in our world order +with one over-all-controlling power--as his solution of the problem. + +[Footnote 30: Walker, for example, in his extremely suggestive Spiritual +Monism and Christian Theism.] + +Josiah Royce has valiantly maintained, through long and subtle argument, +the goodness of the whole despite the evil of the incidental. "All +finite life is a struggle with evil. Yet from the final point of view +the Whole is good. The Temporal Order contains at no one moment anything +that can satisfy. Yet the Eternal Order is perfect. We have all sinned, +and come short of the glory of God. Yet in just our life, viewed in its +entirety, the glory of God is completely manifest. These hard sayings +are the deepest expressions of the essence of true religion."[31] He +finds the root of evil in the dissatisfaction of the finite will--a +dissatisfaction which on the other hand is the secret of the eventual +triumph of good. + +[Footnote 31: "The World and the Individual," Royce, Vol. II, Chap. +9--passim.] + +We suffer also through our involution with "the interests and ideals of +vast realms of other conscious and finite lives whose dissatisfactions +become part of each individual man's life when the man concerned cannot +at present see how or why his own ideals are such as to make these +dissatisfactions his fate." We suffer also through our associations with +nature, none the less "this very presence of evil in the temporal order +is the condition of the perfection of the eternal order." He dismisses +definitely, in an argument still to be quoted, the conclusion of the +mystic that an "experience of evil is an experience of unreality ... an +illusion, a dream, a deceit" and concludes: "In brief, then, nowhere in +Time is perfection to be found. Our comfort lies in the knowledge of the +Eternal. Strengthened by that knowledge, we can win the most enduring of +temporal joys, the consciousness that makes us delight to share the +world's grave glories and to take part in its divine sorrows,--sure that +these sorrows are the means of the eternal triumph, and that these +glories are the treasures of the house of God. When once this comfort +comes home to us, we can run and not be weary, and walk and not faint. +For our temporal life is the very expression of the eternal triumph." + +One may gravely question whether philosophy has ever so completely made +out its case as Professor Royce thinks. He is affirming as the reasoned +conclusion of philosophy what is rather a faith than a demonstration, +but none the less, all honest thinking has hitherto been brave enough to +recognize the reality of evil and to test the power of God and His love +and goodness not by the actuality of present pain, or the confusion of +present sin, but rather by the power which He offers us of growing +through pain to health or else so bearing pain as to make it a real +contribution to character and of so rising above sin as to make +penitence and confession and the struggle for good and the achievement +of it also a contribution to character. So St. Paul assures us that all +things work together for good for those that love God. "The +willingness," says Hocking, "to confront every evil, in ourselves and +outside ourselves, with the blunt, factual conscience of Science; +willingness to pay the full causal price for the removal of the blemish; +this kind of integrity can never be dispensed with in any optimistic +program."[32] + +[Footnote 32: "The Meaning of God in Human Experience," p. 175.] + +Sir Henry Jones takes the same line. "The first requisite for the +solution of the contradiction between the demand of religion for the +perfection of God, and therefore the final and complete victory of the +good in the other, is the honest admission that the contradiction is +there, and inevitable; though possibly, like other contradictions, it is +there only to be solved."[33] + +[Footnote 33: "A Faith that Enquires," p. 45.] + + +_The Divine Mind and Mortal Mind_ + +Christian Science solves this problem, as has been said, by denying the +reality of evil, but since we have an abundance of testimony to pain and +sickness, Mrs. Eddy goes a step farther. She denies the reality of the +testimony of the senses wherever pain and sickness are concerned.[34] +(Mrs. Eddy's denial of the reality of sin is hardly parallel to her +denial of the reality of physical ills.) And here the word comes in +which is made to carry a heavier load than any one poor word was ever +burdened with before. All that is involved in the recognition of +physical ills and indeed all that is involved in the recognition of the +material side of existence is error. (Once fairly on her road Mrs. Eddy +makes a clean sweep of whatever stands in her way.) What one may call +the whole shadowed side of experience is not only ignored, it is denied +and yet before it can be explained away it has to be explained. It is, +in brief, for Mrs. Eddy and her followers the creation of mortal mind. +Mortal mind, she says, "is nothing claiming to be something; mythology; +error creating other errors; a suppositional material sense; ... that +which neither exists in science nor can be recognized by the spiritual +sense; sin; sickness; death."[35] + +[Footnote 34: "Science and Health," last edition, pp. 108, 120, 293, +488.] + +[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, p. 591.] + +Mortal mind is that side of us which accepts our entanglement in the +facts and forces of the world order and upon mortal mind so vaguely +conceived Mrs. Eddy throws the whole burden of responsibility for all +the unhappy aspects of experience and conditioning circumstances. She +gives it a surprising range of creative power. It has created +everything Mrs. Eddy does not like or believe in. In other words, there +is not one reality but two, one the reality of well-being, the other the +reality of unhappiness and suffering, but according to Mrs. Eddy the +first reality is the only real reality, the second is an unreal reality +which we ourselves create through false beliefs and which we may escape +at any moment by simply shifting the center of our creative idealism. +Mrs. Eddy makes what she means by mortal mind reasonably clear through +endless repetition and some analysis, but she never for a moment +accounts for its existence. It is no creation of what she calls the +divine Mind; indeed she says in substance that God is not conscious of +it at all; it lies entirely outside the range of His knowledge. (Page +243.) + +God is Good. Since He is good He cannot have created nor be responsible +for, nor even recognize pain, sorrow or suffering. "The Divine Mind +cannot suffer" (page 108, also page 335), "is not responsible for +physical and moral disasters" (page 119). God did not create matter (the +Father mind is not the father of matter) (page 257), for matter means +pain and death, nor do such things as these belong in any way to the +order of the Divine Mind. They have no admitted reality in Mrs. Eddy's +scheme of a true idealism. Man is "God's spiritual idea" and since he +belongs by right to an order in which there is neither sin nor sorrow +nor death, such things as these have no reality for him save as he +admits them. What really admits them is mortal mind, the agent of +another system of Belief in which humanity has in some way, which is +never really explained, become entangled, and we may apparently escape +from the one order to the other simply by a change in our beliefs. For +all the shadowed side of life has reality only as we accept or believe +in it; directly we cease to believe in it or deny it it ceases to be. + +It is, as near as one can make out, a myth, an illusion, whose +beginnings are lost in obscurity and which, for the want of the +revelation vouchsafed through her, has been continued from age to age by +the untaught or the misled. For example, Arsenic is not a poison, so we +are told again and again. It is only a poison because people think it +is;[36] it began to be a poison only because people thought it was, it +continues to be a poison only because the majority of people think it is +now and, such is the subtle and far-reaching influence of mind upon +mind, it will continue to be a poison as long as any one continues to +believe it to be. Directly we all believe that Arsenic is not a poison +it will be no poison. Poisons, that is, are the creation of mortal mind. +Pain is pain only through the same mistaken belief in the reality of it. +"By universal consent mortal belief has constituted itself a law to bind +mortals to sickness, sin and death." And so on at great length and +almost endless repetition. + +[Footnote 36: Page 178.] + + +_The Essential Limitations of Mrs. Eddy's System_ + +Since matter conditions us who were born to be unconditioned and since +matter is apparently the root of so many ills, the seat of so many +pains, matter goes with the rest. Mrs. Eddy is not always consistent in +her consideration of matter; sometimes she confines herself to saying +that there is neither sensation nor life in matter--which may be true +enough save as matter both affords the material for sensation and +conditions its forms, which is an immense qualification,--but again and +again she calls matter an illusion. Consistently the laws of physics and +chemistry should disappear with the laws of hygiene and medicine, but +Mrs. Eddy does not go so far as that though it would be difficult to +find a logical stopping place once you have taken this line. Mortal mind +is apparently the source of all these illusions. + +Mrs. Eddy's disposal of matter, along with her constant return to its +misleading mastery in experience is an outstanding aspect of her book. +The writer is inclined to believe that Mrs. Eddy's formula: "There is +... no matter in life and no life in matter," is an echo of Tyndall's +famous utterance--made about the time she was working with her +system--that he found "in matter the promise and potency of all life." +There is surprisingly little reference in "Science and Health" to +philosophic or scientific sources. Cutter's physiology is quoted in some +editions--an old textbook which the writer remembers to have found among +his mother's school books. There are a few references to popular +astronomy, but in general for Mrs. Eddy modern science does not exist +except in the most general way as the erroneous expression of error and +always with a small "s" as against the capital "S" of her own system. +Nor does she show any knowledge of other philosophic idealisms nor any +acquaintance with any solution of the problems she was facing save the +commonplaces of evangelical orthodoxy. "Science and Health" knows +nothing also of any medical science save the empirical methods of the +medical science of 1860 and 1870. + +But she cannot have been wholly uninfluenced--being a woman of an alert +mind--by the controversy which, in the seventies and eighties, was +raging about a pretty crass and literal materialism, and her writings +probably reflect--with a good deal of indirection--that controversy. +Here is a possible key to a good many things which are otherwise +puzzling enough. She is, in her own fashion, the defender of an +idealistic interpretation of reality and experience. Now all idealistic +systems have had to dispose of matter in some way. In general idealists +find in matter only the reflection in consciousness of the material +which sense experience supplies, and since the raw material is in every +way so different from the mental reflection, the idealist may defend his +position plausibly in assuming matter to be, in its phenomenal aspects, +really the creation of thought. But he must account for the persistency +of it and the consistency of experience so conditioned. He does this by +assuming the whole interrelated order to be held, as it were, in +solution, in some larger system of thought which really supplies for us +our environment and if he be both devout and consistent he calls this +the thought God.[37] In this way he solves his problem--at least to his +own satisfaction--and even supplies a basis for Theistic faith. But he +does not deny the working reality of his so-called material experiences +nor does he, like Mrs. Eddy, accept one aspect of this experience and +deny the other. This is philosophically impossible. + +[Footnote 37: So Royce in "The World and the Individual."] + +A thoroughgoing theistic monism must find in matter some aspect or other +of the self-revelation of God. It may be hard pressed to discover just +how the psychical is "stepped down" to the physical. (That is the +essential difficulty in all Creationism.) But something must be assumed +to get a going concern in any department of thought and there is much in +that resolution of matter into force and force into always more tenuous +and imponderable forms--which is the tendency of modern science--to +render this assumption less difficult to the rational imagination than +perhaps any other we are asked to make. When the final elements in +matter have become electrons and the electron is conceived as a strain +in a magnetic field and thus the + + "Cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, + The solemn temples, the great globe itself, + Yea, all which is inherent," + +become the projection into sensibly apprehended form of the flux of an +infinite and eternal energy, it is not hard to define that energy in +terms of a divine will. Indeed it is hard not to do just that. But there +is no place in such a resolution as this for the conclusions of "Science +and Health." + +Or we may accept in one form or another a dualism in which the +practical mind is generally content to rest. According to this point of +view we have to do with a reality which may be known under two aspects. +It is the chemical action and interaction of elements--and the mind +which measures and combines them; it is the physical action and +interaction of force--and the mind which directs the process. +Biologically "the living creature gives an account of itself in two +ways. It can know itself as something extended and intricately built up, +burning away, moving, throbbing; it can also know itself as the seat of +sensation, perceptions, feelings, wishes, thoughts. But there is not one +process, thinking, and another process, cerebral metabolism (vital +processes in nerve-cells); there is a psycho-physical life--a reality +which we know under two aspects. Cerebral control and mental activity +are, on this view, different aspects of one natural occurrence. What we +have to do with is the unified life of a psycho-physical being, a +body-mind or mind-body."[38] In short there is no philosophy or science +outside the covers of her own book to which Mrs. Eddy may turn for +support and though this does not prove the case against her--she might +be right and the whole disciplined thought of her time be wrong--this +latter supposition is so improbable as to rule it out of court. + +[Footnote 38: J.A. Thomson, "The Outline of Science," p. 548.] + +The materialism against which she contends has ceased to exist. The +matter which she denies does not exist in the sense of her denial. There +was, even when she was writing, a line of which she was apparently +wholly ignorant which has since been immensely developed, and of all +this there is naturally no reflection at all in her work. It is more +hopelessly out of touch with the laborious and strongly established +conclusions of modern thought in every field than the first chapters of +Genesis for there one may, at least, substitute the science of to-day +for the science of 3,000 years ago and still retain the enduring +insights of the faith then voiced, but there is no possible +accommodation of "Science and Health" to either the science or the +philosophy of the twentieth century. It must be left to a consistent +Christian Scientist to reconcile his gospel with the freer movements of +the world of which he is still a citizen--though perhaps this also might +be urged against a deal of contemporaneous Christian faith--but it is +all an arresting testimony to the power of the human mind to organize +itself in compartments between which there is no communication. + + +_Experience and Life_ + +Beyond all this is the fact of which "Science and Health" takes no +account--the conditioning of conscious life and working experience by +its material environment however conceived. This is true of every phase +of life and all our later emphasis upon the power of the mind in one +direction and another to escape this conditioning scarcely affects the +massive reality of it. Christian Science makes no attempt at all to +escape this--save in the region of physical health--or else it provides +an alibi in the phrase, "I have not demonstrated in that region yet." +But it does not thus escape the limitation imposed upon us all and if +we may dare for a moment to be dogmatic, it never will. At the best we +live in a give and take and if, through discipline and widening +knowledge, we may push back a little the frontiers which limit us, and +assert the supremacy of soul over the material with which it is so +intimately associated, we do even this slowly and at great cost and +always in conformity with the laws of the matter we master. + +There is a body of evidence here which can no more be ignored than +gravitation, and we best dispose of association of personality with the +material fabric of the body and the world of which it is a part, not by +denying their mutual interdependence but by discovering therein the laws +and methods of an infinite wisdom. Here are ministries through which we +come to consciousness of ourselves, here are materials upon which we +exercise our power, here are realities which hold us fast to normal and +intelligible lives, here are masters whose rule is kind and servants +whose obediences empower us. They condition our happinesses as well as +our unhappinesses and supply for us the strings of that harp of the +senses upon which the music of life is played. Life really gains its +spiritual content through the action and interaction of the aspiring +self upon its environment--whether that environment be intimate as the +protest of a disturbed bodily cell or remote as Orion and the +Pleiades.[39] The very words which Mrs. Eddy uses would be idle if this +were not so and though a thoroughgoing defender of her system may read +into its lines a permission for all this, the fundamentals of her system +deny it. + +[Footnote 39: "And I am inclined to think that the error of forgetting +that spirit in order to be real or that principles, whether of morality, +religion or knowledge, must be exemplified in temporal facts, is a no +less disastrous error than that of the sciences which have not learned +that the natural, when all the meaning of it is set free, blossoms into +the spiritual like the tree into flower. Religion and philosophy and +science also have yet to learn more fully that all which can possibly +concern man, occupy his intelligence or engage his will, lies at the +point of intersection of the natural and spiritual."--"A Faith that +Enquires," p. 27.] + +Christian Science breaks down both philosophically and practically just +here. It is none the less a dualism because it denies that it is. It +confronts not one but two ranges of reality; it gains nothing by making +mortal mind the villain in the play. It is compelled to admit the +existence of the reality which it denies, even in the fact of denying +it. What we deny exists for us--we could not otherwise deny it. Royce +has put all this clearly, strongly, finally. "The mystic first denies +that evil is real. He is asked why, then, evil seems to exist. He +replies that this is our finite error. The finite error itself hereupon +becomes, as the source of all our woes, an evil. But no evil is real, +hence no error can be real, hence we do not really err even if we +suppose that evil is real. Here we return to our starting point and +could only hope to escape by asserting that it is an error to assert +that we really err or that we really believe error to be real, and with +a process thus begun there is indeed no end, nor at any stage in this +process is there consistency."[40] All this is subtle enough, but if we +are to make our world by thinking and unthinking it, all this is +unescapably true. + +[Footnote 40: "The World and the Individual," Vol. II, p. 394.] + +When, moreover, you have reduced one range of experience to illusion +there is absolutely nothing to save the rest. If evil is error and error +evil and the belief that evil is an illusion is itself an illusion what +is there to guarantee the reality of good? The sword with which Mrs. +Eddy cut the knot of the problem of evil is two-edged. If the optimist +denies evil for the sake of good and points for proof to the solid +coherency of the happier side of life, the pessimist may as justly deny +good for the sake of evil and point for proof to the solid coherency of +the sadder side of life; he will have no trouble in finding his facts. +If sickness is a dream then health is a dream as well. Once we have +taken illusion for a guide there is no stopping until everything is +illusion. The Eastern mystic who went this road long before Mrs. Eddy +and who thought it through with a searching subtleness of which she was +incapable, reached the only logical conclusion. All experience is +illusion, entire detachment from action is the only wisdom, and +absorption in an unconscious something which only escapes being nothing +is our appointed destiny: + + "We are such stuff + As dreams are made of, + And our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + + +_Sense-Testimony Cannot Be Accepted for Health and Denied for Sickness_ + +Christian Science, then, is not monism, it is rather a dualism; it +confronts not one but two ranges of reality and it is compelled to admit +the existence of the reality which it denies, even the fact of denying +it, for it is a philosophical axiom that what we deny exists for us--we +could not otherwise deny it. Denial is the recognition of reality just +as much as affirmation. To repeat, it is this continuous interwoven +process of trying to reconcile the one-sided idealism of Christian +Science with the necessity of its argument and the facts of life which +gives to "Science and Health" what one may call its strangely bifocal +character, though indeed this is a somewhat misleading figure. One has +the same experience in reading the book that one has in trying to read +through glasses which are out of focus; you are always just seeing and +just missing because Mrs. Eddy herself is always just seeing and just +missing a really great truth. + +This fundamental inconsistency penetrates the whole system even down to +its practical applications. Christian Science denies the testimony of +the senses as to sickness and yet accepts them as to health. It goes +further than this, it accepts the testimony of the senses of other +people--physicians, for example, in accepting their diagnosis. The +edition of "Science and Health" published in 1918 offers in chapter +eighteen a hundred pages of testimonials sent in by those who have in +various ways been helped by their faith. These letters are shot through +and through with a recognition of the testimony of the senses which no +explanation can possibly explain away. "I was afflicted with a fibroid +tumour which weighed not less than fifty pounds, attended by a +continuous hemorrhage for eleven years." If the senses have any language +at all, this is their language. A growth cannot be known as a fibroid +tumour without sense testimony, nor its weight estimated without sense +testimony, nor a continuous hemorrhage be recorded, or its cessation +known without sense testimony, nor can epilepsy be diagnosed, nor +bilious attacks recognized without sense testimony. On page 606 a +grateful disciple bears witness to the healing of a broken arm, +testimony to said healing being demonstrated by a visit to a physician's +office "where they were experimenting with an X-ray machine. The doctor +pointed out the place as being slightly thicker at that part, like a +piece of steel that had been welded." In other words, Christian Science +cannot make out its case without the recognition of the veracity of a +sense testimony, whose truth its philosophy denies. + +Mrs. Eddy seems to dismiss all this in one brief paragraph. "Is a man +sick if the material senses indicate that he is in good health? No, for +matter can make no conditions for man. And is he well if the senses say +he is sick? Yes, he is well in Science, in which health is normal and +disease is abnormal."[41] If Mrs. Eddy and her followers believe so +specious a statement as that, to set them free from an inconsistency +which is central in their whole contention, they are welcome to their +belief, but the inconsistency still remains. You can go far by using +words in a Pickwickian sense but there is a limit. A consistent idealism +is philosophically possible, but it must be a far more inclusive and +deeply reasoned idealism than Christian Science. The most thoroughgoing +idealisms have accepted the testimony of the senses as a part of the +necessary conduct of life as now conditioned. Anything else would reduce +us to unspeakable confusion, empty experience of its content, dissolve +all the contacts of life and halt us in our tracks for we cannot take a +step safely without the testimony of the senses and any scheme of things +which seeks to distinguish between the varying validities of sense +testimony, accepting only the evidence of the senses for health and +well-being and denying the dependability of whatever else they register, +is simply an immense caprice which breaks down under any examination. + +[Footnote 41: Page 120. It is only fair to say that Mrs. Eddy is +hampered by her own want of clear statement. The phrase (so often used +in "Science and Health") "in Science" is probably in her mind equivalent +to "in the ideal order" and if Mrs. Eddy had clearly seen and clearly +stated what she is groping for: that the whole shadowed side of life +belongs to our present world of divided powers and warring forces and +unfinished enterprises, that God has something better for His children +toward which we are being led through the discipline of experience and +that we may therefore seek to conceive and affirm this ideal order and +become its citizens in body, mind and soul, she would have escaped a +perfect web of contradiction and been in line not only with the great +philosophies but with historic Christian faith. But then Christian +Science would not be Christian Science.] + + +_The Inescapable Reality of Shadowed Experience_ + +Evil does not cease to be because it is denied. The acceptance of sense +testimony is just as necessary in the region of pain and sickness as in +driving a motorcar down a crowded street and the hypothesis of a +misleading mortal mind, instead of explaining everything, demands itself +an explanation. What Mrs. Eddy calls mortal mind is only the registry of +the dearly bought experience of the race. We began only with the power +to feel, to struggle, to will and to think. We have been blind enough +and stupid enough but we are, after all, not unteachable and out of our +experience and our reflections we have created the whole splendid and +dependable body of human knowledge. What we know about pain is itself +the outcome of all the suffering of our kind. We began with no developed +philosophy nor any presuppositions about anything. Experience reflects +encompassing realities which we are able to escape only as we make their +laws our ministers. We did not give fire the power to burn, we +discovered that only in the school of the touch of flame. We did not +give edged steel the power to cut, we found that out through death and +bleeding wounds. We did not give to poisons their deadly power, our +attitude toward them is simply the outcome of our experience with them. + +Conditioned as we are by those laws and forces with which this present +existence of ours is in innumerable ways inextricably interwoven, our +tested and sifted beliefs are only the outcome of an action and +interaction of recipient or creative personality upon its environment +old as human consciousness, and if in all this we have become persuaded +of pain and suffering and shadowed experience, it is only because these +are as real as any elements in experience can possibly be. To attempt +to write them out or deny them out or juggle them out in any kind of way +save in bravely meeting them and humbly being taught by them and in the +full resource of disciplined power getting free from them by removing +the causes which create them, is to cheat ourselves with words, lose +ourselves in shadows which we mistake for light and even if in some +regions we seem to succeed it is only at the cost of what is more bitter +than pain and more deadly than wounds--the loss of mental and spiritual +integrity. This is a price too great to pay for any mere healing. + + + + +VI + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A THEOLOGY + + +"Science and Health" is offered, among other things, as a key to the +Scriptures, and along with her interpretation of both the Old and the +New Testaments in terms of her peculiar philosophy Mrs. Eddy rewrites +the great articles of the Christian creeds. A careful student of Mrs. +Eddy's mental processes is able in this region to understand them better +than she understood them herself. She had, to begin with, an inherited +reverence for the Bible as an authority for life and she shared with +multitudes of others a difficulty to which reference has already been +more than once made. For what one may call the typical Protestant +consciousness the Bible is the final revelation of God, governing, if +only we can come to understand it, both our faith and our conduct of +life, but the want of a true understanding of it and, above all, the +burdening of it with an inherited tradition has clouded its light for +multitudes of devout souls. + + +_Science and Health Offered as a Key to the Scriptures_ + +Such as these have been almost pathetically eager to accept any +interpretation, no matter how capricious, which seemed to read an +intelligible meaning into its difficult passages, or reconcile its +contradictions, or make it a more practical guide in the conduct of +life. Any cult or theory, therefore, which can seem to secure for itself +the authority of the Bible has obtained directly an immense +reinforcement in its appeal to the devout and the perplexed, and Mrs. +Eddy has taken full advantage of this. Her book is veined with Scripture +references; two of her chapters are expositions of Biblical books +(Genesis and Revelation); and other chapters deal with great doctrines +of the Church. + + +_It Ignores All Recognized Canons of Biblical Interpretation. +Illustrations_ + +Mrs. Eddy naturally sought the authority for her philosophy between the +covers of the Scriptures. Beyond debate her teachings have carried much +farther than they otherwise would, in that she claims for them a +Scriptural basis, and they must be examined in that light. Now there are +certain sound and universally recognized rules governing the scholarly +approach to the Old and New Testaments. Words must be taken in their +plain sense; they must be understood in their relation to their context. +A book is to be studied also in the light of its history; the time and +place and purpose of its composition, as far as these are known, must be +considered; no changes made in the text save through critical +emendation, nor any translations offered not supported by accepted +texts, nor any liberties be taken with grammatical constructions. By +such plain tests as these Mrs. Eddy's use of the Scriptures will not +bear examination. She violates all recognized canons of Biblical +interpretation on almost every page.[42] + +[Footnote 42: This is a brief--and a Christian Scientist may protest--a +summary dismissal of the claim of "Science and Health" to be a "key to +the Scriptures." But nothing is gained--save of the unnecessary +lengthening of this chapter--in going into a detailed examination of her +method and conclusions. She has insight, imagination, boundless +allegorical resource, but the whole Bible beneath her touch becomes a +plastic material to be subdued to her peculiar purpose by omissions, +read-in meanings and the substantial and constant disregard of plain +meanings. To the student the whole matter is important only as revealing +the confusion of the popular mind which receives such a method as +authoritative.] + +Her method is wholly allegorical and the results achieved are +conditioned only by the ingenuity of the commentator. It would require a +body of citation from the pages of "Science and Health," not possible +here, to follow through Mrs. Eddy's peculiar exegesis. One needs only to +open the book at random for outstanding illustrations. For example, +Genesis 1:6, "And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the +waters and let it divide the waters from the waters." The word +"firmament" has its own well established connotation gathered from a +careful study of all its uses. We can no more understand the earlier +chapters of Genesis without an understanding of Hebrew cosmogony than we +can understand Dante without a knowledge of medieval cosmogony. But, +given this knowledge which is the common possession of all sound +scholarship, we can at least understand what the passage means, even +though we have long left behind us the naive conception of the vaulted +skies to which it refers. + +All this is a commonplace not worth repeating at the cost of the white +paper upon which it is printed, save as the ignoring of it leads to such +an interpretation of the passage as that which Mrs. Eddy offers: +"spiritual understanding by which human conception material mind is +separated from Truth is the firmament. The Divine Mind, not matter, +creates all identities and they are forms of Mind, the ideas of Spirit +apparent only as Mind, never as mindless matter nor the so-called +material senses" (page 505). Comment is not only difficult but +impossible in the face of a method like this. If such an interpretation +were an exception it might seem the unfair use of a hypercritical temper +to quote this particular expression of Mrs. Eddy's mind. But her whole +treatment of Scripture suffers from the same method. + +Everything means something else. The Ark is "the idea, or reflection of +truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle." Babel is +"self-destroying error"; baptism is "submergence in Spirit"; Canaan is +"a sensuous belief"; Dan (Jacob's son) is "animal magnetism"; the dove +is "a symbol of divine Science"; the earth is "a type of eternity and +immortality"; the river Euphrates is "divine Science encompassing the +universe and man"; evening "the mistiness of mortal thought"; flesh "an +error, a physical belief"; Ham (Noah's son) is "corporeal belief"; +Jerusalem "mortal belief and knowledge obtained from the five corporeal +senses"; night, "darkness; doubt; fear"; a Pharisee, "corporeal and +sensuous belief"; river is "a channel of thought"; a rock is "a +spiritual foundation"; sheep are "innocence"; a sword "the idea of +Truth."[43] + +[Footnote 43: Glossary, p. 579--passim.] + +Mrs. Eddy does not hesitate to make such textual modifications of +passages as suit her purpose and even when she is not dealing with her +texts in such ways as these, she is constantly citing for her proofs +passages which cannot by any recognized canon of interpretation possibly +be made to mean what she says they mean. Beneath her touch simple things +become vague, the Psalms lose their haunting beauty, even the Lord's +Prayer takes a form which we may reverently believe the author of it +would not recognize. + + "Our Father: Mother God, all harmonious, Adorable One, Thy kingdom + is come; Thou art ever present. Enable us to know--as in heaven, so + on earth--God is omnipotent, supreme. Give us grace for to-day; + feed the famished affections; and love is reflected in love; and + God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, + disease and death. For God is Infinite, all Power, all Life, Truth, + Love, over all and All." + + +_Its Conception of God_ + +It was quite as inevitable that she should undertake to fit her +speculations into the fabric of the theology in which she and most of +her followers had been trained, as that she should try to secure for her +speculation the weight of the authority of the Bible. She would have to +take for her point of departure the centrality of Christ, the +outstanding Christian doctrines, markedly the Incarnation and the +Atonement and she would need somehow to dispose of the Sacraments. All +this is inevitably implied in the persistent designation of her whole +system as a Christian system. + +The chapter headings in "Science and Health" and the sequence of +chapters are the key to the movement of her mind; they are determined by +her association of interests. Marriage is on the same level with Prayer, +Atonement and the Eucharist, and Animal Magnetism with Science, Theology +and Medicine. It is hard to know where to begin in so confused a region. +She is handicapped, to begin with, by the rigidity of her idealism and +actually by her limitation both of the power and personality of God. +This statement would probably be as sharply contradicted by Mrs. Eddy's +apologists as anything in this study, but it is not hastily made. +Philosophically He is for Mrs. Eddy only an exalted ideality into +relation with which we may think ourselves by a change in our system of +belief. Actually, as we shall see, this conception yields to emotional +and devotional needs--it is bound to--but in theory it is unyielding. + +Now the accepted Christian conception of God is entirely different. Both +the Old and New Testaments conceive a God who is lovingly and justly +conscious of all our need, who is constantly drawing near to us in +manifold appeals and approaches and who has, above all, in the +Incarnation made a supreme and saving approach to humanity. He is no +more rigid than love is rigid; His attitude toward us, His children, +changes as the attitude of a father toward the changing tempers of a +child. Now all this may be true or it may be only the dream of our +strangely sensitive personalities, but whether it be true or not, it is +the Christian conception and any denial of this or any radically +different substitution for it cannot call itself Christian save as it +writes into the word Christian connotations to which it has heretofore +been utterly strange. + + +_Mrs. Eddy's Interpretation of Jesus Christ_ + +Mrs. Eddy begins, therefore, with the handicap of a philosophy which can +be adjusted to Christian theology only through fundamental modifications +of that theology. It is hard to systematize the result. Mrs. Eddy +distinguishes between Jesus and Christ. Her conception of Jesus is +reasonably clear whether it be historically true or not, but her +conception of the Christ is vague and fluctuating. Jesus was apparently +the first Christian Scientist, anticipating, though not completely, its +philosophy and demonstrating its practices. His teachings are so +interpreted as to be made to yield a Christian Science content. When He +urged the commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" what He +really meant was, "Thou shalt have no belief of Life as mortal; thou +shalt not know evil, for there is one Life."[44] "He proved by His deeds +that Christian Science destroys sickness, sin and death. Our Master +taught no mere theory, doctrine or belief; it was the divine Principle +of all real being which He taught and practiced."[45] "He taught His +followers the healing power of Truth and Love"[46] and "the proofs of +Truth, Life and Love which Jesus gave by casting out error and healing +the sick, completed His earthly mission."[47] "The truth taught by Jesus +the elders scoffed at because it demanded more than they were willing to +practice."[48] They, therefore, crucified Him and He seemed to die, but +He did not. Apparently He was not dead when He was entombed and His +three days in the tomb gave Him "a refuge from His foes, a place in +which to solve the great problem of being." In other words He +demonstrated His own healing in the tomb. "He met and mastered, on the +basis of Christian Science, the power of mind over matter, all the +claims of medicine, surgery and hygiene. He took no drugs to allay +inflammation; He did not depend upon food or pure air to resuscitate +wasted energies; He did not require the skill of a surgeon to heal the +torn palms and bind up the wounded side and lacerated feet, that He +might use those hands to remove the napkin and winding sheet and that He +might employ His feet as before."[49] + +[Footnote 44: Page 19. All citations from last edition.] + +[Footnote 45: Page 26.] + +[Footnote 46: Page 31.] + +[Footnote 47: Page 41.] + +[Footnote 48: Page 41.] + +[Footnote 49: Page 44.] + +"His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while He was hidden in the +sepulchre, whereas He was alive, demonstrating within the narrow tomb +the power of the spirit to overrule mortal, material sense." His +ascension was a final demonstration in which He "rose above the physical +knowledge of His disciples and the material senses saw Him no more." He +attained this perfection of demonstration only gradually and He left +behind Him an incomplete revelation which was to wait for its full +illumination for the coming of Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science. Perhaps +more justly He left behind Him, according to Mrs. Eddy and her +followers, a body of teaching which could not be clearly understood +until she came to complete the revelation. At any rate, Christian +Science is really His second coming. + + +_Christian Science His Second Coming_ + +In an advertisement printed in the New York _Tribune_ on January 23, +1921, Augusta E. Stetson says: "Christ in Christian Science is come to +the understanding of those who looked for His reappearing." And if +certain sentences which follow mean anything, they mean that, in the +thought of Mrs. Eddy's followers, she completes what Jesus began and +fulfills the prophecy of His reappearing. "Her earthly experience runs +parallel with that of her Master; understood in a small degree only by +the few who faintly see and accept the truth, she stood during her +earthly mission and now stands on the mount of spiritual illumination +toward whose heights no feet but those of the blessed Master have so +directly toiled, first in agony and finally, like Jesus Christ the +masculine representative of the Fatherhood of God, she as the feminine +representative of the motherhood of God, will appear in triumphant +demonstration of divine power and glory as the combined ideal man in +God's image and likeness." + +And, indeed, there are not wanting intimations in "Science and Health" +which give to Mrs. Eddy a certainty in this region which Jesus Himself +did not possess. He falters where she firmly trod. No need to dwell +upon the significant omissions which such an interpretation of the +historic Jesus as this demands. The immensely laborious and painstaking +scholarship which has sought, perplexedly enough it must be confessed, +to discover behind the Gospel narratives the fundamental facts and +realities of His life, is entirely ignored. Mrs. Eddy has no place for +the social aspects of the teachings of Christ, indeed His whole system +of ethic could be "blacked out"; as far as her teaching is concerned it +would make absolutely no difference. + +Mrs. Eddy distinguishes, in theory at least though there is no +consistency in her use of terms, between Jesus and the Christ. "Jesus is +the human man, and Christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of +Jesus, the Christ" (page 473). "Jesus is the name of the man who, more +than all other men, has presented Christ, the true idea of God, healing +the sick and the sinning and destroying the power of death" (page 473). +"In an age of ecclesiastical despotism, Jesus introduced the teaching +and practice of Christianity ... but to reach His example and test its +unerring Science according to His rule, ... a better understanding of +God as divine Principle, Love, rather than personality or the man Jesus, +is required" (page 473). + +It is difficult enough to know just what this means, but as one stands +far enough back from it all it seems to reduce Jesus historically to the +first outstanding Christian Science teacher and healer. "Jesus +established what He said by demonstration, thus making His acts of +higher importance than His words. He proved what He taught. This is the +Science of Christianity. Jesus _proved_ the Principle, which heals the +sick and casts out error, to be divine" (page 473). He is, therefore, +historically of chiefest value as the demonstrator of Christian Science, +the full philosophy of which apparently awaited a later revelation. + +"Christ is the ideal Truth, that comes to heal sickness and sin through +Christian Science, and attributes all power to God" (page 473). "He +unveiled the Christ, the spiritual idea of divine Love" (page 38). The +Christ of Christian Science, then, is an ideal Truth, a spiritual idea, +apparently an abstraction. But Mrs. Eddy is not consistent in her use of +these two names. On one page Christ is "the spiritual idea of divine +Love"; on the next page "we need Christ and Him crucified" (page 39), +though how an ideal truth or a spiritual idea could possibly be +crucified we are not told. In many of her passages Mrs. Eddy uses the +familiar phrase, Jesus Christ, in apparently its ordinary connotations. + + +_The Incarnation: Christian Theology and Christian Science Belong Really +to Different Regions_ + +The Incarnation is disposed of in the same vague way. "Those instructed +in Christian Science have reached the glorious perception that God is +the only author of man. The virgin mother conceived this idea of God and +gave to her ideal the name of Jesus."[50] "The illumination of Mary's +spiritual sense put to silence material law and its order of generation, +and brought forth her child by the revelation of Truth. The Holy Ghost, +or divine Spirit, overshadowed the pure sense of the Virgin-mother with +the full recognition that being is Spirit."[51] "Jesus was the offspring +of Mary's self-conscious communion with God."[52] Now all this is +neither honest supernaturalism nor the honest acceptance of the normal +methods of birth. It is certainly not the equivalent of the Gospel +account whether the Gospel account be accepted or rejected. To use a +phrase which has come into use since "Science and Health" was written, +this is a "smoke screen" under cover of which Mrs. Eddy escapes the +necessity of either accepting or denying the testimony of the Gospels. + +[Footnote 50: Page 29.] + +[Footnote 51: Page 29.] + +[Footnote 52: Page 30.] + +Something of this, one must confess, one may find in not a little +religious teaching old and new, but it is doubtful if there is anywhere +so outstanding an instance of what one may call the smoke screen method +in the consideration of the Incarnation, as in the passages just quoted. +As a matter of fact all this is simply the attempt to fit the idealistic +dualism, which is the real philosophic basis of Christian Science and +which, in so far as it is capable of explanation at all, can be as +easily explained in two pages as two hundred, into the theology in which +Mrs. Eddy was nurtured and which was a background common to both herself +and her disciples. Christian Science would carry far less weight in the +race it is running if it frankly cut itself clear of a theology with +which it has fundamentally no affinity. This indoctrination of an +idealistic dualism with a content of Christian theology probably +heightens the appeal of the system to those who are most at home in a +new faith as they discover there the familiar phrases of their older +faith, but it weakens the fundamental Christian Science apologetic. I +think, however, we ought justly to recognize this as simply an +inevitable aspect in the transition of Christian Science from the +orthodox faith and experience of historic Christianity to a faith and +experience of its own. + +Seen as a curious half-truth development made possible by a whole group +of forces in action at the end of the nineteenth century, Christian +Science is reasonably intelligible, but as a system of doctrine built +upon the hitherto accepted bases of Christian fact and teaching, it is +not intelligible at all and the long controversy between the Christian +theologian and the Christian Science lecturer would best be ended by +recognizing that they have so little in common as to make attack and +counter-attack a movement in two different dimensions. The one thing +which they have in common is a certain set of words and phrases, but +these words and phrases have such entirely different meanings on the one +side and the other as to make the use of them hopelessly misleading. + + +_The Atonement. The Cross of Christian Science and the Cross of +Theology_ + +There are passing references to the Cross in "Science and Health," but +the word is used generally in a figurative and sentimental way. Mrs. +Eddy's cross is simply the pain of being misunderstood and criticised in +the preaching and practice of Christian Science, though indeed the Cross +of Jesus was also the outcome of hostilities and misunderstandings and a +final and terribly fierce method of criticism. One feels that mainly she +is thinking of her own cross as a misunderstood and abused woman and for +such suggestion she prefers the Cup as a figure to the Cross. As for the +Atonement "every pang of repentance and suffering, every effort for +reform, every good thought and deed will help us to understand Jesus' +Atonement for sin and aid its efficacy."[53] "Wisdom and Love require +many sacrifices of self to save us from sin." All this seems to be in +line with the moral theory of the atonement until we see that in such a +line as this there is no recognition of the fact that again and again we +suffer and that largely for others, and when she adds that "Its [the +atonement] scientific explanation is that suffering is an error of +sinful sense which Truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and +suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love" (page 23), those +passages cancel one another, for if suffering be "an error of sinful +sense" it is hard to see how any pang of it can help us to understand +Jesus' atonement unless His suffering be also "an error of sinful +sense," and this is to reduce the atonement to a like error. + +[Footnote 53: Page 19.] + +In another connection Mrs. Eddy finds the efficacy of the Crucifixion +"in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind." +But this turns out to be nothing more than that the Crucifixion offers +Christ a needed opportunity for the instruction of His disciples to +triumph over the grave. But since in another connection we are told He +never died at all (chapter Atonement and Eucharist, paragraph "Jesus in +the tomb") even this dissolves into unreality. Moreover the "eternal +Christ in His spiritual selfhood never suffered."[54] Whichever road she +takes here Mrs. Eddy reaches an impasse. It ought to be said, in justice +to Mrs. Eddy, that her treatment of the atonement reflects the +difficulty she found in the theology in which she had been trained as a +girl and that there are many true insights in her contentions. She was +at least seeking a vital and constructive interpretation and doubtless +her observations, confused as they are, have been for her followers a +real way out of a real difficulty. Here, as in so many other regions, +"Science and Health" is best understood by its backgrounds. + +[Footnote 54: A curious and far-off echo of early Docetism which also in +its own way reduced Christ's suffering to a simple seeming to suffer.] + +As a matter of fact there is in Christian Science absolutely no soil in +which to plant the Cross as the Cross is understood in Christian +theology. There is no place in Christian Science for vicarious +atonement, whether by God or man; there is little place in Christian +Science for redemptive suffering; there is a rather narrow region in +which suffering may be considered as instructive, a guide, perhaps, to +lead us out of unhappy or shadowed regions into the regions of physical +and, maybe, spiritual and moral well-being, and to quench the love of +sin.[55] Mrs. Eddy sometimes speaks of Christ as the Saviour but if her +system be pressed to a logical conclusion she must empty the word of all +the associations which it has hitherto had and make it simply the +equivalent of a teacher or demonstrator. + +[Footnote 55: Page 36. But this is to recognize the reality of +suffering. Mrs. Eddy is here on the threshold of a great truth--that +suffering is an aspect of education--but she goes no further.] + + +_Sin an Error of Mortal Mind_ + +Sin along with sickness and death are the projections of mortal error, +the creations of mortal mind; sin, sickness and death are to be +classified as effects of error. Christ came "to destroy the belief of +sin." All this is to root sin simply in the mind. No intimation at all +here of the part which a perverted will may play in the entanglements of +life; no intimation of the immense force of the emotional side of life; +no intimation here of the immense part which sheer selfishness plays. +Mrs. Eddy's sin is far too simple. There is, once more, a sound reason +for that. Mrs. Eddy is twice-born, if you will, but the struggle from +which she finally emerged with whatever measure of victory she attained +was not fought out with conscience as the field of battle, or in the +final reconciliation of a divided self finding unity and peace on some +high level. + +If Mrs. Eddy's true struggle was of the soul and not of complaining +nerves she has left no record of it anywhere. It was rather the reaction +of a speculative mind against the New England theology. Her experience +is strangely remote from the experience of Saul of Tarsus, or Augustine, +or John Bunyan. This is not to deny that in the practical outcome of +Christian Science as evidenced in the life of its adherents there is not +a very real power of helpful moral adjustment, but the secret of that +must be sought in something else than either its philosophy or its +theology. Christian theologians themselves have been by no means agreed +as to what sin really is. Under their touch it became too often a +theological abstraction rather than entanglement of personality caught +in manifold urgencies and pulled this way and that by competing forces +battling in the will and flaming in passion and desire. But a sin which +has no reality save through a mistaken belief in its existence is +certainly as far from the fact of a world like ours as is a sin which is +only one factor in a scheme of redemption. + +But at any rate, if sin have no reality except our mistaken persuasion +that it be true and if we are delivered from it directly we cease to +believe in it and affirm in the stead of it the reality of love and +goodness, then while there may be in such a faith as this both the need +and possibility of the recasting of our personal lives, there is in it +neither need nor possibility of the Christian doctrine of the atonement. +Naturally since man is incapable of sin, sickness and death, he is +unfallen, nor is "his capacity or freedom to sin any part of the divine +plan." "A mortal sinner is not God's man. Mortals are the counterfeits +of immortals; they are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil +which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo" (page +475). + +Here also is an echo from an early time and a far-off land. It is not +likely that Mrs. Eddy ever heard of Mani or Manicheeism, or knew to what +a travail of soul St. Augustine was reduced when he fought his way +through just a kindred line of teaching which, to save God from any +contact with or responsibility for evil, affirmed our dual genesis and +made us on one side children of darkness and on the other the children +of light, without ever really trying to achieve in a single personality +any reconciliation of two natures drawn from two entirely different +sources. Nor does Mrs. Eddy know that one Eusebius, finding much +evidence of this faith in the Christianity of the fourth century, +dismissed it briefly enough as "an insane heresy." Heresy it certainly +was for all those who were fighting their way out of their paganism into +an ordered Christian faith and whether it be insane or no, it is of all +the explanations which have been offered for the presence of evil in a +world supposedly ruled by the love and goodness of God, the one which +will least bear examination. It has been dead and buried these thousand +years. + +We may deny, if we are so minded, any freedom of the will at all, so +involving ourselves in an inevitable sequence of cause and effect as to +make us also simply weather-vanes driven east or west by winds of +inheritance and environment which we have no power to deflect and to +which we can only choose to respond. But to deny us the freedom to sin +and so to shut us up to a determinism of goodness is no more in accord +with the facts than to deny us the power to be good and shut us up to a +determinism of sin. If we are free at all we are free in all directions. + + +_The Sacraments Disappear. Mrs. Eddy's Theology a Reaction from the +Rigid Evangelicism of Her Youth_ + +"Science and Health" deals in the same radical way with the sacraments. +Nothing at all, apparently, is made of baptism save that Mrs. Eddy says +our baptism is a purification from all error. In her account of the Last +Supper the cup is mostly dwelt upon and that only as showing forth the +bitter experience of Jesus. The bread "is the great truth of spiritual +being, healing the sick" and the breaking of it the "explaining" it to +others. More is made of what is called the last spiritual breakfast with +the Disciples by Lake Galilee than of the Last Supper in the upper room. +"This spiritual meeting with our Lord in the dawn of a new light is the +morning meal which Christian Scientists commemorate" (page 35). "Our +bread," she says, "which cometh down from heaven, is Truth; our wine, +the inspiration of Love" (page 35). All this is of a piece with the +general allegorical use of the Old and New Testaments in "Science and +Health," but it is a marked departure from the sacrament of the Lord's +Supper even in the simple memorial way in which it is kept by +non-liturgical churches. + +Mrs. Eddy's theology, then, is in part a reaction from the hard phrasing +of the evangelical doctrines in which she was trained and it is indeed +in part a reaching out toward the interpretation of these doctrines in +terms of life and experience, but as a theology it is extraordinarily +loose and even though the familiar phrases of Protestant and Catholic +faiths are employed, what is left is wholly out of the current of the +main movement of Christian theology heretofore. The central articles of +the historic creeds practically disappear under Mrs. Eddy's treatment. + +Here, then, is a philosophy which will not bear examination, a use of +Scripture which can possibly have no standing in any scholarly +fellowship, and a theology which empties the central Christian doctrines +of the great meanings which have heretofore been associated with them. +And yet in spite of all this, Christian Science gets on and commends +itself to so considerable a number of really sincere people as to make +it evident enough that it must have some kind of appealing and +sustaining power. Where, then, is the hiding of its power? Partly, of +course, in its spaciousness. There are times when a half-truth has a +power which the whole truth does not seem to possess. Half truths can be +accepted unqualifiedly; they are capable of a more direct appeal and if +they be skillfully directed toward needs and perplexities they are +always sure of an acceptance; they make things too simple, that is one +secret of their hold upon us. This, of course, is more largely true +among the spiritually undisciplined and the mentally untrained, but even +the wisest folk find it easier upon occasion to accept a half truth +which promises an easy satisfaction or deliverance than a whole truth +which needs to be wrestled with and may be agonized over before it +brings us into some better estate. + + +_The Real Power of Christian Science is in Neither Its Philosophy Nor +Its Theology_ + +We have already seen what predisposing influences there were in the +breaking down of what we have called the accepted validations of +historic Christianity--due, as we have seen also, to many contributing +causes--to offer unusual opportunity to any new movement which promised +deliverance. But one must seek the conditions which have made possible +so many strange cults and movements in America, not only in the +breakdown of the historic faiths, but also in the state of popular +education. Democracy tends, among other things, to lead us to value a +movement by the number of people whom it is able to attract. We are, +somehow, persuaded that once a majority has accepted anything, what they +have accepted must be true and right. Even a strong minority always +commands respect. Any movement, therefore, which succeeds in attracting +a considerable number of followers is bound to attract others also, just +because it has already attracted so many. One has only to listen to the +current comment on Christian Science to feel that this is a real factor +in its growth. + +Democracy believes in education, but has not commonly the patience to +make education thoroughgoing. Its education is very much more likely to +be a practical or propaganda education than such training as creates +the analytical temper and supplies those massive backgrounds by which +the departures of a day are always to be tested. In America particularly +there is an outstanding want of background. It needs history, +philosophy, economic understanding and a wealth of racial experience to +give to any people either the power to quickly discriminate between the +truth and the half-truth, or to carry itself with poise through a +transitional period. But one may not dispose of the distinct hold of +Christian Science upon its followers by such generalizations. The real +inwardness of no religion can ever be known from its theology. A sincere +devotion may attend a most deficient theology and we need to be +charitable in judging the forms which other people's faith takes. What +seems unreasonable to one may seem quite right to another and whatever +carries a sincere faith deepening into a positive spiritual experience +accomplishes for the moment its purpose. These studies of Christian +Science are severe--for one must deal with it as honestly as he knows +how--but the writer does not mean that they should fail in a due +recognition of the spiritual sincerity of Christian Scientists. We must +therefore go in to what is most nearly vitally central in the system to +find the real secret of its powers. It continues and grows as a system +of healing and a religion. + + + + +VII + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A SYSTEM OF HEALING AND A RELIGION + + +Christian Science practice is the application of its philosophy and +theology to bodily healing. This is really the end toward which the +whole system is directed. "Science and Health" is an exposition of Mrs. +Eddy's system as a healing force. Her philosophy and theology are +incidental, or--if that is not a fair statement--they both condition and +are conditioned by her system of healing. There is hardly a page in her +book without its reference to sickness and health. Her statements are +consequently always involved and one needs to stand quite back from them +to follow their outline. Here, as elsewhere, one may read deeply and +indirectly between the lines attitudes and beliefs against which she is +reacting. Her reactions against the environment of her girlhood and +early womanhood affect her point of view so distinctly that without the +recognition of this a good deal of what she says is a puzzle without a +key. + + +_Christian Science the Application of Philosophy and Theology to Bodily +Healing_ + +She had been taught, among other things, that sickness is a punishment +for sin. One may safely assume this for the theology of her formative +period fell back upon this general statement in its attempt to reconcile +individual suffering and special providence. One ought not justly to say +that Mrs. Eddy ever categorically affirms that she had been taught this, +or as categorically denies the truth of it, but there are statements--as +for example page 366--which seem to imply that she is arguing against +this and directing her practitioners how to meet and overcome it. This +perhaps accounts for the rather difficult and wavering treatment of sin +and sickness in a connection where logically sickness alone should be +considered. + +Mrs. Eddy would not naturally have thus associated sin and sickness had +they not been associated for her in earlier teaching and yet, as has +been said, all this is implicit rather than explicit. The key to a great +deal in "Science and Health" is not in what the author says, but in the +reader's power to discover behind her statements what she is "writing +down." Her system is both denial and affirmation. In the popular +interpretation of it quite as much is made of denial and the recognition +of error as of its more positive aspects, but in the book there is a +pretty constant interweaving of both the denial of evil and the +affirmation of well-being. + +There is a sound element of wisdom in many of her injunctions, but more +needed perhaps fifty years ago than now. We must remember constantly +that Mrs. Eddy is writing against the backgrounds of a somber theology, +a medical practice which relied very greatly on the use of drugs which +was at the same time limited in its materia medica and too largely +experimental in its practice. She was writing before the day of the +trained nurse with her efficient poise. The atmosphere of a sick room is +not naturally cheerful and generally both the medical procedure and the +spiritual comfort of the sick room of the fifties and sixties did very +little to lighten depression. When, therefore, Mrs. Eddy urges, as she +does, an atmosphere of confidence and sympathy she is directly in the +right direction. + + +_Looseness of Christian Science Diagnosis_ + +As we pass beyond these things which are now commonplace, what she says +is not so simple. It is difficult to say how far the healing which +attends upon Christian Science is in her thought the result of Divine +Power immediately in exercise, and how far it is the outcome of +disciplines due to the acceptance of her theology and philosophy. It is +hard also to distinguish between the part the healer plays and the +contribution of the subject. There is no logical place in Christian +Science practice for physical diagnosis. "Physicians examine the pulse, +tongue, lungs, to discover the condition of matter, when in fact all is +Mind. The body is the substratum of mortal mind, and this so-called mind +must finally yield to the mandate of immortal Mind" (page 370). + +The result of this in practice is that the Christian Science healer +accepts either the diagnosis of the medical schools, reported +second-hand or else the patient's own statement of his condition. +Needless to say there is room for very great looseness of diagnosis in +such a practice as this. The actuality of sickness must be recognized +neither directly nor indirectly. The sickness must not be thought or +talked. Here also, as far as the patient is concerned, is a procedure of +undebated value. It all comes back, as we shall see presently, to +suggestion, but any procedure which frees the patient from depressing +suggestion and substitutes therefor an encouraging suggestion is in the +right direction. At the same time those who are not Christian Scientists +would rather stubbornly believe that somebody must recognize the fact of +sickness or else we cannot begin to set in action the machinery for +curing it, even if that machinery be Christian Science itself, and we do +not change this rather stubborn fact by covering sickness with the blank +designation Error. Even the error is real for the time being.[56] + +[Footnote 56: The writer once received an unexpected sidelight on the +practice of the Christian Science healer in this connection. He once +enjoyed the friendship of a Christian Science healer with whom he often +played golf. He called this healer up one morning to make an +appointment. His voice was not recognized over the telephone and he was +mistaken for a patient. The reply came back in professional tones--"And +what error are you suffering from this morning?" When he answered that +his own particular error was his persuasion that he could play golf the +telephone atmosphere was immediately changed.] + +The results of fear are constantly dwelt upon and this too is in the +right direction. Much is made of the creative power of mind in that it +imparts purity, health and beauty (page 371). When Mrs. Eddy says on +page 373 that disease is expressed not so much by the lips as in the +functions of the body she is making one of those concessions to common +sense which she makes over and over again, but when she attempts to +explain how erroneous or--as one may venture to call it--diseased belief +expresses itself in bodily function one is reminded of Quimby. +Temperature, for example, is wholly mental. Mrs. Eddy's reason for +believing this is apparently because "the body when bereft of mortal +mind at first cools and afterward it is resolved into its primitive +mortal elements." "Mortal Mind produces animal heat and then expels it +through the abandonment of a belief or increases it to the point of +self-destruction" (page 374). Fever is a mental state. Destroy fear and +you end fever. + +In all this there is a profound ignorance of the real causes of fever +which helps us to understand the marked deficiencies of the whole +system. There is nowhere any recognition of the body as an instrument +for the transformation and conservation and release of energy real as a +dynamo. There is nowhere any recognition of the commonplaces of modern +medical science in the tracing of germ infections. True enough, medical +science had hardly more than begun when "Science and Health" was first +written to redefine fevers in terms of germ infection and the consequent +disorganization of the balance of physical functionings, and the +oxidation of waste materials real as fire on a hearth, but that is no +reason why such ignorance should be continued from generation to +generation. + + +_The Power of Mental Environment_ + +In general, Christian Science practice as indicated in "Science and +Health" is a strange mingling of the true, the assumed and the false; +its assumptions are backed up by selected illustrations and all that +challenges it is ignored. Disease is unreal because Mind is not sick and +matter cannot be (page 393). But Mind is "the only I, or Us, divine +Principle, ... Life, Truth, Love; Deity, which outlines but is not +outlined" (page 591). In other words Mind is an ideal affirmation which +Mrs. Eddy assumes to underlie human experience and possibly to reveal +itself through human experience, and it certainly does not follow that +while an ideal affirmation is not sick, a human being involved in the +necessary relationships of our present material existence may not be. +Mrs. Eddy never clearly distinguishes between what a speculative mind +may affirm and actual experience report. Her dialectic is a constant +wrestling with reality in a range of statement which involves her in +many contradictions. She recognizes what she denies and denies what she +recognizes and, in a lawyer's phrase, constantly changes the venue. + +But through and behind it all is an intelligible method. Confidence is +to be reestablished, fear is allayed, the sufferer from error led to +commit himself to healing forces. These healing forces are not +consistently defined. Sometimes they are the "power of the mind to +sustain the body" (page 417); sometimes "the power of Christian Science" +(page 412), or "the power of Truth" (page 420) or divine Spirit, or her +book itself. "Continue to read and the book will become the physician, +allaying the tremor which Truth often brings to error when destroying +it" (page 422). + +Mrs. Eddy sometimes anticipates in a vague way the reaction of thought +and emotion upon physiological function to which Cannon has given such +careful attention, but her definite statements are strangely inadequate. +"What I term _chemicalization_ is the upheaval produced when immortal +Truth is destroying erroneous mortal belief. Mental chemicalization +brings sin and sickness to the surface, forcing impurities to pass away, +as is the case with a fermenting fluid" (page 401).[57] She recognizes +the limits of Christian Science practice when she advises her followers +to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to +the fingers of a surgeon until the advancing age admits the efficacy and +supremacy of mind (page 401). + +[Footnote 57: Compare "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 118.] + +Great care is to be taken as to the patient's mental environment. Mrs. +Eddy's constant emphasis upon this explains the excessive separatist +nature of Christian Science. More than almost any other of its cults it +separates its followers from those who do not belong to the cult. They +cannot, naturally, attend churches in which the reality of disease is +recognized; they must have their own nurses as well as their own +healers; in certain regions they must confine their reading to their own +literature; their children must be educated, on their religious side, in +their own cult schools and they cannot consistently associate themselves +with remedial movements which assume another philosophy as their basis. +It is difficult for a detached observer to see how a consistent +Christian Scientist reconciles the general conclusions of a modern +scientific education with the presuppositions of his cult. That he does +this is one more testimony to a power which indeed is exercised in many +other fields than the field of Christian Science to keep in the +practical conduct of life many of our governing conceptions in different +and apparently water-tight compartments. + + +_Christian Science Defines Disease as a Belief Which if Treated as an +Error Will Disappear_ + +The answer to such a line of criticism is, of course, in the familiar +Christian Science phrase that perfect demonstration has not yet been +achieved in the regions in which the Christian Scientist appears to be +inconsistent. But beyond this is the rather stubborn fact that in some +of these regions demonstration never will be realized; Christian Science +is confined to the field in which suggestion may operate. Mrs. Eddy is +most specific about diseases, concerning which the medical practice of +her time was most concerned and in the light of later medical science +most ignorant--fever, inflammation, indigestion, scrofula, consumption +and the like. These are all beliefs and if treated as error they will +disappear. Even death is a dream which mind can master, though this +doubtless is only Mrs. Eddy's way of affirming immortality. She hardly +means to say that death is not a fact which practically has to be +reckoned with in ways more final and unescapable than any other fact in +life. As Dr. Campbell Morgan once said: "If you have the misfortune to +imagine that you are dead, they will bury you." + +Mrs. Eddy concludes her chapter on Christian Science Practice with an +allegory which she calls a mental court case, the suggestion of which is +to be found in one of the Quimby manuscripts.[58] Since this manuscript +is dated 1862 it anticipates Mrs. Eddy by almost thirteen years. The +setting is like the trial of Faithful and Christian in the town of +Vanity Fair as recorded in Bunyan's "Pilgrim Progress." Doubtless +memories of Mrs. Eddy's reading of that deathless allegory are +reproduced in this particular passage which the author is inclined to +believe she wrote with more pleasure than anything else ever turned out +by her too facile pen. Personal Sense is the plaintiff, Mortal Man the +defendant, False Belief the attorney for Personal Sense, Mortal Minds, +Materia Medica, Anatomy, Physiology, Hypnotism, Envy, Greed and +Ingratitude constitute the Jury. The court room is filled with +interested spectators and Judge Medicine is on the bench. The case is +going strongly against the prisoner and he is likely to expire on the +spot when Christian Science is allowed to speak as counsel for the +defense. He appeals in the name of the plaintiff to the Supreme Court of +Spirit, secures from the jury of the spiritual senses a verdict of "Not +Guilty" and with the dismissal of the case the chapter on Christian +Science Practice ends. + +[Footnote 58: "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 172.] + + +_Christian Science Has a Rich Field to Work_ + +Now what can finally be said of the whole matter? In general, two +things. Recognizing the force and reality of psycho-therapy Christian +Science gets its power as a healing system from the great number of +people who are open to its appeal and the shrewd combination of elements +in the appeal itself. In spite of our great advance in medical knowledge +and practice and in spite of the results of an improved hygiene there +remains in society at large a very great deposit of physical ill-being +sometimes acute, sometimes chronic, sometimes clearly defined, sometimes +vague, badly treated cases, hopeless cases and a great reach of cases +which are due rather to disturbed mental and moral states than to +ascertainable physical causes. Illness has its border-land region as +well as thought and the border-land faiths make their foremost appeal to +those who, for one reason or another, live in border-land physical +states. + +And, to repeat, the number of those who belong to this group is +unexpectedly large. Naturally such as these grasp at anything which +offers help; they supply to the manufacturer of cure-all drugs their +clientele; they fill printed pages with testimonials of marvellous cures +achieved where the regular medical faculty had been helpless; they crowd +about every faith healer; they are the comrades of the pilgrims to +Lourdes and Ste. Anne de Beaupre; they belong to the fellowship of those +who, in the Middle Ages, haunted shrines and sought out relics and asked +to be touched by kings. We discover their forebears in the pages of the +Gospels and as far back as any records go we see this long, pathetic +procession of the hopeless or the handicapped seeking help. And again +and again they get it, for we have also seen that, given faith enough +either in a saint or a shrine or a system, psycho-therapy with certain +subjects and in certain cases does heal. But this type of healing +depends upon no one philosophy or no single force except indeed those +obscure forces which are released by suggestion. + +While this was being written certain evangelistic faith healers in the +city of Detroit were sending out broadsides of testimonials to their +healings, as definite in detail as the testimonials in "Science and +Health," or the _Christian Science Journal_, and yet the basal +principles by which these men have claimed to work are as different from +the basal principles of Christian Science as east is from west. While +this is being revised Coue, the apostle of suggestion according to the +Nancy school, is besieged in New York by those who have been led to hope +for healing through the success of his method. Whether the relic be true +or false does not matter if only the relic be believed in. + + +_One of the Most Strongly-Drawn Systems of Psycho-therapy Ever Offered_ + +Now Christian Science is one of the most strongly drawn +psycho-therapeutic agencies ever offered. Most faith healing systems +heretofore have depended upon some place, some thing, some healer. Here +is a system capable of the widest dissemination and dependent only upon +a book and its interpreters. It universalizes what has heretofore, for +one reason or another, been localized. It is shrewdly organized, as far +as propaganda goes, and effectively directed. It is widely advertised by +its friends--and its critics. Its temples, for beauty and dignity, put +to shame most Protestant churches. Its rituals combine in an unusual way +the simple and the dramatic. It is so fortunately situated as to be able +to keep finance--which is a trying element in Protestant Church life--in +the background. Its followers have that apostolic fervour which attaches +to movements sure of their divine commission and not yet much worn by +time. It possesses distinctly one of Sir Henry Jones' hall-marks of +religion. "It impassions the spirit of its disciples and adds +consequence to the things it sanctions or condemns." + +It draws upon deeply established Christian reverences and faiths. It +secures for its authority the persistent but perplexed faith in the +Bible which the average Protestant inherits and for those who believe in +it the force of this authority is no wise weakened by the fact that by +every sound canon of Biblical interpretation it is illicit. Its very +dogmatism is an asset. It could not do its work if it were less sure. +The confusions of the systems which try the critically minded are a +contribution to the devout who find in them an added opportunity for +faith. Its experience meetings create enthusiasm and confidence. It is, +in short, more than any one of the movements we are here considering, a +clearly defined cult whose intensities, limitations and mystic +assurances all combine to produce among its disciples the temper most +favourable to suggestion and it locks up on its force as a system of +healing. + +An accurate analysis of what it actually accomplishes would require an +immense and probably impossible labour--a knowledge of each case, an +accurate diagnosis when even for the trained diagnostician the thing is +difficult enough, and the following up of all reported cases. The +medical faculty would probably have done better to have taken such +movements as these more seriously and to have brought to them a trained +investigation which, except in the case of Lourdes, has never even been +attempted. Doubtless there is looseness and inconsistency in the whole +system. Almost any one who has had a practical observation of the +working of Christian Science has knowledge enough not only of looseness +and inconsistency but of what seems to the non-Christian Science mind +positive untruth. Something, however, must always be allowed here for +the way in which the mind acts under excitement and for the way in which +delusion deludes. All this combines to make any final judgment in this +region difficult, but there still remains, after all qualification, an +arresting solidity of achievement. Christian Science does work, +especially with the self-absorbed, the neurotic and those who have +needed, above all, for their physical deliverance, a new access to faith +and courage. Christian Science practitioners have also an unusual +opportunity in what may be called moral rehabilitation with physical +consequences. The physician has a better chance with the bodies of his +patients than with their souls; the minister a better chance with the +spiritual needs of his parishioners than with their bodies and habits; +the Christian Science practitioner to an unusual extent has the whole of +life under his control and it ought in all fairness to be conceded that +this power is helpfully employed. + +The very discipline of Christian Science is itself a therapeutic. There +are really a good many things which become non-existent directly you +begin to act as if they did not exist. An atmosphere in which no one +refers to his ailment and every one to his well-being is a therapeutic +atmosphere. Psychologists have taught us that if we go through the +motions of being happy we are likely to have an access of happiness; if +we go through the motions of being unhappy we have an access of misery. +If we go through the motions of being well, very often we achieve a +sound measure of health. + + +_But it is Fundamentally a System of Suggestion_ + +All this has been so strongly dwelt upon of late as to make any extended +consideration of it unnecessary here, as indeed any extended +consideration is impossible for any one save a specialist. What we are +more concerned with is the way in which the discipline and philosophy of +Christian Science produce their results. The answer to this question is +as plain as anything can be in our present state of knowledge, for +essentially, as a healing force, Christian Science stands or falls with +the therapeutic power of suggestion. It is a strongly drawn system of +psycho-therapy because it is a strongly drawn system of suggestion. Its +suggestion involves assumptions which are sometimes philosophy, +sometimes theology, and more commonly a baffling interplay of the two. + +But the outcome of it all is the practical persuasion on the part of the +patient that he is not sick and does not need so much to get well as to +demonstrate that he is well, and that in this demonstration he has an +absolute force on his side. To this end the whole body of affirmation, +persuasion, assumption, suggestion and technique of Christian Science is +directed. As one tries to analyze these separate elements they are, +taken singly, inconsistent, often unverifiable and often enough, by any +tests at all save the tests of Christian Science, positively untrue. But +as Mrs. Eddy has combined them and as they are applied in practice they +do possess an undeniable power. They are not dependent, as has been +said, fundamentally upon persons or things or places. Here is a coherent +system, the force of which may be felt when it is not understood and it +bears upon the perplexed or the impressionable with very great power. It +would be appreciably weakened if any one of its constituent elements +were taken out of it. But fundamentally it can do no more than any other +system of suggestion, unquestionably accepted, can do. + + +_It is Bound to be Affected by Our Growing Understanding of the Ranges +of Suggestion_ + +A deal of water has gone under the bridge since Mary Baker Eddy began +her work. What was then almost wholly involved in mystery is now +beginning to be reduced to law. The psychology of suggestion is by no +means clear as yet, nor are the students of it agreed in their +conclusions, but we do know enough about the complex character of +consciousness, the actuality of the subconscious and the reaction of +strongly held attitudes upon bodily states to be in the way, generally, +of freeing this whole great matter from the priest, the healer, the +charlatan or the prophet of strange cults and referring it hereafter for +direction and employment to its proper agents--the physician, the expert +in disordered mental conditions and the instructed spiritual adviser. + +It is now generally agreed that suggestion, however induced, may +positively affect bodily function. If it is a wrong suggestion its +effects are hurtful, right suggestion its effects are helpful. Now since +a vast range of physical maladjustments--and this may be broadened to +include nervous maladjustments as well--is functional, suggestive +therapeutics have a far-reaching and distinct field. When Christian +Science or any other healing cult reports cures in this field, those +cures, if verified by sufficient testimony, may be accepted as +accomplished. Those who have accomplished them may take what credit they +will for their own agency in the matter, but for all that the cure is no +testimony at all to the truth or falsity of their system. It proves only +that those helped have believed it. + +The matter of organic healing is more difficult. Medical Science does +not generally admit the possibility of organic change through +suggestion. There may be, however, a real difference of opinion as to +whether a particular trouble is functional or organic. Here is a +border-land not so much of fact as of diagnosis. A cure may be reported +as of an organic trouble when the basal diagnosis was wrong and it was +only functional, but the body possesses undoubtedly the power of +correcting or at least of limiting organic disease. Tuberculosis is an +organic disease but it is again and again limited and finally overcome +without the knowledge of the subject. Post-mortem examinations may +reveal scars in the lungs and so reflect processes only thus brought to +light. + +Whatever serves general physical well-being may greatly help the body in +eliminating disease and securing a going measure of physical health. In +such indirect ways as these suggestion may, therefore, while not acting +directly upon diseased organism, contribute most distinctly to arrest +organic disease. Thoughtful physicians are ready to concede this and +thus open a door for a measure of organic healing which technically +their science denies. A very revealing light has been let in upon this +whole region by hypnotism. Some of the students of hypnotism are +inclined to go as far as to admit organic change under hypnotic +suggestion. "Strong, persistent impressions or suggestions made on the +reflex organic consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their +functional disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic +structures."[59] + +[Footnote 59: Sidis, "The Psychology of Suggestion," p. 70.] + +Christian Science, then, as a healing agency has a great field for there +are always folk enough to heal. It has a method, a discipline highly +effective in producing changed mental and spiritual states and, +strangely enough, it is all the more effective because it is so narrowly +true. Those to whom it makes its appeal are, for the most part, not +capable of analyzing through to their sources its fundamental +inveracities, nor would they be inclined to do that if they were able. +Its vagueness and its spacious rhetoric really give it power. It does +produce results and probably one case of physical betterment has a +prevailing power which a chapter of criticisms cannot overcome and, more +than that, one case of physical betterment may screen a dozen in which +nothing happened at all. + +For Christian Science has in this region two alibis which can always be +brought into action, the most perfect ever devised. If it fails to cure +it is either because the one who was not cured lacked faith, or because +of the erroneous belief of some one else. A system which believes that +the toxic effect of poisons depends upon the vote of the majority in +that arsenic will cease to be a poison when everybody ceases to think of +it as a poison and will be a poison as long as anybody believes it is, +is perfectly safe even if it should fail to cure a case of arsenical +poison, for until facts and experience cease to weigh at all there will +always be some one somewhere believing that arsenic is a poison and that +one will be the scapegoat for the system. + + +_As a Religion it is Strongest in Teaching That God Has Meaning for the +Whole of Life_ + +Christian Science is, however, more than a system of mental +therapeutics, it is also a religion and due allowance must be made in +any just appraisal of it for the way in which it has made religion real +to many for whom religion had ceased to have a working reality. It needs +to be said on one side that a good deal of Christian Science religion is +really taking the Ark of God to battle, using religion, that is, for +comfort, material prosperity, health and just such tangible things. But +Christian Science meets a demand of the time also just here. Our own +age, deeply entangled in material satisfactions, has no mind to postpone +the satisfactions of religion to a future life. The monk and, indeed, +the generality of the devout in the medieval Church sought in +self-limited earthly joy a proper discipline for the soul and a state in +contrast to which the felicities for which they paid so great a price +should be the more welcome. The devout of Mary Baker Eddy's time, though +inclined to find in material well-being a plain mark of divine favour, +none the less accepted sickness and sorrow as from the hand of God and +prayed that with a meek and lowly heart they might endure this fatherly +correction and, having learned obedience by the things they suffered, +have a place amongst those who, through faith and patience, inherit His +presence. + +But our own time is not so eager to inherit promises as to enter into +possession. A religion which does not demonstrate itself in actual +well-being is under suspicion. The social passion now much in evidence +among the churches grows out of this as well as the many cults which +seek the proof of the love of God in health, happiness and prosperity. +And indeed all this is natural and right enough. If religion be real the +fruits of it should be manifest, though whether these are the more +significant and enduring fruits of the spirit may be questioned. A +religion which demonstrates itself in motor-cars and generous incomes +and more than comfortable raiment may be real enough to those who +profess it, but its reality is not quite the reality of the religion of +the Sermon on the Mount. + +Christian Science is in line with a distinct contemporaneous demand to +demonstrate God's love in about the terms of Jacob's famous vow at +Bethel--"If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, +and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that I come again +to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God." This is a +far cry from the noble protestation of Job which sounds still across the +years: "Though he slay me, still will I trust in him." + +And yet the more sensitive and richly endowed among the followers of +Mary Baker Eddy have found in Christian Science other values than these. +They have passed, by a sort of saving instinct, beyond its +contradictions and half-truths to what is centrally best in the whole +system. God, that is, has a meaning for life not hereafter but now, not +in creeds but in experience, not alone in hard disciplinary ways, but in +loving and intimate and helpful ways. True enough, this is no monopoly +of Christian Science; Christianity holds this truth in fee simple. But +unfortunately, in ways which it is perfectly possible to trace, the +great emphases of Christianity have in the past been too largely shifted +from this. + +There has been and still is in most Protestant churches too much +reticence about the meaning of God for the individual life and maybe too +great hesitation in really using to the full the proffer of divine +power. The accepted understandings of the place of pain and suffering in +life have been, as it were, a barrier between the perplexed and their +God; His love has not, somehow, seemed sufficiently at the service of +men, and though Christian Science secures the unchallenged supremacy of +the love of God by emptying it of great ranges of moral meaning and +shutting away therefrom all the shadowed side of life, it has probably +justified the love of God to multitudes who have, for one reason and +another, heretofore questioned it and they have discovered in this +new-found sense of God's love and presence, a reality and wealth of +religious experience which they had never known before. + + +_It Exalts the Power of Mind But Ignores Too Largely the Processes by +Which Mind Realizes Its Ideals_ + +There is also in Christian Science practice and philosophy the +apprehension of a real truth which New Thought formulates much more +clearly. Mind is creative. (Not alone mind with a capital "M" but our +own every-day, human, small "m" mind.) The trouble is that Christian +Science hopelessly short-circuits the creative process. Our human world +is finally what we make it through our insight, our understanding and +above all by our sense of values, but the actual achievement of changed +purposes in a changed world is a process whose immensity is not even so +much as hinted at in "Science and Health." Christian Science too largely +ignores and seems commonly to deny the whole disciplinary side of life +with its inevitable accompaniment of failure, fault and pain. Pain is no +delusion; pain is the sign of something gone wrong in the great business +of normal physical life. Nor is sin only an unreality which "seems real +to human erring belief"; sin is a sign that something has gone wrong in +the struggle for a normal, disciplined, moral life. Nor is the whole +body of evil simply a shadow to be dismissed as easily as one turns +one's back upon some darkness and faces toward the light; evil is the +sign of something gone wrong, or something not yet attained in the +massive progress of a humanity which combines in itself so many +discordant elements, which has so long a way to go and so much to learn +and so many things to conquer as it struggles upward toward a happier +state. + +Christian Science cannot in the end be true to the great facts of +experience, which have a power beyond the force of any assertion to +countervail, unless it is false to Mary Baker Eddy's philosophy, nor can +it be true to its philosophy without impoverishing moral and spiritual +endeavour. It is hard to find a place in the system--taken rigidly--for +sympathy or tenderness or the richest of human qualities, or for those +elements of wealth in character contributed by pain bravely borne or +sorrow uncomplainingly accepted. There is little place in Christian +Science for the Beatitudes and less still for that fine courage which is +itself the one assured victory which the hard beset may win on any field +of battle. The writer believes that while this severe judgment is +justified by "Science and Health," it is not justified by the practical +outcome of the cult in the lives of many of its disciples. They are in +devotion and kindness the equal of many in the Church and superior to +some. Their loyalty to their Church rebukes a good deal of orthodox +easy-going. All of which proves at least that life is bigger than our +theories about it and in the end subdues those who would make the best +of it, to communities of experience and understanding in which we are +all strangely kin. For, after all, unpleasant things cannot be thought +out; they must be fought out and dug out and lived out. The whole +redemptive force of society in thoroughgoing and far-reaching ways must +be brought to bear upon the very sources of all the evil side of life, +and the bare philosophy of Christian Science is not equal to this task. + + +_Is Not Big Enough for the Whole of Experience_ + +It is doubtful if Christian Science has ever made an appreciable change +in the mortality statistics of any city and yet if the Public Health +Department were to permit for forty-eight hours the milk or water supply +of a city to be polluted, statistics would disclose that within ten +days. This is only an illustration but it does illustrate. We must work +if we are to dig up the roots of evil things and get a better growth in +their stead and anything which attempts to substitute for this a denial +of the reality of the evil, a mystical religious attitude and a mere +formula of faith, no matter how oft repeated or how sincerely accepted, +or indeed no matter how efficacious in certain selected regions among +certain selected groups, is on the whole not a contribution to human +well-being. + +Very likely Mrs. Eddy's followers in the practical conduct of their +lives are already recognizing this and gradually, and maybe +unconsciously, adapting themselves to it. There are already signs of +certain processes of conformity to the necessities of experience; these +are likely to go farther. If Christian Science follows the history of +such movements in the past, it will, after having made its own distinct +assertion of whatever measure of truth it contains, be gradually swept +back into the main current of religion and practice. It will maintain a +nominal distinctness, but in the general conduct of life it will lose +its more outstanding characteristics and become largely a distinction +without a difference. Milmine, in her thoughtful criticism of Christian +Science at the end of her history says that the future of Christian +Science stands or falls with psycho-therapy. + +That is true only on the one side. As far as Christian Science has true +religious insights and approaches it will go on in spite of what happens +to psycho-therapy, though there is enough in psycho-therapy to assure +its future within well-defined regions if that were all. Something +bigger than psycho-therapy will finally judge and dismiss Christian +Science to its own place--life and experience will do that--and it is +safe to say that in the end Christian Science will have to come to terms +with a truth bigger than its own, with a body of experience which cannot +be dealt with on the selective process of taking what you want and +denying the rest, and more than that, it will have to come to terms with +the whole great matter of an intellectual, moral and spiritual struggle +governed by law and conditioned by the vaster world of which we are a +part. This is not to deny that Christian Science and allied teachings +have made contributions of real value to our common problem. It is only +to affirm that here is something not big enough for the whole either of +truth or experience. + + + + +VIII + +NEW THOUGHT + + +New Thought has been defined as "an attitude of mind, not a cult." It is +really both. It is necessary to include it in this study because it is a +cult; it is hard justly to appraise it because it is an attitude of +mind. Attitudes of mind are as elusive as the play of light on running +water. We can estimate their force and direction only as we have an +understanding of the main currents of thought by which they are carried +along and as far as New Thought goes these main currents are far older +than the cult itself. + + +_New Thought Difficult to Define; "An Attitude of Mind, Not a Cult"_ + +New Thought has never had an apostolic succession or a rigid discipline +or a centralized organic form. This has given to it a baffling looseness +in every direction, but has, on the other hand, given it a pervasive +quality which Christian Science does not possess. It has a vast and +diffuse literature and so merges into the general movement of +contemporaneous thought as to make it difficult to find anywhere a +distinct demarcation of channels. + +New Thought is either a theology with a philosophic basis or a +philosophy with a theological bias. It is centrally and quite distinctly +an attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science +and philosophy, a reaction against old theologies and perhaps a kind of +nebula out of which future theologies will be organized. For a great +theology is always the systematic organization of a complex of forces, a +massive structure wrought through the years by manifold builders +subduing a rich variety of material to their purposes. + +The teaching of the Scriptures, old traditions, the needs of worship and +organization, political and social circumstances, changing moral ideals, +the trend of philosophies and sciences, the challenge of schisms and +heresies, the sanctifying power of blind custom and the mystical +authority of the Church itself all combine to make a theology. Once a +great theology is so constituted it possesses an immense power over +life. It shapes character and ideals and gives direction to faith, +orders effort and so becomes, as it were, a mould into which souls and +societies are cast. + +Theologies may be changed, in fact they are always in the way of being +changed, but they yield slowly to transforming forces. Nothing is so +persistent as organized faith and yet the very strength of a great +theology is always its weakness. It is never really anything else than a +crystallization of past forces. The experiences which voice themselves +in theology have cooled and hardened down; the philosophy which is +implicit in theology is past philosophy; the science implicit in +theology is senescent science. + +There is always in evidence, then, in the regions of theology a +disturbing pressure occasioned by the reaction of contemporaneous +movements in science and philosophy and understandings of life generally +upon these old and solidly established inherited forms. Currents of +thought are always, as it were, running past the great formulae since +thought is free and formulae are rigid, and then returning upon them. +From time to time this movement gathers great force. The old has been +rigid so long, the new is so insistent that the conflict between them +fills an age with its clamour, stresses souls to its travail, breaks +down ancient forms without immediately building up their equivalent, and +contributes uncertainties and restlessnesses everywhere in evidence. + +Now this is exactly what has been happening in the region of religion in +the last thirty years. An inherited order, strongly fashioned and +organized and long essentially unchanged, has been compelled to take +account of the forces about it. Certainly theology is not so static as +an earlier paragraph would seem to indicate, none the less the great +theological centralities do possess an immense power of resistance. We +have already seen how little Protestantism had changed since the +Reformation until it met the full impact of modern science and +philosophy. We have had really until our own time and still largely +continue a theology with the Creation story of the ancient Hebrews, the +outlook upon life of the age of the Apostles, the philosophy of the +Greek fathers, St. Augustine's conception of human nature and the +expectation of the end of the world and the issues of history of the +Jewish apocalypse given a Christian interpretation. + +True enough, there are in all this precious and timeless qualities but +there is also through all the fabric of our formulated faith the +interweaving of such understandings as those who shaped our creeds had, +of law and history and truth. Any far-reaching change, then, in +philosophy or science was bound to profoundly affect religion and even +forty years ago far-reaching modifications of the old order were +overdue. + +New Thought is just one outcome of the tremendous impact of +contemporaneous thought upon our inherited theology; a detached fragment +or rather group of fragments, for even as a cult New Thought, as has +been said, is loosely organized and its varying parts have in common +only a common drift. Yet that drift is significant for it has beneath it +the immense force of a philosophy which has been gathering head for more +than a century. It is to this, therefore, that we ought to address +ourselves for any understanding of the changed outlook upon life which +is carried, as it were, from the surface of profounder tides. + + +_"The Rediscovery of the Inner Life"_ + +Josiah Royce dismisses the whole of philosophy from Spinoza to Kant in +one single pregnant phrase. He calls it "the rediscovery of the inner +life." It is along this line that modern philosophy and religion +approach each other. Religion has always been the setting forth of the +inner life in terms of its relationship to God and the proofs of the +reality of religion have always been found in the experiences of the +soul. The mystic particularly made everything of the inner life; he +lived only in its realities. For the sake of its enrichment and its +empowerment he subjected himself to rigorous disciplines. Its +revelations were to him all sufficient, for having found God therein he +asked for nothing beside. + +Wherein, then, is this new mysticism, or better, this new cult of the +inner life different from the old? It is not easy to answer that +question in a paragraph, though it is easy to feel the answer in any +comparison of the great classics of mysticism--which are mostly +spiritual autobiographies--and New Thought literature. To turn from St. +Augustine to Dresser, or from St. Theresa to Trine is to change +spiritual and intellectual climates. There is in the modern literature +little reflection of such spiritual struggle as fills the great +Confessions with the agony of embattled souls, nor any resolution of +such struggle into the peace of a soul "fully awake as regards God but +wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect of +herself." This testimony of St. Theresa is illuminating as a contrasting +background for New Thought. There the soul is very much awake, both as +regards things of this world and in respect of herself. + +These new cults of the inner life are far more self-conscious than the +old and far more self-analytical. They seek to discern the laws in +answer to which they act and utilize those laws in the practical conduct +of life. They are always either appealing to underlying philosophies or +else trying to make a philosophy of their own. Mysticism made +everything of God and nothing of itself. It plotted its mystic way but +knew nothing of psychology. New Thought seeks to discover in psychology +a road to God. The centers of mysticism were emotional; the centers of +New Thought are intellectual. All these cults are far more akin to +Gnosticism than mysticism, though they are saved, yet not wholly, from +the lawlessness of Gnosticism by a pretty constant return to the +outstanding conclusions of science and philosophy. + + +_Spinoza's Quest_ + +Now if we seek to discover the real genesis of the movement and trace +its development we would better begin, so deep are the roots of things, +with Spinoza rather than Quimby. Here the deeper currents, upon the +surface of which New Thought moves, take their rise and here also we +return to Royce's phrase--"the rediscovery of the inner life"--and the +philosopher who inaugurated the philosophic quest for just this +discovery. + +Spinoza was one of the last of the mystics and the first of the modern +philosophers. He shared with the mystics of an earlier time a consuming +sense of the futility of life save as life perfected itself in +contemplations of an eternal excellency and communion with something far +greater than itself. "After experience had taught me," he says (and this +is quoted from Royce's "Spirit of Modern Philosophy"), "that all the +usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile, seeing that none +of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good +or bad except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally +resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good which would +affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else, whether there +might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me +to enjoy continuous, supreme and unending happiness." + +Now there is in all this a strangely modern note--dissatisfaction with +what is offered by the commonplace and the accepted, a great emphasis +upon the mind as the key to the readjustments of life, a quest for some +single formula which would offer "continuous, supreme and unending +happiness." This is exactly what Mary Baker Eddy and all the other +perplexed and bodily broken "seekers" who gathered about Quimby were +really wanting and this is what, for one reason or another, the +proffered religious experiences of their time failed to secure them. +"This was, then," to quote Royce, "the beginning of Spinoza's Pilgrim's +Progress." (As indeed it is the beginning of every Pilgrim's Progress.) +"But now, for what distinguishes him from other mystics and makes him a +philosopher and not a mere exhorter, he has his religious passion, he +must reflect upon it ... the philosopher must justify his faith." + +We have no need here to follow Spinoza along all the way, difficult and +misty enough, by which he sought to justify his faith. The outstanding +fact is enough. He is a mystic who reasons his way through where the +elder mystic has felt his way through, and the goal which he finally +reaches, though it be the goal which the earlier mystics had found by +other roads,--the loss of self in God--is none the less such an +achievement of reason as Spinoza was able to compass. + + +_Kant Reaffirms the Creative Power of Mind_ + +So this polisher of lenses bequeathed to the century which followed him +its greatest inheritance and set for it its greatest task: the inner +life as the supreme concern of the philosopher and the discovery of its +laws and the interpretations of its realities the supreme task of +philosophy. Those who continued his work began far enough, apparently, +from the point where he left off and went a road strangely remote from +his. Having taken the inner life for their study they sought to lay bare +its very foundations. Nowadays, if we are so minded, we dictate to +machines which write our words curiously enough in shallow lines upon +wax cylinders and when the cylinders are full shave off the fragile +record and begin again. + +This is what the eighteenth century did for the mind. It reduced it to a +virgin surface, it affirmed the reality of nothing except the +impressions thereupon registered by what sense supplied. We owe to +experience and to experience only "all that vast store which the busy +and boundless fancy of man has painted on it [the white paper of the +mind] with an almost endless variety." We have nothing with which to +begin but sensation; we have nothing to go on with but reflection. +"These two, namely external, material things as the objects of +sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of +reflection, are the only originals from whence all our ideas take their +beginnings."[60] Such things as these are perhaps enough to begin with, +but they are not enough to go on with as our thinkers soon enough +discover. Some way must be found to relate the material thus supplied +and to build it up into a glowing, continuous, reasonable and conscious +inner life. + +[Footnote 60: Locke, "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding."] + +So in turn the philosophers laboured at their problem. They made much +not only of reflection but of association; they found a place for memory +and imagination; they discovered that we may as truly define experience +in terms of ideas as of sensation; they discovered finally that by no +possible process even of the most ingenious reasoning can you get the +full wealth of life out of a mind which was nothing more to begin with +than a piece of white paper, any more than you can get Hamlet (if we may +suppose Shakespeare to have used a dictaphone) out of a wax cylinder, a +needle and a diaphragm. + +So Kant ended what Spinoza began, by reaffirming the creative power of +the mind itself. It does far more than passively receive, it interprets, +organizes, contributes, creates. True enough, it is not an unconditioned +creator, it has laws of its own in obedience to which it finds both its +freedom and its power. It must take the material which experience +supplies and yet, in its higher ranges, in the regions of conduct and +faith, that is, where conscience has become the guide and the +necessities of the soul the law, we do possess the power in +enfranchising obediences and splendid adventures of faith to make a +world rich in goodness, power and peace. And here, once more, there is a +strangely modern note. Life is a pilgrim's progress. We are set out to +discover "whether there might be some real good, the discovery and +attainment of which would enable us to enjoy continuous, supreme and +unending happiness." And we do possess the power within ourselves, if +only we may discover the controlling laws and release effective forces, +to come at least a stage nearer our goal. All this makes for that +exaltation of the creative self which is so marked a characteristic of +present-day attitudes and which is perhaps the distinctive affirmation +of New Thought. + + +_Utilitarianism, Deism and Individualism the Practical Outcome of a +Great Movement_ + +But it needed time for all this to work itself out. The philosophic +basis for it had been supplied but it is a far cry from philosophy to +the practical conduct of life. Kant's transcendental philosophy needed a +deal of working over before it became practicable for the man in the +street. And to begin with what was deepest in the philosophy of the +Enlightenment led in unexpected directions. "While the practical +tendencies of all speculative thought inevitably appear in the opinions +and customs of a general public far removed from their sources, it is +particularly true of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, that its +influences had no small part in shaping the popular point of view +concerning the moral, religious and political convictions of that +age."[61] Utilitarianism, Deism and Individualism were, says Hibben, the +popular and practical outcome of the whole movement,--Utilitarianism in +Ethics, Deism in Religion, Individualism in Politics. These three +growths--and they have borne a deal of bitter fruit in the last one +hundred years--grow out of one soil. In general they are due to Locke's +sensationalism, Hume's skepticism, a new emphasis upon reason as opposed +to revelation and the self-sufficiency of the individual. If conscious +life is nothing but sensation worked over and built up, then pleasurable +sensations are the best we can aspire to, happiness is the end of the +quest. So Utilitarianism defined goodness in terms of happiness and gave +to conduct generally a grasping, greedy quality for which we have paid +over and over again in the disappointments and disillusionments of an +age, which, supposing itself to have discovered the true secret of +well-being, found too much of its seeming happiness only Dead Sea fruit. + +[Footnote 61: Hibben, "The Philosophy of the Enlightenment," p. 253.] + + +_They Bear a Bitter Fruit: the Reactions Against Them_ + +Deism in its reaction against Religion as merely revelation and in its +endeavour to find a rational basis for faith set God apart from His +world, detached, unheeding and offering no real recourse to a travailing +humanity between whom and Himself it built a rigid fabric of impersonal +law. The Individualism of the eighteenth century was partly a reaction +against old despotisms of Church and State--and a Declaration of +Independence. It was in part a pride of accomplishment and a new +affirmation of the self-sufficiency of the questing reason. There was in +it also a sound recognition of the worth of personality of which the +world then stood in need and which has since supplied a foundation for a +saving passion for education and human well-being. But Individualism as +practically applied by the first three-quarters of the nineteenth +century--unexpectedly reinforced as it was by aspects of +Darwinism--stressed the right of the strong and the doom of the weak. It +made competition the law of economic development, the survival of the +fittest the goal of a life of struggle. + +Consciously or unconsciously the politics, industry and religion of the +nineteenth century were greatly influenced by these outstanding +conceptions. No need to say how utterly they have broken down. They have +made for the deepening strife of classes and of nations, they have +essentially defeated the bright promise of a time which seemed to have +more to hope for than almost any other great period of history. + +And yet they were never unchallenged. They were challenged by the +essential spirit of Christianity; they were challenged by the poets who +found that they could shape no songs out of such stuff as this; they +were challenged by philosophers who sought to build for themselves and +for us a world more free and true; they were challenged by a group of +great novelists who created out of the wealth of their imagination +characters and situations in which love and human worth had their way +in spite of a thousand obstacles. They were challenged by prophets of a +better world, the Ruskins and Carlyles who soundly rated the ethics of +selfishness and the political economies of competition and the politics +of self-assertion and who stirred deeply the more sensitive of their +time. And finally they were challenged, and here we begin to approach +again the genesis of New Thought, by a philosophic movement which found +its point of departure in certain great aspects of earlier thinking +which had been much obscured by the difficult forms in which it had been +stated: the supremacy, that is, of the soul over all its surroundings. + +Now this return to what we may call the creative and controlling power +of spiritual forces is the key to the modern approach to life. We do not +understand, it may be, the meaning of our own terms. Spirit is a vague +enough word but we do know that the initiative is with desire and +purpose and understanding. These are positive and masterful; they are by +no means free; they are conditioned by the vaster order of which they +are a part, none the less our human world is plastic to their touch and +our material world as well. Carlyle has chanted all this gustily enough +but there is kindling truth in his stormy music. "Thus, like some wild +flaming, wild thundering train of heaven's artillery does this +mysterious mankind thunder and flame in long-drawn, quick succeeding +grandeur through the unknown deep. Earth's mountains are levelled and +her seas filled up in our passage. Can the earth which is but dead in a +vision resist spirits which have reality and are alive?" + + +_New England Transcendentalism. Quimby Again and the Dressers_ + +Curiously enough this quotation from a book which nowadays nobody likely +reads save perhaps in some college course on early Victorian literature, +brings us within sight of the beginnings of New Thought. A little group +of English and American thinkers, part philosophers, part poets, part +rebels against the established order, anticipated trained students in +their return upon the higher and more positive side of an older +philosophy. They made much of the inner life, its powers and its +possibilities; they affirmed the creative power of the soul; they +conceived life to lie plastic to the touch of vision and desire; they +thought themselves to be standing upon the threshold of a new world. +They were impatient of discipline; they dreamed impossible things and +gave their dreams the authority of reality. They were hard enough to +understand and they sorely tried practical plodding folk, but they +kindled their time and released forces which are yet in action. + +New England, through a group of adventurous thinkers of whom Emerson was +the most distinguished, responded strongly to Transcendentalism. Another +group, as has been said, responded strongly to mesmerism and spiritism, +which were also a part of the ferment of the time in which Christian +Science and New Thought (I use New Thought here in the technical sense) +find their source. And finally, Quimby, who is a rather unexpectedly +important link in a long chain,--important, that is, to the student of +modern cults--reacted against mesmerism, felt and thought his way toward +some understanding of the force of suggestion in abnormal states, +applied his conclusion to faith and mental healing and gathered about +him--as has been said before--a little group of disciples who have +between them released far-reaching movements. + +Mrs. Eddy and the Dressers were the outstanding members of this little +group of disciples. Mrs. Eddy soon dissociated herself from the others +and she supplied in "Science and Health" a distinctive philosophy to her +movement. She organized it into a church; she imposed upon it a +distinctive discipline. No little of the power of Christian Science is +due to this narrow rigidity which is itself the projection of the +personality of Mary Baker Eddy. But Christian Science did not carry with +it the whole of the group which had come under Quimby's influence, nor +indeed all of those who came under Mary Baker Eddy's influence. There +was during all the formative period of these modern cults a perpetual +process of schism. + +We have as a result, then, two divergent movements related in +underground ways, though as marked in difference as in resemblance, both +of them beginning about the same time, both of them reactions against +accepted religious forces and validations, both of them with a marked +therapeutic content, both of them adventures in the conduct of life. + +In the summary which follows I am in debt to Dresser's recent "History +of the New Thought Movement." The name New Thought was chosen as the +title of a little magazine devoted to mental healing, published in 1894 +in Melrose, Mass. "The term became current in Boston through the +organization of the Metaphysical Club in 1895. About the same time it +was used by Mr. C.P. Patterson in his magazine _Mind_ and in the title +of two of his books." Other names were suggested--in England, Higher +Thought; in Boston, Higher Life; in New York the little group was for a +time known as the Circle of Divine Ministry; in the west the movement +was known as Divine Science or Practical Christianity. There were groups +also which called themselves the Home of Truth or the Society of Silent +Unity. + + +_New Thought Takes Form_ + +New Thought, as has been said, lacks the definite direction which +Christian Science has always had. Its organizations have grown up +quietly, more or less irregularly and have had always a shifting +character. "The first New Thought Society with a regular leader and +organization in Boston was the Church of the Higher Life established in +1894."[62] The Metaphysical Club was an outgrowth of the New Thought +group in Boston. Dresser gives a list of the original members, chiefly +significant through the presence among them of some of Quimby's +disciples and others whose books have since held a high place in New +Thought literature. There were manifest connections between the +movement and liberal (particularly Unitarian) theology. + +[Footnote 62: All citations in this section are from Dresser's "History +of New Thought," unless otherwise indicated.] + +The first New Thought convention was held in Boston in 1899 (there had +been earlier conventions of the Disciples of Divine Science--a related +movement--in western cities) and the second in New York City in 1900. +The New York convention was the first to make any general statement of +the "purposes" of the League. We find on the New York program one Swami +Abhedananda, lecturer on the Vedanta philosophy. Here is an early +indication of the return of Eastern religions upon the West which is +also one of the marked characteristics of the religious development of +our time. We do not need to follow through in detail the list of +successive conventions with their topics and their speakers. The group +is not so large but that the same names reappear. There are marked +attempts in the earlier conventions to associate leaders in recognized +schools of philosophy and theology with the movement. One does not +discover this tendency in the later convention lists. + +The local groups throughout the country have had varying fortunes. They +have from time to time changed their names and naturally their leaders. +The west has responded perhaps more strongly than the Atlantic seaboard. +The movement is particularly strong on the Pacific Coast. There are no +available statistics and generalizations are of doubtful value. The +Cincinnati and Kansas City groups are offered by Dresser as typical +organizations, but they seem on the whole to be exceptional rather than +typical. The strength of the New Thought movement is not in its +organization but in its influence. "In England as in America interest +was aroused by Christian Science, then came a gradual reaction and the +establishment of independent branches of the movement." "It is +difficult," says Dresser, "to obtain information pertaining to the +influence of New Thought literature in foreign languages." The more +significant New Thought books, however, have been variously translated +and widely sold. New Thought leaders sometimes advise their disciples to +retain their old church associations and the movement has naturally +tended to merge in religious liberalism generally and to become only an +aspect of the manifold religious gropings of a troubled time. + +In the Constitution and By-Laws of the New Thought Alliance, published +in 1916, the purposes of the society are "to teach the infinitude of the +Supreme One, Divinity of Man and his Infinite possibilities through the +creative power of constructive thinking and obedience to the voice of +the Indwelling Presence which is our source of Inspiration, Power, +Health and Prosperity." We discover here the same tendency toward the +deification of capital letters which we have already noted in Christian +Science. + + +_Its Creeds_ + +In 1917 the International New Thought Alliance went further than at any +other time before in the direction of a creed and set forth the +following series of affirmations: "We affirm the freedom of each soul +as to choice and as to belief, and would not, by the adoption of any +declaration of principles, limit such freedom. The essence of the New +Thought is Truth, and each individual must be loyal to the Truth he +sees. The windows of his soul must be kept open at each moment for the +higher light, and his mind must be always hospitable to each new +inspiration. + +"We affirm the Good. This is supreme, universal and everlasting. Man is +made in the image of the Good, and evil and pain are but the tests and +correctives that appear when his thought does not reflect the full glory +of this image. + +"We affirm health, which is man's divine inheritance. Man's body is his +holy temple. Every function of it, every cell of it, is intelligent, and +is shaped, ruled, repaired, and controlled by mind. He whose body is +full of light is full of health. Spiritual healing has existed among all +races in all times. It has now become a part of the higher science and +art of living the life more abundant. + +"We affirm the divine supply. He who serves God and man in the full +understanding of the law of compensation shall not lack. Within us are +unused resources of energy and power. He who lives with his whole being, +and thus expresses fullness, shall reap fullness in return. He who gives +himself, he who knows, and acts in his highest knowledge, he who trusts +in the divine return, has learned the law of success. + +"We affirm the teaching of Christ that the Kingdom of Heaven is within +us, that we are one with the Father, that we should judge not, that we +should love one another, that we should heal the sick, that we should +return good for evil, that we should minister to others, and that we +should be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. These are not +only ideals, but practical, every-day working principles. + +"We affirm the new thought of God as Universal Love, Life, Truth, and +Joy, in whom we live, move and have our being, and by whom we are held +together; that His mind is our mind now, that realizing our oneness with +Him means love, truth, peace, health and plenty, not only in our own +lives but in the giving out of these fruits of the Spirit to others. + +"We affirm these things, not as a profession, but practice, not in one +day of the week, but in every hour and minute of every day, sleeping and +waking, not in the ministry of the few, but in a service that includes +the democracy of all, not in words alone, but in the innermost thoughts +of the heart expressed in living the life. 'By their fruits ye shall +know them.' + +"We affirm Heaven here and now, the life everlasting that becomes +conscious immortality, the communion of mind with mind throughout the +universe of thought, the nothingness of all error and negation, +including death, the variety of unity that produces the individual +expressions of the One-Life, and the quickened realization of the +indwelling God in each soul that is making a new heaven and a new +earth." + +We discover in this creed a more distinct recognition of ideals and +truths which inherited Christianity supplied than in the earlier +statements of purpose. In the annual address of the President there is +distinct reference to the relation of the New Thought gospel to the +churches. "I am asked often: What is the relation of this movement to +the Church? This is not a new religion. It is not an institution seeking +to build itself up for the mere sake of the institution. We do not ask +anybody to leave the church. We ask them to become better members of +their churches than before. New Thought is designed to make people +better and more efficient in whatever relation of life they may find +themselves. In other words: 'New Thought teaches men and women only the +old common-sense doctrine of self-reliance and belief in the integrity +of the universe and of one's own soul. It dignifies and ennobles manhood +and womanhood.' The main idea on which Christianity is founded is that +of communion with God, that of worshipping God in spirit and in truth. +This is the very corner-stone of those modern movements that recognize +men and women as the living temples of the God within.... I predict that +this new interpretation and new understanding will become universal in +the new age which is now dawning." + +A further paragraph, however, reveals the synthetic character of the +movement. "It is the realization in practical affairs of the teachings +not only of the Nazarene, but of every other great religious teacher +since the world began; for in their essence these teachings are +fundamentally alike; and the New Thought and other new spiritual +movements are but the efforts to apply, in our relations one with +another, these simple and sublime truths." + + +_The Range of the Movement_ + +I have quoted at length from these programs, affirmations and this one +address to indicate the range of the movement as it has found official +expression. We must look, however, to the literature of the movement as +a whole for a full understanding of its reach and influence. The +literature in general falls into three classes: (1) books concerned +mostly about healing; (2) books which instruct as to character, +spiritual states and fullness of life; (3) what one may call success +books which apply New Thought to business and the practical conduct of +life. The lines of demarcation between these three types of books is, of +course, not clear and there is a material which is common to all of +them, but the distinction thus suggested is real. + +As a principle of healing New Thought differs from Christian Science in +almost the whole range of its assumptions. It does not deny the reality +of matter, not the reality of suffering, nor does it distinguish, as +does Christian Science, between the Divine Mind and the mortal mind. +There are, according to New Thought, healing forces which may be trusted +to do their remedial work in us, if only we surrender ourselves to them +and let them have their way. There is nothing in New Thought which quite +corresponds to the "demonstration" of Christian Science. It would seem +to an impartial observer that Christian Science asks of its disciples +an intensity of positive effort which New Thought does not demand. +Dresser, for example, believes all suffering to be the result of +struggle. Directly we cease to struggle we cease to suffer, provided, of +course, that our cessation is in the direction of relaxation and a trust +in a higher power. In some regions, however, Christian Science and New +Thought as therapeutic agents work along the same line, but where +Christian Science denies New Thought ignores. Here New Thought makes +more use of psychological laws; it follows James generally in its +psychology, as it follows Emerson in its thought of the over-soul, +though in this region Emerson's detached serenity of faith is given body +in an insistence upon the divine immanence for which New Thought is in +debt to the suggestions and analogies of modern science. + +New Thought makes much of the shifting of attention and its disciplines +are rather the disciplines of the mystic than the disciplines of the +Christian Scientist. It seeks in substance to ascertain the laws of mind +in action and then, through the utilization of this knowledge, to secure +health, happiness and prosperity. It makes much, of course, of the +centrality of mind both in well-being and pain. It hardly goes so far as +to say that pain is an error in belief, but it does say that pain is a +matter of consciousness and that as we are masters of consciousness we +are masters of pain. It believes in thought transference and absent +treatment, but it is perhaps more conservative in the cases which it is +willing to undertake than Christian Science and recognizes the +limitations of the healer. + + +_The Key-Words of New Thought_ + +Its key-words are Harmony, Realization, Affirmation and Poise. Just here +New Thought is a strangely interwoven web. It makes much of "vibration" +and "friction." It is evidently under the spell of the wave theory of +light and heat. It is most dependable in its analysis and application of +laws of mental action, most undependable in trying to account for the +relation of mind to body and in its explanation of the physical +phenomena of disease. Fatigue, for example, "is evidently due to the +calling of power into a new direction. It [evidently the power] comes +into contact with dense matter, with an uncultivated portion of the +being, physical as well as mental, and meeting with resistance friction +of some sort is the natural result." One has only to compare a statement +like that with Cannon's careful study of bodily changes under emotional +states, to see the difference between speculation controlled by analogy +and the illuminating experimental methods of modern science. + +When Dresser adds that "we shall eliminate disease not by fighting it, +not by studying its causes, or doctoring its physical effects, but by +seeing the wisdom of the better way," he is on dangerous ground, for if +we are not to study the causes of disease but to take as our guide the +serene generalizations of a speculative mind we are shutting in our +faces one of the doors by which we enter into that knowledge of the mind +of God, of which New Thought makes so much. How shall we know the mind +of God except as we ask endless patient and careful questions of every +revelation of the divine method, whether in sickness or health? + +New Thought, however, takes a far more constructive view of suffering +than Christian Science. For New Thought suffering is at least +disciplinary and instructive: it compels reflection: it brings us to a +knowledge of the law. It is certainly, therefore, just and it may be +kind. Indeed, New Thought occasionally goes so far as to say that +suffering is also a revelation of love and must be so accepted and +entertained. Its general conclusions in this region are far more safe +than its insistence upon vibration and friction and its spacious +technicalities. + +When Dresser says that there is a difference "between ignoring a +trouble, between neglecting to take proper care of ourselves and that +wise direction of thought which in no way hinders while it most surely +helps to remedy our ills," he is on perfectly safe ground. When he adds +that there is a strong reason for believing that "there is a simple, +natural way out of every trouble, that kind nature, which is another +name for an omniscient God, is ever ready to do her utmost for us" he is +speaking with a wise and direct helpfulness, though here as generally +New Thought errs on the side of too great a simplification. There is a +way out of every trouble but it is not always simple, it is often +laborious and challenging. We have accomplished marvels in the matter of +tropical sanitation but the way out has been anything but simple. It has +involved experimentations which cost the lives of physicians who offered +themselves for humanity as nobly as any soldier on any battlefield; it +involved the sweat of hard driven labour digging drainage ditches, the +rebuilding of the foundations of cities and a thousand cares and +safeguards. If New Thought wishes to dismiss such a process as this with +the single adjective "simple" it may do as it pleases, but this is not +simplicity as the dictionary defines it. + + +_Its Field of Real Usefulness_ + +All that way of thinking of which New Thought is just one aspect is +fatally open to criticism just here. It ignores the immense travail of +humanity in its laborious pilgrimage toward better things and it is far +too ready to proclaim short-cuts to great goals when there never have +been and never will be any short-cuts in life. None the less, trust and +quietness of mind and soul and utter openness to healing, saving forces +are immense healing agents and in its emphasis thereupon New Thought has +recalled us to that which in the very intensity of life's battles we are +in the way of forgetting. And beyond doubt, in that obscure range of +diseases which are due to the want of balanced life--to worry, fear, +self-absorption and over-strain--the methods of New Thought have a +distinct value. + +In general, as one follows the history and literature of New Thought one +finds that, though it began with a group more interested in healing than +anything else, healing has come to play a progressively less important +part in the development of the movement and the larger part of its +literature deals with what one might call perhaps the laws of mental +and spiritual hygiene. The principles implicit in New Thought as a +healing cult carry of their own weight into other regions. It is +important enough to get well--that goes without saying--but it is more +important to keep well. Good health on the whole is a kind of +by-product. We suffer as distinctly from spiritual and mental +maladjustments as from physical. We suffer also from the sense of +inadequacy, the sense, that is, of a burdening disproportion between our +own powers and the challenge of life. New Thought has addressed itself +increasingly to such states and problems as this. Here it ceases to be a +cult or a method of healing and has become a most considerable influence +and here also it in general takes the direction of and is identified +with what is truest in the Christian religion, what is sanest and most +clear visioned in present-day thinking. The typical books just here are +Trine's "In Tune with the Infinite" and a similar literature. + + +_Its Gospel of Getting On_ + +Another application of New Thought is in the direction of personal +efficiency. There is a considerable literature in this region. It does +not specifically call itself New Thought but it is saturated with the +New Thought fundamentals and has distinctly the New Thought outlook. +Marden is the most popular and prolific writer in this connection and +the titles of his books are suggestive--"Keeping Fit," "Selling Things," +"The Victorious Attitude," "Training for Efficiency," "Getting On," +"Self-Investment," "Be Good to Yourself," "He Can Who Thinks He Can," +"Character," "Opportunity," "An Iron Will." Something like this has, of +course, been done before but the modern efficiency literature moves +along a wider front than earlier books and makes a fuller use of the new +psychology. All this literature dwells strongly upon the driving power +of a self-assertive personality strongly controlled by will, single +visioned and master of its own powers. It suggests lines of approach by +which other people's wills can be overcome, their interest aroused or +their cooeperation secured. + +Quotation is almost impossible--there is such an abundance of material +and much of it is commonplace. It takes a deal of padding to make +shelves of books out of the familiar and generally accepted truisms +which are the "Sermon on the Mount" and the "Beatitudes" of this gospel +of personal efficiency. Keep fit, keep at it, assert yourself, never +admit the possibility of failure, study your own strength and weakness +and the strength and weakness of your competitor and success is yours. +Look persistently on the bright side of every situation, refuse to dwell +on the dark side, recognize no realities but harmony, health, beauty and +success. + +It is only just to say that success is generously defined and the +disciples of this New Thought are asked also to live in the finer +senses--the recognition of beauty and friendship and goodness, that +is--but on the whole the ideal character so defined is a buoyant +optimist who sells his goods, succeeds in his plans and has his own way +with the world. It is the apotheosis of what James called "The Religion +of Healthy-Mindedness"; it all fits easily into the dominant temper of +our time and seems to reconcile that serving of two masters, God and +Getting On, which a lonely teacher long ago thought quite impossible. + +Naturally such a movement has a great following of disciples who +doubtless "have their reward." So alluring a gospel is sure to have its +own border-land prophets and one only has to study the advertisements in +the more generally read magazines to see to what an extent all sorts of +short-cuts to success of every sort are being offered, and how generally +all these advertisements lock up upon two or three principles which +revolve around self-assertion as a center and getting-on as a creed. It +would be idle to underestimate the influence of all this or, indeed, to +cry down the usefulness of it. There is doubtless a tonic quality in +these applications of New Thought principles of which despondent, +hesitating and wrongly self-conscious people stand greatly in need. + + +_The Limitations and Dangers of Its Positions_ + +But there is very great danger in it all of minimizing the difficulties +which really lie in the way of the successful conduct of life, +difficulties which are not eliminated because they are denied. And there +is above all the very great danger of making far too little of that +patient and laborious discipline which is the only sound foundation upon +which real power can possibly be established. There is everywhere here +an invitation to the superficial and, above all, there is everywhere +here a tendency toward the creation of a type of character by no means +so admirable in the actual outcome of it as it seems to be in the +glowing pages of these prophets of success. Self-assertion is after all +a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us +into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to +give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less +mischievous, though it wear the garment of sunny cheerfulness and +proclaim an unconquerable optimism. + +But at any rate New Thought, in one form or another, has penetrated +deeply the whole fabric of the modern outlook upon life. A just +appraisal of it is not easy and requires a careful analysis and +balancing of tendencies and forces. We recognize at once an immense +divergence from our inherited forms of religious faith. New Thought is +an interweaving of such psychological tendencies as we have already +traced with the implications and analogies of modern science. The God of +New Thought is an immanent God, never clearly defined; indeed it is +possible to argue from many representative utterances that the God of +New Thought is not personal at all but rather an all-pervading force, a +driving energy which we may discover both in ourselves and in the world +about us and to which conforming we are, with little effort on our own +part, carried as upon some strong, compelling tide. + +The main business of life, therefore, is to discover the direction of +these forces and the laws of their operation, and as far as possible to +conform both character and conduct, through obedience to such laws, into +a triumphant partnership with such a master force--a kind of conquering +self-surrender to a power not ourselves and yet which we may not know +apart from ourselves, which makes not supremely for righteousness +(righteousness is a word not often discovered in New Thought literature) +but for harmony, happiness and success. + + +_It Greatly Modifies Orthodox Theology_ + +Such a general statement as this must, of course, be qualified. Even the +most devout whose faith and character have alike been fashioned by an +inherited religion in which the personality of God is centrally +affirmed, find their own thought about God fluctuating. So great a thing +as faith in God must always have its lights and shadows and its changing +moods. In our moments of deeper devotion and surer insight the sense of +a supreme personal reality and a vital communion therewith is most clear +and strong; then there is some ebbing of our own powers of apprehension +and we seem to be in the grip of impersonal law and at the mercy of +forces which have no concern for our own personal values. New Thought +naturally reflects all this and adds thereto uncertainties of its own. +There are passages enough in New Thought literature which recognize the +personality of God just as there are passages enough which seem to +reduce Him to power and principle and the secret of such discrepancies +is not perhaps in the creeds of New Thought, but in the varying +attitudes of its priests and prophets. One may say, then, that the God +of New Thought is always immanent, always force and law and sometimes +intimate and personal. However this force may be defined, it carries +those who commit themselves to it toward definite goals of well-being. +The New Thought of to-day reflects the optimistic note of the scientific +evolution of a generation ago. It is not exactly "God's in His heaven, +all's right with the world," but it is the affirmation of streams of +tendency whose unfailing direction is toward happiness and success. + +If an element of struggle be implied in the particular sort of salvation +which New Thought preaches, it is not at least clearly brought out. +There has been amongst us of late a new and a very dearly bought +recognition of the element of struggle which seems to be implicit in all +life. The optimistic evolutionary philosophy in which New Thought roots +itself is on the whole justified neither by history nor the insight of +those who have been most rich in spiritual understanding, nor, indeed, +by the outcome of that philosophy in our own time. The happy confidence +that we do not need to struggle, but rather to commit ourselves to +forces which make automatically for happiness and well-being, has only +involved us more deeply in a struggle where in some ways the smug +happiness and well-being of representative New Thought literature seem +more remote than ever. + +This elimination of the element of moral struggle and the need for +deliverance which has so greatly coloured the older theologies gives a +distinct character to New Thought theology. There is no place in it for +a scheme of redemption; there is no place in it for atonement, save as +atonement may be conceived as a vicarious sharing of suffering incident +to all struggle for better things; there is no place in it for the old +anthropologies of Christian theology. It has on the whole little to say +about sin. Says Allen, in a very thoughtful short article on New Thought +in Hastings' "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics," "New Thought +excludes such doctrines as the duality of man and God, miracles in the +accepted sense, the forgiveness of sins and priestly mediation. It seeks +to interpret the world and nature as science has recorded them, but also +to convey their finer and esoteric meanings to the human understanding. +The fundamental purpose of religion and science is the same--namely, the +discovery of truth." "New Thought does not teach the moral depravity of +man. Such thoughts demoralize and weaken the individual. Miracles, in +the accepted sense, New Thought does not conceive as possible in a +universe of law. The only miracles are phenomena not understood, but +nevertheless the result of law. It applies the pragmatic test to every +religion and philosophy. Are you true? What do you give to a man to +carry to his daily task?" "New Thought recognizes no authority save the +voice of the soul speaking to each individual. Every soul can interpret +aright the oracles of truth." + + +_Tends to Become a Universal and Loosely-Defined Religion_ + +Worship becomes, therefore, contemplation rather than adoration, and a +vast deal of the liturgical material which Christianity specifically has +heretofore supplied becomes useless for this cult. Christian hymnology +would need much editing before it would serve New Thought purposes; the +whole conception of prayer would need to be altered. Naturally, then, on +its more distinctly religious side New Thought is at once fluctuating +and incomplete. It is the proclamation, to quote one of its spokesmen, +of a robust individualism and, in the individual, mind is supreme. Right +thinking is the key to right living. New Thought affirms the limitless +possibilities of the individual. Here perhaps it is more loose in its +thinking than in any other region. It makes free use of the word +"infinite" and surrounds itself with an atmosphere of boundless hope as +alluring as it is vague. + +The interest of New Thought is most largely in the present tenses of +life; its future in an eternal progress which should, of course, imply +immortality. New Thought is hospitable to truth from whatever source +derived. It is particularly hospitable to the suggestions of oriental +religions and, as far as it has taken form as a distinct religious +movement, it is becoming more and more markedly a kind of syncretism, a +putting together of religious elements drawn from widely universal +sources and it patently seeks nothing less than a universal religious +fellowship in which the values of all true faith are recognized and +which is to be under the control of what science has to say about the +world without and psychology of the world within. In a sentence New +Thought is an outstanding aspect of the unconquerably religious in human +nature, seeking to subdue to its own ends and inform with its own spirit +the new material which science, psychology and comparative religion have +put at our service in the last two generations. + +If New Thought diverges from the accepted Christian theology in many +ways, it runs parallel in other regions with what is enduringly true in +the Gospels, and it runs parallel also with not a little of that +endeavour after theological reconstruction which is loosely known as the +New Theology. We are generally under a compulsion to reconstruct our +creeds and adapt our religious thinking to whatever is true about us in +our understanding of our world and its history and its mechanism and the +laws of our own lives. Theology must take account of a creative +evolution and a humanity which has struggled upward from far-off +beginnings along a far-flung front and the findings of Science and the +intimations of Psychology. + +It will need a deal of pioneering to find roads through these new +regions and such adventurous souls as seek new paths, with a daring +disregard for ancient landmarks and a true passion to find religious +meanings in new facts and forces, are really serving us all. There is +the danger, however, that in the very freedom of their speculation they +may be too impatient of old experiences and hallowed certainties, for +these old experiences themselves are deeply rooted and testify to +realities which we may be compelled to let in by the window, once we +have put them out at the door. + + + + +IX + +THE RETURN OF THE EAST UPON THE WEST + +THEOSOPHY AND KINDRED CULTS + + +_Historic Forces Carried Early Christianity West and Not East. The +Far-Reaching Results of This Process_ + +Christianity in its beginning belonged neither to the East nor the West; +it was born where they met and its subsequent development was greatly +governed by the direction of the dominant tides of historical +development. But from the beginning of the Christian era the main +currents of human action flowed West and they carried Christianity with +them. It is, therefore, outstandingly an occidental development. This is +not to minimize the influence of the East in the earlier phases of +Christianity. There was doubtless a measure of give and take, some +blowing of the winds of the spirit in changing directions across vast +regions and a confused time, which carried the germinal forces from one +religion to another. But in the main, Christianity, to use Gardner's +fine phrase, was baptized into the forms and forces of the West. I say +in the main, for Asia Minor was in the time of St. Paul the meeting +place of manifold religions and his first Gentile converts brought with +them into their new faith a very great deal of what their old faiths had +made them. + +There was, generally, in the Apostolic world a very great longing for a +spiritual deliverance and a mystic temper which easily took over and +transformed those elements in Christianity which lent themselves to +mystic interpretations. Something of this we discover in the Pauline +Epistles themselves; Paul's use of the word "mystery" shows how he +adapted his teaching to the understanding of those to whom he addressed +himself. To quote Gardner: "In the growth and spread of popular +superstition, if we may call them by so harsh a name, we may well +discern a gradual preparation for Christianity.... These religions stand +toward Christianity, to continue my biological comparison, as the wings +of a penguin stand toward those of an eagle, and it is surely no slight +on Christianity to say that it met the blind longings of a pagan nation +and showed them a path toward which they had, for long generations, been +trying to find their way. The religious needs which were very +imperfectly met by the initiations and ceremonies and prayers of the +cults of the pagan saving deities found a complete and perfect +satisfaction from faith in an exalted Christ."[63] + +[Footnote 63: "The Growth of Christianity," Gardner, p. 136. For fuller +treatment with suggestive detail see Fraser "The Golden Bough," chapter +37.] + +Christianity could not do this really very great thing without at the +same time being affected by that which it, in a measure, took over and +completed. The influence of Asia upon Christianity is, therefore, a +very real influence. One can only wonder what would have happened had +the course of empire been East instead of West. Christianity might then +have been carried into India and China and through long centuries been +given so distinctly an oriental content as to have taken on a character +radically different from its Western form. But this did not happen. To +follow Gardner's figure still farther, it was baptized into Greek +philosophy and Roman imperialism and the power of the nascent nations of +western Europe, and into the medieval spirit, and so we have become its +heirs. More than that, the East took its own way, uninfluenced by the +West, until two entirely different types of culture, civilization, +religion and approach to reality had been developed, as far apart as the +East is from the West, and each, until almost our own time, +substantially uninfluenced by the other. + + +_The West Rediscovers the East; the East Returns Upon the West_ + +Given the contacts of the modern world this massive isolation of +cultures could not continue. The East and the West were bound to meet +and religion was bound to be affected by their meeting. Western +Christianity has for more than a hundred years now been sending its +missionaries to the Orient and oriental religions are beginning to send +their missionaries to the West. More justly the return of the East upon +the West is not so much in a missionary propaganda, though there is a +measure of that, as in a more subtle indoctrination of Western +speculation by the fascination and mystery of the Eastern cults. It is +not possible to follow this process in detail but it has gone on long +enough now for us to begin to see the outcome of it and to appraise its +force. It began with New Thought. One discovers oriental names on the +programs of New Thought conventions; the Vedanta Philosophy was +expounded by East Indian speakers at the Greenacre conference in Maine +in the late nineties; B.F. Mills was lecturing on Oriental Scriptures in +1907; and a lecture on the Vedanta Philosophy appears on the program of +the second convention of the International Metaphysical League held in +New York City in the year 1900. The New Thought movement in England +naturally reflected the same tendency to look for light to Eastern +speculation even more markedly than the American movement. + +All this was natural enough because New Thought, once divorced from +inherited Christianity and committed to pure speculation about the +sources and meanings of life, was sure to find out that the Orient had +been doing just this for a thousand years. Two things happened. First, +New Thought welcomed Eastern teachers to its conventions in the hope of +receiving thereby some measure of enlightenment, and second, many of +these seekers, finding that the East had a wealth of speculation +compared with which the West is poor indeed, took over the Eastern cults +bodily, gave themselves up to their study and became their ardent +devotees and missionaries. + +Generalizations are always dangerous and though the East has, until the +West began to exploit it, remained practically unchanged, the West has +changed so often that whatever one may say about it must immediately be +qualified. But, on the whole, Eastern and Western life are organized +around utterly different centers. The West in its present phase is +predominantly scientific. Our laboratories are perhaps the +distinguishing hall-mark of our civilization. We are always asking +questions of the outside world; we are hungry for facts; we are always +seeking to discover the law and direction of physical force; we have +taken small account, comparatively, of our own inner states, but we have +taken immense account of the universe of which we are a part and the +forces which play around us. Our realities are what we touch and see. We +have given to our sight an immense increase of searching power through +the microscope and telescope, but we are slow to venture beyond what +they reveal to us. We have increased the sensitiveness of our touch +through the instruments of our laboratories. We have organs to sensibly +register the vibrations of an etheric force and even to weigh light. But +we are slow to recognize any range of reality not thus revealed to us. + +We have gained in such ways a really illuminating understanding of the +physical universe; we have formulated its laws, chronicled its sequence +and made it in a marvellous way the instrument of our material +well-being. If we have speculated at all it has been rather in the +direction of the ultimate nature of matter and force, as these have +supplied us material for speculation, than in any other direction. We +have been generally and soundly suspicious of conclusions which cannot +be verified by the scientific method, and so have built about ourselves +restraining limitations of thought which we are wholesomely unwilling to +pass. We have found our real joy in action rather than meditation. Our +scientific achievements have supplied material for our restless energy +and our restless energy has urged us on to new achievement. + +True enough, there has been of late signs of a changing temper. We are +beginning to discover that science has marked limitations; there are +ranges of reality of which our laboratories can make no possible report +which we are beginning to take into account. But in a large way the +matured Western outlook upon life has been conditioned by the scientific +interpretation of the universe. + + +_Chesterton's Two Saints_ + +The East has taken an entirely different line; its laboratories have +been the laboratories of the soul. The East has had little concern about +outside things; it has had an immense concern for its own inner life. +The East has made little attempt to master outer forces; it has been +generally content to let them have their way with it, realizing, maybe, +that after all what the outside world can do for the inner life is +negligible compared with what the soul can do for itself. Race and +climate and the sequence of history have all conspired to produce this +temper. The history of the East is a strange combination of drive and +quiescence; its more vigorous races have had their periods of conquest +and fierce mastery, but sooner or later what they have conquered has +conquered them and they have accepted, with a kind of inevitable +fatalism, the pressure of forces which they were powerless to subdue to +their own weakening purposes. They have populated their lands to the +limit and accepted the poverty which a dense population without +scientific resource, on a poor soil and in a trying climate, inevitably +engenders. The more helpless have fallen back upon fate and accepted +with a pathetic resignation their hard estate, asking only to be freed +from the weariness of it. "It is better," says an Eastern proverb, "to +sit than to stand, it is better to lie than to sit, it is better to +sleep than to lie, and death is the best of all." + +There is an immensity of weariness and disillusionment in such an +interpretation of life, which needs no comment. But the Eastern mind is +subtle and speculative, possessing a peculiar penetrating power; and, +for the want of any other field in which to act, it turned in upon +itself. + +Chesterton has both hit and missed the immense difference between the +East and the West in one of his brilliant paragraphs.[64] "No two ideals +could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and +a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every +point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist +saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has +them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious +body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The medieval saint's +body is wasted to crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There +cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced +symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are +extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real +divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist +is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards; the Christian is staring +with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we +shall find some interesting things." + +[Footnote 64: "Orthodoxy," p. 243.] + +But to follow Chesterton's own method, the saint with the open eyes may +still be blind while the saint with his eyes shut may really see a vast +deal, and the East has seen much. Whether what it sees be true or not, +is another matter, but there is no denying the range of his conjecture. +The Eastern saint has sought to answer for himself and in his own way +those compelling questions which lie behind all religion--Whence? and +Whither? and Why? He, too, has sought to come into right relations with +the power which manifests itself in the universe and he has sought, with +an intensity of effort to which the West is strange, for a real +communion with the power he has discovered. And above all, he has sought +deliverance. + + +_Why the West Questions the East_ + +He has not been so conscious of the need of forgiveness, since +forgiveness plays no great part in his understanding of the sequences of +life, but he is anxious enough to be set free from pain and weariness +and at his best he has traced the relation of moral cause and effect far +more analytically than his Western brother. He has, indeed, introduced +greatly speculative elements in his balancing of life's accounts, but +the West has done that also, for the accounts of life persistently +refuse to be balanced unless something beyond ordinary experience is +taken into account. The longing of the East for deliverance has, on the +whole, however, been less theological and more simple than the longing +of the West. The West has been led to turn to the East for teaching and +deliverance through a combination of forces. I have noticed already the +very direct way in which New Thought, once committed to free speculation +about life and God, found congenial guidance in the Eastern cults, but +other elements enter. The West has begun to share something of the +disillusionment of the East; so many things which promised to deliver us +have seemingly failed us. Our sciences have immeasurably enlarged our +knowledge and increased our power; they have added to our material +well-being; they have worked their miracles for us; but they have +brought us neither peace nor true happiness. They have instead added +their own disturbances to our other perplexities and they have +ultimately simply extended the frontiers of the mysterious and given a +new and vaster quality to our problems. + +Our democracies and our humanitarian movements have shown us that the +keys both to liberty and progress are still in human nature and not in +forms of organization and government. As our civilizations have grown +older and particularly as they have wasted themselves in war, some +shadow of the age-old weariness of the East has begun to fall across our +Western world. We have also reacted strongly against materialism in +thought and life; we have begun to see, as has been said, how the need +and force of personality have the right to assert themselves against the +dominance of things. We are beginning to recognize the right of religion +and philosophy to suggest terms to science, and all these tendencies +have combined to produce a considerable group of people who, having +found, for one reason or another, no real satisfaction in their +inherited Christianity, have welcomed the Eastern solution of the +problems of life, or else have positively turned to the East in the hope +of discovering what Western Christianity has not been able to give them. +One should add also that the pure love of speculation which is one of +the phases of modern thought has made an opening in the West for the +East. If unlimited speculation is the main business of life, the East +has certainly everything to offer us, and for warning, as we shall +presently see, as well as for guidance. + + +_Pantheism and Its Problems_ + +The older Eastern religions are, to begin with, Pantheistic. We have +seen how religion generally in its development takes form and content +from its governing conception of God. We have seen also that there are +three governing conceptions of God: He is conceived as Transcendent or +Immanent, or else He is simply identified with the range and force of +the universe. Pantheism is generally the creation of brooding wonder and +uncritical thought; Pantheism feels rather than thinks; it accepts +rather than seeks to explain. It may be devout enough but its devotion +is passive rather than active. Pantheism is never scientific in the +accepted sense of that term; it has little concern for law; it explains +by personalizing the forces with which it has to deal; it is akin to the +temper which finds some animating spirit in all natural phenomena. The +flow of waters, the growth of things, the drift of clouds across the sky +are all, for Pantheism, simply the revelation of the action of some +indwelling spirit or other, without which they could neither exist nor +go on. + +At its worst Pantheism issues in a grotesque mythology and an +inconceivable multiplication of divinity; the gods in the Hindu Pantheon +are numbered by the thousands. At its best Pantheism issues in a kind of +mystic poetry and creates a devotee sensitive as Tagore to the fugitive +gleams of beauty through the murk of things, voicing his prayers and +insights in rare phrases which are, on the whole, in arresting contrast +to the actuality of life about him. Western devotion has been caught by +the mystic and poetical character of Pantheism and is, on the whole, +strangely blind to its actual outcome in the life of its devotees. + +We all feel the suggestion of it in certain of our tempers. If we should +take out of much of our finest poetry suggestions akin to the +suggestions of Pantheism at its best, we should leave even Western +poetry strangely poor, and we have beside, particularly in the +contemplation of rare natural beauty, a feeling of kinship with the +spirit which clothes itself in dawn and twilight, or speaks through the +rhythmic beat of sea waves, or lifts itself against the skyline in far +blue mountain summits, which helps us to understand this old, old faith. +And if modern cults had done nothing more than appropriate the poetry of +Pantheism they would have lent only a touch of oriental colour to the +somberness of Western life. + +But Theosophy and kindred cults have gone farther, since Pantheism +itself must go farther. Directly you have identified creation and the +creative power so intimately as Pantheism does, then you are under +bonds, if you have any curiosity at all or any speculative force, to try +to explain the ways in which a God, who is just to begin with all that +there is, has managed to reveal Himself in such an infinitude of minute +and sometimes ungodlike ways. So Pantheism has its own scheme, not of +creation, for there is no place in Pantheism for creation, but rather of +emanation. Eastern thought substitutes for the cosmogony of the Old +Testament which simply carries the world back to a creative God and +seeks to go no farther, and for the methods of Western science which +carries creation back to ultimate force and is unable to go any farther, +an entirely different system. + + +_How the One Becomes the Many_ + +A paragraph in Mrs. Besant's "The Ancient Wisdom" (page 41) may help us +here. "Coming forth from the depths of the One Existence, from the One +beyond all thought and all speech, a Logos, by imposing on Himself a +limit, circumscribing voluntarily the range of His own Being, becomes +the manifested God, and tracing the limiting sphere of His activity thus +outlines the area of His universe. Within that sphere the universe is +born, is evolved, and dies; it lives, it moves, it has its being in Him; +its matter is His emanation; its forces and energies are currents of His +life; He is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, +all-evolving; He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, +its centre and circumference; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, +it breathes in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything and +everything in Him. Thus have the Sages of the Ancient Wisdom taught us +of the beginning of the manifested worlds." + +It is not, of course, fair to say that here is something entirely +different from the line of Western scientific and philosophic thought or +wholly alien to elements in modern Christianity.[65] The real problem of +modern Theism is to connect what science discovers with what faith +assumes. The broader generalization of science resolves action and +existence into the unities of an underlying and self-conserving force +which grows more and more subtle and tenuous as we follow it from +molecules to atoms, from atoms to eons and electrons, and even discern +beneath these something more impalpable than themselves, and there must +be some way in which a creative power conceived by faith in terms of +personality has released the forces which have built themselves into the +universe. The difference is, however, that Christian Theism refuses +completely to identify God and His universe. + +[Footnote 65: Indeed this is a better commentary on the prologue to the +Gospel of John and certain passages of Colossians than most of the +orthodox theologies, and the self-limitation of God is the key to the +moral freedom of the individual.] + +There is, after all, a profound distinction between creating and +becoming. Theosophy undertakes to explain for us how "the One beyond all +thought and all speech" has become us and our universe. It attempts also +to provide a way by which we, who are entangled, to our pain and sorrow, +in the web of things thus woven, may escape from it and lose ourselves +again in the One. It takes the wheel for its symbol in more senses than +one. Everything is a turning and returning and we ourselves are bound +upon the wheel, carried down or up and finally to be set free, only by +the acceptance of a certain discipline of life. + +Theosophy, then, is both speculative and practical. Its speculations +take an immense range necessarily; it is no simple thing to follow the +One from the depths of His hidden existence to our earth-born lives and +the forces which flow about them. Only an expert deeply versed in +Eastern literature would be able to say whether Mrs. Besant follows her +Eastern masters faithfully in reporting their conclusions, but she has +plainly availed herself of many of the terms and suggestions of modern +science in interpreting them to us. If one could use a figure borrowed +from electricity, the One is "stepped-down" through a series of planes +and manifestations. Theosophy makes much of sevens--no use to ask +why--and bridges the gulf between ultimate and present realities by a +series of seven planes in which what is coarsest in the plane above +becomes the germ of what is finest in the plane beneath. Even so, the +One does not directly touch even the highest of these seven planes. +(Theosophy is, first of all, a study in descents and not in ascents; +ascent comes later.) There are between the One and the topmost plane +three emanations (but perhaps we would better let Mrs. Besant speak to +us herself): "The self-unfolding of the Logos in a threefold form: the +first Logos the root of all being, from Him the second manifesting the +two aspects of life and form, then the third Logos, the universal mind, +that in which all archetypically exists, the source of beings, the fount +of fashioning energies."[66] + +[Footnote 66: "The Ancient Wisdom," p. 41.] + + +_Evolution and Involution_ + +It would seem to the uninitiated that all this is a kind of smoke-screen +of words to conceal our real ignorance of what we can never know and +really have no need to know. It is evidently just an attempt to bridge +the abyss between the immaterial and the material. If Theosophy wishes +to bridge this abyss with conjecture, well and good, but its conjectures +really leave us more deeply perplexed than we should be if we frankly +recognized and accepted the limitations of our ignorance. Once within +sight of the topmost of her seven planes, Mrs. Besant goes on a little +more definitely though she confesses "of what occurs on the two higher +planes of the universe, the seventh and the sixth, we can form but the +haziest conception." Each plane has what she calls its own "spirit +matter"; this spirit matter becomes coarser as we descend; each plane is +an emanation from the plane above it and the spirit matter of each plane +winds one more veil around those emanations of the immaterial One in +whom or which the whole process took its beginning. + +Theosophy does not speak of evolution as it attempts to account for our +material world, it speaks of involution. Here it reverses what is most +distinctive in modern Western religious thought as far as modern Western +religious thought has accepted evolution. For us evolution, if we seek +to give it a Theistic content, is God making manifest, in the vast +ascent of form and existence, an always fuller revelation of Himself. +Our familiar phrase "the self-revelation of God" posits a power which +can never for a moment be contained in all that is, but which may always +be more clearly known as we follow His creative record from stage to +ascending stage. A grass blade is a richer revelation than a crystal, a +bird than a grass blade; personality is almost infinitely richer than +the lower forms, some personalities are more perfectly the instruments +of the divine self-revelation than others, and Christian faith accepts +in Jesus Christ the supreme self-revelation of God in terms of human +experience. + + +_Theosophy Undertakes to Offer Deliverance to the Entangled Soul_ + +But Theosophy reverses all this. As the One comes down from emanation to +emanation and from plane to plane He is always more deeply entangled in +the veil of things, until on our last and lowest plane He is seven times +enwrapped and smothered. We must not, however, confuse this last and +lowest plane with our little world, or even our universe; these are but +sensible aspects of it and they are really the manifestation of the +deeply enwrapped Divine trying to struggle up and out again and so +building our realities about us and eventually bringing us, with all our +conscious powers, into being. (Here the theosophist has more in common +with the evolutionist than one or two of the preceding paragraphs would +seem to indicate.) If we follow the figure of the wheel our present +plane, the last and lowest of them all, is really the turning point of +the wheel; now it begins to turn back upon that from which it descended, +and according to Theosophy our practical human task is so to avail +ourselves of its upward movement as to be carried back with it toward +the high planes of perfect being. + +Theosophy undertakes to account for personality as it accounts for our +sensible universe and along much the same line of speculation. Just as +the whole physical plane on which our world exists has really somewhere +deep wrapped up within it some emanation of the One from whom everything +flows out, so our true selves, which have really come down from the One +and should thence return, are wrapped up so deeply as also to be near +lost and smothered with, nevertheless, the power to get themselves +unwrapped. Our wrappings are our bodies, but we do not begin to +understand Theosophy if we think of body in the ordinary sense; our +physical body is only one and that the coarsest of the seven veils, for +there are seven here also, in which the true soul is enmeshed. We have +really seven bodies and we are not any one of them though each of them +is useful and each one of them puts us in touch with a certain order of +existence. Some of these bodies are mortal, others of them belong to the +truly enduring order. + +Now we are lost here unless we recognize the profound difference between +all our usual ways of thinking or talking and the wisdom of Theosophy. +Theosophy begins at the top and comes down, at least until it reaches +our present world; it also begins at the inside and works out. We think +of our physical bodies as the instruments, on one side at least, through +which the physical world communicates with us, but for the theosophist +they are only instruments through which we communicate with the world. +Not quite so, however, for Theosophy recognizes the give and take of +experience. The soul may slip out of the physical body in sleep and +it--our physical body--is at the best a stupid, imprisoning, misleading +sort of a husk which has its practical uses but ought by no means to be +taken too seriously.[67] Its coarse matter may be refined by discipline +and diet and apparently the physical body of a vegetarian is a finer +instrument than the physical body of one who feeds on the flesh of +animals. + +[Footnote 67: For a striking modern phrasing of this see Edward +Carpenter's Free Verse "The Stupid Old Body."] + + +_But Becomes Deeply Entangled Itself_ + +The physical body has also an etheric double which duplicates in a more +subtle way the constitution of the physical body. This is the vehicle of +the life force, whatever that means. The physical body and its double +are in a rough way the vehicles of the give and take of physical +existence, but for the experiences of pain and pleasure and for the +dwelling place of the passions, desires and emotions, we have an astral +body. Here the theosophist makes much use of vibrations and colours, and +apparently our changing play of emotion is reflected in a play of colour +which puts the chameleon to shame and makes us in our most excited +moment rivals of the rainbow itself. The astral body shows upon occasion +browns, dark reds and greens and their combinations, lit from time to +time with flashes of scarlet. Our better feelings reveal themselves in +finer colours; rose indicates love, blue, religious feeling, yellow, +intelligence, and violet, spirituality. The Theosophist believes that we +can be trained to see all this and illustrates it in coloured plates +which are, to the uninitiated, not over convincing. Beside the body of +physical existence and the astral body we possess also a mental body. +This is the seat of thought and mental action. In a sentence, maybe, the +theosophist is trying to say that we have a body for each phase of +personality through which we come into contact with the finer realities +of the ascending planes of existence, and that the matter of these +bodies is more subtly refined as we pass from mere sensation to higher +spiritual states. + +So within the astral body there is the mental body which, says Mrs. +Besant, is of finer material than the astral as the astral is finer than +the physical. This is the body which answers by its vibrations to our +changes of thought. The mental body may be refined by fitting +disciplines as it is coarsened by evil thoughts. These thoughts may +become "veritable diseases and maimings of the mental body incurable +during its period of life." These bodies we discard in due time, the +physical at death and the astral when ready to enter the heaven world. +What becomes of the mental body Mrs. Besant does not say. + +Beyond these are bodies which belong to man's timeless existence, +curiously named and obscurely defined. There is apparently a causal body +which is possibly the vehicle of will and, more involved still, a +super-spiritual body which is the reality of God deep within us, and the +carrier and vehicle of our supreme and enduring personal values. All +this is a curious enough mingling of psychology, a subtle materialism, +and unbounded speculation; it is equally beyond proof and denial, though +for the proof of it the theosophist offers the testimony of those whose +senses are so refined by peculiar disciplines as to see in and about +physical form a play of light and colour which are themselves the +revelation of mental and emotional states. We literally go about, +according to this testimony, "trailing clouds of glory" or of gloom. +While for the denial of it there is the deep-seated protest of Western +reason, that personality, complex as it is, cannot possibly be so +bafflingly complex as this. + + +_The West Accepts Suffering as a Challenge and Looks to Personal +Immortality for Victory_ + +We are, therefore, according to the theosophist, emanations from the +Divine; deeply enveiled and much enshrouded within us is a timeless and +changeless self descended from the mysterious All which lies back of all +things and under high compulsion to seek again, in some vast turning of +the wheel of Being, that from which we sprang. Theosophy becomes more +understandable in its practical reaction upon life, for this many veiled +self is deeply involved in forces and states to which it is not really +akin, and since it suffers greatly in being so involved the end of +existence is, in discipline and ascent, to be set free from the pain and +weariness of conscious existence, and to be absorbed in the changeless +peace of that ultimate reality out of which we have issued and back +again to which we are destined to go. We cannot be insensible to the +vast scope of such a speculation as this for in one form or another +there are, in all religion and in the deeper yearnings of life, elements +akin to it. + +The order of which we are a part bears hard upon the soul. No one who +meditates deeply upon the strangeness of human destiny can fail to +recognize the arresting estate of sensitive personality enmeshed in laws +and forces which drive on with so little apparent consideration for +those who are caught in the turning of their wheels, or ridden down in +their drive. Western faith has generally seen in this situation a +challenge to personality to assert its own supremacy over the impersonal +and subject its encompassing order to the high purposes of the soul. If +we are wounded in the fight we take our wounds as good soldiers; if the +forces which face us are challengingly strong we fall back upon our +deeper resources and in the end assert our own vaster powers. + +We accept the conditions of the struggle as a part of the discipline of +life and in our braver moments win from the fight itself those elements +of personal steadfastness which, matured in character, give moral +meaning to the endeavour, and though we anticipate an ultimate release +and blessed compensation for the present travail of our souls, we find +that release and those compensations in a personal immortality which +attends the termination of the individual life in the present order, and +continues that life conscious, free and triumphant in an immortal order, +and even there we ask neither to be released from effort nor denied +progress. We challenge the fortunes of the Unknown in the poet's phrase, +and seek "other heights in other lives, God willing." + + +_The East Balances the Accounts of Life in a Series of Reincarnations_ + +But just as the East casts the glamour of its speculation over the +processes by which we have come to be where and what we are, so it casts +the glamour of its speculation over the process of our release. The +West stakes everything on the issue of one individual life even if death +ends it, or else it assumes a conscious continuity of life rich in +memory and persistent in individuality in whatever progress lies beyond +the grave. Those whom Dante saw ascending from terrace to terrace of the +Mount of Purgation were in all stages continuously and truly themselves. +They knew the faults for which they made atonement and looked back with +unclouded vision along all the stages by which they had climbed. The +East makes little of the continuity of individual life and everything of +the sequence of individual lives. It offers for the solution of our +problem of ultimate destiny and also for its solution of the problem of +pain and sorrow and manifest inequality in human states, two simple and +unescapable laws--the law of moral consequence and the law of +reincarnation. The East and the West both believe that "whatsoever a man +soweth that shall he also reap" but the West believes he gathers his +harvests of pain or punishment in a continuity of conscious existence, +the vaster part of which is lived beyond death, with no rebirth and with +no travelling again the light or shadowed ways of earth and time. The +Christian West believes also in redemption which is just that sharing of +God in the process which makes faith and repentance definite and saving +elements in the struggle of the soul. + +The East believes in a series of reincarnations, each reincarnate state +taking its character from the quality of the life before. The fact that +the doors of recollection are shut and locked between each incarnate +existence makes no difference to the East. If a man has lived well and +justly and followed his light, he will hereafter be born higher up; if +he has loved darkness because his deeds are evil, he will be born into +some low estate; he may descend into the beast or ascend into the saint. +He will pay for present injustice with future suffering-- + + "Or reach a hand through time to catch + The far-off interest of tears" + +even though he have no conscious remembrance of the faults for which he +atones, or the sorrow for which he is recompensed. If he is steadfast +through countless rebirths, the slow turning wheel will bear him higher +and higher until he begins to ascend the successive planes, discovering +in each plane for which he has fitted himself a new wealth and reality +of existence, until at last he is lost in the Infinite Existence and his +struggle is ended. + +Perhaps the word "struggle" as here used is wrong. Deliverance for the +East is not so much struggle as acquiescence. For the theosophist desire +is the master mischief maker. Desire leads us in wrong directions, +complicates our spiritual problems and thrusts us against the turn of +the wheel. We are rather, according to the theosophist, to reduce desire +to its simplest terms, thereby freeing ourselves from restlessness, +above all taking care not to hurt or embitter others. + + +_Theosophy Produces a Distinct Type of Character_ + +There is no denying that here is a faith capable of producing a +distinctive type of character. It tends at its best toward an extreme +conscientiousness and an always excessive introspection; it creates also +a vast and brooding patience. "In countries where reincarnation and +karma [the law of Cause and Effect] are taken for granted by every +peasant and labourer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of +inevitable troubles that conduces much to the calm and contentment of +ordinary life. A man overwhelmed by misfortunes rails neither against +God nor against his neighbours, but regards his troubles as the result +of his own past mistakes and ill-doings. He accepts them resignedly and +makes the best of them.... He realizes that his future lives depend on +his own exertions and that the law which brings him pain will bring him +joy just as inevitably if he sows the seed of good. Hence a certain +large patience and philosophic view of life tending directly to social +stability and to general contentment."[68] + +[Footnote 68: "The Ancient Wisdom," Besant, p. 273.] + +If such a faith as this be informed with humaneness and be deeply +tempered with the principle of sacrifice, it may, and does, result in a +distinct type of real goodness. It is possibly a good faith for helpless +and more or less despairing folk, though it likely creates many of the +evils from which it desires to escape. The very reach and subtlety and +even splendour of its speculation will make a strong appeal to minds of +a certain type. + +Two elements in the whole system doubtless account for what hold it has +upon the Western mind. It does offer, to begin with, a coherent +explanation of the problem of pain and sorrow. As we have seen more than +once in this study, Western Christianity has been deficient just here. +The accepted explanations of the shadowed side of life have not been +great enough to meet the facts. Practically every cult we have studied +has found its opportunity just here. Christian Science solves the +problem by denying the essential reality of pain and disease. New +Thought believes in an underlying and loving good to which life may be +so attuned as to bring us generally into the current of health and +happiness. Theosophy accepts pain, sorrow and all unhappy forces and +explains them as the inevitable result of wrong action either in this or +a previous existence. + + +_Theosophy a "Tour de Force" of the Imagination_ + +Christian Science saves the justice and affirms the love of God by +making Him just a God with apparently no concern for and no +participation in the shadowed side of life. New Thought saves the love +and justice of God by discovering in pain and unhappiness our lack of +harmony with Him. Theosophy meets the whole shadowed order along its +full front and explains everything in terms of compensation. Now there +is much in this to appeal to our modern temper. Directly we recognize +the scales in which the consequences of our actions are weighed as being +so sensitive that not even a thought can be thrown in the one balance +without disturbing the equilibrium, directly we recognize ourselves as +involved in a sweep of law from whose consequences there is no possible +escape, we have at least a consistent scheme in which there is room for +no evasion, and if we balance the manifold inequalities of one life by +what has been done or left undone in some previous life, we are always +able to add weight enough to the scales to make them hang level. True +enough, there is nothing to guide us here but imaginative ingenuity, but +it is always possible to imagine some fault in a previous existence +which we pay for in pain or loss or disappointment, or some good deed +done in a previous existence which accounts for our happy fortune in +this. And so justice is saved if only by a tour de force of the +imagination. (Mrs. Besant, for example, explains the untimely death of a +child as a penalty due the parents for unkindness to a child in an +earlier incarnation.) + +The speculative aspects of Theosophy also appeal to tempers which love +to dream without accepting the laborious discipline of a truly reasoned +speculation. To quote a phrase of Macaulay's quoted in turn by William +James in one of his letters, there is a type of mind "utterly wanting in +the faculty by which a demonstrated truth is distinguished from a +plausible supposition," and there has been amongst us of late a marked +increase of this type of mind. There has been up to our own time no +great amount of such speculation as this in the West. It is not native +to the occidental temper and it has been held in control by our +scientific approach to the facts of our world and our experiences +therein. We have demanded for our speculations generally the +demonstration of fact and this has heretofore held us to a rather +narrow range, but that widening of the frontiers of the possible which +has attended the new psychology with its emphasis upon the subconscious, +along with the rather baffling character of psychic phenomena, has +opened the flood gates and released a tide of speculation which goes far +beyond the proved fact and accepts no limits but its own ingenious +audacity. We have already seen how evident deficiencies in the +discipline of present-day education and the loose state of mind too much +in evidence amongst us has contributed to all this. There are everywhere +a great number of perplexed people who want to believe something and +find it far easier to believe in dreams and guesses and cloud-built +systems than in restraining facts or even the rather clearly +demonstrated realities of the moral order, and such as these have found +a wealth of material in Eastern speculation. + + +_A Bridge of Clouds_ + +In trying to appraise the truth of Theosophy we have to disentangle the +system and the needs and the seekings which lead its adherents to accept +it. These needs and seekings are, after all, near and familiar; they are +only our old questions Whence? and Whither? and Why? Theosophy is at +least the attempt to really answer some of the questions which Western +science is either content or compelled to leave unanswered. The creative +point of contact between personality and matter and force is deeply +enwrapped in mystery. Orthodox Christianity has been content to affirm +the facts of creation without asking any questions at all as to its +methods. It has affirmed the omnipotence of the Creator and has found in +His omnipotence a satisfactory resting place. God is great enough to do +what has been done and the detail of it is rather an affair for God than +man. Scientific speculation generally has gone back as far as it can go +in the resolution of its forces and laws and recognized its own +limitations, leaving the rest to the theologian and the philosopher. The +result has been a gap which has not been bridged over. Theosophy has +undertaken to bridge that gap. But, examined more carefully, one sees +that the abyss has been crossed by nothing more solid than a fabric of +cloudy speculation. True enough these speculations are ingenious and +touched with suggestive light, but they are strangely insubstantial. +After all they do absolutely nothing more than our Western affirmation +of the immanence of God in life and force and law, and our Western +thought has the advantage alike in simplicity, in scientific basis and +reverent self-restraint. + +We might as well recognize, and be done with it, that there are +questions here which in all human probability are insoluble. There are +elements of mystery in life and the universe beyond our present and +likely our future power to definitely resolve. In the end faith can do +nothing more than rest in God and accept as an aspect of life itself the +necessary limits of our position. Our organized knowledge all too +quickly brings us to regions where faith and faith alone completes the +inquiry. But on the other hand, a faith which too far outruns either in +the reach or audacity of its speculation those elements which organized +knowledge supplies and reason validates, loses itself in futilities or +else misleads us altogether. Eastern speculation is too far beyond +either ordered knowledge or right reason to be of any practical use in +the fruitful conduct of life. Believing too much does just as much harm +as believing too little. + +Theosophy's seven planes and ascending emanations and sevenfold veils +and all the rest really explain nothing. On the other hand they tempt +their faithful to take conjecture for reality; they create a credulous +and uncritical temper; they are hostile to that honest dealing with fact +which is just one condition of getting on at all. A brave confession of +ignorance is often more truly reverent than knowing too many things +which are not so. As we approach more nearly the reality of things as +they are we find them always unexpectedly simple. The burden of proof is +always upon the murky and the complex. Those who try to escape the +difficulties in which our deeper understanding of the world order and +our own personalities involve us, by taking refuge in Eastern occultism +are on the wrong line. + + +_The Difficulties of Reincarnation_ + +The same criticism holds true of Reincarnation. It is involved in +hopeless difficulties. There are apparent injustices and inequalities in +life--so much is beyond debate--but we have in general, if we are honest +enough to follow it through, the clue to even these. We are all parts +of a struggling and, we trust, ascending order, an order which on the +whole is not so greatly concerned for the individual as we are concerned +for ourselves. We are hampered by our ignorance and we are deeply +involved one with the other. The orthodox theology which blames +everything upon sin as an abstraction is not convincing, but sin as the +projection of wrong desires, through self-will, into the field of human +action is a fact to be constantly reckoned with. The individual and +social consequences of it are enormous, nor can they be confined either +to one individual or one generation. Heredity continues weakness as well +as strength. A vast deal of our bitter reaping is due to the wrong or +foolish sowing of others, though fortunately we share the good as well +as the bad. The laws of heredity will account for a vast deal in any one +generation; the laws of social action and reaction for a great deal of +the rest, and there is finally not a little for which we ourselves are +responsible. A good many of our problems ought to be approached from the +point of view of the well-being of humanity generally and not our own +individual destiny. + +We may safely trust our individual destiny to brave and unselfish +living. I ought not to test what I do or leave undone by its effect upon +me in some future reincarnation; I ought to test it by the effect which +it has now upon the world of which I am a part, upon the generation +which is to follow me and upon the quality of my own present life. True +enough, the theosophist and myself find ourselves here in substantial +agreement as to many of the things which a man ought practically to do +to secure a happier future, but I maintain that the motives just named +are far more solid and worthy motives than the camouflaged selfishness +of Theosophy, and they are certainly in far deeper accord with the +ascertained facts of life. If we recognize that the more shadowed side +of life is partly the result of social and individual development +conditioned by weakness, ignorance and sin, if we recognize that the +present reaps what the past has sown, if we recognize that we suffer for +the faults of others and that no one of us may hope to climb far until +his neighbour climbs with him, if we recognize that pain and suffering +are disciplinary, illuminating, educative, and finally, if we recognize +that we do possess the power to take all the more difficult elements in +experience and subdue them to an increased wealth of personality, we +have really all the elements in hand for the solution of the problem of +pain and sorrow in terms of action and understanding, and we do not need +a series of reincarnations to help us out. + +Reincarnation really explains, as it claims to explain, neither the +exceptional individual nor the apparently unmerited sufferings of the +individual, and it has beside inescapable difficulties of its own. It +has to parallel the course of human existence with a range of supernal +existence for which there is absolutely no proof; it has to numerically +equalize birth and death--and these are not equal in an increasing +terrestrial population--or else it has to assume, as it does of course, +on other planes a storehouse of souls from which to draw. And more than +that, it involves itself in a perfect tangle of heavenly bookkeeping. +Here is the best Mrs. Besant can do to explain the difficulties of +reincarnation. "We have seen that man during his passage to physical +death loses, one after the other, his various bodies.... These are all +disintegrated and their particles remixed with the materials of their +several planes.... At this stage, then, only the man himself is left, +the labourer who has brought his harvest home and has lived upon it till +it is all worked up into himself. The dawn of a new life begins."[69] + +[Footnote 69: "The Ancient Wisdom," p. 202--passim.] + +To condense, he now proceeds to build up for himself a new body for his +coming life on the lower mental level. "This again exactly represents +his desire nature, faithfully reproducing the qualities he evolved in +the past; ... thus the man stands fully equipped for his next +incarnation.... Meanwhile action external to himself is being taken to +provide him with a physical body suitable for the expression of his +qualities.... All this is done by certain mighty spiritual Intelligences +often spoken of as the lords of Karma because it is their function to +superintend the working out of causes continually set going by thoughts, +desires and actions. They hold the threads of destiny which each man has +woven, and guide the reincarnating man to the environment determined by +his past. The race, the nation, the family thus determined, what may be +called the mould of the physical body ... is built within the mother's +womb by the agency of an elemental, the thought of the Karmic lords +being its motive power." The difficulties which this statement evades +are enormous, its conjectures are even more enormous. + +This is the subversion of all the facts of biology and heredity to a +capricious scheme, built up just to answer a few practical +questions--Why do we differ? Why do we suffer? Why are we happy? Surely +there are far more simple and reasonable answers to these questions than +the answer of Theosophy, and the willingness of so many people to rest +in such an answer as this can prove only one of two things--the capacity +of the mind for credulity or the arresting failure of those whose +business it is to interpret life to the perplexed, to have even begun +their task. + + +_Immortality a Nobler, Juster and Simpler Balancing of Life's +Account-Book_ + +If there be a want of opportunity in our present existence for a true +balancing of the scales of justice, and if some future existence be +needed to make things right, then the Christian doctrine of immortality +has an immense advantage over the reincarnations of Theosophy. We have +no right to underestimate the difficulties of a reasonable faith in +immortality, but they are simplicity itself as compared with the +difficulties of reincarnation, for reincarnation must answer every +question which the possibility of immortality raises and answer even +more difficult questions of its own. It is far simpler to believe that +having survived the shock of death we go on with the same essential +individuality we had before death, than to believe that having survived +we are sent back again through the gates of birth and are really +reincarnated in another individuality. More than that, the Christian +belief in immortality is more ethical. The action and reaction of life +have real meaning for me only as I know and remember. No theosophic +evasion can take the force out of this. + +If I consciously connect to-day's pain with yesterday's pain with the +folly or fault of a previous existence of which I am really unconscious, +the chain has been broken and no speculative question can supply the +missing link. Very likely the accepted Christian doctrine of the +finality of life after death has given Theosophy an opportunity in the +West. Protestantism particularly has allowed absolutely no place after +death for repentance, has offered no new chance to the adventuring soul; +its Hell and its Heaven have been final states. Catholicism has eased +the strain of this with purgatory, a belief wholly without Scriptural +basis, but nevertheless evolved in answer to great necessities of life. +We need neither purgatory nor reincarnation; we need only the +recognition of what is so centrally a part of any conception of +immortality as to make one wonder why we have so greatly missed it; the +reasonable confidence, that is, that we really go on very much as we +left off here. + +If there be in a future existence--and there must be if there be a +future existence--any room for repentance born of a clearer recognition +of fault and new and holier purposes born of a clearer understanding of +the true values of life, then we shall go on in a truly moral process of +growth, availing ourselves always of the teachings of experience and +working toward the true well-being of our souls, and if the mercy and +justice of God be not the figment of our imagination those who have been +hardly dealt with here will be given new opportunity, the deficient and +the handicapped released from what weighed them down will find a new +departure, and the justices of eternity complete what time began. All +this will be accomplished not in a series of existences, separated one +from the other by abysms of forgetfulness, but in a remembered +continuity of life deepening through endless growth. If this be only +faith and speculation it is at least a far more reasonable faith and +speculation than the alternative which Theosophy offers. Theosophy is a +side issue in the real solution of the problems of life. + + +_Pantheism at Its Best--and Its Worst_ + +Finally, though this is possibly unfair, Eastern Pantheism generally +must be tested by its fruits. We ought not, if we are to deal justly +with it, to ignore its better side. The East at its best has been strong +in a type of life wanting in the West; the East has been rich in +patience and gentleness and in consideration for every kind of life, +even the ant in the dust or the beast in the jungle. The East at its +best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of +cause and effect in character far, far beyond the West; it has been +content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life. +It has willingly, for the sake of truth and goodness, subjected itself +to disciplines, some of which are admirable, others of which are +loathsome. It has at its best ventured everything for the well-being of +the soul, even when it has misconceived that well-being. It has had +little of the hard driving quality of the West. Not a little of the +teaching of Jesus fits in better with the temper and devotion of the +Orient than the competitive materialism of the Occident. It is easily +possible to pass not a little of the Gospels through the interpretation +of Eastern mysticism and find therein arresting correspondences. For +example, a little book called "At the Feet of the Master" by a young +Indian student, has in it a wealth of insight and an understanding of +the balanced conduct of life which is wanting in a good many of the +Western interpretations of life, but none the less, things must be +judged by their massed outcome and the massed outcome of Eastern +Pantheism does not commend itself. + +The larger part of the religious literature of the East is upon a +distinctly lower level than those parts of it which are brought to us by +its devotees, and when Pantheism--and the basis of all Eastern +speculation is Pantheistic--comes down from its high places and begins +practically to express itself in worship and the conduct of the crowd, +then it is such as to give us pause. What Kipling calls "the sculptured +horrors" of the carved fronts of the temples in Benares are no accident; +they are simply the logical outcome of a faith which lifts the whole to +the level of the divine and has nothing beyond to correct what is by +what ought or ought not to be. Almost inevitably Pantheistic religions +unduly exalt those powers which make for fertility of field and the +increase of life. As they do this they have on their side the elemental +forces in human nature. When we begin to make gods of what after all +must be sternly subordinated to higher things, and the East has done +this in spite of its mystics and its dreamers, then we are not only in +danger of sculpturing symbolic horrors on the fronts of our temples but +of setting up therein strange altars to strange gods who are best +worshipped by strange rites. All this, inevitably enough, has given to +Eastern worship a more than earthly character, and has invested with the +sanction of religion forces which it must always be the business of +religion to subordinate and control. + +Along with all this has gone a grotesque mythology and an inconceivable +multiplication of divinity. Since no one but an expert can hope to +understand the complexities of a faith like this, the East has developed +a priestly class which bears harder upon its devotees and at the same +time more contemptuously separates itself from them than perhaps any +priestly class in the world. If the East is to return upon the West in +substituting a refined and more or less mystic Pantheism for the sterner +forms of Western faith, we ought at least to understand what it is +which, with all its implications, is beginning to set up its altars +amongst us. No one can follow the theosophic religion of the West +without recognizing how largely Western Theosophy avails itself of +Western science and informs itself with what Christianity has given to +the West. If these were taken out of it it would be hopeless. Since, +therefore, its speculations carry us beyond reason or science, since its +solution of the problems of life is far too complex, since whatever is +good in it may be found more richly and simply in what we already +possess and since the practical outcome of it in the East itself is an +arrested civilization which has many depths but few heights, one must +inevitably conclude that Theosophy has no real meaning for those who +possess already the knowledge which we have so laboriously gained and +the faith and insight which Christianity has brought us. + + + + +X + +SPIRITUALISM + + +Practically all the newer cults are quests in one general direction but +down more or less specific roads. Christian Science and New Thought are +endeavours after health and well-being and the endeavour also to +reconcile the more shadowed experiences of life with the love and +goodness of God. Theosophy and kindred cults are quests for illumination +and spiritual deliverance along other than the accepted lines of +Christian "redemption." Spiritualism is practically the quest for the +demonstration of immortality through such physical phenomena as prove, +at least to those who are persuaded by them, the survival of discarnate +personality. + +All these movements involve in varying degrees the abnormal or the +supernormal. They imply generally another environment for personality +than the environment which the ordered world of science supplies, and +other laws than the laws of which it takes account. They are one in +affirming the mastery of the psychical over the physical. They either +affirm or imply faculties which do not depend upon the senses for their +material; they suggest a range of personality which, if the facts which +they supply are sound, demands a very considerable recasting of our +accepted beliefs about ourselves. + +Christian Science and New Thought confine themselves largely to the +present term of life, though Christian Science affirms strongly enough +that death is an error of the mortal mind. New Thought places a shifting +emphasis upon immortality. Spiritualism centers wholly upon the +phenomena of the discarnate life, upon the power of the discarnate to +communicate with us and upon our power to receive and interpret their +communications. + +Spiritualism, or Spiritism, the name its adherents prefer, is, however, +by no means so simple as this definition of it. It may be anything from +the credulity which accepts without question or analysis the trick of a +medium, to the profound speculation of Meyer or Hyslop or the new +adventures in psychology of Emile Boirac and his French associates. It +may be a cult, a philosophy or an inquiry; it may organize itself in +forms of worship and separate itself entirely from the churches. It may +reinforce the faith of those who remain in their old communions. +Spiritism has a long line of descent. The belief that the spirit may +leave the body and maintain a continued existence is very old. Mr. +Herbert Spencer finds the genesis of this belief in dreams. Since +primitive men believed themselves able, in their dreams, to wander about +while the body remained immobile and since in their dreams they met and +spoke with their dead, they conceived an immaterial existence. The +spirit of a dead man, having left the body, would still go on about its +business. They, therefore, set out food and drink upon his grave and +sacrificed his dogs, his horses or his wives to serve him in his +disembodied state. All this is familiar enough and perhaps the whole +matter began as Mr. Spencer suggested, though it by no means ends there. + +The animism which grew out of this belief characterizes a vast deal of +early religion, penetrates a vast deal of early thinking. Primitive man +lived in a world constantly under the control of either friendly or +hostile spirits and the really massive result of this faith of his is +registered in regions as remote as the capricious genders of French +nouns and the majestic strophes of the Hebrew Psalms, for the genders +are the shadowy survivals of a time when all things had their spirits, +male or female, and the Psalms voice the faith for which thunder was the +voice of God and the hail was stored in His armoury. It would take us +far beyond the scope of our present inquiry to follow down this line in +all its suggestive ramifications. Animism, medieval witchcraft and the +confused phenomena of knocks, rappings and the breaking and throwing +about of furniture and the like reported in all civilized countries for +the past two or three centuries, supply the general background for +modern Spiritualism. (The whole subject is fully treated in the first +and second chapters of Podmore.) + + +_The Genesis of Modern Spiritualism_ + +Modern Spiritualism does not, however, claim for itself so ancient an +ancestry. In 1848 mysterious knockings were heard in the family of John +D. Fox at Hydesville, N.Y. They appeared to have some purpose behind +them; the daughters of the family finally worked out a code: three raps +for yes, one for no, two for doubt, and lo, a going concern was +established. It is interesting to note that mysterious noises had been +about a century before heard in the family of the Wesleys in Epworth +Rectory, England. These noises came to be accepted quite placidly as an +aspect of the interesting domestic life of the Wesleys. It has usually +been supposed that Hattie Wesley knew more about it than she cared to +tell and, as far as the illustrious founders of Methodism were +concerned, there the matter rests. + +But the Fox sisters became professional mediums and upon these simple +beginnings a great superstructure has been built up. The modern interest +in Spiritualism thus began on its physical side and in general the +physical phenomena of Spiritualism have become more bizarre and complex +with the growth of the cult. Raps, table tiltings, movements of articles +of furniture, playing upon musical instruments, slate writing, automatic +writing, of late the Ouija Board, materialization, levitation, apparent +elongation of the medium's body, are all associated with Spiritism. It +was natural that the voice also should become a medium of communication, +though trance mediumship belongs, as we shall see, to a later stage of +development. + +Incidentally the movement created a kind of contagious hysteria which +naturally multiplied the phenomena and made detached and critical +attitudes unduly difficult. For reasons already touched upon, America +has been strongly predisposed to phases of public opinion which in their +intensity and want of balance have the generally accepted +characteristics of hysteria. Some of them have been religious, great +awakenings, revivals and the like. These in their more extreme form have +been marked by trances, shoutings and catalepsy and, more normally, by a +popular interest, strongly emotionalized, which may possess a real +religious value. Other religious movements have centered about the +second coming of Christ and the end of the world. Many of these peculiar +excitements have been political. The whole offers the psychologists a +fascinating field and awaits its historian.[70] Yet the result is always +the same. The critical faculty is for the time in abeyance; public +opinion is intolerant of contradiction; imposture is made easy and +charlatans and self-appointed prophets find a credulous following. +Movements having this genesis and history are in themselves open to +suspicion. + +[Footnote 70: Sidis has a resume of Social Epidemics in part three of +his work on the "Psychology of Suggestion."] + + +_It Crosses to England and the Continent_ + +The American interest in Spiritualism from 1848 to 1852 belongs +distinctly to this region. The Fox sisters have been generally +discredited, but what they began carried on. In 1852 a Mrs. Hayden and a +little later a Mrs. Roberts introduced raps and table turnings to +England. There, and more particularly on the Continent, Spiritualism met +and merged with a second line of development which in turn reacted upon +American Spiritualism, and, in America, released movements on the +surface wholly unrelated to Spiritism. In France to a degree and in +Germany strongly Mesmerism lent itself to spiritistic interpretations. I +quote Podmore, who is commenting upon the trance utterances of a Mrs. +Lindquist: "It is to be noted that the ascription of these somnambulic +utterances to spirit intelligences was in the circumstances not merely +easy but almost inevitable. The entranced person was in a state +obviously differing very widely from either normal sleep or normal +wakefulness; in the waking state she herself retained no recollection of +what happened in the trance; in the trance she habitually spoke of her +waking self in the third person, as of some one else; the intelligence +which manifested in the trance obviously possessed powers of expression +and intellectual resources in some directions far greater than any +displayed by the waking subject. Add to this that the trance +intelligence habitually reflected the ideas in general and especially +the religious orthodoxy of her interlocutors; that on occasion she +showed knowledge of their thoughts and intentions which could not +apparently have been acquired by normal means; that she was, in +particular, extraordinarily skillful in diagnosing, prescribing for, and +occasionally foretelling the course of diseases in herself and +others--the proof must have seemed to the bystanders complete."[71] + +[Footnote 71: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. I, p. 77.] + + +_The Beginnings of Trance-Mediumship_ + +We have here plainly enough the beginnings of trance mediumship. It +needed only unstable personalities, capable of self-induced trance +states, so to widen all this as to supply the bases of spiritistic +faith and the material for the immensely laborious investigation of the +Society for Psychical Research. In the main, however, French interest in +Mesmerism and animal magnetism took a more scientific turn and issued in +the brilliant French studies in hypnotism. Spiritualism has made little +headway in Catholic countries. The authority of the Church is thrown so +strongly against it as to prohibit the interest of the credulous and the +penetrating minds of the southern European scientists have been more +concerned with the problems of abnormal personality than the continued +existence of the discarnate. + +The interest in Germany took another line. There was less scientific +investigation of hypnotism and trance states as abnormal modifications +of personality and far more interest in clairvoyance and spirit +existence. Men whose names carried weight accepted the spiritistic +explanation of phenomena ranging from broken flower pots to ghosts. Very +likely the German tendency toward mysticism and speculation explains +this. Jung followed Swedenborg and the mystics generally in affirming a +psychic body, but was a pioneer in associating it with the luminiferous +ether in a range of speculation which in our time supplies an +hypothetical scientific basis for the environment of the discarnate. (So +Sir Oliver Lodge.) Podmore concludes that the foundations of modern +Spiritualism were laid by the German magnetists of the first half of the +nineteenth century. + +The movement developed along these lines till 1875. Once broadly in +action it touches at one point or another the whole region of the +occult. Many spiritualists found in Theosophy, for which existence is +the endless turning of a wheel, a cycle of death and rebirth, a +pseudo-philosophic support for their belief. Spiritualism appealed +naturally to the lovers of the mystic and the unusual and it associated +itself, to a degree, with extreme liberalism in the general development +of religion. (On the whole, however, as far as religion goes, +Spiritualism has created a religion of its own.) Its advocates were +likely to be interested in phrenology, advanced social experiments, or +modification of the marriage laws. Spiritualistic phenomena themselves +became more varied and complex; trance mediumship became a profession +with a great increase of performers; slate writing was introduced and +finally materialization was achieved. All this might mean that the +spirits were growing more adept in "getting through," the mediums more +adept in technique, or else, which is more likely, that latent abnormal +aspects of personality were being brought to light through suggestion, +imitation and exercise. But no concerted effort was made by trained and +impartial observers to eliminate fraud, collect data and reach +dependable conclusions. This has been finally attempted by the Society +for Psychical Research and the results of their laborious investigations +are now at the service of the student of the occult. + + +_The Society for Psychical Research Begins Its Work_ + +The weight which attaches to the names of many English and some +American members of the Society, the carefully guarded admission of some +of them that there is in the whole region a possible residue of +phenomena which indicate communication between the living and the +discarnate and the profoundly unsettling influence of the war, really +account for the renewed interest in Spiritualism in our own time. In +1875 a few Englishmen, one of them a famous medium--Stainton +Moses--formed a Psychological Society for the investigation of +supernormal phenomena. (In general all this account of the history of +Spiritualism is greatly condensed from Podmore and Hill and the reader +is referred to their works without specific reference.) + +This first group dissolved upon the death of one of its members--though +that would seem to have been a good reason for continuing it--and in +1882 Professor (afterward Sir) William Barrett, who had already done +some experimenting and had brought hypnotism and telepathy to the notice +of the British association for the advancement of science, consulted +Stainton Moses with the view of founding a society under better auspices +and the Society for Psychical Research was organized, with Professor +Henry Sidgwick as first president. The Society undertook, according to +its own statement: + + 1. An examination of the nature and extent of any influence which + may be exerted by one mind upon another, otherwise than through the + recognized sensory channels. + + 2. The study of hypnotism and mesmerism, and an inquiry into the + alleged phenomena of clairvoyance. + + 3. A careful investigation of any reports, resting on testimony + sufficiently strong and not too remote, of apparitions coinciding + with some external event (as for instance a death) or giving + information previously unknown to the percipient, or being seen by + two or more persons independently of each other. + + 4. An inquiry into various alleged phenomena apparently + inexplicable by known laws of nature, and commonly referred by + Spiritualists to the agency of extra-human intelligences. + + 5. The collection and collation of existing materials bearing on + the history of these subjects.[72] + +[Footnote 72: "Spiritualism," Hill, p. 100.] + +They sought also "to approach these various problems without prejudice +or prepossession of any kind and in the same spirit of exact and +unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many +problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated." + +As a matter of fact the region is the most obscure which inquiry has +ever been called to enter. A noble rationality pervades the whole normal +material order, causes can be controlled, effects anticipated, laws +formulated and above all, the hypotheses of science are, if true, always +capable of a luminous and splendid verification. The disciplined +intellect moves through it all with a sense of "at-homeness" which is +itself a testimony to profound correspondences between the human mind +and the order with which, during its long, long unfolding, it has been +associated in intimacies of action and reaction too close to be +adequately set forth in words. But the mind does not rest easily in the +region which Spiritism claims for its own. + + +_The Difficulties It Confronts_ + +Of course this is to beg the whole question. The more scientifically +minded spiritualists might fairly enough answer that they are attempting +to discover the laws of the occult and reduce an anarchical system to +order, that our feeling of strangeness in these regions is only because +of our little contact with them. There are, they claim, undeveloped +aspects of personality which we have had as yet little occasion to use, +but which would, once they were fully brought into action, give us the +same sense of rapport with a super-sensible order that we now have in +our contact with the sensible order. The crux of the whole contention is +probably just here and in view of what has heretofore been accomplished +in discovering and formulating the laws of the physical universe and in +reducing an immense body of apparently unrelated facts to order, there +is doubtless possible a very great systematization of psychical +phenomena, even the most obscure. Nor may we readily set bounds to the +measure of human development. But at any rate the statement with which +this paragraph began is true. The region which the Society for Psychical +Research set out to explore is obscure and is, as yet, so far from +yielding to investigation that the investigators are not even agreed as +to their facts, let alone the conclusions to be drawn from. + +The proceedings of the Society literally fill volumes (thirty-two); it +would require a specialist to follow them through and an analysis here +impossible, rightly to evaluate them. When such careful investigators as +Hill and Podmore, dealing with the same body of fact, differ constantly +and diametrically in their conclusions, it is evident that the facts so +far collected have not cumulative force enough to establish in the +generality of disciplined minds a substantial unanimity of conviction. +There are far too many alternatives in the interpretation of the facts +and, in general, the personal equation of the investigator colours the +conclusions reached. Of course this is, in a measure, true in every +field of investigation, but it is outstandingly true in psychical +research. + + +_William James Enters the Field_ + +For some years the Society was mainly occupied with hypnotism and +thought transference, with occasional reports on "apparitions, haunted +houses, premonitions, automatic writing, crystal vision and multiple +personality." Professor William James' experiment with Mrs. Piper +carried the Society over into the field of trance mediumship. James had +a sound scientific interest in every aspect of the play of human +consciousness and was earlier than any of his contemporaries awakened to +the psychological value of abnormal mental states. He also loved fair +play. He made his first report on Mrs. Piper in 1886. He was unable, he +said, "to resist the conviction that knowledge appeared in her trances +which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes, ears +and wits.... What the source of this knowledge may be, I know not, and +have not a glimmer of explanatory suggestion to make, but from admitting +the fact of such knowledge I can see no escape." + +In a letter to Flourney dated August 9, 1908, James says of later +investigations: "It seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in +the history of automatism.... Evidently automatism is a word that covers +an extraordinary variety of fact." The reports of Mrs. Piper's sittings +fill a large place in the Society's records. Dr. Richard Hodgson and +Professor Hyslop were finally led to accept her trance utterances and +writings as spiritistic revelations. Podmore, after a most careful +analysis, concludes that "Mrs. Piper's trance utterances indicate the +possession of some supernormal power of apprehension, at least the +capacity to read the unspoken and even unconscious thoughts and emotions +of other minds."[73] He is willing to admit that if any case in the +whole history of Spiritualism points at communication with the spirits +of the dead, hers is that case, but he adds, "to other students of the +records, including the present writer, the evidence nevertheless appears +at present insufficient to justify the spiritualistic view even of a +working hypothesis." "I cannot point to a single instance in which a +precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished, of a +kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working +upon the materials provided in the hints let drop by the sitter."[74] + +[Footnote 73: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, pp. 342-343.] + +[Footnote 74: "Modern Spiritualism," Podmore, Vol. II, p. 345.] + + +_The Limitations of the Scientist in Psychical Investigation_ + +It is impossible in this study to follow through the records of the +Society. A representative group of its members, some of them men whose +names carry weight in other regions, have been led by their +investigations to adopt the spiritistic hypothesis. Significantly, +however, it is generally the scientist and not the psychologist who +commits himself most strongly to Spiritism. He is strongly impressed, as +was Sir William Crookes, by phenomena of one sort or another which do +not come under his laws, and he assigns to them causes which lie +altogether out of his field. Indeed the temper and training of the +scientist handicap him in all psychical investigations. He has only one +of two alternatives: to explain what he sees in terms of what his +laboratories have told him, or else in terms of forces with which he is +not familiar. His training in careful experimentation may fit him to +test and isolate physical phenomena, but if they cannot be explained in +terms of the forces and laws with which he is familiar his conclusions +are no more authoritative than the conclusions of any other reasonably +intelligent man. He may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to +conclusions--or conjectures--entirely outside his own province. The +element of trickery in the ordinary professional seance is +notorious.[75] The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost +without exception been duplicated by conjurers--many of whom have +mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most +unusual phenomena, such as Home's apparent ability to handle fire +unburnt and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the +performance of Indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritistic +explanation is attached. In many instances a trained conjurer would be +far more apt to detect fraud than a trained scientist. He would at least +know where to look for a probable explanation. + +[Footnote 75: Carrington, "The Psychical Phenomena of Spiritualism," pp. +6 and 7.] + + +_The Society for Psychical Research Gives Intellectual Standing to Their +Investigations_ + +If the explanations of the whole group of phenomena is not in the known +resident forces about us it is presumably in powers or aspects of +personality not yet fully known. Here the psychologist is a better +witness than the scientist and it is significant that psychologists have +been slower to accept the spiritistic hypothesis than the scientist. +Hyslop is an exception but the extent to which Hyslop has of late gone +in some of his reported utterances would seem to indicate that he has +passed far beyond the bonds of the scientific. And indeed, the whole +tendency of those who let themselves go strongly with the spiritistic +tide is exactly in this direction. It ought, however, to be said that +even these members of the S.P.R. who have become spiritistic have +generally been savingly conservative in their conclusions. + +At any rate, the work of the Society for Psychical Research has given +intellectual standing to what was before a sort of hole and corner +affair under suspicion twice: first, because of the character of those +involved, second, because of the character of what they revealed. It is +difficult for one not predisposed toward the occult and even strongly +prejudiced against it to deny in alleged spiritistic phenomena a +challenging residuum which may in the end compel far-reaching +modifications in the conclusions both of science and psychology. By one +set of tests this residuum is unexpectedly small. One of the canons of +the S.P.R. is to reject the work of any medium once convicted or +strongly suspected of fraud. There is a vast literature in this region +through whose outstanding parts the writer has for a good while now been +trying to find his way, often enough ready to quote the Pope in the Ring +and the Book. + + "I have worn through this sombre wintry day + With winter in my soul ... + Over these dismalest of documents" + +The reports of sittings cover weary pages of murky statement; the +descriptions of the discarnate life are monotonously uniform and +governed almost without exception by old, old conceptions of planes and +spheres. There is always a preponderance of the trivial--though the +advocates of spiritism claim, and the justice of this claim must be +allowed, that this is inevitable and that only through the veridical +character of the inconsequential can the consequential be established. +Moreover, the impartial student working over the records should at least +recognize the pathetic importance which those, believing themselves to +be in touch with their own dead, naturally attach to even the most +trivial instances. This sense of really being in touch, itself entirely +subjective, probably carries over ninety-nine out of every hundred who +finally become spiritists. It would be foolish to ignore the +contributive force of this sense. In one form or another it is the last +element in our recognition of our friends, and it never can be judged +externally. But on the other hand a recognition of the unwarranted +lengths to which--with lonely longing behind it--it may carry even the +best poised minds, must give us pause in accepting any conclusion thus +reached. + + +_The Very Small Number of Dependable Mediums_ + +Spiritistic literature is endlessly diffuse, but on the other hand the +more dispassionate students rest their case on an unexpectedly small +body of undiscredited evidence. Mrs. Piper, Home and Stainton Moses are +the mediums with whom the case of the S.P.R. really stands or falls. +Home was never detected in fraud and was non-professional. Sir William +Crookes' experiments in these physical phenomena were carried on with +him as medium. His work, however, was generally done for a small group +of already convinced followers and their testimony, while sincere and +generally consistent, may often have been influenced in ways of which +they themselves were not conscious. Podmore thinks them to have been +unduly suggestible and offers hallucinations as an alternative +hypothesis. Stainton Moses was respected in his private life, a teacher, +a clergyman and a private tutor. His specialties were the introduction +of a great variety of articles--apports as they are called--at his +sittings, levitation, table-tipping and automatic writing and the direct +voice. His control was known as "Imperator" and this ghostly commander +fills a large place in the S.P.R. literature. "Imperator" had a strong +homiletic instinct (remember that Moses was a clergyman) and +communicated first and last through automatic writing, a considerable +exposition of the spiritualistic creed, the larger part of which could +have been preached from any liberal pulpit with no other effect on the +hearers than to win their assent to blameless commonplaces--or, +possibly, put them to sleep. + +Mrs. Piper affords the strongest evidence of what Podmore calls "Some +supernormal power of apprehension" in the entire history of trance +mediumship. She was for years under the constant observation of a +capable group by no means unanimously sympathetic with the spiritistic +hypothesis, and has never been detected in fraud. She contributed a very +great amount of information to her sitters which she apparently could +not and did not obtain from known sources. There are no physical +phenomena in connection with her work. The records of her seances fill a +large place in the proceedings of the S.P.R. and the case for spiritism +could be more safely rested with her than any other medium. + +But the point here is that these three--Home, Moses and Mrs. +Piper--supply the larger part of material which the really trained +investigators of the last forty years are at all willing to take +seriously. If there have been only three mediums in forty years who have +commanded the general confidence--and Podmore does not feel absolutely +sure of Home--of the group whose judgment the rest of us have to depend +upon, we have a situation in which the average untrained seeker dealing +with the average medium can have no sound confidence at all. The whole +region is shot through and through with uncertainties, deceits and +alternative hypotheses. + + +_Spiritism a Question of Testimony and Interpretation_ + +It is all fundamentally a matter of testimony. We have, or we have not, +a body of fact for which we are in debt to observation. The observation +may be first hand--as in Sir Oliver Lodge's sittings where he reports +what he saw and heard. It may be second hand as the cases reported in +the larger part of the authoritative literature of psychic phenomena. +(Second hand, that is, for the authors and those who depend upon them.) +Trustworthy observation is probably more difficult here than in any +region of investigation. The whole situation is unfavourable; low lights +and high emotion, the instinctive tendency to read into the facts a +desired content even in watching them, the possibility of hallucinations +and forms of hypnosis, all combine to render human testimony unreliable +and introduce errors of observation. Nowhere can we be less sure of our +facts and even when the facts are admitted the interpretation of them +still remains, and here the room for difference is equally great. At +best we are dealing with forces not yet subdued to law, phenomena for +which normal experience supplies no parallel. It is all a region of +intimations and possible permissions, but never for a moment of +inevitable conclusions. One must go slow enough in offering any opinion +at all. The writer recognizes and accepts, to begin with, a +preponderance of dependable testimony for physical phenomena not to be +explained in terms of any force with which science is now familiar. + +In this he goes beyond Podmore who would eliminate all physical +phenomena from the problem, and fully as far as Carrington. But Sir +William Crookes never admitted entire error in this region,[76] and the +conclusions of Geley (though he cites in part Eusapia Palladino, who is +more or less discredited) point in the same direction. His studies of +materialization are so vivid as to be uncanny and his photographs a +series of documents which still await explanation.[77] There would seem +to be a possible exercise of personal force not dependent upon muscular +pull or pressure, bodily movements operating against known laws and even +the building of this mysterious force into complete or fragmentary +body-like forms. + +[Footnote 76: See Carrington, "The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism," +p. 377.] + +[Footnote 77: Geley, "From the Unconscious to the Conscious."] + +On the psychical side there is dependable evidence for information +conveyed by supernormal means across considerable spaces--possibly long +distances and the power to secure and report information not gained in +any normal way. These are bare statements capable of great +amplification. But they cover the ground. + + +_Three Possible Explanations of So-Called Spiritistic Phenomena_ + +Admitting the facts, there are three possible explanations. First, the +Daimonistic. There are, according to this theory, in the unseen +world--wherever and whatever that may be--an order of beings akin to +ourselves, either less or more highly developed, mischievous or benign. +This is an old, old belief; it has pervaded animistic religions, +fathered witchcraft, persisted in the belief of demoniac control, +enriched folk lore, filled the friendly silences of the night with +terror and haunted humanity. Now it has found its renaissance in the +full blaze of Twentieth Century Science. + +"It seems not improbable," says Sir William Barrett, "that many of the +_physical_ manifestations witnessed in a spiritualistic seance are the +product of human-like but not really human intelligence--good or bad +daimonia they may be, _elementals_ some have called them, which +aggregate round the medium; drawn from that particular plane of mental +and moral development in the unseen which corresponds to the mental and +moral plane of the medium."[78] This is, with little enough alteration, +the very point from which we set out in the remote dawn of our endeavour +to interpret the mystery of the world about us. The only difference is +that Sir William has his daimon for a tipping table and the savage had +his for a flowing spring. Sir William may be right but primitive man was +wrong. The whole trend of science heretofore has been to eliminate +capricious and isolated elements from observed phenomena and include +them in a sweep of law for whose operation the resident forces in the +universe and human personality are seen to be sufficient. The +daimonistic hypothesis has always up to this time been proved not only +unnecessary but positively misleading. It belongs to a region where +proof and disproof are equally impossible, but the weight of experience +and especially all our truer understandings of ourselves and our world, +dearly bought through the intellectual travail of our race, are against +it. To accept it is really to turn back the clock and populate the +unseen again with the creation of our fears or our fancies. It is at the +best the too easy solution of a challenging problem, at the worst an +aspect of that renaissance of superstition which is one of the strangest +characteristics of our own time. + +[Footnote 78: "On the Threshold of the Unseen," p. 113.] + +The second explanation is spiritistic. There are unseen presences but +they are the discarnate who seek in the more trivial phenomena to bring +themselves to our attention and in the more important to assure us of +their continued existence and satisfy their longing and ours in renewed +personal contacts. Given a faith in immortality, this explanation is +natural enough--even inevitable. If the discarnate still live they must +remember and desire. Death does not end affection on our side. It should +not end affection on their side. There must be, moreover, what one may +call a discarnate status--an order, that is, of relationships and +activities in which discarnate personality realizes and expresses +itself. Our racial curiosities about the state of the dead are +quenchless. Every religion has its creeds, its dreams, its assurances. +From the Nirvana of the Buddhist to the ardent paradise of the +Mohammedan, faith and longing have built their structure and peopled it +with their dead. Great ranges of literature are coloured by such +speculations. Christian hymnology is instinct with them and not a little +of our noblest poetry. We have set our hells over against our heavens +and opposed their terror to celestial splendours. Modern Spiritualism +has to head it the whole drive of such speculations as these. For if the +generality have been content to leave the solution of the very great +difficulties which any faith in immortality involves, to the +demonstrations of eventual experience, and rest in what is really the +poetry of their faith, others either more curious or more credulous seek +the testimony of the senses. Such as these naturally find what they seek +in the phenomena of trance mediumship. They believe that the discarnate +are constantly seeking to penetrate the veil between their order and +ours and avail themselves of every opportunity to recall themselves to +the memory of the incarnate. + + +_Myers' Theory of Mediumship_ + +F.W.H. Myers undertakes to describe how this may be done from the point +of view of the spirit. "Seeking then for some open avenue, it discerns +something which corresponds to a _light_--a glimmer of translucency in +the confused darkness of our material world. This 'light' indicates a +_sensitive_--a human organism so constituted that a spirit can +temporarily _inform_ or _control_ it, not necessarily interrupting the +stream of the sensitive's ordinary consciousness; perhaps using a hand +only, or perhaps, as in Mrs. Piper's case, using voice as well as hand, +and occupying all the sensitive's channels of self-manifestation." + +There are, naturally, in all this unescapable elements of speculation. +As a matter of fact anything which we may imagine about the discarnate +life may be almost unbelievably wide of the mark. Memory more than +anything else is the binding force in personality. We know ourselves to +be in the morning what we were when we went to sleep the night before, +simply because memory reassembles immediately the continuing elements of +our individual existences. More than that, we are greatly helped by our +surroundings; everything which meets us in the morning has associations +by which memory is served and, therefore, by the almost automatic +process of putting together what we remember and surrendering ourselves +to the suggestions of what we see and meet we find our places in a +waking, working world and go about our business. + +If we were to awake in a totally strange world where nothing was in any +degree at all similar to the world in which we went to sleep, we might +find ourselves so sadly puzzled as to doubt our own identity, even +though memory persisted in its identifying suggestion. And if in +addition to this we found ourselves without the contribution of physical +sensation to which we have always been used--sightless, soundless, +touchless--one can easily imagine a shock in the face of which even the +most strongly centered personality would give way. And yet such changes +as this probably only faintly indicate the adjustments which the +discarnate are called upon to meet. It is as if we were asked to argue +or to imagine from one dimension to another. + +These are difficulties, of course, which attend any conception of +immortality, but we usually escape them by refusing to follow through +what they involve and taking refuge in a free poetic imagination +sustained by faith and enriched by tradition. In the face of all this +Myers' supposition, ingenious as it is, can do no more than repeat the +more prosaic assumption which is the basis of spiritism, and that is +that the discarnate naturally desire to communicate with those whom they +have left, one hardly dares say behind them for even that simple word +introduces suppositions which may have no meaning at all, and would +naturally avail themselves of any possible opportunity. The whole +process, if it be a process, must lie in the region of suggestion. If +there be a telepathy between the living it is not impossible that there +should be a telepathy between the living and the discarnate. + + +_Telepathy: Between the Living or the Living and the Discarnate?_ + +There might be thus a kind of eager pressing of the departed against +the doors which had been shut and not quite locked behind them, taking +the form of more or less obscure suggestion to which the medium would be +sensitive and so recreate in ways at which we can only guess some hint +of the voice or presence of the discarnate. The suggestion would come +from the other side. The form in which it is given to our world would be +the contribution of the medium. As far as there is any possible +explanation of the facts of trance mediumship as a revelation from the +dead it is somewhere here. + +Telepathy between the living is fairly well enough established to make +this a not impossible hypothesis, and even materialization might be +accounted for in the same way. Sir Oliver Lodge is inclined to discover +in the luminiferous ether an environment in which discarnate personality +could function. But this is pure supposition, though others have adopted +it. Walker, for example, in his extremely suggestive work on Monism and +Christian Theism. But he suggests the ether only as a help to the +imagination in meeting the difficulties of an immortal existence--the +old Heaven and Hell having been made astronomically and geologically +impossible. But if Einstein should upset the hypothesis of the ether all +this would go the way of the Heaven and Hell of Dante. + +We cannot eliminate, however, in a supposition so vague as this the +contributive elements supplied by the friends themselves to whom the +communication is supposed to be addressed and by whom it is certainly +interpreted, for if the trance medium is open to suggestion from the +discarnate side, the medium must be equally open to suggestion from the +living, a suggestion likely to be very much stronger, more distinct, +more compelling. + +The real crux of the whole problem is the disentanglement of these +possible lines of suggestion and the assignment of them to their true +sources. We may, the writer believes, eliminate as far as their +evidential value is concerned, all physical phenomena. In doing this we +need not necessarily deny the reality of some of the physical phenomena +but the larger part of the residue which might possibly be left after +the elimination of fraud on the part of the medium and unintentional +misrepresentation on the part of the witnesses is so utterly meaningless +as to have no value at all. The only physical phenomena which can have +any direct bearing on spirit communication are the tappings and table +tippings which can by a deal of ingenuity be made to spell out a message +or answer questions yes or no. The same question as to the source of the +suggestion enters here. Even if we admit the taps to spell out a +message, we have still to decide from whom the message comes and the +messages alleged to be contributed through the voice are so much more +full and intelligible as to leave the whole question standing or falling +with the credibility of voice trance mediumship. + + +_Controls_ + +The usual machinery of a seance creates suspicion. Most mediums have +controls. Nothing is more capricious than these controls. They may be +people who really never existed at all. The genesis of Mrs. Piper's +control, Dr. Phinuit, is suggestive. "It would appear that Mrs. Piper in +1884 had visited for advice a professional clairvoyant whose leading +control claimed to be a Frenchman named Finne, or Finnett."[79] When +Mrs. Piper was later seen by William James, a French doctor had +succeeded in obtaining almost exclusive control and his name was +reported to be Phinuit. Beyond debate, as far as name goes, here is a +kind of transmuted suggestion. The Finnett of the French clairvoyant, +who may or may not have really lived, becomes the Phinuit of Mrs. Piper, +for whose existence there is apparently no testimony at all. + +[Footnote 79: Podmore's "Modern Spiritualism," Vol. II, p. 333.] + +The controls have sometimes been Indians and indeed almost any one may +appear as a control--Longfellow, for example, or Mrs. Siddons, or Bach +or Vanderbilt. In a region where disproof and proof are equally +impossible this element of capricious control is suspicious. It is much +more likely to be some obscure casting up of the medium's mind, through +lines of association of which the medium is utterly unconscious, than to +represent the personalities so named. In Raymond the control is one +Moonstone, or a little Indian girl called Freda or Feda, who speaks of +herself in the third person and who reports a great many silly things in +a very silly way. + +It is possible, of course, to say that these thus named are spirit +mediums as necessary for the transfer of suggestion from the discarnate +order as mediums seem to be in the incarnate order, and that abnormal +personalities are as much needed on one side as the other through the +abnormality of the whole process. But this is patently to beg the +question. There is room in the whole process for the trivial, even the +inconsequential. As the advocates of spiritism have urged, +identification very often turns on apparently trivial things but it is +difficult to justify the very great element of the capricious and +actually foolish which enters so largely into the records of all +sittings. It would seem as if death robbed grave personalities of their +gravity, the strong of their force and the wise of their wisdom, and +this is so hard to believe as to make us wonder whether we are not +really dealing with something which belongs to an entirely different +region and is open to an entirely different line of explanation. + +But beyond such considerations as these, which may or may not have +force, there remains the graver question still--the question of the +identification of the sources from which the intelligible residue of +communications is received. If we fall back upon suggestion there are +always two general sources of suggestion--the incarnate and the +discarnate, and among the incarnate themselves there are manifold +sources of suggestion. The sitter may be unconsciously supplying the +material which the medium is receiving, recasting and giving back again, +or the medium may be reporting what is received from other incarnate +sources than the sitter. (This, of course, when we have eliminated all +that might possibly be contributed by the medium.) + + +_The Dilemma of Spiritism_ + +Anything, therefore, which is known to the living may be the source of +the medium's information. Only those things, therefore, which are +utterly unknown to the living anywhere, which cannot possibly have been +known by the medium himself or herself, can be finally and conclusively +a testimony to communications from the dead. But unless the information +thus received is known to the living, its truth or falsity can never be +proved or disproved. This is the dilemma which spiritism is finally +brought to face and from this dilemma there is absolutely no escape. It +does not forbid the conclusions which may be drawn from a seeming +preponderance of evidence, but it does forbid absolute certainty, for, +to repeat, if the information is to be verified it must be verified by +the living, which proves that some one does possess it and may have +communicated it--if we assume such communication to be possible--to the +medium. On the other hand, if no one at all possesses the information, +then we may never be sure that it is real information, or anything else +than a creation of an excited imagination. + +There is one test here which, if it were really made under absolutely +dependable conditions, conditions, that is, in no wise open to suspicion +or misunderstanding, might be final. If a message written before death +and so sealed as to be unknown to any one save the one who wrote it, +could be correctly reported, it would have, everything else being +right, an immense force. (Though even here clairvoyance--for which, on +the whole, there is a pretty dependable evidence--might afford the true +explanation.) F.W.H. Myers left such a message as this. In January, +1891, he sent Sir Oliver Lodge a "sealed envelope, in the hope that +after his death the communication contained in the envelope would be +able to be given by means of a medium. Many different messages obtained +by a well-known medium, Madame Verrall, and coming supposedly from +Frederick Myers, led them to believe that they represented this +communication. The envelope was opened in December, 1904, and 'it was +found that there was no resemblance between its actual contents and what +was alleged by the script to be contained in it.'"[80] If there is any +authentic case of this final test being successfully maintained, the +writer does not know it. There are instances of hidden articles +discovered, but these tests by no means possess the same force of +testimony. + +[Footnote 80: Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 278.] + +We may assume, then, that we have no absolute demonstration of spirit +communication. We have only a very complex group of phenomena capable of +varying explanations. Any fair-minded student of the whole subject must +recognize that men who have had ample opportunity for first hand +investigation, not hasty in their conclusions and in some instances of +very great intellectual force, have taken an opposite view. They have +felt the testimony to be both sound and sufficient. There is an +unescapable personal equation here which probably finally determines +divergent attitudes. As has been said before, those generally who have +accepted the spiritistic explanation have been led to do so through +communications in which they discovered some personal note or touch, to +which they themselves would be hospitably susceptible and which would +have far less weight with those whose affections and previous +associations were not thus involved. This does not necessarily prove +their conclusions to have been false. Perhaps just this personal element +is necessary to give final meaning to what otherwise is so perplexing +and even contradictory. The dogmatism which shuts the door squarely in +the face of spiritism is as unreasonable, as unscientific, as the +credulity which opens the door wide and accepts everything which comes +through. + + +_The Influence of Spiritism Upon Its Adherents_ + +There are other considerations which bear more or less indirectly upon +this difficult matter, but which have their weight. In general, those +who have whole-heartedly accepted spiritism have been unable thereafter +to maintain the balanced detachment which they urge upon others. They +tend to become unduly credulous; they force their explanation beyond its +necessary limits; they tend to become persons of the idee fixe type; +they become sponsors for extravagant stories, and, in general, lead +those who are influenced by their position or name far beyond the limits +which impartial investigation, even on the part of those sympathetic, +has as yet justified. Those descriptions of the discarnate state, +moreover, which reach us through mediums are undependable. + +There is a machinery of planes and spheres and emanations and +reincarnations which is not at all peculiar to spiritism but belongs to +the fringes of the occult in every manifestation of it, which is +perpetually recurrent in modern spiritualistic literature. We are on the +frontiers of a region where the reason which steadies us in the +practical conduct of life and guides us in an order with which we are +familiar through age-old inheritances, has no value at all. Our very +terminology ceases to have any meaning. A generous creative imagination +may build for itself what cities it will of habitation, furnish them as +it desires and try to conceive, as it has power, the experiences and +progressions of the discarnate, but to invest these imaginations with +evidential accuracy is to break down all the limits between the +dependable and the undependable. + +And finally, though this is rather a commonplace observation than an +aspect of our investigation, there is little to be gained in the +necessary business of solid living by such an interweaving of the two +worlds as spiritism carries with it. One life at a time is plainly +enough all that we are equal to. Those who surrender themselves to such +conclusions and inquiries are in very great danger of being so detached +from the actualities of the present order as to become themselves errant +and eccentric spirits, finding their true interests in endless seances +and investigations which have no practical bearing upon life as it now +is. + + +_The Real Alternative to Spiritism_ + +The writer's observation of the effect of much going to mediums upon +those whom he has personally known leads him to distrust the whole +matter and possibly to react too strongly against it. A discriminating +critic has said that Spiritualism is not Spiritualism at all, but a +subtle materialism, in that it is the effort to verify the reality of +the spiritual in terms of the material. It is, therefore, just one more +unexpected aspect of the hard skepticism of the time, which trusts +nothing it cannot hear, or see, or touch. A faith which is not solidly +established in reason, which does not continue and complete in its own +regions what we know and understand, is a cloud-built faith, but a +faith, on the other hand, which refuses to adventure beyond the limits +of the senses is a faith too largely empty of any noble content. + +If the phenomena under examination, then, cannot be explained in terms +of animism and if the spiritistic hypothesis is gravely open to +question, what explanation is left? In what follows the writer has been +greatly influenced by the suggestion of the students of abnormal +personality generally, and partly by the work of certain Frenchmen who, +with French logic and brilliancy of insight, are working toward +far-reaching psychological restatements and even to recasting of the +accepted scientific understandings of matter and force. Maeterlinck says +somewhere in substance that our universe is as tightly sealed as a +sphere of steel and that whatever happens inside must be explained in +terms of its own resident forces, and, in general, the whole of science +and the weight of experience are on Maeterlinck's side. Of course this +assumes that a good many things have been put inside this sphere to +begin with. Speaking in terms of religion, this does not shut God out of +the world, but it does shut up life and experience to conformity with +their own laws and forces them to explain their phenomena in terms of +their own content. + +In a sentence, just as the resident forces of the outside world have +been heretofore sufficient, in the measure that we have been able to +discover them, to explain all the phenomena of the outside world, it is +reasonable to believe that the content of personality is sufficient to +explain all personal phenomena, whether normal or abnormal, and that it +is to ourselves and not to the discarnate that we have to look for the +explanation of the phenomena of alleged spiritism. + + +_The Investigations of Emile Boirac_ + +The men who are working along this line, particularly Geley and Emile +Boirac, by no means deny the phenomena, but they offer another solution. +Boirac, particularly, finds his point of departure in hypnotism and +suggestibility. Now here is a continuation of the line of approach and +interpretation which cleared up the whole confused matter of mesmerism. +We have already seen how the French investigators found the explanation +of what Mesmer and those who followed him have been able to accomplish, +not in magnetic influence or any such thing, but in the remarkable +changes produced in personality by exterior or autosuggestion, and just +as this was the key to the phenomena of mesmerism, it is more likely +than anything else to prove the key to the explanation of the phenomena +of spiritualism, for these are really nothing more than simply aspects +of the trance state, however induced. + +It is not necessary to follow, in this connection, Boirac's analysis of +the phenomena attendant upon the trance state, or to consider his +theories as to hypnosis itself. He believes that there are in our +personalities hidden forces which, in the normal conduct of life, are +not brought into action. They are no necessary part of our adjustment to +our working environment; on the whole they complicate rather than +simplify the business of living and they are best--though this is not +his statement but the writer's conclusion from the whole matter--they +are best left unawakened. What we are normally is the outcome of the +adjustment of personality to those creative and shaping forces in +response to which life is most happily and usefully carried on. But when +the waking self and normal self is for the moment put in abeyance and +new forces are evoked from the "vasty deep" of our souls, we are capable +of an entirely different set of manifestations. First of all, those +usually associated with the hypnotic state which do not need to be +further considered here--a great docility to suggestion, unconsciousness +to pain and the like. We have also the possibility of powers which +Boirac calls magnetoidal. "These appear to involve the intervention of +forces still unknown, distinct from those that science has so far +discovered and studied, but of a physical nature and more or less +analogous to the radiating forces of physics: light, heat, electricity, +magnetism, etc."[81] + +[Footnote 81: Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 24. Some recent +French investigations seem to indicate that this force--Myers' +Telekinesis--operating through barriers, changes the magnetic properties +of that through which it passes. Carrington, the most skeptical student +in this region, is inclined to admit its existence. See "The Physical +Phenomena of Spiritualism," p. 359.] + +Under this general head he considers Animal Magnetism, what is known +generally as mesmerism, the power, that is, to create hypnotic states in +others; the phenomena of Telepathy "comprising numerous varieties, such +as the transmission or penetration of thought, the exteriorization of +the sensitiveness, psychometry, telepathy, clairvoyance or lucidity, +etc.," and finally states "where physical matter appears to exert over +animate beings, especially human beings, an action that does not seem to +be explicable by any physical or chemical properties already known." He +believes also that there is in human beings a radiating influence +susceptible of being exercised at a distance over other animate beings +or else upon inanimate objects. He finds in trance mediumship all the +elements which enter into any hypnotic state. "The trance is produced +and developed spontaneously, without the intervention of any visible +operator, under the sole effect of the nervous and mental conditions in +which the medium is placed, and among which the _belief in spirits_ and +the expectation of their intervention would appear to play a +considerable part."[82] The italicized words "a belief in spirits" are +extremely significant. In the entranced personality there is the +suggestion, already strongly established, that whatever is experienced +during the trance will be due to spirit intervention or revelation. This +introduces the element of expectant attention. We know on the physical +side of what expectant attention is capable. It becomes a real factor in +all faith healing; it may produce, either for the better or the worse, +far-reaching changes in physical states and it is perfectly possible for +such an expectant attention once fully in action in the trance--given of +course, to begin with, the attitude and interests of the medium in a +waking state--to create all the machinery of controls, revelation and +the like, which characterize trance mediumship. + +[Footnote 82: Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 271.] + +Boirac finds, therefore, in spiritism a complex determined by certain +particular nervous and mental states into which there enter, in one form +or another, almost all the facts of abnormal psychology and he believes +that science, faithful to the principle of economy, should consider the +alleged phenomena of spiritism, until proved to the contrary, reducible +to facts of the preceding orders. He does not call the spiritistic +hypothesis impossible; he does believe it ought not to be called in +until every other explanation has been examined and found inadequate and +he is not inclined to believe that we have as yet exhausted other +possible explanations. + +One man's authority here is by no means final. F.W.H. Myers has taken +into consideration many of the facts upon which Boirac dwells and on the +whole has reached a different conclusion. But, in general, the more +deeply we advance into the region of abnormal personality and the +phenomena of hypnotic and related states, the more reason there seems to +be for believing that there are resident in human personality powers +which, if at once evoked and released, are sufficient to account for all +mediumistic revelations without assuming that they come from the +discarnate. + + +_Geley's Conclusions_ + +Geley has gone much farther in some directions here than any one else. +He is more concerned with the physical phenomena. He has a striking +series of photographs of materialization, the authenticity of which it +is difficult to doubt. He finds an ascending series in abnormal +psychology from neuropathic states to mediumship with gradations which +intensify the abnormal or the supernormal, but in which the continuity +of development is never broken. His analyses here are both keen and +suggestive and tend to confirm the conclusions of other students that we +have resident in human personality elements which are adequate to the +explanation of any phenomena which have been as yet presented. + +As far as the physical phenomena go, he cites experiments which seem to +reveal "threads of substance and rigid rods, sometimes visible, +sometimes invisible, proceeding from the fingers of the medium" and +serving as a real mechanism for the movement of distant and sometimes +quite heavy articles. He argues from this that there is a possible +exteriorization of power which may itself be governed by ideas and +believes also that such facts as this will eventually compel us to +recast our conceptions of matter and force and profoundly affect biology +and all evolutionary theories. The whole matter is necessarily obscure, +but such studies do give a new direction and a larger significance to +our whole subject matter. + +In substance the spiritistic hypothesis is inadequate; it is too simple, +too easy. We are evidently only upon the threshold of the whole subject. +All conclusions are necessarily inconclusive; there is no region in +which one has less right to be dogmatic. The bearing of it all upon +immortality seems to the writer to be not at all where the spiritists +place it. If human personality has in itself such latent powers, if +there are these extensions of a mysterious force which operate beyond +our normal mechanism, if there are contacts of consciousness deeper than +consciousness itself in which information is given and received outside +normal methods of communication, we are led to conceive that what for +want of a better name we call spirit has an unexpected range and force. +We are by no means so shut in by the walls of the material and the +sensible as we have heretofore supposed. There is a transcendence of +spirit over matter and materially imposed conditions which must give us +pause. If, in the murky ways which have been brought to our attention, +spirit can transcend matter, we have at least one more reason for +affirming its supremacy and one more suggestion of a force or a reality +which may be able to survive even the dissolution of matter itself. In +other words, here is a line of testimony, richly suggestive, though by +no means clear, to the power of the soul to make its own conditions, and +what is immortality but just this? + +The phenomena of so-called spiritism, while not as yet justifying +Spiritualism, certainly make a dogmatic materialism increasingly +different. Those of us who are as anxious for a sustaining faith in +immortality as any of our comrades in the great quest may possibly be, +but who are as yet unwilling to accept their conclusions, may +nevertheless find in this subject matter which is common both to us and +to them, the permission to believe that that which is most distinctly +ourselves possesses enduring possibilities. If it may from time to time +break through in curious ways the walls which now shut it in, may it not +in some very real way pass through the gate which Death opens and still +continue in such a richness of consciousness and identity as to organize +for itself another life beyond the grave? + + +_The Meaning of Spiritism for Faith_ + +Faith may find its permissions and witnesses in many regions. The writer +believes that faith in immortality finds an added permission in this +region also. Beyond debate, there are laws which we now but dimly +discern and possible forces which only now and again touch the coasts of +our present experience, as tides which sweep in from distant and +mysterious seas. Beyond debate, we may not confine the interplay of mind +with mind to purely physical channels, and under exceptional +circumstances effects may be produced whose causes we have not yet been +able to tabulate. Our conscious lives are rooted deeper than we dream. +They reach out in directions which we do not ourselves know. It may well +be, therefore, that they ascend to heights whose summits we do not see, +and possess a permanence independent of the body which they inhabit, or +the things of seeming sense which surround them, and it may be also that +what is now occult and perplexing and capricious may in the future +become as truly an organized science as the alchemy and the astrology of +the Middle Ages have become the chemistry and astronomy of our own time. +Beyond this one may assert the wholesome commonplace that the main +business of living is in the region of the known and the normal. It is +for our own well-being that the veil hangs dark between this world and +the next. An order in which there was constant passing and repassing +would be impossible. It would be either one thing or the other. It does +demoralize us to be always searching after the secrets of the unseen. +Might it not demoralize those who have passed through the veil to be +always trying to come back? Surely the most fitting preparation for what +awaits us hereafter is the brave conduct of life under those laws and +conditions which are the revelation of the whole solid experience of our +race. Beyond this it is difficult to go and beyond this it is not +necessary to go. + + + + +XI + +MINOR CULTS: THE MEANING OF THE CULTS FOR THE CHURCH + + +_Border-land Cults_ + +The cults which we have so far considered are the outstanding forms of +modern free religious movements, but they do not begin to exhaust the +subject matter. Even the outstanding cults have their own border-lands. +New Thought is particularly rich in variants and there are in all +American cities sporadic, distantly related and always shifting +movements--groups which gather about this or that leader, maintain +themselves for a little and then dissolve, to be recreated around other +centers with perhaps a change of personnel. The Masonic Temple in +Chicago is said to be occupied on Sundays all day long by larger or +smaller groups which may be societies for ethical culture or with some +social program or other, or for the study of Oriental religions. One +would need to attend them all and saturate himself far more deeply than +is possible for any single investigator in their creeds or their +contentions to appraise them justly. Their real significance is neither +in their organization, for they have little organization, nor in their +creed, but in their temper. They represent reaction, restlessness and +the spiritual confusion of the time. They can be explained--in part at +least--in terms of that social deracination to which reference has +already been made. They represent also an excess of individualism in the +region of religion and its border-lands. + +An examination of the church advertisement pages in the newspapers of +New York, Detroit, Chicago or San Francisco reveals their extent, their +variety and their ingenuity in finding names for themselves. On Sunday, +February 25th, the Detroit papers carried advertisements of Vedanta, +Spiritist and Spiritualist groups (the Spiritist group calls itself "The +Spirit Temple of Light and Truth"), The Ultimate Thought Society, The +First Universal Spiritual Church, The Church of Psychic Research, The +Philosophical Church of Natural Law, Unity Center, The Culture of +Isolan, Theosophy, Divine Science Center, and Lectures on Divine +Metaphysics. Their leaders advertise such themes as: The Opulent +Consciousness, The Law of Non-Attachment, Psychic Senses and +Spirituality, The Continuity of Life, The Spiritualism of Shakespeare, +The Voiceless Code of the Cosmos, The Godlikeness of Divine Metaphysics +in Business. Their themes are not more bizarre, it must be confessed, +than some of the topics announced for the orthodox churches. (Indeed the +church advertisement page in cities whose churches indulge generously in +display advertisements is not altogether reassuring reading.) But, in +general, this list which can be duplicated in almost any large city is +testimony enough to a confusion of cults and a confusion of thought. As +far as they can be classified, according to the scheme of this study, +they are variants of New Thought, Theosophy and Spiritualism. If they +were classified according to William James' "Varieties of Religious +Experience" they would be seen as mystical rather than rational, +speculative rather than practical. + +Fort Newton, who speaks of them perhaps more disrespectfully than they +deserve as "bootleggers in religion," finds in these lesser movements +generally a protest against the excessively external in the life of the +Church to-day and a testimony to the quenchless longing of the soul for +a religion which may be known and lived out in terms of an inner +experience. But this certainly is not true of all of them. + + +_Bahaism_ + +There is, however, one other larger and more coherent cult, difficult to +classify, which deserves a more extended notice. That is Bahaism, which, +as it is now taking form, is a leaven rather than a cult. It is an +attempt after spiritual unity and the reduction of religion to very +simple and inclusive forms and a challenge to the followers of religions +widely separated on the surface to be more true to what is deepest in +their faith. It has a long and stirring history and curiously enough is +drawn from Mohammedan sources. Its basal literatures are Arabic and +Persian, "so numerous and in some cases so voluminous that it would +hardly be possible for the most industrious student to read in their +entirety even those which are accessible, a half dozen of the best known +collections in Europe." + +We find its genesis, historically, in certain expectations long held by +Persian Mohammedans akin to Jewish Messianic expectations held before +and at the time of Christ. There has been, we know, a tradition of +disputed succession in Mohammedanism ever since the death of the +prophet. Persian Mohammedans believed the true successor of Mohammed to +have been unjustly deprived of his temporal supremacy and they trace a +long line of true successors whose divine right would some day be +recognized and reestablished. Perhaps we might find a parallel here +among those Englishmen who believe that the true succession of the +English throne should be in the house of the Stuarts, or those royalists +in France who champion the descendants of one or the other former +reigning houses. But the Persian faithful have gone farther than that. +They believe that the last true successor of Mohammed who disappeared in +the tenth century never died, but is still living in a mysterious city, +surrounded by a band of faithful disciples and "that at the end of time +he will issue forth and 'fill the earth with justice after it has been +filled with iniquity.'" A parallel here would be the old stories of +Frederick Barbarossa who waits in his cave for the proper time to come +forth and reassert his imperial power. This curious Persian belief has +worked itself out in a time scheme much like the time schemes of other +Apocalyptic beliefs, the detail of which is difficult enough. + +But in substance this hidden and true successor of the prophet has had +from time to time those through whom he reveals himself to the faithful +and makes known his will, and these are known as Babs or gates; "the +gate, that is, whereby communication was reopened between the hidden one +and his faithful followers." The practical outcome of this would be that +any one who could convince Persian Mohammedans that he was the Bab or +"gate" would possess a mystic messianic authority. Such a confidence +actually established would give him an immense hold over the faithful +and make him a force to be reckoned with by the Mohammedan world. + + +_The Bab and His Successors_ + +As far as our own present interest is concerned, the movement dates from +1844 when a young Persian merchant announced himself as the Bab. If we +are to find a parallel in Christianity he was a kind of John the +Baptist, preparing the way for a greater who should come after him, but +the parallel ends quickly, for since the Mohammedan Messiah did not +appear, his herald was invested with no little of the authority and +sanctity which belonged to the hidden one himself. The career of the +first Bab was short--1844 to 1850. He was only twenty-four years old at +the time of his manifestation, thirty when he suffered martyrdom and a +prisoner during the greater part of his brief career. The practical +outcome of his propaganda was a deal of bloody fighting between +antagonistic Mohammedan factions. The movement received early that +baptism of blood which gives persistent intensity to any persecuted +movement. His followers came to regard him as a divine being. After his +execution his body was recovered, concealed for seventeen years and +finally placed in a shrine specially built for that purpose at St. Jean +d'Acre. This shrine has become the holy place of Bahaism. + +During one period of his imprisonment he had opportunity to continue his +writings, correspond with his followers and receive them. He was thus +able to give the world his message and we find in his teachings the germ +of the gospel of Bahaism. Before his death he named his successor--a +young man who had been greatly drawn to him and who seemed by his youth, +zeal and devotion to be set apart to continue his work. To this young +man the Bab sent his rings and other personal possessions, authorized +him to add to his writings and in general to inherit his influence and +continue his work. This young man was recognized with practical +unanimity by the Babis as their spiritual head. Owing to his youth and +the secluded life which he adopted, the practical conduct of the affairs +of the Babi community devolved chiefly on his elder half-brother +Baha'u'llah. What follows is a confused story of schism, rival claimants +and persecution but the sect grew through persecution and the control of +it came in 1868 into the hands of Baha'u'llah. + +During the greater part of his life Baha'u'llah was either an exile or a +prisoner. From 1868 until his death in 1892 he was confined with seventy +of his followers in the penal colony of Acca on the Mediterranean coast. +Meanwhile the faith which centered about him changed character; he was +no longer a gate or herald, he was himself a "manifestation of God" +with authority to change all earlier teaching. He really universalized +the movement. Beneath his touch religion becomes practical, ethical, +less mystic, more universal. He was possessed by a passion for universal +peace and brotherhood. He addressed letters to the crowned heads of +Europe asking them to cooperate in peace movements. It has been +suggested that the Czar of Russia was influenced thereby and that we may +thus trace back to Baha'u'llah the peace movement which preceded the +war. + +Pilgrims came and went and through their enthusiasms the movement +spread. After his death there was the renewal of disputes as to the +proper succession and consequent schisms. The power came finally into +the hands of Abdul-Baha who was kept under supervision by the Turkish +government until 1908. He was freed by the declaration of the New +Constitution and carried on thereafter with real power a worldwide +propaganda. He had an unusual and winning personality, spoke fluently in +Persian, Arabic and Turkish and more nearly than any man of his time +filled the ideal role of an Eastern prophet. He died in November, 1921, +and was buried on Mt. Carmel--with its memories of Elijah and +millenniums of history--his praises literally being sung by a most +catholic group of Mohammedans, Jews and Eastern Christians. + + +_The Temple of Unity_ + +Bahaism as it is held in America to-day is distilled out of the writings +and teachings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha. Naturally enough, in the +popularization of it its contradictions have been reconciled and its +subtleties disregarded. What is left fits into a variety of forms and is +in line with a great range of idealism. The twelve basic principles of +Bahaism as announced in its popular literature are: + + The Oneness of Mankind. + Independent investigations of truth. + The Foundation of all religions is one. + Religion must be the cause of unity. + Religion must be in accord with science and reason. + Equality between men and women. + Prejudice of all kinds must be forgotten. + Universal Peace. + Universal Education. + Solution of the economic problem. + An international auxiliary language. + An international tribunal. + +A program inclusive enough for any generous age. These principles are +substantiated by quotations from the writings of Abdul-Baha and the +teachings of Baha'u'llah. Many things combine to lend force to its +appeal--the courage of its martyrs, its spaciousness and yet at the same +time the attractiveness of its appeal and its suggestion of spiritual +brotherhood. Since the movement has borne a kind of messianic +expectation it adjusts itself easily to inherited Christian hopes. There +are real correspondences between its expected millennium and the +Christian millennium. + +How far its leaders, in their passion for peace and their doctrine of +non-resistance and their exaltation of the life of the spirit, are in +debt to the suggestions of Christianity itself, or how far it is a new +expression of a temper with which the Orient has always been more in +sympathy than the West, it would be difficult to say, but in some ways +Bahaism does express--or perhaps reproduces--the essential spirit of the +Gospels more faithfully than a good deal of Western Christianity as now +organized. Those members of Christian communions which are attracted to +Bahaism find in it a real hospitality to the inherited faith they take +over. It is possible, therefore, to belong to the cult and at the same +time to continue one's established religious life without any very great +violence and indeed with a possible intensification of that life. + +It is difficult, therefore, to distinguish between Bahaism as it is held +by devout groups in America, so far as ethics and ideals go, from much +that is distinctive in the Christian spirit, though the influence of +Bahaism as a whole would be to efface distinctions and especially to +take the force out of the Christian creeds. + +Chicago, or rather Wilmette, is now the center of the movement in +America and an ambitious temple is in the way of being constructed +there, the suggestion for whose architecture is taken from a temple in +Eskabad, Russia. This is to be a temple of universal religion, +symbolizing in its architecture the unities of faith and humanity. "The +temple with its nine doors will be set in the center of a circular +garden symbolizing the all-inclusive circle of God's unity; nine +pathways will lead to the nine doors and each one coming down the +pathway of his own sect or religion or trend of thought will leave at +the door the dogmas that separate and, under the dome of God's oneness, +all will become one.... At night it will be brilliantly lighted and the +light will shine forth through the tracery of the dome, a beacon of +peace and unity rising high above Lake Michigan." + +This study has led us into many curious regions and shown to what +unexpected conclusions the forces of faith or hope, once released, may +come, but surely it has revealed nothing more curious than that the old, +old controversy as to the true successor of Mohammed the prophet should +at last have issued in a universal religion and set the faithful to +building a temple of unity on the shores of Lake Michigan. + +If this work were to be complete it should include some investigation of +the rituals of the cults. They are gradually creating hymns of their +own; their public orders of service include responsive readings with +meditations on the immanence of God, the supremacy of the spiritual and +related themes. In general they dispense with the sacraments; they have +no ecclesiastical orders and hardly anything corresponding to the +Catholic priesthood or the Protestant ministry, though the Christian +Science reader has a recognized official place. They meet in +conferences; they depend largely upon addresses by their leaders. +Spiritualistic movements organize themselves around seances. They use +such halls as may be rented, hotels, their own homes; they have not +generally buildings of their own save the Christian Science temples +which are distinctive for dignity of architecture and beauty of +appointment in almost every large city. + + +_General Conclusions; the Limitations of the Writer's Method_ + +It remains only to sum up in a most general way the conclusions to which +this study may lead. There has been a process of criticism and appraisal +throughout the whole book, but there should be room at the end for some +general statements. + +The writer recognizes the limitations of his method; he has studied +faithfully the literature of the cults, but any religion is always a +vast deal more than its literature. The history of the cults does not +fully tell their story nor does any mere observation of their worship +admit the observer to the inner religious life of the worshippers. Life +always subdues its materials to its own ends, reproduces them in terms +of its own realities; there are endless individual variations, but the +outcome is massively uniform. Religion does the same thing. Its +materials are faiths and obediences and persuasions of truth and +expectations of happier states, but its ultimate creations are character +and experience, and the results in life of widely different religions +are unexpectedly similar. Both theoretically and practically the truer +understanding or the finer faith and, particularly, the higher ethical +standards should produce the richer life and this is actually so. But +real goodness is everywhere much the same; there are calendared saints +for every faith. + +There is an abundant testimony in the literature of the cults to rare +goodnesses and abundant devotion, and observation confirms these +testimonies. Something of this is doubtless due to their environment. +The Western cults themselves and the Eastern cults in the West are +contained in and influenced by the whole outcome of historic +Christianity and they naturally share its spirit. If the churches need +to remember this as they appraise the cults, the cults need also to +remember it as they appraise the churches. Multitudes of Catholics and +Protestants secure from a religion which the cults think themselves +either to have corrected or outgrown exactly what the cults secure--and +more. Such as these trust God, keep well, go happily about their +businesses and prove their faith in gracious lives. There is room for +mutual respect and a working measure of give and take on both sides. + +The writer is inclined to think the churches at present are more +teachable than the more recent religious movements. For a long +generation now the churches have been subject to searching criticism +from almost every quarter. The scientist, the sociologist, the +philosopher, the publicist, the discontented with things as they are and +the protagonist of things as they ought to be, have all taken their turn +and the Church generally, with some natural protest against being made +the scapegoat for the sins of a society arrestingly reluctant to make +the Church's gospel the law of its life, has taken account of its own +shortcomings and sought to correct them. The cults are as yet less +inclined to test themselves by that against which they have reacted. But +this is beside the point. The movements we have been studying can only +be fairly appraised as one follows through their outcome in life and +that either in detail or entirety is impossible. But it is possible to +gain from their literature a reasonable understanding of their +principles and interrelations and this the writer has sought to do. + + +_The Cults Are Aspects of the Creative Religious Consciousness of the +Age_ + +Certain conclusions are thus made evident. These movements are the +creation of the religious consciousness of the time. They are aspects of +the present tense of religion. Since religion is, among other things, +the effective desire to enter into right relationships with the power +which manifests itself in the universe there are two variants in its +content; first, our changing understanding of the power itself and +second, our changing uses of it. The first varies with our knowledge and +insight, the second with our own changing sense of personal need. Though +God be the same yesterday, to-day and forever, our understandings of Him +cannot and ought not to be the same yesterday, to-day and forever. Our +faith is modified by, for example, our scientific discoveries. When the +firmament of Hebrew cosmogony has given way to interstellar spaces and +the telescope and the spectroscope plumb the depths of the universe, +resolving nebulae into star drifts, faith is bound to reflect the change. +The power which manifests itself in the universe becomes thereby a +vaster power, operating through a vaster sweep of law. Our changed +understandings of ourselves must be reflected in our faith and our +ethical insights as well. And because there is and ought to be no end to +these changing understandings, religion itself, which is one outcome of +them, must be plastic and changing. + +What we ask of God is equally subject to change. True enough, the old +questions--Whence? Whither? and Why? are constant. As we know ourselves +to be living in a world which is less than a speck in an immensity +wherein the birth and death of suns are ephemeral, we may rightly +distrust our own value for the vaster order. We shall, therefore, the +more insistently ask Whence? and Whither? and Why? But, none the less, +there is always a shifting emphasis of religious need. Our own time is +manifestly more concerned about well-being in the life that now is than +a happy issue in the life which is to come. Temperament also qualifies +experience. The mystic seeks conscious communion with God as an end in +itself; the practical temper asks the demonstration of the love of God +in happy material conditions. In general, action and reaction govern +this whole region. The Puritan was supremely concerned about his own +salvation and the struggle consequent thereto; his descendants were +chiefly interested in the extension of knowledge and the conquest of the +physical order and we react against this in a new return upon ourselves +and the possibilities of personality. + +Now these changing understandings of the power which manifests itself in +the universe on the one side and our own changing senses of need on the +other, give to religion a constantly fluctuating character and what is +most distinctively religious in any period must be the outcome of the +combination of these two variants. What an age asks of the God whom it +knows colours the whole of its religious life. These cults and movements +do not wholly represent the creative religious consciousness of our +time, of course; a great deal of that same creative religious +consciousness has given new quality to the organizations and orthodoxies +of the churches. But within the frontiers of historic Christianity it +has been rather the working over of the deposit of faith than an actual +adventure in the making of religion. The cults and movements have not +been thus limited. They have challenged old understandings, broken away +from the older organizations and taken their own line, using such +material as seems proper for their purpose. + +They are not wholly independent of the past; some of them have taken the +immemorial speculations of the East for their point of departure though +introducing therein a good many of the permissions or conclusions of +modern science and something of the spirit of Christianity itself. Those +taking their departure from Christianity have claimed rather to +reinterpret and modernize it than to supplant it by their own creations. +Yet when all this is recognized these cults and movements are +particularly the creation of our own time. So accepted, they reveal +strongly the persistence of religion. All these conjectures and +confidences and reachings through the shadows are just a testimony that +few are content to go on without some form of religion or other. + +All religion has, in one phase or another, gone through much the same +process. There has been for every religion a time when it took new form +out of older elements, a time when the accepted religions had little +enough sympathy for and understanding of what was taking place about +them while those committed to new quests were exultant in the +consciousness of spiritual adventure and discovery and heard the morning +stars sing together for joy. What is thus begun must submit always to +the testimony of time. In the end a religion is permanent as it meets +the great human needs and adjusts itself to their changing phases. It is +imperial and universal as it meets these needs supremely. If in addition +it be capable of organization, if there be within it room for expansion, +and if, on the whole, it justifies itself by the outcome of it in life +and society it will persist, and if it persists through a long period of +time and creates for itself literatures, dogmas and authorities, it +becomes as nearly fundamental as anything can be in this world. It +creates cultures, shapes civilizations, colours art, establishes ideals +and fills the whole horizon of its devotees. + +If a religion is to endure it must meet a wide range of need; it must be +plastic and yet invest itself with the sanctions of History. For the +conservative it must possess the note of authority and at the same time +promise freedom to the liberal. It must persuade the forward-looking +that it holds within itself the power to meet changing conditions. It +must offer a satisfying experience to the mystic and the practically +minded and deliverance to the despairing. It must be able to build into +its structure new sciences and philosophies and yet it must touch the +whole of life with some sense of the timeless, and above all, it must +include the whole of life, nor depend upon particularized appeals or +passing phases of thought. Historic Christianity has more nearly met all +these tests than any other religion, for though under the stress of +meeting so great a variety of needs and conditions it has organized +itself into forms as different as Latin Catholicism and the Society of +the Friends, so losing catholicity of organization, it has secured +instead a catholicity of spirit and a vast elasticity of appeal which +are the secret of its power and the assurance of its continuing and +enduring supremacy. + + +_Their Parallels in the Past_ + +Now by such tests as these what future may one anticipate for such cults +as we have been studying? Are they likely to displace the historic forms +of Christianity, will they substantially modify it, or will they wear +away and be reabsorbed? Evidently one of these three things must happen. +This is not the first time in the Western world that historic and +authoritative Christianity has been challenged. We should have, perhaps, +to go back to the fourth century to find an exact parallel and then we +should find in the vast and confused movement of Gnosticism an +unexpected parallel to a great deal of what is happening about us. +Gnosticism was the effort of a reason excessively given to speculation, +undisciplined and greatly unrestrained by any sense of reality to +possess and transform the Church. Various forces combined to build its +fabric of air-born speculation and though for the time it gave the +patristic Church the hardest fight of its existence, the discipline of +the Church was too strong for it. Its own weaknesses proved eventually +its undoing and Gnosticism remains only as a fascinating field of study +for the specialist, only a name if even so much as that for the +generality of us and valuable chiefly in showing what speculation may do +when permitted at will to range earth and sky, with a spurious +rationalism for pilot and imagination for wings. + +There have been, beside, in the history of the Church many other +movements possessing a great staying power and running in some cases for +generations alongside the main current of religious development, until +they finally disappeared with the changing centuries. Arguing from such +historical precedents as these one might easily assume a like fate for +the Gnosticism of our own time, and yet a note of caution is needed here +for there are divisive religious movements which have as yet neither +failed nor been absorbed in that from which they took their departure. +The expectation of the Catholic Church that Protestantism will spend its +force and be lost again in the majestic fabric of Latin Catholic +Christianity as it is continued amongst us, is as far from realization +to-day, or farther, than at any time in the last 300 years. We need to +remember also that conditions change. The right of individual initiative +and judgment once secured in the region of religion is not likely ever +to be lost. A good many divergent movements have literally been whipped +back into line or else put out in fire and blood. Nothing of that sort +is likely to happen now. + +No student of history should be blind to the sequence of action and +reaction. A period of excessive dependence upon authority may follow a +period of undue self-assertion, but it is not likely that we shall ever +find recreated exactly the conditions of the past or that religion can +hereafter be held, as it has heretofore, in relatively well marked +channels under the stress of accepted authorities. Prophecy is hazardous +business but it is safe to assume that these modern religious cults and +movements represent the beginnings of a freer, more diffused, less +formal religious faith. The peculiar cults themselves may reach their +term but the temper which produced them is likely to continue and with +other groupings of forces produce something in the future which will at +least be their parallel. + + +_The Healing Cults Likely to be Adversely Influenced by the Scientific +Organisation of Psycho-therapy_ + +As far as the fortunes of the distinctive cults themselves go, one's +conclusions may be less tentative. For the most part the foundations +upon which they are built are not big enough to carry an ample and +secure structure. They have been made possible not only by marked +limitations in historic religion itself, but also by contemporaneous +tempers which, one may sincerely hope, are self-limiting, and this is +said not through undue prejudice against the cults themselves, but +simply because one is loath to believe that the want of critical +faculty which has made some of these cults possible will not in the end +yield to experience and a really sounder education. Since, moreover, +some of them--and Christian Science, preeminently--depend upon faith and +mental healing, whatever helps us to a clearer understanding of the +nature and limits of psycho-therapy will greatly affect their future. +All faith healing cults have heretofore depended very greatly upon the +atmosphere of mystery with which they have been able to surround +themselves. The fact that they have been able to secure results with no +very clear understanding of the way in which the results have been +secured has invested them with awe and wonder, so essential to every +religion. + +But as psycho-therapy itself becomes organized, works out its laws, +develops its own science and particularly as the knowledge of all this +is extended and popularized, they will lose their base of support. For +this reason the writer believes that the final explanation of all faith +and mental healing in terms of some form of suggestion which is just now +strongly in evidence will prove a distinct service to us all. + +The intimate association of religion and healing has, on the whole, been +good neither for religion nor health. Of course, this statement will +probably be sharply challenged but it is maintained in the face of +possible challenge. As far as religion goes it has withdrawn the +interest of the religious, thus influenced, from the normal expressions +of the religious life to border-land regions; it has stressed the +exceptional rather than the sweep of law, and the occult rather than the +luminously reasonable. Where it has failed in individual cases, as it +is bound to fail, it has left those thus disillusioned without any sound +basis for their faith and generally has driven them away from religion +altogether. It has tempted religious teachers to win a hearing by signs +and wonders. Even the Founder of the Christian religion grew weary of +this, as the records show plainly enough, in that He saw His true work +to be thereby not helped but hindered, and if this be true of the +Founder it is by so much the more true of His followers. + +On the scientific side this temper has hindered honest thinking, +laborious investigation and that specialization which is absolutely +necessary to the furtherance of any great division of human effort. +Medicine made little progress until it got itself free of the Church. +Specifically the average minister is neither by training nor temperament +fitted for healing work and those laymen who have assumed that office +have generally been wanting in balance and self-restraint. This is not +to deny the reality of a power not ourselves making for health and +well-being generally, or the power of faith, or the efficacy of prayer. +Least of all is God, upon this understanding, to be shut out of life. +But the power not ourselves which makes for faith and healing is best +known through laborious investigation, the discovery of methods and +obediences to ascertained law. When we have clearly come to see the +nature of psycho-therapy, the occult authority of healing cults will in +the end yield to this understanding and the cults themselves be greatly +weakened or displaced. + +One must recognize, on the other hand, the staying power of any +well-established religious system. Through nurture and those profound +conservatisms which hold more tenaciously in the region of religion than +anywhere else, it is possible to continue from generation to generation +the unreasonable or the positively untrue, and this holds in the Church +as well as outside it. None the less, the most coherent systems must +reckon with their own weaknesses. Christian Science may have before it a +long period of solid going or even marked growth, but its philosophy +will at last yield to the vaster sweep of a truer philosophic thought. +Its interpretations of historic Christianity will come up again and +again for examination until their fallacies become apparent and its +force as a system of psycho-therapy will be modified by simpler and more +reasonable applications of the same power. + + +_New Thought Will Become Old Thought_ + +New Thought is likely to take a different course but it also will have +to reckon with changing sciences and philosophies. What is New Thought +to-day will be old thought to-morrow; it will be challenged by new +expressions of the spirit which begot it. It will endure, therefore, +only as it is open, flexible and possesses a great power of +accommodation. But as long as understandings and ideals are fluid, as +long as religion is under bonds to take account of all the elements +which must be incorporated in it in order to enlarge and continue it, as +long, in short, as the human spirit outgrows fixed forms in any region +there is likely to be in religion itself something corresponding to the +New Thought of to-day, but this will be true only as New Thought is not +a cult at all but something larger--a free and creative movement of the +human spirit. + +Of all these cults it has made the soundest contribution to religion as +a whole. It is also more easily assimilated, more easily absorbed. Its +own distinct field will be limited by the increasing hospitality of +Christian thought to contemporaneous truth. A wholly open-minded church +will go a long way toward taking from New Thought its raison d'etre. Its +future depends, therefore, very largely upon the open-mindedness of the +older and more strongly established forms of religion. + +The future of Spiritualism is greatly open to conjecture. We have +already seen the alternatives which Spiritualism is called upon to face +and the uncertainties which attend its conclusions. A fuller +understanding of the possibilities of abnormal personality and the reach +of automatism are likely to work against Spiritualism. If we find +ascertainable causes for its phenomena resident within personality +itself there will be no need of calling in the other world in order to +explain what is happening in this. On the other hand, if there should +evidence an increasing and tested body of facts which can be explained +only in terms of spiritistic communications, Spiritualism will naturally +make headway. But we are certainly standing only upon the threshold of a +scientific interpretation of spiritistic phenomena and until the whole +region has been very much more carefully worked through and far more +dependable facts are in hand, one can only say that Spiritism is a +hypothesis which may or may not be verified, and attend the outcome. + +It is hard to believe that Theosophy and kindred speculation will ever +get a strong hold upon the practical Western mind. It owes what force it +has either to an excessive love of the speculative on the part of a few, +or else to that particular temper which always wants something else and +something new, or else to wearinesses and misunderstandings of the more +shadowed side of life. Theosophy is greatly at the mercy of the +positive, practical temper; it will always find a prevailing competitor +in the Christian doctrine of immortality. Whatever, moreover, explains +the apparent inequalities of life in more simple and reasonable terms +will cut the roots of it. The movement toward religious syncretism of +which Bahaism is just now the expression will not be so easy to dispose +of. There will always be a temper impatient of the past, eager for +unity, anxious for something big and interpenetrating. Historically this +temper has from time to time emerged, particularly in the latter phases +of Roman paganism, and there is likely to be a larger interchange of +religious faith and understanding in the future than there has been in +the past. + +In general, this desire for a universal religion, simple and wanting in +distinctive characters, follows a weakening of conviction, a loss of +passion for accepted forms. If anything should deepen again amongst us +in religion what corresponds just now to the passion for nationality +these more general religious quests would suffer. A strong feeling for a +church or a creed or one's own movement would displace them. They have, +on the other hand, in their favour the general tendency of all religion +toward simplicity, the reduction of faith, that is, to a few broad and +generally shared elements. But there is no reason to anticipate a speedy +breakdown of what one may call particularist religion and the +substitution therefor of a faith built up out of many diverse elements +and held in common by widely separated tempers. + + +_There is Likely to be Some Absorption of the Cults by a Widening +Historic Christianity_ + +If the past supplies analogy or suggestion there will be some tendency +for the cults and movements to be reabsorbed by the dominant religious +forms from which they have broken off. A careful analysis of this +statement would involve the consideration of a finality of Christianity +as now held in the Western world. That is impossible in the range of a +study like this. Any general statement is of course coloured by the +temper of the one who makes it and to a certain extent begs the whole +great question. But a careful and dispassionate examination of +present-day cults would seem to indicate that they really have nothing +to offer which the dominant Christianity does not possess either +explicitly or implicitly. There is a solidity of human experience behind +its forms and creeds which cannot be lightly left out of account. They +represent the travail of twenty centuries and have behind them far +older confidences and hopes. If Christianity should widen itself to the +full limit of its possibilities, it would leave little room for that +which seeks to supplant it and would meet the needs which have begotten +the cults in far richer and more reasonable ways. + +As far as the cults are mistakenly distinctive, as far as they cannot +stand a careful examination, they represent what must be corrected and +cannot be absorbed. Christianity can absorb New Thought far more easily +than Christian Science. Theosophy in its extremer forms it cannot absorb +at all. It is more hospitable to the quest for a universal religion for +it seeks itself to be a universal religion and can never achieve its +ideal unless it takes account of the desire for something big enough to +include the whole of life, East as well as West, and to make room within +itself for a very great variety of religious tempers. + + +_But Christianity is Being Influenced by the Cults_ + +If Christianity is not to reabsorb the cults in their present form, it +must, as has been said over and over again, take account of them and it +is not likely to go on uninfluenced by them. Already it has yielded in +some directions to their contentions. If it feels itself challenged by +them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the +correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its +most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is +need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The +necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to +make the message of the Church far less vital than it ought to be. +Preaching is too much declamation and far too much a following of narrow +and deeply worn paths. + +The cults themselves represent a craving for light, especially in the +regions of pain and loss. Historic Christianity has lost out because it +has made religion too self-centered, not that the cults are a corrective +here, for they are even more self-centered--that is one of their great +faults. The individual is not the center of the world; he is part of a +larger order concerned for great ends for which his life can only be +contributory. The Church and the cults together have forgotten too +largely that life is sacred only as we lose it. We need in the churches +generally a braver personal note and a very much larger +unself-centeredness. + +It is interesting to note that the movement of the cults, with the +possible exception of New Thought, has been away from rationalism rather +than in the direction of it. This is a consideration to be taken into +account. It would seem on the surface of it to indicate that what people +are wanting in religion is not so much reason as mysticism and that for +the generality religion is most truly conceived in terms not of the +known but of the unknown. If the Christian Church is to meet the +challenge of the cults with a far more clearly defined line of teaching, +it is also to meet the challenge of the cults with a warmer religious +life, with the affirmation of an experience not so much tested by crises +and conversions as by the constant living of life in the sense of the +divine--to use Jeremy Taylor's noble phrase: in the Practice of the +Presence of God. The weakness of the cults is to have narrowed the +practice of the presence of God to specific regions, finding the proof +of His power in health and well-being. If we can substitute therefor the +consciousness of God in the sweep of law, the immensity of force, the +normal conduct of life, in light and understanding, in reason as well as +mysticism and science as well as devotion, we shall have secured a +foundation upon which to build amply enough to shelter devout and +questing souls not now able to find what they seek in the churches +themselves and yet never for a moment out of line with what is truest +and most prophetic in Christianity itself. + +Sir Henry Jones has a paragraph in his "Faith that Enquires" distinctly +to the point just here. "The second consideration arises from the +greatness of the change that would follow were the Protestant Churches +and their leaders to assume the attitude of the sciences and treat the +articles of the creeds not as dogmas but as the most probable +explanation, the most sane account which they can form of the relation +of man to the Universe and of the final meaning of his life. The +hypothesis of a God whose wisdom and power and goodness are perfect +would then be tried and tested, both theoretically and practically, and, +I believe, become thereby ever the more convincing. The creed would be +not merely a record of an old belief to be accepted on authority, but a +challenge to the skeptic and the irreligious. The Church, instead of +being a place where the deliverances of ancient religious authorities +are expounded, and illustrated by reference to the contents of one book +and the history of one nation--as if no other books were inspired and +all nations save one were God-abandoned--the Church would be the place +where the validity of spiritual convictions are discussed on their +merits, and the application of spiritual principles extended; where +enquiring youths would repair when life brings them sorrow, +disappointment or failure, and the injustice of man makes them doubt +whether there be a God, or if there be, whether he is good and has +power, and stands as the help of man. Recourse to their certified +spiritual guides, knowing that full and sympathetic justice will be done +to all their difficulties, ought to be as natural to them as their +recourse to the physical laboratory or the workshop of the mechanician +when an engine breaks down."[83] + +[Footnote 83: "A Faith that Enquires," p. 82.] + + +_Medical Science Should Take a More Serious Account of the Healing +Cults_ + +Not only the churches but the schools and particularly Medical Science +need to take account of the cults. They constitute perhaps one of the +sharpest indictments of present-day education. Many of their adherents +are nominally educated above the average. They have secured for what +they follow the authority which always attaches, in the American mind, +to the fact that those who champion any movement are college bred, and +yet the want of clear vision, the power to distinguish and analyze, +along with the unexpected credulities which are thus made manifest, +seem to indicate arresting deficiencies in popular education. It has +left us unduly suggestible, much open to mass movement, at the mercy of +the lesser prophets and wanting in those stabilities and understandings +upon which a sound culture is to be built. When we consider what they +are capable of believing who have had college or university training, we +must conclude either that contemporaneous education is wanting in the +creation of sound mental discipline, or else that we have a strange +power of living in water-tight compartments and separating our faith +wholly from our reason. + +The cults which are organized around faith and mental healing at once +challenge and in a measure indict modern medical science. In many +directions all these movements are reactions against an excessive +materialism; they affirm the power of personality as against its +environment, testify that the central problems of life may be approached +from the spiritual as well as from the physical and material side. It +would not for a moment be fair to say that modern Medicine is ignoring +this. There has probably always been a considerable element of mental +healing in any wise medical practice. But on the whole, the marvellous +successes and advances in Medical Science within the last thirty years +and the very great success which has attended the definition of all +diseases in terms of physical disarrangement has led physicians +generally unduly to underestimate or ignore the undoubted power of faith +and mind over bodily states. + +Even as a matter of scientific investigation medicine as a whole has not +taken this line of approach seriously enough. The Society for Psychical +Research has something to teach the medical faculties just here. That +Society, as we have seen, set out in the most rigorous and scientific +way possible to find out first of all just what actual facts lay behind +the confused phenomena of Spiritualism. They have given a long +generation to just that. As they have finally isolated certain facts +they have, with a good deal of caution, undertaken to frame hypotheses +to account for them and so, with the aid of the students of abnormal +personality, they are gradually bringing a measure of order into the +whole region. Medical Science on the whole has not done this in the +region of faith and mental healing. We are, therefore, far too uncertain +of our facts. A good deal of this is open to correction. If a Society +for Psycho-Therapeutic Research should be organized, which would follow +up every report of healings with an accurate care, beginning with the +diagnosis and ending with the actual physical state of the patient as +far as it could be ascertained by the tests at their disposal, they +could greatly clarify the popular mind, prevent a vast deal of needless +suffering, save the sick from frustrated hope and secure for their own +profession a distinct reinforcement and an increased usefulness. + + +_A Neglected Force_ + +If they thus find--as is likely--that the real force of Psycho-therapy +has been largely overestimated, that imagination, wrong diagnosis and +mistaken report as to the actual physical condition have all combined to +produce confidences unjustified by the facts, we should begin to come +out into the light. And if, on the other hand, they found a body of +actual fact substantiating Psycho-therapy they would do well to add +courses therein to the discipline of their schools.[84] The whole thing +would doubtless be a matter for specialization as almost every other +department of medicine demands specialization. Every good doctor is more +or less a mental healer, but every doctor cannot become a specialist in +Psycho-therapy, nor would he need to. + +[Footnote 84: But this is already being done.] + +Temperamental elements enter here very largely. But we might at least +take the whole matter out of the hands of charlatans and the +half-informed and establish it upon a sound scientific basis. There is, +beyond debate, a real place for the physician who utilizes and directs +the elements of suggestion. They have gone farther, on the whole, in +this direction in France and Switzerland than we have in America. +Evidently we are standing only upon the threshold of marked advances +along these lines. Psycho-therapy can never be a substitute for a +medical science which deals with the body as a machine to be regulated +in its processes, defended against hostile invasion or reinforced in its +weaknesses, but there is also another line of approach to sickness. A +catholic medical science will use every means in its power. + + +_The Cults Must be Left to Time and the Corrections of Truth_ + +Beyond such general considerations as these there is little to be said. +The Christian churches will gain nothing by an intolerant attitude +toward expressions of faith and spiritual adventures beyond their own +frontiers. Just as there is a constant selective process in answer to +which the historic churches maintain their existences, a selective +process controlled by association and temper, in that some of us are +naturally Catholics and some Protestants, there are tempers which do not +take kindly to inherited organization, authority or creed. Such as these +are seekers, excessive perhaps in their individuality, but none the less +sincere in their desire for a faith and religious contact which will +have its own distinct meaning for their own lives. And if there may seem +to some of us elements of misdirection or caprice or unreason in their +quests, it is perhaps in just such ways as these that advances are +finally made and what is right and true endures. + +If nothing at all is to be gained by intolerance, nothing more is to be +gained by an unfair criticism and, in general, all these movements must +be left to the adjustments of time and the corrections of truth. + +We began this study by defining religion as the effective desire to be +in right relation with the power which manifests itself in the universe. +How vast this power is we are just beginning to find out. How various we +are in our temperaments and what unsuspected possibilities there are in +the depths of personality we are also just beginning to find out. There +is possible, therefore, a vast variation of contact in this endeavour to +be in right relation with the power which faith knows and names as God. +In an endeavour moving along so wide a front there is room, naturally, +for a great variety of quest. When we have sought rightly to understand +and justly to estimate the more extreme variants of that quest in our +own time, we can do finally no more than, through the knowledge thus +gained, to try in patient and fundamental ways to correct what is false +and recognize and sympathize with what is right and leave the residue to +the issue of the unresting movements of the human soul, and those +disclosures of the Divine which are on their Godward side revelation and +on their human side insight, understanding and obedience. + +_Printed in the United States of America_ + + + + +STRIKING ADDRESSES + + * * * * * + + +_JOHN HENRY JOWETT, D.D._ + +God Our Contemporary + +A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. + +Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr. Jowett has been given a high +place. Every preacher will want at once this latest product of his +fertile mind. It consists of a series of full length sermons which are +intended to show that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can +we find the resources to meet the needs of human life. + + +_SIDNEY BERRY, M.A._ + +Revealing Light $1.50. + +A volume of addresses by the successor to Dr. Jowett at Carr's Lane +Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim of which is to show what the +Christian revelation means in relation to the great historic facts of +the Faith and the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts +of men to-day. Every address is an example of the best preaching of this +famous "preacher to young men." + + +_FREDERICK C. SPURR_ + +_Last Minister of Regent's Park Chapel, London._ + +The Master Key + +A Study in World-Problems $1.35. + +A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of the Christian +Gospel and its relation to the travail through which the world is +passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in the vanguard of religious thought, yet +just as emphatically as any thinker of the old school, he insists on one +Physician able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. + + +_RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D._ + +_Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadelphia._ + +Unused Powers $1.25. + +To "Acres of Diamonds," "The Angel's Lily," "Why Lincoln Laughed," "How +to Live the Christ Life," and many other stirring volumes, Dr. Conwell +has just added another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. +Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the experimental +knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who having long faced the stark +realities of life, has been exalted thereby. + + +_GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D._ + +_Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Michigan._ + +The Undiscovered Country $1.50. + +A group of addresses marked by distinction of style and originality of +approach. The title discourse furnishes a central theme to which those +following stand in relation. Dr. Atkins' work, throughout, is marked by +clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing. + + +TIMELY ESSAYS AND STUDIES + + * * * * * + + +_NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS_ + +_Author of "Great Books as Life-Teachers."_ + +Great Men as Prophets of a New Era $1.50. + +Dr. Hillis' latest book strikes a popular chord. It fairly pulses with +life and human sympathy. He has a large grasp of things and relations, a +broad culture, a retentive memory and splendid imagination, and there +are few writers to-day with so large an audience assured in advance. The +subjects include: Dante; Savonarola; William the Silent; Oliver +Cromwell; John Wesley; John Milton; Garibaldi; John Ruskin, etc. + + +_THOS. R. MITCHELL, M.A., B.D._ + +The Drama of Life + +A Series of Reflections on Shakespeare's "_Seven Ages_." Introduction by +Nellie L. McClung. $1.25. + +A fresh, stimulating discussion of old themes. Mr. Mitchell handles his +subject with unusual directness, bringing to its discussion clarity of +thought and lucidity of expression which has already won the +enthusiastic endorsement of Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Chas. W. +Gordon, D.D., (Ralph Connor) Archdeacon Cody and Prof. Francis G. +Peabody. + + +_D. MACDOUGALL KING, M.B._ + +_Author of "The Battle with Tuberculosis."_ + +Nerves and Personal Power + +Some Principles of Psychology as Applied to Conduct and Health. With +Introduction by Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King. $2.00 + +Premier King says: "My brother has, I think helped to reinforce +Christian teaching by showing wherein recent medical and scientific +researches are revealing the foundations of Christian faith and belief +in directions hitherto unexplored and unknown.--The world needs the +assurance this book can scarcely fail to bring." + + +_REV. R.E. SMITH Waco, Texas._ + +Christianity and the Race Problem $1.25. + +A sane, careful study of the Race problem in the South, written by a +born Southerner, the son of a slave-owner and Confederate soldier. Mr. +Smith has lived all his life among negroes, and feels that he is capable +of seeing both sides of the problem he undertakes to discuss. + +PROBLEMS OF TODAY + + * * * * * + + +_GEORGE McCREADY PRICE, M.A._ + +Poisoning Democracy + +A Study of the Present-Day Socialism. $1.25 + +Professor Price shows that the conditions prevailing to-day are due +largely to the acceptance of various socialistic and evolutionary +theories termed "New" Theology. No more terrific moral and religious +indictment of Socialism has ever been presented. + + +_ALBERT CLARKE WYCKOFF_ + +Sense of Christian Science $1.75 + +A deadly, withering attack on Christian Science enfilading its every +position. Mr. Wyckoff's searching analysis of the pretensions, errors, +follies, and non-sense of so-called Christian Science should prove as +convincing as it is unanswerable. + + +_ALLEN W. JOHNSTON_ + +The Roman Catholic Bible and the Roman Catholic Church + +Foreword by David J. Burrell, D.D. $1.25 + +A book that examines the cardinal doctrines as taught by the Church of +Rome, such as the Invocation of Saints, Purgatory, Indulgences, Worship +of Mary, the Holy Eucharist, etc. etc., and indicates the dissimilarity +between this body of teaching and Holy Writ. + +New Editions. + + +_I.M. HALDEMAN_ + +Can the Dead Communicate with the Living? $1.25 + +"Needless to say, Dr. Haldeman holds no brief for Spiritism. A book that +is awakening everyone to the peril of 'spiritualism' among +Christians."--_Christian Work._ + + +_JAMES M. GRAY, D.D._ + +Spiritism and the Fallen Angels + +From a Biblical Viewpoint. $1.25 + +"Beginning with a review of the present-day revival of Spiritism and how +to meet it, Dr. Gray harks back to origins, the baleful influence of the +cult from the earliest recorded history of the human race." _S.S. +Times._ + +STANDARD REFERENCE WORKS + + * * * * * + +_G.B.F. HALLOCK Editor of "The Expositor."_ + +A Modern Cyclopedia of Illustrations for All Occasions + +Nineteen Hundred and Thirty-eight Illustrations. $3.00. + +A comprehensive collection of illustrative incidents, anecdotes and +other suggestive material for the outstanding days and seasons of the +church year. The author, well-known to the readers of "_The Expositor_," +has presented a really valuable handbook for Preachers, Sunday School +Superintendents and all Christian workers. + + +_JAMES INGLIS_ + +The Bible Text Cyclopedia + +A Complete Classification of Scripture Texts. New Edition. Large 8vo, +$2.00 + +"More sensible and convenient, and every way more satisfactory than any +book of the kind we have ever known. We know of no other work comparable +with it in this department of study."--_Sunday School Times._ + + +_ANGUS-GREEN_ + +Cyclopedic Handbook to the Bible + +_By Joseph Angus. Revised by Samuel G. Green._ + +New Edition. 832 pages, with Index, $3.00. + +"The Best thing in its line."--_Ira M. Price, Univ. of Chicago._ + +"Holds an unchallenged place among aids to the interpretation of the +Scriptures."--_Baptist Review and Expositor._ + +"Of immense service to Biblical students."--_Methodist Times._ + + +The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge _Introduction by R.A. Torrey_ + +Consisting of 500,000 Scripture References and Parallel Passages. 788 +pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. + +"Bible students who desire to compare Scripture with Scripture will find +the 'Treasury' to be a better help than any other book of which I have +any knowledge."--_R.R. McBurney, Former Gen. Sec., Y.M.C.A., New York._ + + +_A.R. BUCKLAND, Editor_ + +Universal Bible Dictionary + +511 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. + +_Dr. Campbell Morgan_ says: "Clear, concise, comprehensive. I do not +hesitate to say that if any student would take the Bible, and go through +it book by book with its aid, the gain would be enormous." + +CHURCH WORK + + * * * * * + + +_ROGER W. BABSON Author of "Fundamentals of Prosperity," etc._ + +New Tasks for Old Churches + +Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 60c. + +Suggestions for the solution of to-day's problems, clear-cut and +courageous. Babson has little sympathy with the arguments of +self-interest of business men or with the outworn methods of the church +in industrial communities. His sole interest is in the physical, social, +and spiritual salvation of the men, women, and children in our +industrial centres. + + +_PRES. WILLIAM ALLEN HARPER_ + +_Author of "The New Church For The New Time" etc._ + +The Church in the Present Crisis $1.75. + +Hon. Josephus Daniels says: "Dr. Harper has ably presented the demand +that the church shape the thought and life of the future. The world, +having tried everything else, is becoming convinced that no Golden Rule +alone will be the savior. Dr. Harper wisely stresses study of the Bible, +the Christian leaven in education, the duty to look difficult problems +in the face and solve them by application of the Christian religion. It +is a book of faith with wise directions and guidance." + + +_REV. ALBERT F. McGARRAH_ + +_Author of "Modern Church Management."_ + +Money Talks + +Stimulating Studies in Christian Stewardship. $1.25. + +Ministers and laymen, who desire to present convincingly the principles +and practices which should govern Christians in getting and using money, +will find here a wealth of fresh material, popular in style, yet deeply +inspiring in tone. A companion volume to "Modern Church Finance" and +"Modern Church Management." + + +_LYMAN EDWYN DAVIS, D.D., LL.D._ + +_Editor "Methodist Recorder."_ + +Democratic Methodism in America + +A Topical Survey of the Methodist Protestant Church. $1.50. + +A history of the Methodist Protestant church from its founding in 1830, +pointing out the various links in the chain of circumstances which lead +to the organization of the Methodist Protestant Church and the +fundamental principles which prompted and justified the movement. It +constitutes a vigorous and ably-argued plea for "mutual rights" +Methodism. + +BIBLE STUDY + + * * * * * + + +_P. WHITWELL WILSON_ + +_Author of "The Christ We Forget"_ + +The _Church_ We Forget. + +A Study of the Life and Words of the Early Christians. 8vo, cloth, net + +The author of "The Christ We Forget" here furnishes a companion-picture +of the earliest Christian Church--of the men and women, of like feelings +with ourselves, who followed Christ and fought His battles in the Roman +world of their day. "Here again," says Mr. Wilson, "my paint-box is the +Bible, and nothing else--and my canvas is a page which he who runs may +read." + + +_C. ALPHONSO SMITH, Ph.D., LL.D._ + +_Head of the Department of English in the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. +Md._ + +Key-note Studies in Key-note Books of the Bible 12mo, cloth, net + +The sacred books dealt with are Genesis, Esther, Job, Hosea, John's +Gospel, Romans, Philippians, Revelation. "No series of lectures yet +given on this famous foundation have been more interesting and +stimulating than these illuminating studies of scriptural books by a +layman and library expert."--_Christian Observer._ + + +_GEORGE D. WATSON, D.D._ + +God's First Words + +Studies in Genesis, Historic, Prophetic and Experimental. 12mo, cloth, +net + +Dr. Watson shows how God's purposes and infinite wisdom, His plan and +purpose for the race, His unfailing love and faithfulness are first +unfolded in the Book of Genesis, to remain unchanged through the whole +canon of Scripture. Dr. Watson's new work will furnish unusual +enlightment to every gleaner in religious fields, who will find "God's +First Words" to possess great value and profit. + + +_EVERETT PEPPERRELL WHEELER, A.M._ + +_Author of "Sixty Years of American Life," etc._ + +A Lawyer's Study of the Bible + +Its Answer to the Questions of To-day. 12mo cloth, net + +Mr. Wheeler's main proposition is that the Bible, when wisely studied, +rightly understood and its counsel closely followed, is found to be of +inestimable value as a guide to daily life and conduct. To this end Mr. +Wheeler examines its teachings as they relate to sociology, labor and +capital, socialism, war, fatalism, prayer, immortality. 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