This section is from the book "Faith - Healing. Christian Science And Kindred Phenomena", by James Monroe Buckley. Also available from Amazon: Faith-Healing, Christian Science and Kindred Phenomena.
Mental treatment is that which the metaphysical healer is supposed to be giving the patient when she sits silently before him for a period longer or shorter according to her judgment of the necessities of the ease. Some of the practitioners have revealed the thoughts which constitute a mental treatment, so that if truth is an element of their system, we can speak confidently upon this part of it, i said to him mentally: "You have no disease; what you call your disease is a fixed mode of thought arising from tho absence of positive belief in absolute good. Be stronger," i said, "you must believo in absolute good; i am looking at you, and i see you a beautiful, strong spirit, perfectly sound. What makes you think yourself diseased f You are not diseased; tho shadow of a doubt is reflected on your feet, but it has no real existence. There, look down yourself and see that it is gone. Why, it was a mere negation, and the place where you located it now shows for itself as sound as the rest of your body. Don't you know that imperfection is impossible to that beautiful creature, your real self? Since there is no evil in all the universe, and since man is the highest expression of good amidst ubiquitous Good, how can you be diseased f You are not diseased. There is not an angel in all tho spheres sounder or more divine than you." Then i spoke out aloud: "There now," i said, "you won't have that pain again." As I said it there was a surge of conviction through me that seemed to act on the bloodvessels of my body and made me tingle all over."1—helen Wilmans.
To this treatment I shall refer in elucidating the causes of the phenomena.
Dr. Evans controverts some of Mrs. Eddy's theories:
To modify a patient's thinking in regard to himself and his disease, we employ the principle of suggestion or positive affirmation—not mental argument, as it is sometimes called, for argument creates doubt and reaction. No sick man was ever cured by reasoning with him, mentally or verbally. It is the business of the man who knows the truth, not to argue, but to affirm. . . . No intelligent practitioner of the mind cure will ignore wholly all medical science. . . . The phreno-pathic system is not necessarily antagonistic to other methods of cure, as the various hygienic regulations, and even the use of the harmless specific remedies.
He repudiates Mrs. Eddy's ideas about the personality of God, and says:
It is not necessary to deny the personality of God. . . . Neither is it necessary to deny the personality and persistent individuality of the human spirit.
He also flatly denies Miss Taylor's theories, saying, " The selfhood is not lost in Godhood." " It is not necessary to tell a man dying of consumption that he is not sick, for that is not true." He says that one may or may not use the imposition of hands in healing the sick.
As an example of Christian Science superstition exceeding anything attempted by the most ignorant advocates of patent Faith Healing, read the following, taken verbatim, italics, small caps, etc., from a text-book on Mind Cure, issued by the President of the "New York School of Primitive and Practical Christian Science," who states that his school will be free from " eccentricity, pretension, and fanaticism"!
 
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