"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" AND "MIND CURE"
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faith is necessary on the part of the patient; but it will expedite his recovery if he take interest enough in the method by which he is being healed to read suitable books on the subject, and converse profitably with the healer.... Prayer to a personal God affects the sick like a drug that has no efficacy of its own, but borrows its power from human faith and belief. The drug does nothing because it has no intelligence.
TESTS OF THE THEORY
First Test. If their principles be true, food should not be necessary. Mrs. Eddy affirms this:
Gustatory pleasure is a sensuous illusion, an illusion that diminishes as we understand our spiritual being and ascend the ladder of Life. This woman learned that food neither strengthens nor weakens the body,—that mind alone does this.... Teach them that their bodies are nourished more by Truth than by food.
Then, finding herself unable to silence the testimony of the senses, she endeavors to circumvent it thus:
Admitting the common hypothesis, that food is requisite to sustain human life, there follows the necessity for another admission, in the opposite direction,—namely, that food has power to destroy life, through its deficiency or excess, in quality or quantity. This is a specimen of the ambiguous character of all material health-theories. They are self-contradictory and self-destructive,—"a kingdom divided against itself, that is brought to desolation." If food preserves life, it cannot destroy it. The truth is, food does not affect the life of man; and this becomes self-evident when we learn that God is our only life. Because sin and sickness are not qualities of Soul or Life, we have hope in immortality; but it would be foolish to venture beyond our present understanding, foolish to stop eating, until we gain more goodness and a clearer comprehension of the living God. In that perfect day of understanding, we shall neither eat to live, nor live to eat.
