Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/289

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"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" AND "MIND CURE"
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of voice which accompany youth. Nor at eighty-five had he exhibited much change. In the city of Chicago there died recently a professional man nearly seventy-five years of age, whose teeth, complexion, color, hair, voice, and mind showed no signs of his being over forty-five years of age. Henry Ward Beecher, the January before his death, could write to his oldest brother that he had no rheumatism, neuralgia, sleeplessness, or deafness, was not bald, and did not need spectacles.

Meanwhile it is impossible not to suppose that the case as described by Mrs. Eddy has been greatly exaggerated. That some Americans who saw her at the age of seventy-four supposed her to be under twenty, is to be taken "cum grano salis."

As for death, if the theories of these romantic philosophers be true, it should give way; if not in every case, at least in some. It is said that there are hundreds of persons in Boston who believe that Mrs. Eddy will never die. Joanna Southcott, who arose in England in 1792, made many disciples, by some estimated at one hundred thousand, who believed that she would never die; but unfortunately for their credulity she succumbed to the inevitable decree.

Sixth Test. If these theories are true, clothing, so far as sustaining warmth and life is concerned, is superfluous, and fire unnecessary. This conclusion reduces the whole scheme to an absurdity.


EXPLANATION OF THEIR ALLEGED SUCCESS

In endeavoring to ascertain the causes of recoveries which undoubtedly occur when the patient is under the supervision of Christian Scientists and Mind Curers, it would be a blunder to omit the testimony of Mrs. Eddy as to her experiments with