S. P. H. writes: "How can you establish a College to instruct in Metaphysics when other institutions find little interest in such dry and abstract subjects"?
Metaphysics as taught by Mrs. Eddy at the Mass. Metaphysical College is far from dry and abstract; it is a science that has the animus of Truth in its practical application to benefit the race, heal the sick, enlighten and reform the sinner. Teaching metaphysics at other Colleges means, mainly, elaborating a man-made theory, speculative views too vapory and hypothetical for questions of practical import.
A. P. asks "Is it necessary to study your science in order to be healed by it and keep well"?
It is not necessary to make every patient a student to cure his disease, if this is what you mean; were it so the science would be of less practical value. Many who apply for help are not prepared to take a course of instructions in Christian Science. To never again be subject to disease means much, and would require the understanding of how you are healed. This can to-day be obtained in its genuineness only at the Mass. Metaphysical College. There are at present some grossly incorrect and false teachers of what they term Christian Science. They have risen up in a day to this claim, when its founder was years giving it birth.
J. B. S. inquires: "Can you take care of yourself"?
Yes; unlike the M. D. we are not afraid to take our own medicine, for our medicine is Mind, and we intend to fill the body with enough leaven of Truth to keep it in good condition. There may be exceptional cases where one Christian Scientist who has far more to bear than others needs their support at times; then it is right to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
M. E. D. writes: "How can you consider yourself an instrument by which God reaches others to heal them"?
We assume no more in claiming to work with God in healing the sick than converting the sinner, and one is as necessary as the other. The divine Principle of healing demands this co-operation, but it would be arrested if we mixed material methods with the spiritual; if we mingled drugs and prayers in the same process, or served other gods by hygienic methods. Heaven is a state of harmony that can never be attained while there is either sin or sickness, and the same process of Truth effectual in destroying sin, is as efficacious to destroy sickness.
L. C. L. asks: "If Christian Science is the same method of healing that Jesus and the Apostles used, why do not your students perform as instantaneous cures as they did"?
We claim our method of healing to be governed by and demonstrated on the very same Principle as theirs, namely, the action of the divine Spirit and the power of Truth to destroy error. The only reason that the same results follow not now as then is, the student does not possess as much of this Spirit and its power to meet and master sin. The founder of Christian Science teaches her students thoroughly, and so imbues them with Truth and Love that when they leave her class they have power over sickness, but she also teaches them by following Truth and Love to reach the same power over sin themselves, and this leads to instantaneous healing. But in the midst of this Christian warfare there is the element of evil coming from others for the student to meet and master, and if it is malice, holding the purpose to kill through mind, it requires more divine power and understanding to conquer it than the sin of ignorance by which one unintentionally harms himself or another. This element is animal magnetism, brute force in man that only the cruel, sinful and devilish can send forth. This wicked force employed by one who has learned the liberated power of mind to do good and perverts it, uses this power principally to make money, or to accomplish some selfish, envious or revengeful purpose, is what retards at this period, and disgraces more than all things else, mental healing. Because of this wickedness he loses his power to heal in science, and resorts to mal-practice to hinder those who are honest practitioners, and prevent the normal results of Christian Science appearing at this period and the public from distinguishing the difference between his practice and that of the scientist. For the student of Christian Science, to meet this sin of others with its malicious attempts on his patients and master that also, after he has purged his own thoughts and made them fit for medicine, is the hardest battle on the field of Christian Science, and the most ennobling. It is one too, that God will not suffer to be shirked: it must be fought by those who keep the faith, fight the good fight and finish their course.
