The new "science," better known as the art of mental healing, which is attracting great attention in Boston and its vicinity, has become a topic of pulpit discussion. Rev. Dr. Bartol, pastor of West Church, yesterday spoke for the second time on the subject. There was present a large congregation, it being noticeable that fully three-fourths of those in the audience were ladies. The text was taken from 2 Chron. 16: 12, 13: "And Asa in his disease sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians; and Asa slept with his fathers." The preacher said in part: The tendency of the medical profession has been to the material conditions that constitute or contribute to health or disease. An eminent doctor of my acquaintance said: "The man is all body." But this materialism provokes reaction to the other extreme, and some say, The body is nothing; man is all mind. The importance of mind in medicine, we have yet to learn. When Isaiah says our health shall spring from our humanity, and Jesus that demons or diseases are expelled only by prayer and fasting, or Moses that filial piety prolongs life, the commentators say, It is poetry; as if it were not the highest truth. Yet in attempting to grasp it there is danger that ignorance will take the name of science, and assuming to heal with no knowledge of the potency of an idea or agent, of the history of disease, the diversity of bodily affections or even of the anatomy of the human frame, "and fools rush in where angels fear to tread." In using the names metaphysical and Christian Science, the new practice disowns aught magical or lawless in its belief and procedure, appeals to common experience to attest its claims, and professes to build on what the Bible builds on, fact and principle in nature and human nature, not despising but confirming God's revelation.
The school, so-called, of Christian scientists for the healing of disease, may be something new under the sun, but our text hints that nothing is older in the world than the connection between sin and sickness, virtue and health, and were it not matter of daily observation the Bible affirms it in every book. Whoever would be whole or sound in body and mind must consider and use what can be held in no medicine-chest or apothecary's shop. Drugs and doctors occupy but a tithe of the field. Note, then, what sickness has in common with sin: The same origin, they are coeval; the same spread and self-propagation. Maladies are contagious; not only pestilence, small-pox, typhus, Asiatic cholera, but, as physicians now say, even coughs and colds. Are not our moral ailments contagious? Do we not infect others with our selfishness, avarice, vanity and pride? Is not anger very catching? What epidemic worse or wider than the spirit of retaliation and revenge?
If sin and sickness are alike in their cause and continuance, are they not so in their cure? Disease, or tendency to disease, is inherited; but sin, or a tendency to sin, is too. Theological liberals like not this orthodox doctrine, but it is true. But, to the point of my analogy, take the effect of what is so utterly unsensual as fear. Mankind has been a great frightened child. Courage is a virtue. But we do not count it wrong to be afraid. Yet to quake and quiver in body or mind is to betray weakness. It is an infirmity. It is an exposure and invitation to harm. The prevailing disorder you will be likely to have. Therefore away with fear; cast it out, as the Apostle bids, with perfect love. How much harm a religion of fear for men's souls in the next world has done to their bodies in this!
