An article on Christian Science in the Chicago Sunday Herald some weeks ago, closed with this wise admonition: "Be careful by whom you are taught; be careful by whom you are healed." The writer was evidently well posted on the operations of the mental healers in Chicago, and wrote the advice from the standpoint of an informed critic, directing the counsel especially to his Chicago contemporaries. He meant warning only against pretenders in the field of healing and teaching, but, speaking from the standpoint of a patient investigator and unprejudiced student of differences and likenesses in values, I beg the privilege of bringing the injunction to prospective students of Christian Science under authorized and commended instructors.
Student graduates of the Normal Course at the Metaphysical College, have done themselves great credit in the excellent instruction they have given their students in Christian Science, so far as they have gone in that instruction. And so far as the pupils of those teachers have been candidly informed of the fact that they were receiving instructions in the rudiments only of Christian Science (or metaphysical healing) so far is there no reproof, but only commendation for those teachers, and congratulation for their pupils. But when minds of superior abilities, wholly uninformed of the fact that it is primary instruction only that they receive from Normal College Students, are boldly informed by circulars, agents, or otherwise, that the same course of instruction is afforded by attendance upon their private classes, or "schools," as at the college, and are thereby deceived into taking what they suppose to be an equally advantageous course with that of the regularly chartered college, under the presidency of the discoverer of the science—inestimable damage is done the cause, and many, many promising workers.
This is being done. And moreover these "schools" and class-instructors are making the same charges for their rudimentary teaching that the Mass. Metaphysical College charges, after its reduction to students residing at a distance. Nobody can calculate the harm these measures are working. Clergymen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, writers, peculiarly qualified by mental training and moral fitness to be an honor to our alma mater, to themselves, and to their communities, are tempted by these flattering programmes to spend their time and money for instructions which bring discredit on the Science, and dissatisfaction to themselves—because supposed to be the bona fide course in Christian healing.
