The Irish standard., 1904-12-10
NOT A.: SCIENCE
Jesuit Father Tears Off Mask
From Mrs. Eddy's Cult.
Not a Revelation, Either, Says
Rev. Henry Woods, S. j.

writing on the so-called christian Sci
ence," says in part:
Statistics prove that no novelty in
religion or social reform can be so
dreamily unreal as not to be able to
draw to itself a number of supporters.
There are still, they say, believers i'll
jeanne Southcott. The Purple Mother
fourishes in Southern California. New
Brook farms are organized from time
to time by promoters untaught of past
failures. Messiahs and divine healers
have only to appear to be surrounded
with multitudes of men and women
ready to accept them on their own
testimony.
Today, as easily as few years ago,
persons could be found to put their all
into the hands of an adventurer, if
he, too, would promise to lead them to
nameless, undiscovered Eden in the
Southern seas. And therefore, though
we blush at it, we do not wonder that
Christian Science, the vagary of wo-
mans disordered imagination, has been
accepted by many, in the course of 30
years, as the truth for which the world
is waiting, the cure of every physical
and moral i'll.
For this reason it is good for us to
look into it and see what it's real ma.
ture. Why it is called Science we can
not discover. Perhaps for a similar
reason to that which leads men who
tame horses, or go up in balloons, or
wander from place to place showing
stereopticon views, to call themselves
professors. They must have some title
to give their occupation dignity these
have not themselves They feel the
appropriateness of General or Doc
tor. Reverend would not be more
suitable. Herr and Signor seem to be-
long almost exclusively to the operetta
stage, although the latter, in company
with Monsieur, is sometimes found in
the equestrian ring. The royal title
has been appropriated by ladies and
gentlemen on terms of closer ac-
quaintance than ordinary people enjoy
with lions and other beasts of prey.
On the other hand, Professor is at once
eminently respectable, and, to the COM
mon mind, somewhat vague; therefore
Professor they become. Yet certainly
they are not professors.
And so, too, ith-Healing, whatever
eXigencies may have compelled it to
take the name, is not a science. Sci
ence is knowledge of things through
their more general causes; that is to
say, knowledge Of particular truths
and their reasons why, up to the more
remote and general causes of which
they are the effects. Thus the knowl-
edge of the laws of storms, derived not
only from observation, but also from
their causes, as found in aerostatics.
aerodynamics, mechanics, the motions
OF the earth, and so forth, is scientific
If knowledge alone be the term of in
vestigation, the science is speculative:
when knowledge is acquired to be ap-
piled to direct or assist the affairs of
life, the science becomes practical. 90.
1t is perfectly clear that Christian
Science, whatever else it may be, is
not speculatively, much less practical
ly, scientific. Its inventor claims it to
be revelation. Revela ton in itself is
not science, though when once given
it can be treated scientifically. This is
the case with our Christian revelation
which is the matter of the science of
theology. But no such treatment is
found in the exposition of the revela-
ton which Mary Baker Glover, after
wards Mary Baker Glover Eddy,
claims to have received in the year
1865. Bold assertions are found, in
deed, and subjective impressions and
strange interpretations of Scripture, as
well as propositions either improved
or supported with arguments wonder
fully illogical.
Take, for instance, the following
chain of pretended reasoning: "There is
no pain in truth, and no truth in pain;
no nerve in mind and no mind in
nerve; no matter in mind and no mind
in matter; no matter in life and no life
in matter" Considering only the logi-
cal form, one could argue in the same
way: "There are no pods in peas and
no peas in pods; no stables in horses
and no horses in stables; no trees on
leaves and no leaves on trees; no ovens
in pies and no pies in ovens" More
over, the equivocation in the use of
terms should not pass unnoticed. The
object of the passage is to support the
fundamental principle Of Christian Sci
ence, the unreality Of the body with
all it's accidents; the only reality is the
soul.
The argument, then, runs thus: Pain
does not enter into the essential defini-
ton Of truth, which, spelled with a
large T, stands for the True; therefore
pain is not true thing, reality; and
SO on. One could prove in this way
that no finite being, not even the soul
itself, is real; for there is nothing finite
that enters into the definition of the
True. This transcends all individual