From the platform of the Monday lectureship in [2] Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, as will be seen by what follows. Reverend Mary Baker G. Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed [5] ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con- demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full by a shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribed below. Mrs. Eddy responding, said:— [10] As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient for even a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my- self to questions and answers. Am I a spiritualist? I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi- [15] bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead and living. There have always attended my life phenomena of an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis- called mediumship; but I clearly understand that no human agencies were employed,—that the divine Mind [20] reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. And to such as are “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body,” Christian Science reveals the in- finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from [1] sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbed the grave of victory and death of its sting. I understand that God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble,— have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no [5] remedies in drugs, no material medicine. Do I believe in a personal God? I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know not what the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is, or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that [10] of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father and Mother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being to diviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to the apostle who declared it, “God is Love,”—divine Prin- ciple,—which I worship; and “after the manner of my [15] fathers, so worship I God.” Do I believe in the atonement of Christ? I do; and this atonement becomes more to me since it includes man's redemption from sickness as well as from sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before. [20] It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who enter- tain this understanding of the Science of God, a whole salvation. How is the healing done in Christian Science? This answer includes too much to give you any con- [25] clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name some means by which it is not done. It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it is not the transference of human images of thought to other minds; it is not supported by the evidence before [30] the personal senses,—Science contradicts this evidence; it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; [1] that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi- dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies of Truth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har- mony,—the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal [5] thought transmitted to another's thought from the human mind that holds within itself all evil. Our Master said of one of his students, “He is a devil,” and repudiated the idea of casting out devils through Beelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10] sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healing I deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. All human control is animal magnetis
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