"Christian Science" Purports to Popularise the Treatment of Disease

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 14 pages

Christian Science was new when this was written, and spreading quickly, and Blavatsky treats it as a serious rival rather than a curiosity — which is what gives the analysis its edge. The claim under examination is a double one: that the movement possesses the secret of man's being, and that it holds the power to heal.

Her objection turns on the doctrine that diseases are nothing but mental pictures which a man creates for himself and then believes in religiously, so that the cure lies in learning to dominate the conditions that produce them. She does not dispute that mind acts upon body — the whole of her own system depends on it — but she disputes the account of how, and she regards the popularising of such a technique among people untrained in it as precisely the sort of thing this series exists to warn against. The file is set out as a contents and abstract of central ideas, which makes the structure of the criticism easy to follow.

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