|Without wanting to give offence, I would say that Christian Science
is, in many respects, the modern version of the witchcraft belief,
which smote New England some three or four hundred years ago. If mental
treatment can cure, according to Mrs. Eddy's admissions, it can also
kill. Over her own signature Mrs. Eddy declares that her last husband
was killed by poison "mentally administered." The devil possessed
witches, too, were supposed to be able to injure and kill people
mentally. Mrs. Eddy teaches that, "If the right mental practice can
restore health, it is self-evident that mental malpractice can impair
health." She also contends that a person may commit mental murder or
"mental assassination." In the _Christian Science Journal_ of February,
1889, she demands that "mental assassins" be turned over to the
executioner.
On May 14, 1878, Mrs. Eddy, her attorney, and some twenty witnesses,
appeared at the opening of the Supreme Judicial Court in Salem and
practically accused a certain Mr. Daniel Harrison Spoffard of sorcery
and witchcraft. Mrs. Eddy's bill of complaint recited the injuries which
Spoffard was mentally, and of course by absent treatment, inflicting
upon one of Mrs. Eddy's students, a Miss Lucretia Brown, and begged the
Court to restrain him from giving malicious mental treatment to said
Miss Brown. Does not that suggest darkest Africa? Let me give a few
lines from Mrs. Eddy's bill of complaint:--
_By the power of his mind he (Mr. Spoffard) influences and controls the
minds and bodies of other persons, and uses his said power and art for
the purpose of injuring the persons and property of others. Among the
injuries Mr. Spoffard has communicated to Miss Brown are severe spinal
pains, neuralgia, temporary suspension of mind._
Fortunately for the reputation of our courts, Judge Gray dismissed the
charges against Mr. Spoffard, declaring, with a twinkle in his eye,
that it was not within the jurisdiction of the courts to control Mr.
Spoffard's mind. Had the Judge been of Mrs. Eddy's persuasion, the old
regrettable Salem persecutions against so-called witches might have been
revived. How well has it been explained by John Fiske that "one of the
most primitive shapes which the relation of cause and effect takes in
the savage mind is the assumed connection between disease or death and
some malevolent personal agency."