Christian Science (essay)

Christian Science is a highly critical essay published in 1907 by Mark Twain, on the beliefs of Christian Scientists. His biographer Paine suggested that Twain had reversed his stance later in life; but, this is unlikely, from his other statements:^[1]

I was at this period interested a good deal in mental healing, and had been treated for neurasthenia with gratifying results. Like most of the world, I had assumed, from his published articles, that he condemned Christian Science and its related practices out of hand. When I confessed, rather reluctantly, one day, the benefit I had received, he surprised me by answering:

"Of course you have been benefited. Christian Science is humanity's boon. Mother Eddy deserves a place in the Trinity as much as any member of it. She has organized and made available a healing principle that for two thousand years has never been employed, except as the merest kind of guesswork. She is the benefactor of the age."

It seemed strange, at the time, to hear him speak in this way concerning a practice of which he was generally regarded as the chief public antagonist. It was another angle of his many-sided character.

Twain's response to Paine may have been satiric hyperbole, as it directly parallels a quote from his own critical essay:

Mrs. Eddy is a very unsound Christian Scientist, and needs disciplining. I believe she has a serious malady--"self-deification"

References

External links

• Christian Science at Project Gutenberg