- Christian Science (essay)
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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
- ^ Paine, Albert Bigelow (1997), Mark Twain: A Biography; the Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 3, Philadelphia, Pa.: Chelsea House Publishers, p. 1271, ISBN 0791045390, http://www.archive.org/details/marktwainabiogr00paingoog
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