strangled on the death of any great man; the living victims who were buried beside every post of a chief's house, and must needs stand clasping it while the earth was gradually heaped over their devoted heads; a time when there was not the slightest security for life or property, and no man knew how quickly his own hour of doom might come; when whole villages were depopulated simply to supply their neighbours with fresh meat!

"Just think of all this and of the change that has been wrought, and then just imagine white men who can sneer at missionary work in the way they do. Now you can pass from isle to isle, certain everywhere to find the same cordial reception by kindly men and women. Every village on the lightly inhabited isles has built for itself a tidy church and a good house for its teacher or native minister, for whom the village also provides food and clothing. Can you realize that there are nine hundred Wesleyan churches in Fiji, at every one of which the frequent services are crowded by devout congregations; that the schools are well attended, and that the first sound that greets your ear at dawn and the last at night is that of hymn-singing and most fervent worship rising from each dwelling at the hour of family prayer?"

One great chief after another was converted, but the most remarkable of all was the conversion of King Thakombaw, the powerful monarch of Fiji. Captain Erskine, of Her Majesty's steamship Havannah,who visited Fiji in 1849, thus describes Thakombaw: "It was impossible not to admire the appearance of the chief. Of large, almost gigantic size, his limbs were beautifully formed and proportioned. His countenance, with far less of the negro cast than among the lower orders, was agreeable and intelligent. In 1857 he was publicly baptized. He had been requested to address an assembly after his baptism. He did so. What a congregation he had! Widows whose husbands he had slain; people whose relatives had been strangled by his orders; those whose friends he had eaten; and children, the descendants of people he had murdered, and who had vowed to

avenge the wrongs inflicted on their fathers. A thousand stony hearts heaved with fear and astonishment as Thakombaw said:

The

"I have been a bad man. missionaries came and invited me to embrace Christianity, but I said, "I will continue to fight.' God has singularly preserved my life. I desire to acknowledge Him as the only and the true God. I have scourged the world.'

"He was deeply affected, and spoke with great diffidence. He showed his sincerity by dismissing his many wives and publicly marrying the chief one, Andi Lydia Samanunu. From this time he took no retrograde step. His thirst for knowledge grew, and the touching spectacle was often witnessed of his efforts to learn to read, taught by his own little children. The Rev. J. Nettleton, who was his chaplain for seven years, said he never met with a more devoted, earnest and consistent Christian. He died in 1883, and the Fijian Times, a secular paper, said: 'His influence on the side of Christianity and of good in general has been greater than that of any chief or combination of chiefs throughout the islands. Since his conversion and baptism he has led a worthy life, and, eminent before for tyranny, licentiousness, and disregard of human life, he has since been free from reproach, chaste in conduct, and considerate of the people!"

The conversion of Fiji was preeminently God's work-the work of the Holy Spirit. The work at Ono was a remarkable instance of this. Without any prompting except that which must have come from God's good Spirit, these people began to grope from their own deep heathen darkness toward the light:

"An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.”

In 1835, about the same time that

the Mission to Fiji was commenced, a desire arose among these people for better gods than they had. One of their chiefs had heard from a Friendly Islander that there was but one God, and that one day in seven ought to be set apart for His worship. As soon as this news reached them they determined to worship this unknown God. A difficulty arose as to who should officiate for them. In their dilemma they sent for the heathen priest. Moved either by fear or compassion or honour, he consented, and asked this new God to keep and bless the people, at the same time acknowledging that he himself worshipped a different God and that he was only acting as spokesman for his neighbours.

It was a long time before their wishes for a teacher could be made known. A storm drove a boat full of Tongans, returning home, far out of their course. They landed on an island fifty miles from Ono. One of them was a Christian, and when he heard of what was going on at Ono went there and taught them what he knew. When a regular Christian teacher reached them he found one hundred and twenty persons who had renounced heathenism. The work spread on every hand. The missionaries bore testimony that "of all the work in Fiji, that at Ono has been the most permanent and successful. More native teachers have been raised in proportion to the population than in any of the other islands.”

The genuine and sturdy character of the religion of these Fijian converts has proved itself on many signal occasions. Manfully have many of them endured persecution, exile, and death rather than compromise their principles. Forty native Fijians have gone as missionaries to New Guinea, a land more degraded than even their own had en, and through their labours two

and three hundred of the in

habitants became Christians. The Fijians make good missionaries; difficulties do not dishearten nor perils affright them. Where one falls under the club of the savage— and many have so fallen-others are ready to take up his work and proclaim to his murderers both the law and the Gospel.

In 1877 Mr. Brown, a Wesleyan Missionary, with nine native Fiji preachers (seven of them married, and accompanied by their wives), sailed in the mission brig John Wesley to carry to the savages of New Britain the Gospel of Christ. Before they sailed the British consul remonstrated with them on the peril of the attempt, but they replied, "We know the danger; we are willing to go. If we get killed, well; if we live, well."

News was soon received that four of them were eaten, and that their wives and little ones were threatened with a similar fate. "These distressing tidings," says Miss Gordon Cumming, reached Fiji just

as a fresh detachment of teachers was about to start for New Britain. Their determination was in no degree shaken. Qne of them expressed the determination of them. all when he said, 'If the people kill and eat my body I shall go to a place where there is no more pain or death; it is all right.' One of the wives was asked whether she still intended to accompany her husband to a scene of so great danger. She replied, I am like the outrigger of a canoe-where the canoe goes, there you will surely find the outrigger!' Brave helpmeets these!

Bishop Walsh, a prelate of the Anglican Church, pays this generous tribute to the lowly Lincolnshire ploughman whose life and work we have sketched: "Fiji is not only a gem in the British crown, but a precious jewel in the missionary diadem; and to John Hunt, above all other men, belongs the honour of having placed it there!"

We shall endeavour to approach this subject in the spirit of scientific soberness, avoiding prejudgment and harsh descriptive epithets of every kind, nor would we even provoke an idle or a needless smile.

The plan of the paper is very simple. We do not attempt to deny that the devotees of Christian Science produce large numbers of cures, both of nervous and organic diseases in attestation of their by no means too modest claims.

The question that seems vital to us is Must we accept the teaching of Christian Science in order to account for these happy results? In so saying, we do not intend to imply that the nexus between cause and effect is severed in any instance, but merely to point out that the results reached under the supervision of Christian Scientists are due to a cause or causes other than the one to which they are attributed by them. In other words, we must utter our protest in this paper against the assumption that the cures associated with the practice of Christian Science are due to its theological or quasi philosophical

assertions.

We feel somewhat confident in taking this position, because many of the tenets relied upon to produce therapeutic effects are demonstrably false, if not foolish; and the cures cited, so far as they are genuine, can be accounted for upon other, and rational grounds.

The chief difficulties of our subject are two. First, the unusual and ambiguous—perhaps, in courtesy, I may say the esoteric-meaning which Christian Science gives

A paper read before Trinity University, Toronto, and before the Theological Conference of Victoria University, Toronto.

to words which are in current use amongst us, and have a well-recognized but different meaning in the intercourse of normal humanity. And, secondly, the dogmatic unwillingness of Christian Science to accept and abide by the intuitive declarations of the ordinary human intelligence.

As an example of the first difficulty, take the word "matter." We are in the habit of thinking of matter as that which makes up the substance of anything-the material of which anything is composed-the elements of the cosmos with which we become acquainted in the use of the five senses of smell, taste, hearing, sight and touch. This seems to be the simple verdict of common sense. Mrs. Eddy, however, affirms that "nothing we can say or believe concerning matter is true except that matter is unreal." "Here let us simply note that the word "unreal " is used in a sense not in accordance with common thought. She says: "Mind is all and matter is naught. "There is no such thing as matter," P. 379.

It is not necessary in this connection to discuss how we arrive at the conviction of the existence of matter, nor what particular conception of matter may be most satisfactory. Suffice it to say that such a conviction is in possession of the average and ordinary human mind, and that substantiality, or the power of producing sensation and perception, is to the ordinary mind proof of reality. Of course, if any one refuse to admit the truth of that statement, if he deny the testimony of our five senses, my words will be

* The citations from Mrs. Eddy are from the 23rd edition of her "Science and Health."

to him only vanity, if indeed they are not vexation of spirit.

But this I would say, that there is no barrier between him and universal scepticism, for if we cannot believe the testimony of our mind. when receiving its perceptions through the five senses and bearing witness to objects and things about us, we can advance no sufficient reason for believing its testimony when certifying to the presence of thoughts within us. We have not two minds, one of which we may call mortal mind, that deals with the delusions of sense, and is itself deluded; and another, a spirit mind, which is cognizant of the subjective realities of thought alone. We have but one mind engaged in this dual activity.

It is conceivable that the term "mortal" might be used as a synonym for diseased or deceived, and mortal mind may thus be considered as the spirit mind acting under the bondage of delusion; but to use the term mortal mind as it is used in Christian Science, as though it were a distinct entity from the spirit mind, is to set up a false psychology from which all sorts of vagaries may be deduced. We must stand firmly to, and never yield, the truth that we are conscious of an undivided personality, and that that personality is ours, or we become victims of any metaphysical schemer who may draw the proverbial red herring across our path. Grave consequences follow from surrendering this pivotal position. We shall refer to this point later. Meanwhile let us say that if matter is only a false belief of mortal mind; if matter is that which mortal mind sees, feels, hears, tastes and smells only in belief, then our sense perceptions are engaged in a continual round of deception, and we are a bundle of living falsehoods which "We evermore repeat themselves. are such stuff as dreams are made

of," with the assurance in advance that all our dreams are untrue.

However far from the truth this statement may appear to us, it is curious to know that Christian Scientists take no exception to it. Indeed it is their deliberate teaching. But if it be true, we are bereft of responsibility; for if we are victims of delusion in our accustomed and necessary modes of thought, it were outrageous injustice to expect us to form a correct moral judgment in any exigency of life.

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To this, also, I think Mrs. Eddy would give her cheerful consent, for she says that there is a universal insanity which mistakes fable for fact throughout the entire round of the material senses, but this general craze cannot in a spiritual diagnosis shield the individual case from the special name of insanity. Those unfortunate people who are committed to insane asylums are only so many well-defined instances of the baneful effects of illusion on mortal minds and bodies."* Since we are all insane we cannot be responsible. This verdict throws light upon the Christian Science doctrine of sin. But I err in permitting for a moment the supposition that Christian Science has a doctrine of sin. There is no room for a dream of evil in Christian Science. "God is good and God is all." "Man is incapable of sin.”** "Sin and mortality are native nothingness. And that is all that need be said about them.

Thus Christian Science demolishes the conception of human life which has been building for centuries, and denudes it of all moral dignity; for if man is incapable of sin, he is also incapable of virtue.

Let us turn now to the other chief difficulty in treating the subject of Christian Science, namely, its un

* "Science and Health," p. 330.
**Science and Health." p. 541.

willingness to accept and abide by the intuitive declarations of the ordinary human mind. The misuse of words, to which we have already referred, is the result of the falseness of thought, to which we shall now refer.

Mrs. Eddy says, "Flesh is an illusion." But we intuitively declare it to be a reality. The New Testament supports this view. "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world. (1 John iv. 2, 3.) These verses were written to oppose a trend towards Gnosticism, which was already in the air in John's lifetime. Gnosticism was the Christian Scientism of the early Church. Gnostic and Scientist mean the same thing, as you know, one word being Greek and the other Latin. points the two isms are in theological affinity.

In many

Christian Science says, "pain is an imagination," yet never had Christian Science healer imagination so dull as not to feel the sudden prick of a pin or the stab of a bayonet. Were it so, what a valuable addition to the troops of South Africa a corps of Christian Scientists would be; no hospital service would be needed. They could fight without rest or sleep, regardless of so-called wounds, and even death. Not only hospital, but also the commissariat department might be dispensed with if only the glorious doctrines of Christian Science had sufficient control of those who march forth in the name of the Queen. Mrs. Eddy affirms that Gustatory pleasure is a sensuous illusion that diminishes as we understand our spiritual being and ascend the ladder of life." This woman learned that food neither

strengthens nor weakens the bodythat mind alone does this. "The truth is, food does not affect the life of man, . . . but it would be foolish to venture beyond our present understanding, foolish to stop eating until we gain more goodness, and a clearer comprehension of the living God."

One can hardly forbear asking questions at this point. Has the crying baby a false belief in pins and cholera infantum ? Are sick brutes the victims of morbid imagination ? Are persons who die of poison taken by mistake for wholesome food killed by their belief in its poisonous character, when they had no such belief? Is there no difference between heat and cold?

Now, strange to say, Mrs. Eddy is not at all disconcerted by such questions. She calmly responds that "heat and cold are the products of mortal mind, and that food neither strengthens nor weakens the body."

Is it not surprising how unanimous these delusions are in this changeable weather. Surprising how not a single mortal mind imagines it is blazing hot outdoors when the thermometer stands forty degrees below zero. If heat and cold are the products of mortal mind, it would certainly be a high privilege to live where the changes in the weather are decided upon by the majority opinion. If cold is the product of mortal mind, why cannot we come to some agreement to keep the temperature from going down too far when the price of coal is rising so high. And if heat is the product of mortal mind, how delightful to think we can have any climate we desire without the expense of travel!

But Mrs. Eddy is even more radical than this would imply. She says, "If a dose of poison is swallowed by mistake and the patient dies, even though the physician patient are expecting favour

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