It has been more than once asserted in recent discussions of Christian Science and kindred forms of occult therapy that their therapeutic success is in no way dependent on the theological or metaphysical doctrines on which these systems purport to be based; that these theoretical elements are, in fact, from the point of view of success in healing, irrelevant and unessential. Drugless healing, for example, it is said, is successfully practiced by persons and sects whose religious and metaphysical dogmas have little or nothing in common with those of Christian Science, and, what is still more significant, by scientists who, many of them, do not espouse any religious system whatever, or, if they do, do not connect in any way their therapeutic practice with their religious beliefs.
The facts referred to are, as facts, sufficiently authentic, and I have no intention to controvert them; but the conclusion drawn from them is,