Christian Science (essay) 3372428 225530712 2008-07-14T04:31:58Z FKmailliW 3712676 clean up using [[Project:AutoWikiBrowser|AWB]] Published in 1907, '''''Christian Science''''' by [[Mark Twain]] (Samuel Clemens) is a highly critical essay on the beliefs of [[Christian Science|Christian Scientists]]. However, later he seemed to reverse his stance as biographer [[Albert Bigelow Paine|Paine]] wrote:<ref name="Paine">{{citation | last1 = Paine | first1 = Albert Bigelow | authorlink1 = Albert Bigelow Paine | title = Mark Twain: A Biography; the Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens | volume = 3 | page = 1271 | url = http://ia310935.us.archive.org/0/items/marktwainabiogra02988gut/old/mt7bg11.txt | isbn = 0791045390 }}</ref> :''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.'' ==References== {{reflist}} ==External links== *{{Gutenberg | no=3187 | name=Christian Science}} {{Twain}} [[Category:Essays by Mark Twain]] [[Category:Books critical of religion]] {{essay-stub}} [[fi:Christian Science]]