"I just had a wonderful healing by applying the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. Do you people heal the sick as Jesus required?"

A friend of mine responded to the CSist and shared his response with me. I am posting it below with his permission:

It's been a long time since I looked into the Frye incidents. Apparently there were witnesses when Mrs. Eddy supposedly raised Calvin Frye from the dead. I used the amazon.com "search inside this book" feature for Gill's book, Mary Baker Eddy and came up with a footnote on p. 669 that discusses the Frye incidents. The footnote points out that there was no medical determination that Frye was dead and speculates that Frye might have had some form of epilepsy or hysterical catatonia. In any case, Eddy's followers believed the claims of resurrection and believed that she could raise people from the dead. 

I don't think we can prove that Mrs. Eddy did or didn't raise Calvin Frye, but the doubt raised by the lack of medical diagnosis and the mindset of the witnesses (all being CS and probably not in a position to objectively or medically determine whether he was dead) makes me appreciate the resurrections that Jesus did. Jesus let Lasarus remain dead for three days before bringing him back to life. He raised a boy during his funeral -- when he was undeniably dead. I'm glad He left no doubt about these healings.

I just read about halfway through the list of healings attributed to Mrs. Eddy. I recongize a lot of names (for example, people published in the "We Knew Mary Baker Eddy" series) and I've seen some of these testimonials elsewhere. Can't know whether they're true (seems like a awful lot of "raising from the dead" stories...). Some of them strike me as "credible" as the stories she told of being levitated off the bed and being audibly called by God as a child. Many cult leaders and founders of doctrinally aberrant religions are surrounded by fantastic stories that supposedly validate their teachings, so I tend to be a bit skeptical.

In any case, nothing in these stories fits the "greater works than these" that Jesus talked about.

Good point. Apparently the spiritual insights gained during the healing process are hard to keep...

zoarean 

1)  "The Fellowship of the Fittest," which I name without apology to Darwin.  I believe that people with robust constitutions and a strong immune system will be comfortable in CS.  They may be brought up in it, and marry other CS'ists, and continue the propgagation of children with this fortunate virtue of natural health.  (I identify myself as one.  I have to guard against reacting to my wife's illness as though they were some kind of moral failing!)

2) Unconscious (and sometimes deliberate) desire to conform to the CS mindset of healing.  Testimonies are the currency of value in CS.  If you have them, you "rate," and if you don't, well.....   Members will stretch facts (espeically "diagonses" and "recoveries" for dramatic effect.  Thus, symptoms before the "healing" are magnified, and symtoms after it minimized or otherwise dismissed.

My favorite example of this was the case of a favorite Sunday School teacher of mine.  He had remarkable testimonies, including the healing of blindness following a hit on his tank in WWII.  When he abandoned his wife, she gleefully told the rest of the congregation that he made them all up!   (Of course, her objectivity is suspect.)

Your second point does not sufficiently address the issue. Below are my comments.

This point evades the issue and points to the personal lives of Christian Scientists rather than acknowledging the actual text. It should be understood that adherents of Christian Science do not claim to have figured it all out (at least in my experience), nor do they claim to have practiced Christian Science perfectly. Assuming for the sake of argument that Christian Science is true (and I am not in any way supporting that assertion), the lack of spectacular healings in Christian Science would simply mean that Christian Scientists are not practicing Science correctly.