Article July 27, 1899 Issue

I am not a Christian Scientist

San Francisco Chronicle

I am not a Christian Scientist. I am an Episcopalian and rector of the Church of the Advent here in East Oakland, and I want to answer the Bishop's statement that there is no call for another sect of Christians. So I thought once, but I have changed my mind. I have tried preaching healing to my people. I have told them that we should take all of the New Testament for our guide. I have endeavored with discretion and boldness to bring to their attention the full mission of Christ, but the majority of the church think they know better than the New Testament, and the greater part will have no healing, notwithstanding Christ taught it, and Bishop Moreland concedes that Christian Scientists do heal. So the statement of the Bishop that there is no room for another sect is not true. There is a call for just this sect of Christian Scientists, and the fact that they number more than a million all over the world, in one generation, is proof of it. Here in Oakland they get out a hall full at their mid-week meetings on Wednesday, and what one of the other churches would not rejoice to do the same?

Medicine is a system of guesswork, as I can testify after nine and a half years' practice, and physicians know it to be so. They do not take their own medicine, and they do not take any of the various diseases they go among.

When we ordained Bishop Moreland, many other bishops laid their hands on his head before all the people, and as soon as that was done he was presented with the Bible and instructed by the presiding bishop to study it, and among other things he was told to "hold up the weak, heal the sick," etc., and not a word about medicine. Did the presiding bishop mean that?

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Legislation and Christian Science