Reply to the Objections of a Clergyman

Los Angeles Evening Express

To the Editor of the Express:

Without caring to dispute with Rev. Thomas Stalker in his attack on Christian Science, I would like to cite, for his benefit and that of the Express readers who read your report of his paper, a fragment of history. It is found in the London Quarterly Review, vol. iv., 1820. "A Barrister" had a series of papers in that magazine in which he complained of the bigotry and fanaticism of the Methodists of that day. Instances of this fanaticism were cited and he expressed the opinion that the law should be invoked to put a stop to their practices. These practices were not only the healing of the sick, but the raising of the dead, according to the Methodist, a magazine of the sect to which Mr. Stalker belongs.

I would like it if Mr. Stalker would signify whether he regards John Wesley as having been a nuisance. If he does, he is consistent; if not, he is inconsistent in so stigmatizing Christian Scientists. According to Rev. Abel Stevens, Wesley's biographer, the founder of Methodism said, in answer to the question, "Do you believe in miracles?"

"Certainly I do if I believe the Bible.... Every answer to prayer is properly a miracle."

If Mr. Stalker is correct in his characterization of Christian Scientists, then Francis Asbury, Jacob Knapp, Peter Cartwright, and Jacob Gruber, pioneer Methodists, were also nuisances, as scoffers in their day called them. They all believed in the power of prayer to heal the sick, as does Bishop Charles Fowler, one of the brightest minds in all the Methodist Church to-day.

I could cite dozens of men who became eminent in Mr. Stalker's church who taught prayer saved them from sickness and from death by flood, by freezing, by hunger, and by violence. I will not undertake to advocate or explain Christian Science, because I am not sufficiently versed in it, but I know enough of it to perceive that Mr. Stalker did not truthfully represent it, any more than did the barrister who wanted the Methodists of England prosecuted, as he wants Christian Scientists served to-day.

One of the Healed.
Los Angeles Evening Express.

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