Article August 16, 1900 Issue

Christian Scientists as Insurance Risks

Hermann S. Hering

Baltimore (Md.) Herald

The action of the Supreme Council of the Knights of Honor in relation to Christian Scientists, at their meeting in Buffalo, N. Y., last month, has been so widely commented upon by the religious and secular press throughout the entire country, and has been discussed on such an erroneous basis, that I would like to bring out a few salient facts in connection with this subject. In the first place, the Knights of Honor did not vote to class Christian Scientists as hazardous risks as was generally reported, but by a vote of 62 to 13 rejected such a proposition. All the discussion based on the supposition that the Knights had voted to exclude Christian Scientists was therefore unfounded. It brought out, however, two false claims against Christian Science, which show how very generally this, what might be called the "renaissance of the religion of Jesus Christ," is misunderstood and misrepresented. These two claims are that Christian Science healing is contrary to the Bible teaching, and that Christian Science does not heal and therefore its treatment is dangerous.

The religious papers were especially bitter in their denunciation of healing without drugs as being un-Scriptural. This seems strange in view of the fact that the Word of God, and especially the life and teaching of our Lord and Master Christ Jesus in the four Gospels, and the experiences of the Apostles as given in Acts, contain not only the results of healing through prayer alone, but the direct commands for all his followers so to heal. And not only did the Apostles heal thus, but also Christian believers in general, during the first three hundred years of the Christian era, and some few since that time. The greater part of the work of our Saviour while on earth, as recorded in the New Testament, was the healing of physical disease through spiritual power alone; and this was an important part of the work he commanded his disciples to do, and to which he referred the disciples of John the Baptist to prove his Messiahship.

The main reason why so many people consider Christian Science dangerous is because they believe that medical aid is the only aid, and that when patients give up medicine for Christian Science they give up something for nothing, and thus lose their only chance of getting well. Here again their premise is wrong. They either believe that God works through drugs and does not work without drugs, which pantheistic beliefs would make God either kill or cure and make Him the author of evil and death, or they do not know that the power of God is infinitely greater than drugs and entirely independent thereof.

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