Insanity and Religion

New York Sun

The testimony of Dr. Flint in the Brush will case, in answering affirmatively a question as to the sanity of a Christian Science believer, opposes a view taken by certain alienists and by many other people which is really dangerous to society. It is a very convenient way to dispose of a religious belief by describing and treating those who have it as pestilent victims of lunacy, but such a method involves an interference with the liberty of religious opinion that outrages a fundamental principle established after centuries of bloody struggle.

The religious world is divided into a great number of contradictory sects and cults, and in this country they are especially numerous; there is hardly a possible form of belief which has not its representation in them. Over against them is the now vast body of infidels of one sort or another,—atheists, agnostics, and what not,—to whom the evidences on which all these believers found their faith seem purely fanciful if not actually the fruit of delusion,—mere creations of the imagination which defy the laws of nature; and in the ranks of belief one camp may look on the faith of another as approximating the absurdity of lunacy.

The course of Christian history has been reddened with the blood of people who were tortured and slain like noxious reptiles, on the ground that they imperilled the souls of true believers. Faith in miraculous cures, devoutly held even yet by millions in Christendom, is smiled at both by believers of other religious faiths and by infidels as a fanatical delusion which defies the laws of nature and the absolute limitations of the art of healing.

When once we have passed beyond the realm of fact and scientific demonstration we enter into a mysterious supernatural country where there is no restraint upon the imagination. To that of the agnostic all religions seem delusion when they are taught as other than mere human speculations. To him the only real sanity is in himself.

The Christian Science belief cannot be said to depart so completely from the original faith of Christianity as to be absolutely new and singular. It is rather an extreme extension of a faith and practice always preserved in Christendom, based on this injunction of the Epistle of James:—

"Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."

If a body of Christian believers, rejecting all authoritative interpretation of this passage, and interpreting it for themselves as a divine command, proceed to act upon it practically, how can they be accounted legally insane any more than the others who interpret for themselves and act upon other injunctions of Scripture literally? If a man believes that God has promised that the simple prayer of faith, as he understands faith, will cure his ailment, how can you clap him into a lunatic asylum for acting on the belief without doing outrage to the religious liberty to which he is entitled under the law? Nor can you restrain his freedom of proclaiming his belief without such interference. You may think him a fool, but most people are fools, according to Carlyle and to many besides.

Moreover, experience proves that by adopting any method for the extirpation of Christian Science which approaches persecution you will only give further stimulus to the fanaticism. It has already made surprising progress in this country and, together with faith cure, it has appealed to many people whose minds could not be called otherwise than healthy by alienists, more especially to women whose intelligence as to other subjects cannot be disputed. It will have to run its course, and the more violent the means adopted to stamp it out, the longer and the wilder will be the run.—New York Sun.

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Not Christian Science

March 7, 1901

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