Article August 29, 1901 Issue

Christian Science and Absent Treatment

J. R. Mosley

The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph

Editor of The Macon Telegraph.

In a comparatively recent issue of the Telegraph you have an editorial on "absent treatment" in which you quote from the Philadelphia Record to the effect that "absent treatment is an invention of Christian Science," and that it may be used to injure as well as benefit, "since it can work in silence as well as at a distance."

The recognition that good thoughts, the prayer of faith and love, bless and heal both those who pray and those who are prayed for, seems to have been as ancient as God's revelation of Himself to man, and man's first glimpses of God as a good Mind or as a beneficent Spirit. As early as God was even vaguely apprehended as infinite Intelligence, omniscient Good, or as omnipresent Spirit instead of a material, corporeal, finite object or person, it inevitably followed that the answer of prayer would depend upon a right understanding of God and a right mental or spiritual attitude toward His ethical nature and character, and not upon the physical presence or absence of the object of one's prayer. When "Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants;" and when "Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee," their prayers were made to a God who was recognized as being able to hear and answer prayer independently of the physical locality of person praying or the person prayed for.

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