Article October 23, 1902 Issue

Prayer not Medical Practice

W.D. McCrackan

Brooklyn Eagle

No one can find fault with the statement that "the doctrine of no-doctoring is not doctoring, and of doing without medicine is not medical," unless reliance upon God, as taught by Christianity, can be defined as medical practice.

Any attempt to define a Christian Science church as "a medical institution," and to bring it, as such, under the special legislation governing medical practice, must inevitably raise a series of knotty legal problems. Since every Christian denomination is based on the Bible, and the latter preaches and teaches, from cover to cover, that God heals, it must follow that, if the Christian Science denomination is to be reckoned as "a medical institution," then every other Christian denomination must proclaim its belief that God does not heal.

The terms "mental concentration" and "thought-trans-ferrence" do not properly describe the modus operandi of the Christian Science treatment, and these terms are not used, so far as I can recall, in Christian Science literature, except in warning students against the exercise of human will-power. The Christian Science treatment consists of knowing the truth in regard to God and man; namely, that God is Spirit, omnipotent and omnipresent; while man, made in His image and likeness, is spiritual and not material. This spiritual understanding of the truth is Science and not merely belief, hope, or expectation; and this Science frees man from discord in accordance with Jesus' promise: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Thus it is that Christian Science not only reforms the sinner, but also heals the sick. W.D. McCrackan. In Brooklyn Eagle.

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