Article April 2, 1904 Issue

When Doctors Disagree

SAMUEL GREENWOOD.

The world's thought has been controlled so long by its medical and religious systems that any practical departure from them is looked upon as dangerous folly on the one hand and heresy on the other. These man-made systems have endeavored to pilot humanity over the troubled waters of earthly experience, but the battered bark still continues the buffet of wind and wave. Adrift on the sea of error, driven hither and thither by its pitiless storms of suffering and want and crime, shall man or angels deny that Christian Science has come to the rescue with the same Christ-truth that stilled the tempest, that gave peace to troubled hearts, and opened for mortals the way to God's kingdom on earth?

The universal agreement among the adherents of these human systems regarding the necessity of matter for the expression of intelligence and life, reveals their disagreement with the spiritual teaching and practice of him who was at once the most successful physician and effective preacher the world has ever known; while their internal disagreements exemplify the limitations that beset all material theories and endeavors. They are engaged in a warfare with conditions which are but the logical conclusions of the premise upon which all human systems are based; namely, that man is legitimately a material animal, subject to the control of animal propensities and demoralizing passions, and surrounded by the constant chance of pain, disease, and death.

The medical doctor agrees with his ecclesiastical brother, that Christianity has nothing to do with the healing of the body; and so he rests his hope and effort on nothing higher than matter, making it at once the source of mortals' blight and blessing, their tyrant and their saviour, their life and their death. At the very outset he virtually makes that supreme—a god—which opposes the reign of divine Spirit in man; and his healing efforts are but so many attempts to propitiate this devastating and destructive deity. The failure of these long ages of matter-worship to assist the salvation of mortals is seen in the fearful sacrifice of human health, happiness, and life still offered up in the service of this unappeasable, unpropitiable false god.

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