Article October 12, 1907 Issue

I am very far from anxious to involve myself in a...

Frederick Dixon—London.

British Medical Journal

I am very far from anxious to involve myself in a controversy on any subject, but in the article in your last issue you ask me a definite question, and to that question I am perfectly willing to reply.

You ask whether I am prepared to undertake to blot out the epidemic of typhoid now raging at Peterhead? I answer, Certainly I am not. No Christian Scientist would undertake anything of the kind, any more than the apostle Peter could be induced to give Simon Magus for money the power to heal. The Christian Scientist knows exactly what Peter knew, that the power to heal, as Jesus taught and healed, depends on the spiritual perception of the healer, and that whether or no that perception will be equal to any given attempt it is impossible to say. Any Christian Scientist, however, will undertake, if the requirements of Christian Science are fulfilled, to do his utmost to help any sick person who may apply to him, and to show such a person how he may begin to gain that spiritual perception which will enable him, through purity of thought and consecration to Truth, to obey the divine command to overcome some day "all manner of disease."

The only man in the world of whom it is recorded that he healed with unerring certainty is Jesus, and it is the contention of Christian Science that the only method by which such healing can ever be repeated is the method he taught and practised. That the disciples failed to heal on occasion we know, but that does not prove that as healers they were inferior to the Jewish physicians, any more than, if a Christian Scientist were to be found presumptuous enough to undertake to stop the epidemic at Peterhead, and fail, it would prove that Christian Science healing was inferior to that of the medical schools.

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