Article March 2, 1907 Issue

House Roll No. 51 and Senate Files Nos. 72 and 108...

Ashland (Neb.) Journal

House Roll No. 51 and Senate Files Nos. 72 and 108 are measures introduced in the Nebraska legislature which every honest representative should unhesitatingly vote against. They are proposed measures which are without a particle of merit to their credit. Should our law-makers prove so unwise as to enact them into law, they would be a disgrace to the State and would stand as monumental sign-boards of the bigotry, intolerance, and folly of the men who voted for their passage.

The ostensible object of these bills is to regulate the practice of Christian Science, ... and the claim sometimes made that this class of legislation is only asked as protective measures for the people will no longer do. ... The talk of regulating the practice of Christian Science is as foolish and nonsensical as it would be to talk of regulating the "practice" of Catholicism, Methodism, Baptism, or Presbyterianism. And the State has no more right to attempt to "regulate" the practice of any of the latter isms than it has to "regulate" Christian Science. It is a religion as much as any of the latter. In this country a man has the right to worship God as he pleases. The Christian Scientist is certainly religious. His belief is a religion, and the fact that it inculcates healing without medicine, as taught by Jesus Christ, should not debar him from the protection of law, nor make him an object of tyrannical legislation. Such measures as are embodied in the bills above mentioned are class legislation of the grossest kind. They are of no earthly benefit to any one but drug doctors, and we should think—for their own self-respect—that they would not countenance the passage of such bills a single instant. Let every tub stand on its own bottom. If materia medica is the only true healing art, it will win recognition through its own virtues, and not by attempting to smother out all contrary teaching. Intolerance never wins in the long run. If Christian Science is error, it will soon fall of its own falsehood. Truth is as mighty now as when the omnipotent Father gave it birth. Let the people try both, if they will. In the crucible of time the real gold will be separated from the baser parts and the true virtues of each will shine out resplendent, and all may see, choose, and appropriate.

These bills, we understand, provide for the examination of Christian Science practitioners before the State Medical Board in anatomy, physiology, pathology, chemistry, etc. This would be a monstrous injustice. Christian Science practitioners, as we understand it, make no pretensions of knowledge in these branches of wisdom. When called in to treat a patient their only method is to pray for him. They ask the Father to heal the patient, and give no medicine of any kind. Must a man get permission of the State Medical Board before he can ask Almighty God to heal the sick? If so, every minister in the land should be "regulated" by them in the same way. No Sunday passes by but what ministers pray God to heal the sick. Christian Scientists claim that their prayers are answered—and surely their graveyards are not more densely populated than are those of their contemporaries, the M.D.'s! (But the efficacy or non-efficacy of Christian Science treatment, or of materia medica, are not the questions at issue.) We have a very high respect for both classes, when they work according to the Golden Rule and with the spirit of toleration, but we have little use for unfair legislation—class favoritism of any kind. The doctors are doing good work; so are the Christian Scientists. Let each class work out its own place in public estimation, without invoking the aid of the law to help it out.

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