Article September 28, 1907 Issue

No one need be a "Christian Scientist" to do what is obviously...

J. W. Williams—London, England.

Daily Telegraph

No one need be a "Christian Scientist" to do what is obviously the wisest thing under all circumstances—live a clean, healthy life, and so put oneself beyond the pale of disease. But there is something behind all this. The ordinary person does want something to fall back upon. People ought to be satisfied with the Sermon on the Mount and the knowledge that the kingdom of God is within them, and hence their heaven is on earth, and not only in a dim and obscure future. But as a fact in this hysterical age this does not suffice, and Christian Science steps in.

To a large extent the Church is to blame. It has cast off the definite injunction of Jesus Christ to heal the sick and preach the gospel, and so the one profession has got divided into two—healing and teaching—to the degradation of both. This is emphasized at the present time by the craving for better modes of healing than by drugs. and more satisfactory teaching than our churches give us. Mr. Lovell ably shows how this can be brought about by merging the two professions again and by creating a revolution in the training of those taking up so high and sacred an office. We are told by Jesus Christ himself that the truth shall make us free. That is precisely what we are all yearning for, and it is because we are not free that we witness the disgraceful squabbles that arise about religious teaching in our schools, etc. What is wanted is a better class of man to teach us and heal us—a man who physically and spiritually is the living embodiment of what he preaches.

I venture to predict that when the public conscience is awakened there will be a demand for such men, and the result will be also a higher type of schoolmaster to teach true hygiene in our schools. The methods employed now are simply ludicrous, and hygiene has no place in the curriculum of the school. And yet the health of the nation is its most valuable asset! We may at least be grateful to Christian Science for doing its best to bring us back to a more earnest way of living, and we can absorb what good there is in it. ... Meantime the medical profession must look facts in the face, and the Church, too, and strive to emancipate themselves from drugs and dogma, and recognize that more than these are wanted to elevate and ennoble mankind; but I fear they will not do this until they find their occupations nearly gone.

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