Article January 4, 1908 Issue

Conceding that drugs, with the action of which the doctors...

John Henry Keene

Baltimore (Md.) American

Conceding that drugs, with the action of which the doctors are wholly unfamiliar, are often harmful rather than beneficial, Professor Thayer, of the Johns Hopkins medical faculty, confesses himself a firm believer in the simpler physical and psychical methods of treating disease. Remarkable, indeed, it seems to wide-awake thinkers that a professor of such distinguished rank should, nevertheless, conclude his thesis with the assertion that "drugs are indispensable." Dr. Thayer's concession of the advantage of psychical treatment of disease marks, if only by a solitary footstep, new spiritual advancements in the scientific aspects of medicine. The scientific admission of spiritual therapeutics from a university whose chief corner-stone is materialism, is as new and as stunning a revelation as the confession of Dr. William Osler that drugs had no medicinal properties or remedies for disease. The sublime philosophy of the Nazarene rested for its key-note upon the advent of vast spiritual revolutions among mortal men. The kingdom of heaven in the days of Jesus was the kingdom of health. The reign of Christ was the triumphant consummation of the spiritual man. To understand the meaning of Christ's mission (not of this world), Christ instructed his followers that they must drink profoundly from his spiritual cup; that when they partook of his cup and became of the mind that was in Christ the sickness and sin of this world would melt away in a moment like a cloud. For three hundred years after his death Christ's followers healed all manner of diseases spiritually, or, as we now say, psychically.

In the earlier ministry of his disciples there was no false construction of Christ's mission. They fully apprehended its high purpose. Afterward Christ's mission became unintelligible. It rose into a region far beyond the frail fleshly sympathy of the after centuries. The new truth of the spiritual healing of sin, sorrow, and sickness, suddenly, in an age of darkness, became and was made nothing. Thenceforth the new truth proclaimed by Christ and his earlier disciples of spiritual healing became in its spiritual sense absolutely nothing at all to the inner heart. The Christ spiritual movement of healing the sores of the soul and the sores of the body seemed lost during the dark ages. Men ran headlong into rancorous nationality and inhuman bigotry. Wild degeneration from a basis originally so noble quickly followed. Religion became the expression of a base mercenary selfishness, caught and baffled at last in the meshes of its chicanery. Mysteriously complex, spirituality had no common vernacular version at all intelligible. Christian Science is spiritual science—the science of spirituality. Christian Science is the first great station, so to speak, that has been reached after entering the portals of the twentieth century. Christian Science presents us with the evolution and propagation of Christianity: its spirituality of man. The present central abodes of Christian Science are America, Europe, and the far-off islands of the sea. Wherever the light of civilization burns the spiritual man is discerning faint sparks of the spiritual image and likeness that God created. The whole of Christendom, freed from creed and letter, is bisecting the debatable ground between Spirit and matter.

Not yet to all is the exact and perfect line of demarcation discernible, save by what the Christian Scientists call demonstration, that demonstrates by healing sickness and sin. The spirituality of man begins to mold and to knit men and women of all faiths. To-day Christian Science churches and chapels all over the world mark in the more eminent sense the birth of a new Christian spiritual era. Vast are these humanizing, spiritualizing processes of Christian Science going on. Within the pale of that mighty agency for elevating, purifying, and healing human nature, and beneath the gentler yoke of spirituality, Christian Science is gathering in the rebellious recusants among the American and European families of materialists.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Conceding that drugs, with the action of which the doctors...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access