Article October 17, 1908 Issue

I wish to protest against the bad habit to which the press...

Frederick Dixon—London, Eng.

The Mystic

I wish to protest against the bad habit to which the press seems to have succumbed, of pitting various other healing methods against that of Christian Science. Time will show. without any room for question, which method is the nearest to truth, and consequently the most efficacious. Meantime may not these others and the Christian Scientists go their separate ways, in the words which Abram spoke to Lot, in the centuries that are passed, in the land between Bethel and Hai: "Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren." Furthermore, no one who comes to Christian Science for help is "called upon to subscribe" to any of the doctrines of Christian Science. Christian Science is healing sickness and sin all over the world without insisting on anything of the sort. I should say that in the enormous majority of cases those who are healed do not accept the teachings of Christian Science until their healing is complete, certainly not until it has begun. Christian Science leaves every man quite free to choose, and Christian Scientists know that unless a man has seen for himself, his adherence to the movement would be very far from being a cause of strength to it. For this reason they never attempt to persuade people to become Christian Scientists.

Finally, it is not quite fair to say that a certain church in Boston claims to accomplish all that Christian Science does. The rector of this church draws a hard and fast line between the healing of functional and organic disease, and declares emphatically that the latter is incurable, while Christian Science insists that "the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save." Jesus, it is quite certain, drew no such line. He healed deafness and blindness, leprosy and lameness, the withered hand and the issue of blood, the demoniac boy and the paralytic man, quite indiscriminately, just as he raised the dead; to say nothing of stilling the tempest, walking on the water, feeding the multitude, and finding the tribute money. The very words in which he defended his claim to the Messiahship put the question at rest for ever: "Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached."

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