Article May 30, 1908 Issue

Christian Science accepts the undivided garment of divine...

Rosemary O. Anderson

New Haven (Conn.) Leader

Christian Science accepts the undivided garment of divine healing as taught and practised by Christ Jesus and repeated in the works of his followers, but Christian Scientists do not believe that the works of Jesus and his disciples were miracles in the common, mistaken sense of the term, nor do they accept the theory that the Master or his followers, in the performance of these works of healing, violated a law of God or worked contrary to it. The laws of nature, in the spiritual sense, are the laws of God, but these laws do not include the accepted code of human laws embodied in the systems of materia medica, hygiene, physiology, or anatomy. These so-called laws are man-made and originate in human belief. In setting aside these laws Christ Jesus and his disciples demonstrated the inviolable law of God, which in its unbroken motion holds all that God created in its eternal harmony and indestructibility.

It is a well-known fact that Christian Scientists do not make physical examination or diagnose disease; usually the result of diagnosis by the medical fraternity and the establishment of disease in the mind of the patient has obtained before the patient presents himself for help to a Christian Science practitioner, and it is no uncommon thing for such patient to have submitted to surgical operations in the hope of restoration, only to find his case again pronounced hopeless or classed under incurable diseases. This, then, is the mental and physical status of the patient when he turns to Christian Science for healing. The thousands of testimonies to freedom from these conditions and the restoration of the body to a normal and healthy action, together with mental and moral uplifting, after Christian Science treatment, certainly justify the claim, both by the patient and the practitioner, that the patient has been healed of this organic disease through the efficacy and administration of Christian Science. . . .

Would it not be cruel, either through ignorance or through a mistaken sense, to inculcate in the minds of patients an abnormal fear and apprehension of a disease outlined or designated by the physician, and to send these patients forth panic-stricken and disheartened to battle with what, after the patient is healed by Christian Science, the physician claims never existed, be this disease cancer, tuberculosis, tumor, or any other of the myriad forms of organic and so-called incurable diseases? Facts are stubborn things, and the fact remains that thousands of patients thus diagnosed and pronounced by medical practitioners incurably ill of organic diseases have been healed by Christian Science, and this brings our reverend friends to the point of admission or rejection of one of two propositions—either Christian Science does heal organic disease, or the relation of medical practice to religious practice is valueless, since medical diagnosis cannot be relied upon. . . .

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