Editorial January 23, 1909 Issue

HEALING AND HUMANITARIANISM

John B. Willis

Concerning no other matter, perhaps, have Christian Scientists been more frequently and more grievously misjudged than with respect to their attitude toward the humanitarian spirit which has made such wondrous advance in the last half century. Time was when the poor, the imbecile, and the decrepit were left to the makeshifts of beggary, wholly dependent upon the scant provisions of unorganized charity. To-day the care of these unfortunates has become a public charge, and institutions for their benefit are found in every city and well-nigh every town of the Christian world. That these institutions witness to the advance of Christian brotherhood none can question, and that Christian Scientists are not looking to the multiplication of such means for the solution of the problem of human suffering and want has been interpreted again and again as evidence of their lack of humanitarianism, of an unsympathetic attitude toward the unfortunate and needy which, it is averred, is but a logical outcome of their teaching respecting the unreality of all material things.

Christian Scientists have only the kindliest thought toward all who are endeavoring, as best they know how, to improve human conditions. They recognize that the effort to remedy ill effects is a good thing, but they have come to see that contentment with such efforts to make the ills of life more endurable, and the practical denial of the possibility of their being healed, is a very bad thing. To provide an asylum or home for the sick and maimed may be an altogether praiseworthy act as a present-day expedient, since it is the only thing that the many know how to do for their suffering fellow-men; but when such provision is declared to be the distinctive and permanent feature of Christ's rule on earth, when Christian ministers assert that it meets and discharges the responsibility which Christ Jesus imposed upon his disciples in counseling them to heal the sick, then the higher ministry of Truth is interdicted through unfaith, and an order of things established which actually conduces to the multiplication of human miseries rather than to their removal.

It is against this neglect to do the more important thing which has been left undone by the church at large, this content with the palliation of human sufferings for the removal of which provision is made in the gospel, that Christian Scientists protest. They have awakened to the fact that the love which would help but cannot heal is incommensurate with human need, and while not neglecting the call for present humanities, they are endeavoring to measure up to the demands of the situation, and to obey Jesus' commands. If the great Wayshower had stood for alleviation instead of cure, if he had inaugurated the building of hospitals and asylums as the solution of the problem of sickness and suffering, then those who declare that in this line of work they are meeting their responsibility as his followers, would have a ground for their contention which is now wholly wanting.

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