Article July 10, 1909 Issue

I wish to refer to your comment that "with the make-believe...

Frederick Dixon

British Medical Journal

I wish to refer to your comment that "with the make-believe which denies the existence of pain and disease we have no patience." May I be permitted to say at once and without equivocation that neither has any Christian Scientist. The members of the medical profession have for centuries devoted their lives, have even often given then lives, to the struggle which has for its object the overcoming of disease and pain. No Christian Scientist who denied this would be worthy the name. The Christian Scientist has come to join in the struggle, to spend his life in pressing on to the same goal. Surely it would be unworthy of the physician to deny this, and unworthy of a great medical journal, however much it might discredit the means, to misstate the method.

Christian Science, then, does not teach that disease and pain have no existence in the ordinary sense of the word, but it does distinguish between an existence which is an expression of the absolute and one which is nothing beyond a subjective condition of the human mind. In other words, Christian Science is idealism pushed unshrinkingly to its ultimate and logical conclusions. It contends that pain and disease are unreal, inasmuch as they are no part of divine law; it admits that they have relative existence as a subjective condition of the human mind. "Sickness," writes Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 460), "is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being. If Christian healing is abused by mere smatterers in Science, it becomes a tedious mischief-maker. Instead of scientifically effecting a cure, it starts a petty crossfire over every cripple and invalid, buffeting them with the superficial and cold assertion, 'Nothing ails you.'"

In attempting the demonstration of this problem the student of Christian Science relies on nothing but the understanding of divine Principle as taught by Jesus to his disciples, and in proportion to his power to grasp this, and not in any way in dependence on the will of man, will the demonstration be quickened or protracted. It is this fact which gives perennial force to that great saying of Gamaliel, "If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it."

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