Article February 5, 1910 Issue

To say that the practice of Christian Science endangers...

J. R. Mosley

Atlanta (Ga.) Journal

To say that the practice of Christian Science endangers the health of the community is to say that it is not safe to trust God as the "great Physician" for body, mind, and soul, for this is just what Christian Science does. The Bible not only teaches that this is safe, but that to trust anything less than God is not safe, and experience has convinced thousands of intelligent and good people that it is safest to trust God and spiritual means only. Christian Scientists claim: First, that many cases which were pronounced hopeless by other systems have been healed through the understanding and practice of Christian Science; second, that Christian Science literature, wherever it is studied and its teachings reduced to practice, has a decided tendency and power to improve morals as well as health. Christian Science takes away the desire for whisky and tobacco and awakens a hunger and thirst after righteousness and all the fruit of the Spirit. Its whole motive and effort is to do good and only good. It would bless all and injure none. It prays for its enemies, and does good to them that despitefully use and misrepresent it.

Even such a critical and scholarly physician and psychologist as Professor Munsterburg of Harvard generously recognizes that Christian Science has healed thousands, and he credits a case of almost instantaneous healing of tuberculosis to its treatment. To say that Christian Science does not heal organic diseases because it is impossible to heal organic diseases by spiritual means, is to argue in a circle. Those who believe this, when they encounter those who are confident that they have been cured of such diseases by the means of Christian Science (and there are thousands of such cases), naturally say that these are cases of mistaken diagnosis. Now of all the incompetent people in the world to sit in judgment upon Christian Science it is these. Theirs is the attitude of the skeptic and prosecuting attorney, and not the attitude of the fair and open-minded investigator, juror, or judge. The state of mind that works in this limited as well as vicious circle, in Jesus' time first denied his power, and when forced to acknowledge it said, "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub." In our own time a similar state of mind says that Jesus either did not perform the works attributed to him, or that if he did it was by the means of suggestion, will-power, or hypnotism. It goes without saying that this state of mind cannot deal justly and adequately with Christian Science or anything that claims to work by the power of faith, the power of Love, the power of Truth, the power of God.

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