Editorial June 4, 1910 Issue

A SIGNIFICANT BY-PRODUCT

John B. Willis

When Christ Jesus declared that "a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit," he enunciated that unvarying law of identification and estimate which is divine, and which Christian Science insists upon and is ready to submit to as a final test of values. Phrased in the language of the day, its import would be conveyed in the statement that not only the products of a real good, a divine idea or order, will always be good, but its by-products, its every incidental effect, will always be good also. This is a fundamental teaching of Christian Science, that there can be no fraternity or commingling of good and evil, and no transmutation or transformation of good into evil or evil into good,—that they are as finally and forever separate as are light and darkness.

The world is beginning to see this mutual exclusiveness of opposites such as truth and error, and in so far it is prepared to accept the fact that the knowledge of God and His manifestation which Mrs. Eddy has named Christian Science can bring forth only good, and that any failure or imperfection which may attend the human expression of Christian Science is not traceable to its presence but to its absence. The consciousness which has acquired but a meager apprehension of divine law may try to solve a problem of which it is as yet incapable and fail, as did the disciples in the case of the epileptic boy, but to attribute such a result to the law of Truth would be as gross a mistake as to hold the rule of numbers responsible for the blunders of an accountant. The world is also beginning to see that a system of teaching and healing which is attended by incidental results that are evil, and always so, cannot be a true or trustworthy system, though its immediate effects may in many instances seem good.

All this is very pertinent to the fact that, according to statements made by Dr. Kebler, chief of one of the departments of the government bureau of chemistry, which appear in a recent government bulletin, the "drughabit" in America is becoming an "alarming problem." The whole world has been moved by a knowledge of the "opium scourge" of the East, and yet, according to the figures given by this government officer, there are more "drug fiends" in the United States, in proportion to the population, than in China! "Not only is there an increased consumption of opium and its derivatives," says the bulletin, "but large quantities of other habit-forming agents [nine are enumerated] are being introduced chiefly for medical purposes" (our italics). We are told that many of these are found in patent medicines; that many of the mixtures are concocted, directly or indirectly, by unscrupulous physicians, and that illicit sales of cocaine, morphine, etc., are also made by druggists, both wholesale and retail.

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