Article September 10, 1910 Issue

OUR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

WM. LLOYD.

To me, one of the most attractive features in the teaching of Christian Science is that, while it upholds individual liberty, it inculcates respect for others' rights and maintains most emphatically that we mind our own business. It teaches that each must work out his own salvation; that no one can take the place of others and do their work for them. It therefore largely destroys the human desire to govern, order, or interfere with the lives and liberties of others. As a consequence, I can feel that, if my neighbor on one side calls in a homeopathic physician to heal his sick, it is his privilege; that if my neighbor on the other side calls in an allopath, it is his privilege; while if a neighbor farther down the street employs an eclectic or an osteopath, it is his privilege. It follows, therefore, that if I prefer personally to call a Christian Science practitioner, it is my privilege to do so.

Having thus referred to the various schools into which the medical profession is divided, I desire to say that as a profession it has my profound respect; that it has been my good fortune to know many noble and unselfish physicians, men who have devoted their lives to the service of their fellow-men, and that to my thinking there is no profession which labors more faithfully for the good of mankind. I say this so that it may be clear that what follows is not a criticism of any, but just a simple plea for our individual rights,—rights that my own experience most amply justifies. Christian Scientists are charged from time to time with neglecting their children, because no physician is called in when they are sick. To this, we might reply, "What school do you recommend?" and, "If I call the doctor you advise, will you guarantee that my child will live and not die?" Put thus, our critic, if wise, would shrink from assuming such responsibility,—that which involves the life of another's child.

Let me give my own experience. Briefly, I am one of ten children. By the time I was twenty-three there were four of us left, six having passed on at ages varying from infancy to young womanhood; also both parents were dead. All of the eight had passed out under the best medical care obtainable. Twenty-three years ago I lost my own first-born, also under the care of one of the best doctors in a large city. My keenest grief over this was that we added greatly to the child's sufferings by the severe material remedies we applied under the doctor's instructions. Then I turned to Christian Science, and with Christian Science and under its treatment alone, have brought up five children to young manhood and womanhood. They have had all that usually comes to a large family of children,—only no doctors and no medicine. I will illustrate their care with the incident that opened my eyes to the fact that Christian Science is an individual work and that it is literally God's power and presence which heals through the prayer of understanding.

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