Article November 25, 1911 Issue

To declare, as does the committee of the British Medical...

R. Stanhope Easterday

Indianapolis (Ind.) News

To declare, as does the committee of the British Medical Association, that there is "no difference in kind" between healing through divine and spiritual means and various forms of so-called mental or psychic healing, is wantonly and presumptuously to assail the fundamentals of Christianity, namely, the words and works of Christ Jesus. Our Lord in all of his healing declared, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," thus attesting the activity of the divine intelligence, or God, not of the so-called human mind, as the healing agency. He also pointedly declared of his follower in all ages, "The works that I do shall he do also." It is but reasonable to deduce that such "works" or "signs following" were to be achieved through the activity of the same divine agency.

Is it not true indeed that the presumptuous effort thus to account for the healings of Jesus and of the early church upon the basis of mental suggestion, belittles Christianity, strikes at the fundamentals of Christian faith, and incidentally indicates a very significant anxiety on the part of certain exponents of "purely medical treatment"? The fact seems to have been overlooked also that for forty years Christian Science has been healing all manner of diseases, including so-called "organic" diseases; and if, as the committee declares, "no evidence has been forthcoming of any authenticated cure of organic disease" by means of mental suggestion, we are forced to conclude that Christian Science, which is not mental suggestion, having effected such desired results, must not only differ from ordinary so-called mental methods, but must be vastly superior thereto.

Christian Science is, in brief, a recapitulation of the teachings of Jesus, and its practice is a revival of primitive apostolic healing as enjoined throughout the Scriptures. An ever increasing volume of incontestable evidence attests for Christian Science such origin and efficacy, and we leave our readers to find in the Scriptures such justification for purely material or humanly mental methods, and in the annals of these latter methods evidences of infallibility or unfailing efficacy. Until, moreover, such divine origin and universal utility are thus absolutely established for materia medica and mental suggestion, a reasonable leaving of the public to rational reliance upon prayer and spiritual methods for surcease from disease will not appear to be at all dangerous or illegitimate.

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