Let us suppose that a man allows himself to get into a prolonged state of jealous anger, and thereby falls sick. The matter-physician is called to the sick man's bedside and discovers an accelerated pulse, a coated tongue, and other physical effects; whereupon he opines that he has made a needed diagnosis on which he can determine the size, frequency, and contents of the pellets of an inert and non-intelligent drug which he will put into the sick man's stomach in the experimental effort to restore him to physical harmony. If the man's jealous anger sufficiently subsides he will probably get better and finally be comparatively well, and the doctor and his diagnosis and drugs will receive the credit therefor. If the man be slow in recovering, the doctor will feel his pulse, look at his tongue again, and decide that he will try some other drug. If the man's anger in the mean time does not subside the bad symptoms which the doctor has been diagnosing (which withal are only effects and not cause) will continue; and other doctors may be called into a consultation. What for? To look again at the patient's tongue, et cetera, and decide upon a "change of treatment;" that is, a change of experimentation. Meanwhile, the patient's vigor is being undermined in various ways, especially by the weakening influence of fear.

Alas! how long will the countless victims of material thought remain content with so unspiritual and so inadequate an order and those who champion its rule be regarded with obsequious respect when they seek legislative aid to discourage and prevent the methods for overcoming sickness which were proven trustworthy by Jesus and his followers? Is it not evident that the right way to diagnose a case is to inquire into and discern the mental cause of the physical inharmony, instead of observing simply physical effects or symptoms? Moreover, is it not unquestionably true that no pill or other material remedy can destroy the mental cause of sickness? and is it not perfectly rational to assume that the remedy for mental discords is the true and right remedy for sequent physical discords? And yet, if this be so, what excuse or apology can be offered in behalf of those who would unite medicine and legislative authority to destroy that freedom of religious conscience and that enjoyment of personal liberty which the fathers so jealously guarded in the constitution of the United States?

It cannot be truly said that the cases of physical sicknesses which are to be traced unquestionably to mental causes are negligible in their number. The observations and often the personal experiences of most adult persons, if they will consider the subject without prejudice, lead to the conviction that such cases, on the contrary, are noticeably numerous, even if the contention of Christian Scientists that the primary cause of physical discord is mental rather than physical be disregarded. Are such cases to be consigned by legislative enactment to drug or other material treatment, and the opportunities for mental treatment be restricted and limited by law? Would not such a monopoly in behalf of the drug physicians, created and sanctioned by law, be quite as tyrannous and unjustified as the creation and sanction by our laws of a monopoly of religious privileges in behalf of some particular religious denomination? In fact, to limit by law the opportunities of the citizen to worship God as his conscience teaches him is essentially the same thing as wholly to forbid him to worship God as his conscience teaches him. Likewise in fact to limit by law the opportunities of the citizen to have the remedial system for sicknesses in his home and in his own person which his conscience and judgment teach him to be most trustworthy is essentially the same thing as wholly to forbid by law his recourse to such remedial system.

We do not claim that the rights of others may not be protected by reasonable legislative enactments, as for example in what are termed contagious diseases. For the right of the majority, that their beliefs in such matters are to be treated as sacred, is identical in that respect with the right of the minority. Any argument which is based on the undisputed police power of the state to seek to protect the public health in instances of alleged contagious diseases, and in like instances, by reasonable legislation, has nothing to do with the sacred rights of the citizen whenever his choice of the remedial system for members of his household or for himself does not endanger the rights of others. The courts have manifested a strong inclination to leave the question of the reasonableness of medical legislation to the legislatures; hence, the legislatures need to consider with even greater vigilance and caution every measure which may threaten the personal or religious rights of any citizen.

It is evident that the legislative branch of a government has no right whatever to enact any law which is intended to favor, in the least particular, a special school of drug medication, for example, the allopathic, and to work to the disadvantage of another school of drug medication, for example, the homeopathic. And this is so notwithstanding the fact that these two schools are so diametrically opposed to each other in medical theories and practices that if the allopathic be conceded to be scientific and safe, then it follows that the homeopathic is unscientific and dangerous; while, on the other hand, if the homeopathic be the scientific and proper therapeutic system, then it follows that the allopathic system is a peril to life and health. But in the republican form of government the legislature cannot prefer by legislative enactment the allopathic over the homeopathic, or vice versa. To do so would be wholly and even absurdly apart from the functions of a republican government.

The same reasons apply to restrain a legislative body from enacting a statute under which the government would deserve to be called an allopathic government or a Christian Science government, rather than a Presbyterian or Methodist government. With a decent regard for the basic rights and privileges of citizenship, lawmaking bodies, either national or state, cannot enter into the determination of the relative merits or demerits of any system of medicine or religion, and if the views and beliefs of majorities at any particular time were permitted by legislative bodies to influence in the least the character of the laws which affect religion or medicine, the government would thereby become so subverted that minorities would live under a mobocracy of the most pernicious description.

No line of distinction can be drawn between the right refusal of a legislative body to enact a law which discriminates between allopathy and homeopathy, or a law which discriminates between one religious denomination and another, and a law which discriminates between drug medication for physical diseases and a non-materialistic and mental system therefor, such as was practised and exemplified by Jesus and his followers for at least three centuries of our Christian era.

In this connection there is a consideration which ought never to be overlooked. Under a republican form of government the fundamental rights and privileges of Christian Scientists as American citizens involve the circumstance that their reason and religious conscience have taught them to regard Christian Science as both a system of therapeutics and of religious convictions united. It is a conviction of conscience with them that Christian Science comprehends the religion which was taught and practised by Jesus, including the obedience to his command to "heal the sick" according to his way, which was drugless and mental; and it is their conviction that reason and experience unite in demonstrating that the Christ-way of dealing with what are called physical ailment's is the most successful and dependable way. Whether the Christian Scientist in their views may or may not conform to the views of the individual members of the lawmaking bodies or of any class or classes of other citizens, is just as impertinent in this connection as would be their views if they were allopaths or homeopaths, or Episcopalians or Baptists. Any invasion, direct or indirect, of their right to hold and enjoy their own views, religious or therapeutic, or both united, is an indefensible invasion of American citizenship, whether the citizen whose liberty is disregarded belongs to some particular school of medicine, some one church or to none.

A statute which discriminates against a believer in allopathy by seeking to lessen the number of the practitioners of allopathy (by providing penalties for their acceptance of pay for their time and efforts, for example, or by any other kind of indirection), is in its practical effects the same as a statute forbidding allopathy altogether. If a citizen has the right to choose an allopathic physician for his child or himself, then it is an invasion of that right for a legislature to enact a statute which is intended to diminish the number of allopathic physicians to whom he can apply for help. If this be true of the allopath or homeopath or eclectic, it is equally true in the case of the Christian Scientist.