Article January 20, 1912 Issue

According to report the clergyman offered his tribute...

William J. Bonin

Rochdale (Eng.) Times

According to report the clergyman offered his tribute to the memory of the evangelist Luke, last Wednesday, in the form of an exceedingly violent attack upon Christian Science. There is happily today something about such utterances that marks them as almost out of date, something about their very ferocity that smacks of an outgrown barbarism, something of misplaced zeal in them that is already faintly lavendered.

The preacher appears to have been so occupied with his diatribe, so obsessed with his denunciation of the strange object he erected and deluded himself into believing to be Christian Science, as to omit to tell his congregation what it was that constituted the great event in Luke's life. It is interesting to call it to mind. The admitted authority on the subject is Adolph Harnack, and he speaks of Luke as a benevolent doctor at Antioch, who became a follower of Paul because he saw in Paul's teaching a new and better way to heal the sick and help his brother man. He had been accustomed to apply the various material remedies and drugs of the day to the body to heal it of its diseases; that is to say, to restore, renew, and maintain life against the attack on or limitation of it which is expressed by disease. He had relied upon the unliving and unintelligent agency termed matter, but he saw Paul healing the sick by the Spirit of God alone, and preaching, as he did on Mars hill, that God giveth to all life, and breath, and all things. He saw him turning to the source of all life, to God who is Life, and achieving results on body, mind, and character which no drug could ever produce; therefore he abandoned matter as the source of salvation and turned to Spirit. He became a Christian.

Now, there are today a great many physicians who to their honor have, on account of the results they have seen following Christian Science treatment, abandoned their old material methods and followed Luke's example in turning to the giver of life for the gift of life. And it is as well to remember that the drug treatment of today is no more scientific than in Luke's day. Based upon the belief that life is resident in matter as a kind of quality or attribute of it, it is still purely empirical. To be sure the choice of the drugs themselves has been continuously changing until almost everything in the three kingdoms has been exploited, each specific in turn having just so long a life and such degree of potency as fashion and fancy may decree, and the discovery of yesterday being forgotten today just as the blessings of today (so fervently eulogized by the reverend critic) will inevitably be discarded tomorrow.

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