Article November 8, 1913 Issue

"Coercive legislation"

WILLARD S. MATTOX

On page 80 of "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy says: "Unconstitutional and unjust coercive legislation and laws, infringing individual rights, must be 'of few days, and full of trouble.' ... Tyranny can thrive but feebly under our government. God reigns, and will 'turn and overturn' until right is found supreme." This utterance has never had greater significance than it has today, when citizens are confronted by an unusual activity on behalf of many medical laws, some of which easily fall under our Leader's designation of "unconstitutional and unjust."

In approaching civic or political questions, the Christian Scientist is not likely to be biased by purely partizan considerations, because he is learning to solve all problems, whether individual or communistic, by reference to Principle, and by the application of a fixed scientific rule. This attitude toward all public questions of the day is calculated to give to the Christian Scientist a poise, a calm and judicial outlook which enables him to view a situation impersonally and which greatly enhances the value of his work of reform. It is in this impersonal manner that the followers of Mrs. Eddy will work to restrain the mad ambition which is seeking to enact "unconstitutional and unjust coercive legislation," and since it is one of the fundamental teachings of Christian Science that error is never to be personalized, the Christian Scientist will not treat the evidences of medical aggression as anything but a phase of what Paul so aptly called "the carnal mind," which "is enmity against God."

Mrs. Eddy must have foreseen the present-day attempt to enthrone the drugging system and cloak it with the authority of civil law, when she wrote, "Certain elements in human nature would undermine the civic, social, and religious rights and laws of nations and peoples, striking at liberty, human rights, and self-government—and this, too, in the name of God, justice, and humanity!" (Message to The Mother Church for 1900, p. 10.) In the name of humanity and the public health, attempts are constantly being made to infringe the rights of citizens, and to establish a medical despotism which would equal the most unhappy days of religious tyranny the world has ever known. On the plea that the public health and the public welfare must be conserved, plans are being laid to fetter not only the bodies but the minds of men in a bondage more oppressive than that of human servitude. The mortal mind sets up its idols of material medicine, and the command issues, by way of legislative enactment, that all must bow to this strange god or suffer the legal penalty. The purpose is the same now as it was in the days of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. The only difference is in the form of the penalty for disobedience to mortal mind's mandates. Civilization has simply exchanged wild beasts and superheated furnaces for more polite, but none the less unjust, punishments.

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