Editorial June 21, 1913 Issue

DRUGS OR DIVINITY?

John B. Willis

There are not a few beginners in Christian Science who are puzzled when called on to explain how cures are effected by the use of drugs, and one such has recently asked, "If the worth of things is to be determined by their fruits, and some material remedies have brought health as certainly as has Christian Science, according to the testimony of those benefited, why should not the good of both be recognized and accepted?" In answer to this it may be said that the world's greatest physician did not hint in any way that his followers were to vary from his oft demonstrated method of drugless healing, a fact to which Christian people today are strangely indifferent.

Further, human ills are regarded as effects by most Christian believers, as the result of sin, the infraction of divine law, and it is clear that to do away with effects we must remove the cause. Now the infraction of law is, in the nature of things, the outcome either of ignorance or of wilfulness, i.e., of mental states, so that in the last analysis the removal of the cause of sickness and suffering involves a mental change, transformation in the realm of thought. This change may be superficial, a mere shifting of beliefs, or it may be fundamental, the substitution of basic right ideas for a false sense, the renewing of the mind, as St. Paul has named it. Moreover, it is a matter of general information today that the mental state has very much to do with health; that fear begets and intensifies disease, and the contention of Christian Science respecting the significance of belief in temporarily affecting physical conditions, is being fully sustained by phenomena with which the world is rapidly becoming familiar.

The distinctive feature, however, of Christian Science lies in this, that it "not only reveals the origin of all disease as mental, but it also declares that all disease is cured by divine Mind," and that "there can be no healing except by this Mind, however much we trust a drug or any other means toward which human faith or endeavor is directed" (Science and Health, p. 169). Belief in the power of serums, etc., may effect temporary cures, but it is perfectly apparent that in this process the cause of disease remains untouched and the problem of overcoming all evil unsolved, and this is the testimony of the history of medicine. Material remedies come and go, their efficiency varying with the states of mortal mentality; and while bettering beliefs are to be welcomed, the regeneration which means health and immunity from disease can come only by the attainment of the Mind that was in Christ Jesus. This is the teaching of Christian Science, and when understood it is seen to be supported by the Master's words, by sound logic, and by human experience.

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