Article October 3, 1914 Issue

In a recent issue there is a reference to the report of the...

Frederick Dixon—Birmingham, England

Evening Despatch

In a recent issue there is a reference to the report of the clerical and medical committee on mental healing, and also a statement by Dr.—to the effect that Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific. In these circumstances I am sure you will permit me to examine exactly what this leads to. To begin with, I think it would puzzle this gentleman to tell us what an orthodox Christian is, and what orthodox natural science is. For almost as many centuries as belong to the Christian era, the various nominal Christian sects have been persecuting one another without mercy, on the ground that each of them individually was the Christian church. Today the Roman Catholic church dismisses all of the Protestant churches as heretical, and the Bishop of Oxford, writing to The Times, says that he is not sure that a Dissenter has any right to be regarded as a member of the Christian church.

As for natural science in general and the science in particular, the story is exactly the same. Pliny declared that the doctors differed from the rest of the world in the fact that they could kill legally, and the persecution of illegal practitioners began as early as the persecution of religious heretics. The court physician to Edward II healed the Prince of Wales of smallpox by wrapping him in red cloth, while the unfortunate so-called charlatan was simultaneously placed in the pillory for putting a parchment instead of a red cloth on a woman's chest. I wonder how the critic's patients would like John of Gaddesden's red cloth prescription applied to them. Later on it was orthodox to inoculate for smallpox; since then it has become a criminal offense. Then there came arm to arm vaccination, and that has shared the same fate. Today vaccine is orthodox treatment, though a gentleman has lately been writing to the press to invoke a return to red cloth.

Everybody knows that the allopathic physicians dragged the homeopathists through the police courts, just as the medieval bishops and the later Jacobean and Georgian bishops dealt out Jedburgh justice to the Dissenters. Today the bishops and scholars of the church are disputing as to whether there is such a thing as an orthodox creed, and yet our critic is sure that Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific. The Christian Science movement has spread all round the world because it has convinced millions of people that the teaching of the gospel, that preaching is to be with "signs following," is the only orthodox Christianity or science worth talking about. The Founder of the Christian religion made that demand long ago when he brushed aside profession with the declaration that those who believed on him would be able to do the works he did. Millions of people, of all the countries in the world, who have experienced Christian Science healing, are quite as honest and quite as intelligent as the gentlemen who, having learned nothing from history, are always ready to assure their neighbors that their views are right.

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