Article August 15, 1914 Issue

In The Oregonian the retiring head of the City and County...

Paul Stark Seeley—Portland, Ore.

The Oregonian

In The Oregonian the retiring head of the City and County Medical Society is reported as having condemned Christian Scientists for their attitude toward the medical profession. The critic also expressed displeasure because diseases, the causes of which are much sought after by his profession, are denied by Christian Scientists to exist. Let me first state, and plainly, too, that Christian Scientists entertain no ill will against physicians. Rather do they hold in esteem the honest, high-minded physician who is endeavoring, in what he believes to be the best way, to lessen the sum total of human suffering. It is true that Christian Scientists do not agree with the theories and practices of that system of therapeutics which the learned doctor represents, and for this there is good reason, since a large majority of them have tried its ministrations without relief, and only as a last resort have they turned to the spiritual law of Christian healing. A difference of opinion on matters medical has, however, not lessened their friendly feeling for honest practitioners of other systems than their own.

To say that Christian Scientists deny the reality of diseases is stating only part of the truth, and that the least important part, as I shall endeavor to point out further on. If, however, the doctor is piqued because Christian Scientists deny the existence of diseases which he and his professional brothers are seeking to trace to their cause, he must admit, whatever he may think of the Christian Science method, that it is reasonably successful in the results obtained. Then, too, let it be remembered that materia medica has yet to find the primal cause of disease, though its efforts in this direction began many centuries before Christ. Unable to trace disease to its origin, it has ever placed the responsibility for it on certain intermediary physical laws and phenomena, sometimes honestly called secondary causes, always failing to recognize that the phenomena are all reducible to mind, even the carnal, mortal mind which would have men believe that evil is power.

And so, when it is said that Christian Scientists deny the existence of disease, a more complete statement is necessary correctly to present the fact, which is that they have found where disease originates, that is, in a false belief in a power opposed to God. They have found, too, what is of far more importance to the human race, that this belief can be destroyed by realizing the demonstrable truth of being, namely, that God, divine Mind, is in reality the only cause and creator of man and the universe; that God's creation, including man, is, like Himself, perfect; and that sin and disease have no place in or power over God's man, who is in reality forever godlike and harmonious.

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