Article January 16, 1915 Issue

That would be a rare commander in battle who could contrive...

Frank Bell—Reading, Pa.

The Herald

That would be a rare commander in battle who could contrive not only to choose his field of conflict, but to designate the character and disposition of the forces with whom he contends. Success would be assured in advance, and his battles, so far as results were concerned, would be ended before they were begun. A similar brand of invincibility appears to distinguish the anonymous contributor in a recent issue, who undertakes to disprove Christian Science by the familiar process of setting up misrepresentations of this teaching and at convenience bowling them over.

It would seem that after observing that "Christian Science advances a theory of and cure for disease that is at complete variance with that of medical science," one would be impressed with the difficulties in the way of seeing Christian Science correctly through the medical man's spectacles, though it must be admitted that our friend is by no means the first to make the attempt. The materialist who permits himself to be convinced that disease has its origin in a micro-organism called a germ, and therefore concludes that all healing effort must be directed to thwarting the micro-organism, and who at the same time believes the practice of Christian Science consists merely in the reiteration of certain word formulas, may be impelled by the "logic" of his misinformation to adopt the opinion that Christian Science is helpless in the face of disease.

But in the first place nobody knows, and probably few really believe, that the germ is the actual source of the diseased condition with which it is associated in present-day medical theory. The bacteriologist must admit that the tiny organism to which he attributes such potency is at best (or worst) only an effect, not a cause. An effect of what? Does any learned advocate of the germ theory actually know what a germ is, or whence it comes, or why one differs from another? Can he name the source of the intelligence and power with which his theory would endow the micro-organism? In view of the large preponderance of pure speculation in the germ theory, and the necessary admission that, whatever the germ may be, it is due to something else as yet undisclosed to the advocates of the theory, is it reasonable to set up the assumption that all systems of healing are to be judged by the microbe standard? Since the champion of the germ does not know the origin of the germ itself, he cannot really know that the "favorable conditions" in which the germ is supposed to thrive are not the direct or indirect product of a mental state.

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