Editorial April 15, 1916 Issue

A Wall of Defense

Archibald McLellan

It is gratifying to note, as the years go by, how one by one the great scientific discoveries promulgated by Mrs. Eddy four decades ago, and which since then have been derided and ridiculed times without number by would-be clever critics, have later found vindication, strangely enough, at the hands of physical scientists. By devious ways and by incalculable labor and reasoning they have finally arrived at conclusions to which the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science had long since attained, not by material research but through spiritual understanding of the word of God, and had proved them by actual demonstration.

For some time now, to cite one instance, it has been freely claimed by the medical profession that the excessive indulgence of anger, malice, and like brutal passions induces in the individual the secretion of a poison as injurious in its effects on the body as is the continued use of drugs or stimulants. Not long ago a case was brought before the courts in which this claim figured in a new phase, in that the verdict rendered by the jury was to the effect that death had been superinduced by "a mental assault;" in other words, by persistent fault-finding. Mrs. Eddy has shown how a disturbed condition of thought may react upon a person physically and mentally, but even so she does not leave that person helpless and hopeless, to succumb to such a belief, by conceeding to evil either place or power. Instead she points out that the condition can be met by casting out the error, the perturbed thought which has manifested itself on the body, and that in order to do this one "must calm and instruct mortal mind with immortal Truth" (Science and Health, p. 415).

The case above mentioned is of interest only in that it directs attention to the fact that our law courts are not yet sufficiently advanced to take into account the allied relationship of mental and bodily assaults. It is hopeful, however, because it is indicative of an awakening on the part of the public to the recognition that these assaults when deliberately administered are in one and the same class, and should be so acknowledged and dealt with by the courts.

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