Article June 3, 1916 Issue

Considerable space has been given recently in the News to...

Ezra W. Palmer

The Grand Junction (Col.) News

Considerable space has been given recently in the News to the reporting of lectures in which spiritual healing by prayer was discussed. The speaker is quoted as saying that "the Bible taught healing according to promise, according to statute, according to atonement, and according to the commission given to the disciples and to the church." It is gratifying to note this frank statement, since Christian denominations for centuries prior to the advent of Christian Science have ignored the commands of Jesus to heal the sick. When Christian Science proved that healing by prayer was an inseparable concomitant of genuine spiritual understanding, it was met with opposition, denial, and denunciation. But indisputable facts cannot be explained away by sophistry or innuendo, and so it has come to pass that spiritual healing is being slowly acknowledged outside of Christian Science churches, even though the truth is more or less obscured by confounding it with autosuggestion, hypnotism, and various other subtleties of the human mind.

This clergyman attempted to label as "cults" outside of the church all religious denominations which teach spiritual healing of body as well as of mind. By so doing he casts an aspersion, perhaps unwittingly, on the Christian Science church. The Christian Science church accepts the words and deeds of Jesus, whose final commission to his followers was, "In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." It is difficult to see on what rational grounds the critic can classify the Christian Science church among the "cults" when it obeys all the commands of the Master, in both healing the sick and reforming the sinner. Jesus disposed of all such artificial classifications when he said, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you."

Jesus never taught that healing the sick was a "minor" part of the work of the church, or that her "major" work was the salvation of the sinner. This distinction made by the speaker has no Scriptural foundation. Jesus knew that sickness and sin were effects of the same cause, "the works of the flesh," and he healed them both, impartially and without distinction. In the case of the man sick of the palsy, as recorded in Matthew ix. 2-7 and Mark ii. 3-12, Jesus clearly showed that sickness and sin were both errors of the human mind and are cast out and destroyed through divine knowledge of God. Jesus said, "Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house." On page 318 of Science and Health the question is asked, "Is the sick man sinful above all others?" The answer is, "No! but so far as he is discordant, he is not the image of God."

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