Editorial January 20, 1917 Issue

Compulsory Health Insurance

William D. McCrackan

What a word wherewith to rejoice mankind—this word health, intimately associated with its kindred words hale and whole! What buoyancy and beauty, what symmetry and wholesome peace lie enfolded in this word, and yet how little it is generally understood! Every one wants health, therefore no one should need be compelled to seek it; but, unfortunately, while everybody believes in health, all are not agreed as to its real meaning.

Trying to make people healthy is like trying to make them happy. The compelling force is quite superfluous, for literally all mankind are only too willing to be both healthy and happy, if they only knew how. Not wilful compulsion but divine impulsion is destined to bring health to humanity, and the way to this appears through Christian Science. Therefore compulsory health presents a curious paradox, for it implies an attempt to force people to be that which they are already eager to become. Obviously a misunderstanding of some sort intervenes, and Christian Science shows this clearly to be the popular misconception as to what actually constitutes health.

It is no exaggeration to say that health is quite generally regarded as a purely physical condition, to be maintained or restored by material means,—possibly by dieting, or bodily exercise, or change of environment, or the administration of remedies which in most instances are recognized poisons. It would be a surprise to the proverbial average person to be informed that in establishing health the very last thing to be considered is the material body itself; that the more we can be absent from the body, the surer we are to cure it of its various maladies or to keep it wholesome and active. Yet Christianity through Paul has been speaking to its followers for centuries of the benefits of being "absent from the body" and simultaneously "present with the Lord," and the Science of Christianity proves such absence to be beneficial to both morals and bodily health. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 478 of Science and Health: "That body is most harmonious in which the discharge of the natural functions is least noticeable. How can intelligence dwell in matter when matter is non-intelligent and brain-lobes cannot think?"

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