Editorial February 24, 1917 Issue

A Humanitarian

Archibald McLellan

In the by-laws of The Mother Church Mrs. Eddy wrote for the guidance of practitioners, "A Christian Scientist is a humanitarian; he is benevolent, forgiving, long-suffering, and seeks to overcome evil with good" (Manual, Art. VIII, Sect. 22). By this description Mrs. Eddy sought to establish an ideal in the thoughts of those who undertake the work of healing the sick which would make them worthy to be known as followers of the great Master,—he who came to "bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." A humanitarian is one actively concerned in promoting the welfare of his kind. To be benevolent is to have a disposition to do good; to possess or manifest love to mankind, and to have a desire to promote men's prosperity and happiness; to be kind and charitable.

Mrs. Eddy's high ideal of a practitioner, which she expressed in the by-law referred to, is one that transcends the common aims and desires of mankind, and would lift its possessor into the realm of the Christlike. Fulfilled in its entirety it would exalt the work of practitioners above and beyond the mere seeking of a livelihood, keep it sacred, as it should be, from the sordid motives of commercialism, and relegate to the rear all thoughts of personal ease and selfishness which would hamper this work and make the practitioner more solicitous about his remuneration and the amount of it than he is about the spiritual content of his treatment and the healing and blessing of his patient.

The ideal of this by-law is the same which Christ Jesus placed before his followers when he said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." It was because they lacked this ideal that our Master rebuked the people who had followed him to Capernaum after he had fed them on the mountain by the Sea of Galilee. To these people who he perceived would "take him by force, to make him a king," his word was: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled."

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