Article March 31, 1917 Issue

Your kindly editorial regarding the renewed attempt in...

John M. Dean

The Memphis (Tenn.) Press

Your kindly editorial regarding the renewed attempt in New York to make it a crime to pray for sick people, will be appreciated by every one who believes in religious freedom. It may interest you to know that there is rarely a session of the legislature in any state in the Union at which some attempt is not made to pass restrictive medical laws under which Jesus and the apostles, if they were here today, would be tried and convicted as common criminals.

But for one's understanding of the perversity of the human mind and its opposition to all progress, one would wonder at the animosity which Christian Science excites, even among those who might otherwise be expected to show a friendly feeling for every movement which has the good of mankind as its object. However, an illuminating analogy may be found in the experience of the gentle Nazarene, who met with the most vindictive opposition from the established systems of his day merely because he went about doing good. This is the sole mission of Christian Science, and yet there are still found those who would consign its followers to the ranks of criminals and outlaws.

Christian Scientists have no fight to make on the doctors, and they will never be found objecting to the passage of laws to regulate the practice of medicine. Those who administer poisons and wield the surgeon's knife should be thoroughly competent, and the medical profession is to be commended for its insistence on proper laws to govern these practices. However, materia medica and Christian Science are so entirely dissimilar that it is a travesty to attempt to make Christian Scientists subject to rules designed for those who administer material medicine. To require a Christian Scientist to graduate from a medical college before becoming legally qualified to pray for the sick, would be as foolish as compelling the doctor to take a thorough course in Christian Science before he is allowed to give a pill. And yet this is what a certain minority class of doctors is constantly trying to accomplish. Again, many of these proposed laws would make it a crime to accept a fee for treating the sick by spiritual means, while ignoring the act of treating. This would indicate that the question of money is at the bottom of such attempts—certainly not a very commendable motive in the members of a profession which is enlisted in an endeavor so vital to humanity that its every thought should be actuated by pure altruism.

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