Article June 9, 1917 Issue

In a sermon, excerpts of which appeared in the columns of...

Peter V. Ross

Oakland (Cal.) Post

In a sermon, excerpts of which appeared in the columns of the Post, a clergyman argues for a composite system of healing made up of Christian Science and material medicine. No doubt the clergyman is actuated by a sincere desire to promote scientific healing, but he is making a plea for an impossible system. Christian Science and medicine can no more blend or unite than can oil and water, for the two are opposites. The one is entirely material, the other is purely spiritual; and spirit and matter do not and can not mingle. If Christian Science should attempt any such partnership, it would lose its vitality and its power to heal. In fact, it would cease to be Christian Science.

For centuries Christianity has been trying just such a system as the clergyman recommends; that is, Christians have been praying to an all powerful and all intelligent God to heal them, but at the same time have been relying on a non-intelligent drug for health and life, placing reliance for the most part on non-intelligence rather than on all-intelligence. This is having "other gods," and consequently it has not been successful.

Christians of the present day, outside of Christian Scientists, are still depending on this composite system of healing, or else relying on material remedies alone. But the results are so obviously unsatisfactory (disease and mortality are now as much in evidence as they have ever been) that Christian Scientists feel no inclination to abandon spiritual methods of healing. They observe, what should be apparent to every reader of the Bible, that Jesus healed all manner of diseases without resorting to drugs. They are unable to find any record of his ever having recommended or used medicine in any form. They notice that he relied solely upon spiritual means of healing. They remember that as he went about his work of destroying the worst forms of human ills, he declared that those who believed on him could accomplish the same results, and that he commanded his followers to heal the sick as well as to preach the gospel.

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