Article August 11, 1917 Issue

In a recent letter a clergyman states, "I no more think...

Charles M. Shaw

Accrington (England) Observer

In a recent letter a clergyman states, "I no more think that Jesus' miracles of healing summon me to thrust myself between my fellows and their medical advisers than I think that Jesus' miracle of the loaves summons me to thrust myself between my fellows and the bakers and fishmongers." This is an astonishing statement, seeing that while Jesus commissioned his followers to preach the gospel and heal the sick he did not commission them to go about dispensing loaves and fishes. However, it serves to emphasize the difference between its author and the Christian Scientists. He rejects the idea of any obligation resting upon the Christian church to heal the sick. Christian Science accepts that obligation to the full, and does so on the ground of the teaching and practice of Jesus and the apostles, and also on the ground of the nature of the evils to be dealt with. In doing so it finds itself in opposition to what is called orthodoxy; but as orthodoxy has not succeeded in satisfying the needs and aspirations of men, largely because it has swept aside the plain commands of Jesus with their far reaching personal and social obligations in favor of dogmas and institutions, there is no need to apologize for that opposition.

Mrs. Eddy accepted these commands of Jesus and their patent obligations. She took the view that Christianity, as a purely spiritual truth and force, is the divinely appointed means of delivering mankind from every ill. In arriving at this conclusion she did not rely upon human opinion; but it is remarkable how much support is to be found among scholars of universally admitted repute. In saying this I do not imply that any of those men supported the teaching as a whole, but I assert with confidence that it is possible to find support form a variety of eminent authorities for each of the fundamental positions of Christian Science.

For example, Harnack states, in opposition to the belief that the healing work of Jesus was subordinate and temporary, that it was an essential part of his mission and is bound up with the very conception of the gospel as the coming of the kingdom of God. In his work "Luke the Physician" he says, referring to the evangelist, "His medical profession seems to have led him to Christianity, for he embraced that religion in the conviction that by its means and by quite new methods he would be enabled to heal diseases and to drive out evil spirits, and above all to become an effectual physician of the soul." Both Harnack and Gibbon are at-one in describing the power to heal disease possessed by the primitive church as one of the chief factors accounting for its triumph, during the first three centuries, over the adverse conditions which beset it.

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