Your correspondent "Reader" writes: "There is this difference...

Weekly Mail

Your correspondent "Reader" writes: "There is this difference between M. Coué and the Christian Scientists: the former never makes any profits out of his healing and helping work, but there is a charge with the latter." M. Coué's system and Christian Science are so different that they cannot be compared. As I understand the system of M. Coué, it is not concerned directly or intentionally with the morals of his patients; neither is it a religious one in the highest sense of that word. Since it is an offshoot of the human mind, an immoral and irreligious man may be a successful exponent of his system. A Christian Scientist to be successful must exercise the highest morality and the purest spirituality; and he performs the dual duties of doctor and clergyman. There is no outcry against paying a doctor for his services in his endeavor to restore the health of his patients; nor is it considered wrong to pay a clergyman who does his part in supplying the spiritual needs of his congregation. There is, therefore, no good reason why a Christian Scientist's services should not be suitably remunerated. Seeing that there is a requirement that only those shall be advertised Christian Science practitioners who devote all their time to Christian Science work, unless they made a reasonable charge for their services they would be dependent upon others for their support.

If, as your correspondent avers, it is "immoral" for the Christian Science practitioner to make a charge for prayer, then it is equally wrong for doctors and clergymen to charge for their services, which include the prayers—at least of the latter. Your correspondent concludes: "Personally I prefer to think that prayers offered up by the patient's nearest and dearest, and offered for love itself, are more likely to be answered than any bought prayers." The Christian Science practitioner does not sell prayer. The patient does not pay for prayer; he simply remunerates the practitioner for the time that is devoted to his particular case.

A very large proportion of the people who go to Christian Science practitioners do so because they have failed to gain the help they needed from the prevailing medical systems, and have not been encouraged by their churches to pray to God for health, in spite of the fact that the Bible teaches that God is the one and only source of true health. The Psalmist, when discouraged and troubled by the testimony of material sense, recognized the futility of the expectation of good from matter and material ways and means, and, looking away from matter to Spirit, exclaimed, "Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God."

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