Article December 12, 1925 Issue

In connection with your report of the defeat of Senate File No. 26...

Lester B. McCoun, Committee on Publication for the state of Nebraska,—Beatrice

Sun

In connection with your report of the defeat of Senate File No. 26, antivaccination bill, a state senator is quoted as saying substantially that Christian Scientists do not believe there is such a thing as disease, but that he believes in it, and regards some of it as contagious. Please permit the following explanation in behalf of Christian Science. It is commonly supposed that certain physical effects are due to a mysterious, misunderstood power called disease. Christian Science denies that there is such a power, and exposes the supposed cause of discordant effects. On page 411 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy has stated: "The procuring cause and foundation of all sickness is fear, ignorance, or sin. Disease is always induced by a false sense mentally entertained, not destroyed. Disease is an image of thought externalized. The mental state is called a material state. Whatever is cherished in mortal mind as the physical condition is imaged forth on the body."

Christian Scientists are not unmindful of the healing works of Christ Jesus, the healer who never lost a case, but who receives scant consideration from materialists. If disease were real, if God created it, there could be no overcoming of it. Yet Christ Jesus overcame it, undeniably, by spiritual means alone, and he said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." If mortals would only contend for the spiritual existence of man as God's image and likeness, and deny any reality or power to that which God did not make, they could readily prove the contentions of Christian Science to be true. The difficulty is that Christian Science requires an overcoming of the desires of the flesh to which mortals are too often unwilling to accede.

The antivaccination bill mentioned was introduced without the knowledge of Christian Scientists, but they favored it because they do not believe in vaccination and do not believe health authorities should be clothed with the arbitrary power they now exercise. There is justification for clothing police officials with power to curb riots, mob rule, and other similar disturbances on the part of the lawless; but it seems right that other consideration should be given law-abiding citizens, whose own lives are involved, and who are proving their ability to heal disease, as well as their remarkable immunity from so-called contagious diseases. It seems to be a misuse of the civil law to permit a physician to be prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to enforce his own opinion, merely because some accredit him with knowing all there is to know regarding healing. Fear is the principal argument for vaccination, and, according to Christian Science, fear is at the root of the theory of contagion and consequent suffering.

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