Article March 20, 1926 ISSUE

The article contributed to the columns of a recent issue...

Ralph W. Still, Committee on Publication for the State of Texas,—Kingsville

Record

The article contributed to the columns of a recent issue on the subject of "National Hospital Day" would be appropriate and unobjectionable were it not that it includes offensive, erroneous, unjust, and uncalled-for accusations against Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, against her teachings, and against Christian Scientists in general. Nowhere in Mrs. Eddy's writings are to be found such unseemly statements regarding hospitals, surgeons, doctors, nurses, and medical or surgical procedure as those attributed to her by our critic. On the contrary, her writings contain many evidences of high regard for the medical faculty, and appreciation of their humanitarian efforts to alleviate mankind's manifold ills. The attitude of Mrs. Eddy towards the medical profession, as well as that of her students generally, is adequately set forth in the following quotations from her work, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 151): "Great respect is due the motives and philanthropy of the higher class of physicians;" and (p. 164), "It is just to say that generally the cultured class of medical practitioners are grand men and women."

It is recognized that there is a definite need to-day on the part of many for the surgeon, the doctor, the nurse, and the humanitarian institutions with which they are identified. Christian Scientists, however, deprecate and oppose compulsory (state) medicine; but they accord full freedom of conscience to all, not only in religious beliefs, but in medical preferences and practices as well. It is never advanced as an argument that because Jesus' immediate disciples failed to heal in a given instance his teachings were proved worthless; neither do occasional failures on the part of students of Christian Science prove the inefficacy of their teachings. The evidence in its favor is too preponderating to-day for any one to challenge successfully the healing efficacy of Christian Science; and noted surgeons and medical men have testified to its worth. Christian Science, correctly demonstrated, obviates the necessity for surgical or medical procedure. Since its students may not have that understanding of God's power necessary to meet the need in every instance, there is no inconsistency in calling a surgeon to set a broken limb. Nevertheless, Christian Scientists do not hold that God, Truth, is unable to heal in these cases, as in all others; and most practitioners of Christian Science know of instances of broken and dislocated bones being set and healed through their religion, without the aid of surgeon or material appliance.

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