Article March 27, 1926 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Richard C. Cabot, R. J. Northcutt, Canon Maurice Ponsonby, Clarence Reed, James Gordon Gilkey

[From an address by Dr. Richard C. Cabot, in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Cambridge, Massachusetts]

If religious life is defined ... as the center of any man's energies, whether he calls himself an atheist or a theist, then it is obvious that any enrichment or development of his religious life will show itself in an increased ... search for knowledge, in an increased interest in the world around him and in his fellow-beings, in an increased organization of his own life which may be in disorder; and in addition, one would naturally expect that it would improve his health. ... Miracles to me always seem comparable to the feats of heroism. They show us more about the nature of man than we knew, more about the nature of the world ... than we knew before. Every heroic act as I see it is a miracle. Miracles, like heroism, are born out of the sense of a supreme need. It is often said that they come out of the faith of the sufferer. That is the other half of it; we have the sense of supreme need plus the awareness, the trust, that some help is possible. We are accustomed to say that "necessity is the mother of invention." Out of the sense of necessity—the sense that this thing must be—some new idea, some new strength comes. So I think miraculous powers come out of a man when he suddenly feels that he must do what ordinarily he cannot, and in some way manages to draw into himself strength enough to do it.

Christian Science believes, as I have been stating that I believe, in the healing of disease by spiritual means. But there is a negative side to Christian Science which carries it a little away from agreement with what I have been saying. It does not believe in cure through drugs and through surgery. It is opposed to the use of drugs and surgery. Well, what is to be said of that?

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