Article July 6, 1929 Issue

A reader of a professor's articles which appear in the...

Peter B. Biggins, Committee on Publication for the Province of Alberta, Canada,—Edmonton

Bulletin

A reader of a professor's articles which appear in the Bulletin has asked him to recommend to some of his correspondents that they try Christian Science for their mental ills, as this reader has been benefited by Christian Science. He says in his own expressive language: "I know of no mental treatment that is one tenth as beneficial. . . . It surely has all other methods of mental treatment 'backed off the boards.' " The professor in his reply to this reader's request, says that he does not propose "to discuss Christian Science either as a religion or as a form of practice." Nevertheless, he makes a number of statements which require comment and correction.

The professor writes: "No group in the community can expose other groups to the contagion of disease under the plea that their religious belief denies the reality of such disease, and decline to call in the medical practitioner. . . ." Christian Scientists cannot properly be accused of exposing others to contagion. The fact is that the teaching of Christian Science requires the reporting of infectious or contagious diseases, and many fair-minded health officers frankly admit that Christian Scientists are more than ordinarily conscientious in this respect.

Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, throughout her experience as the Leader of this movement persistently taught and practiced obedience to the laws of the land. The New York Herald published, on May 1, 1901, a report of an interview in which Mrs. Eddy made clear her views on this subject. Her interviewer asked the question: "Then as to the laws—the health laws of the States on the question of infectious and contagious diseases. How does Christian Science stand as to them?" To this Mrs. Eddy replied, in part: "I say, 'Render to caesar the things that are Caesar's.' . . . So long as Christian Scientists obey the laws, I do not suppose their mental reservations will be thought to matter much" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 344, 345). Again, Mrs. Eddy has written on page 220 of the same book: "I believe in obeying the laws of the land. I practise and teach this obedience, since justice is the moral signification of law. Injustice denotes the absence of law."

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