The weekly article, "Diary of a Doctor," in last Saturday's Advertiser,...

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The weekly article, "Diary of a Doctor," in last Saturday's Advertiser, under the subheading "Faith Healing," contained certain misrepresentations concerning Christian Science. Although Christian Science was not mentioned by name, the half truths employed were too obvious to refer to anything else. I am sure the Advertiser would not knowingly lend its support to a method of criticism which, to state it kindly, is "not cricket," nor countenance a means of escaping the editorial censorship.

The "Clara" of the doctor's imaginative episode he admits is a crank, and the conversation attributed to her, together with her ignorance of either the spirit or the letter of her latest fad, is consistent with such a character. The subtlety to which I object, however, is the attributing of statements to a crank, with the natural inference that they represent the views of a religious body.

All progress involves orderly steps, wherein old beliefs are discarded as the ideal is recognized and proved true in human experience. Has it occurred to the doctor that the practice of materia medica, due to faith in the power of inanimate drugs, might better be termed "faith healing" than Christian Science? Mere human faith is distinguished from the true in II Chronicles 16:12, 13: "And Asa ... was diseased ...: yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa ... died." Christian Science utilizes the higher faith, based on the understanding of Spirit, God, to which Jesus referred when he said, "Thy faith hath made thee whole." In this sense may Christian Science be said to be faith healing. Its practice demands radical reliance on God, "who healeth all thy diseases."

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