Items of Interest August 4, 1934 Issue

Items of Interest

Some have questioned the term "Benevolent Association" as applied to a sanatorium in which some guests pay for accommodation and care. Others have thought the term "Charitable Institutions" questionable in its application to our Sanatoriums. It may be said that as the Christian Science Benevolent Associations are not self-supporting nor profit-making, but are philanthropic, even though a proportion of their guests who can do so pay for their stay, the term "benevolent" seems truly applicable. In the By-Law "Practitioners and Patients" (Church Manual, Art. VIII, Sect. 22), Mrs. Eddy writes that a Christian Scientist is "benevolent," and this term is pertinent even though a practitioner has patients who pay for their treatment. It is generally recognized how fully generous, self-sacrificing, and benevolent practitioners are.

And so with the term "charitable"! Under a law of Massachusetts the Sanatorium at Chestnut Hill is classed as a "charitable institution," and that involves doing just what is done at the Sanatorium—taking some part-paying and some nonpaying guests, according to their needs, worthiness, and eligibility. The Pacific Coast Sanatorium is in the same category. "The noblest charity," says the Talmudical philosopher quoted by Mrs. Eddy in the Preface to "Miscellaneous Writings," "is to prevent a man from accepting charity; and the best alms are to show and to enable a man to dispense with alms." Any institution which is engaged in restoring to freedom and usefulness the discouraged, the sick, the handicapped, as are our two Sanatoriums, is rightly entitled to the designations "charitable" and "benevolent."

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