Roanoke World News W. Marlborough Addison, former Committee on Publication for Virginia

It is disconcerting, in these troublous days, to find an official representative of so large a body of splendid men and women as compose the medical profession, attacking the good names of world-famous men and women, and the religious beliefs and practices of devout Christians. According to the report of a lecture appearing recently in the columns of your good paper, a prominent physician, speaking before a large audience in Roanoke on the subject of "Quackery," referred to Mary Baker Eddy as having originated something which might fall into this classification. Kindly allow me to correct this false and unwarranted assumption.

Mary Baker Eddy was a noble, Christian gentlewoman. Her discovery, Christian Science, and the good resulting therefrom, are now well known. The laws of God, Spirit, are eternal, universal, and unchangeable. In proportion to our understanding of these laws, we can use them in regaining and maintaining health, happiness, peace, and other like qualities and conditions. A quack is defined as "a boastful pretender to medical skill." Christian Scientists do not engage in boastful talking, nor do they pretend to be skilled in the modes of material medicine.

"From my very childhood," said Mrs. Eddy, "I was impelled, by a hunger and thirst after divine things,—a desire for something higher and better than matter, and apart from it,—to seek diligently for the knowledge of God as the one great and ever-present relief from human woe" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 31). That her quest was successful, there is unlimited proof.

Bridgetown Advocate
Miss Maude A. Law, Committee on Publication for Barbados, British West Indies

In an address given at a meeting of the Convention of Churches, reported in your paper, the speaker alluded to Christian Science, and I should be grateful if you would accord me space to correct, for the public, the evident misunderstanding of this subject.

The old canard that Christian Science is "neither Christian nor scientific" is worn threadbare, and is contrary to the experience of countless numbers who have proved that it is both Christian and scientific.

It would be readily agreed by all thinking people that love is the basis of Christianity, and in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes (p. 454): "Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching. Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way." This was the motivating impulse in all Jesus' work and life, and is in line with our Master's reply to the question, "Which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Christian Science is based on this and all of the teachings of Christ Jesus, which makes it Christian.

A dictionary defines "science" as, "Expertness or ability to do, resulting from knowledge." Christian Science claims that this "ability to do, resulting from knowledge" or spiritual understanding of the Christ-way of healing, which includes radical reliance on spiritual means, is scientific, and this is proved by the healing of disease when all other methods have failed.

Today, more than ever before, all who follow the Master's teachings, according to their lights, should present a united front in the destruction of the claims of anti-Christ, rampant in the world at present, and Christian Scientists have no time nor desire for controversy with their neighbors, but feel, while reserving their right to freedom of thought and action, that every moment should be spent in practicing the Christ-teaching, with the glorious realization that "the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."

Isn't there a glory in the challenge of our present torn world that we would not exchange for sunny days and a more peaceful environment? The powers of evil are abroad. The church of Christ is definitely challenged, and the call to those who love its Founder, who cherish its history and mission, who would hasten its day of victory, is to "put on the whole armour." What a time for the church to rediscover its sense of the presence of "the Lord of glory"!—Selected.