A news item appeared in The Gazette...

S. Pontoppidan Broby

The Gazette

S. Pontoppidan Broby, Committee on Publication for the Province of Quebec, Canada
The Gazette, Montreal

A news item appeared in The Gazette yesterday in which a doctor takes exception to Christian Science as a healing agent. In his remarks to the Social Security Committee in Ottawa, the doctor is quoted as having said, "We should protect the taxpayers against paying out money for the kind of treatment some of us believe has no value and, I might say, against fraud."

A religion which has proved itself over a period of three quarters of a century capable of healing every disease known to the medical faculty, and which has made God-fearing people out of infidels, has restored wrecked homes, made thousands of individuals happy and successful, cannot by any means be a fraud, however much some people may misunderstand it and attempt to discredit it.

The doctor is also quoted as having said that Christian Scientists do not rely upon prayer in their healing work, but "on a repetition of a formula introduced by its Founder, Mary Baker Eddy." Nothing could be farther from the fact. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 1): "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love. Regardless of what another may say or think on this subject, I speak from experience. Prayer, watching, and working, combined with self-immolation, are God's gracious means for accomplishing whatever has been successfully done for the Christianization and health of mankind." And in the Church Manual, under the heading "Formulas Forbidden," she writes (Art. VIII, Sect. 9), "No member shall use written formulas, nor permit his patients or pupils to use them, as auxiliaries to teaching Christian Science or for healing the sick."

Christian Scientists make no claims to having reached the perfect understanding which our Master and Way-shower, Christ Jesus, possessed, and which instantaneously heals any disease; yet, there is irrefutable evidence, accumulated during over seventy years, that this Science has healed diseases which baffled the medical profession, and which had been declared incurable. Many of the world's best-known physicians are ready to testify to this fact. Sir William Fletcher Barret, F.R.C.S., at the time of the passing of the special exemption for Christian Science Nursing Homes in Britain, said, "I am bound to say that cures, often of a very remarkable character, are effected," and, "The marvelous improvement in the general health of persons who have become adherents of this faith is unquestionable."

When Paul, one of the greatest of Christians, was dragged before the courts to defend the religion which he had accepted, but which ran contrary to the generally accepted beliefs of his time, he made a statement as pertinent today as then. He said, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?"

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