Does the state of Missouri intend, through its laws, to create a monopoly of the medical profession, and grant to the members of that profession the sole and exclusive right to cure the sick?
Christian Science depends not upon personal magnetism, hypnotism, mesmerism, or any other phase of so-called human mind-force, but it depends for its results absolutely upon the manifestation of God's power to heal the sick and sinful in accordance with the teachings of Scripture.
Gibbon's "History of Rome" recites the fact that for three hundred years after the crucifixion primitive Christians healed the sick and raised the dead through their spiritual understanding of God's power over human error.
Our clerical friend affirms, in substance, that Christian Science heals by suggestion, which is not essentially a religion, and not according to divine power as the Christian Scientists believe.
To say that the practice of Christian Science endangers the health of the community is to say that it is not safe to trust God as the "great Physician" for body, mind, and soul, for this is just what Christian Science does.
The
prefatory quotation from "Miscellaneous Writings" inserted in the Manual of The Mother Church is full of meaning in its explanation of the purpose of our by-laws: "They sprang from necessity.
