A short time since the Boston Traveler published an article made up of matter much of which had previously been published in some of the New York papers, in opposition to Christian Science. Immediately after such publication the editor of the Traveler requested a presentation of the Christian Science view of the question, calling upon the editor of the Journal and Sentinel to prepare an answer especially upon the legal aspect of the question. The request being a cordial one, and made in a friendly spirit, the editor felt it his duty to comply. He accordingly furnished the Traveler with the following article, which is republished.

I have read the article published in The Traveler of January 9, entitled "The Legal Aspect of Christian Science." You request me to present the Christian Science view of this question.

The first paragraph of your article is this,—

"The question of Christian Science, when considered in its legal aspect, presents an interesting problem which must soon be solved by legislation, or the effect upon the public will be even more dangerous than the instance of such abuse in England, as evidenced in the case of Harold Frederic."

This is a broad assumption. It assumes without reason or argument that Christian Science is without any virtue whatever. It refuses to admit even the possibility that Christian Science can heal disease. If this assumption were correct, you do not put the case too strongly. You might put it much more strongly and yet be within reasonable bounds. This raises, however, the question as to whether your assumptions are correct. I will refer to this later.

You again say: "The recent death of Harold Frederic has revived the interest in the opposition to Christian Scientists, and the so-called faith healers have been indicted on the charge of manslaughter by the London coroner's jury which investigated the case. There is every reason to believe that this prompt and vigorous action may lead to the proper legal treatment of these dangerous fanatics."

A sufficient answer to this part of your article is the fact that the prosecution against one of the persons charged with manslaughter was dismissed by the Crown, and the other was discharged, the court finding that there was no ground for a criminal prosecution of any character. The absurdity of attempting to hold a person on a charge of manslaughter, where the motive was to save life, rather than to destroy it, is apparent to any one having the slightest knowledge of criminal law. There can be no crime committed, say all the works upon criminal law, unless there be a criminal intent. This is a fundamental principle.

A number of leading lawyers of Chicago were not long since interviewed by representatives of the Chicago press, upon the general question involved in the Frederic case from whom I will briefly quote.

Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, son of the celebrated Senator from Illinois, said this,—

"The proposition appears to me to be a very simple one, although I do not claim to be a criminal lawyer. A man cannot be prosecuted for what he did not do. There is no affirmative charge here. If the indictment were brought it would charge the Christian Scientist with failing to save the life of the patient, which is a negative charge. Again, intent must be shown, and there is no assumption that these people intended to bring about the death of Frederic. It would be the same as though you had seen a man drowning and had tried to save him according to your lights, which might be to stand on the dock and yell for help. If he drowned, you could scarcely be held criminally responsible for his death."

Mr. Robert Redfield, who was for years connected with the city law department of Chicago, said,—

"I have not delved very deeply into Christian Science, but in the strict letter of the law I fail to see how an exponent of that faith could be held criminally responsible for what practically amounts to a negative act. As well might practising physicians be held accountable for the death of patients. There is no law making it a criminal offense to pray over a sick man and urge him to do the same, and if he dies while voluntarily following out this practice no one is responsible, so far as I can see."

Mr. James Todd, who was assistant state's attorney and a criminal lawyer of wide experience, said,—

"The only question in my mind is, whether the doctors or the Christian Scientists allow the greater number of people to die. There is no law to compel a man to summon a physician when he is sick. There is no law which says he shall summon a doctor of any particular school, whether a homœopath, or an allopath, or an osteopath, or a Christian Scientist. If Christian Scientists could be prosecuted successfully for failure to save the lives of the people they attempt to cure, so could physicians. I have examined more than eighty physicians of the class generally denominated experts, on mental questions and the causes of death, and I have found there was no unanimity on any subject. When the various schools of medicine are that far apart, how can it be expected that failure to save life can be made a criminal responsibility?

"The nub of the question, after all, however, is that you cannot convict without proving the intention, and intention cannot be inferred from a negative act. Even to convict a Christian Scientist of being an accessory would fail, since it must be shown that the defendant was an accessory to the death by some act, word, or token, whereas the Christian Scientist bends all his or her endeavors to prolonging or saving life, and if they fail it is absurd to talk of prosecution."

Half a dozen other attorneys held almost precisely the same view, and none were found who would say that there was any possibility of bringing about a conviction in such a case, even were an indictment to be found.

There can be no doubt of the correctness of these views of members of the Chicago bar. No one in Chicago, Boston, England, or elsewhere, familiar with criminal law, would have the hardihood to say that a person can be convicted of a crime when there was an entire absence of intent to commit any crime whatever, and where the intention was benevolent and good. Any other view would be manifestly absurd.

You further said, "In the case of Harold Frederic a valuable life might have been saved but for the fatal influence of the Christian Scientists, who disregarded the experience of ages and refused to take even ordinary precautions against the progress of his disease, until finally there was nothing left to them but the corpse of a prominent man as evidence of abuse in inflicting a so-called religious sham upon the public."

This statement is certainly positive, broad, and made with all the assurance of statements based upon fact. Nevertheless, it is true that this statement has no basis in fact. The fact is that Frederic had been restored to the hands of the physicians some days before his death. He had been in the hands of physicians for a long time prior to the calling in of the Christian Scientist, and was rapidly growing worse.

The Christian Science practitioner relieved him of pain and suffering that the physicians were unable to relieve him of, and it was only at the urgent solicitation of some of the immediate friends of Frederic that he consented to have the physicians again called. These friends, of course, had no confidence in Christian Science treatment.

The fact is that Frederic died under the ministrations of physicians, and not of Christian Scientists. Your remarks, therefore, about "the fatal influence of Christian Scientists," etc., are untrue and unjust.

It is true that there are few decisions of the courts touching the Christian Scientists. A great many prosecutions have been instituted, and in some instances police courts have found Christian Scientists guilty of practising medicine without license, etc., but with a single exception these cases have been reversed in the upper court.

These courts were not courts of final jurisdiction, and therefore their decisions have not become precedents for the guidance of the lower courts, only so far as the lower courts see fit to adopt their dicta.

You quote from the decision of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island. This was a very interesting case. Permit me to make brief additional quotations from it. The court says,—

"To give to the words 'practice of medicine' the construction claimed for them by the state, in the opinion of the court, would lead to unintended results. The testimony shows that Christian Scientists are a recognized school or sect. They hold common beliefs, accept the same teachings, recognize as true the same theories and principles.

"If the practice of Christian Science is the practice of medicine, Christian Science is a school or system of medicine, and it is entitled to recognition by the State Board of Health to the same extent as other schools or systems of medicine.

"Under said chapter 165, it cannot be discriminated against, and its members are entitled to certificates to practise medicine provided they possess the statutory qualifications.

"The statute, in conferring upon the State Board of Health authority to pass upon the qualification of applicants for such certificates, does not confer upon said board arbitrary power. The board cannot determine which school or system of medicine, in its theories and practices, is right; it can only determine whether the applicant possesses the statutory qualification to practise in accordance with the recognized theories of a particular school or system.

"It would be absurd to hold that under said chapter 165, which provides against discrimination, the requirements necessary to entitle an applicant to a certificate were such that the members of a particular school or system could not comply with them, thus adopting a construction which would operate not as a discrimination only, but as a prohibition.

"On the other hand, to hold that a person who does not know, or pretend to know, anything about disease, or about the method of ascertaining the presence or the nature of disease, or about the nature, preparation, or use of drugs or remedies, and who never administers them, may obtain a certificate to practise medicine, is to hold that the operation of the statute is to defeat the beneficial purposes for which it was enacted."

If this decision is good law (and if good law is common sense it is), it would seem difficult for the Legislature to control Christian Science practice. I can conceive of no language that could be made broad enough to cover the ground that must of necessity be covered by any inhibitive legislation.

If, as the court says, Christian Scientists constitute a separate school for the practice of medicine, they are entitled to all the rights and privileges of any other school.

If they do not constitute such a school, they are not practising medicine in any sense. The fact being true that they can heal disease without the use of medicine, what earthly power can say that they cannot exercise that healing power as a matter of inherent, constitutional right?

Is it not a perfectly rational and safe proposition, that if the Christian Science method of healing is the result of prayer (and every Christian Scientist knows that Christian Science healing results from the exercise of the highest prayer known to mankind), no legislative enactment can reach or prevent it?

On the same principle might the Legislature undertake to inhibit the reading of the Bible, and ministers of the gospel from offering prayer in their pulpits or elsewhere. The very purpose of prayer is to benefit humanity, and if it be a fact that prayer will heal the body as well as the soul, why is not its exercise as legitimate and lawful in the one case as in the other?

Never can there be successful legislation against the Christian Science method of healing until legislators shall have acquired wisdom sufficient to draw a sharp line of demarkation between prayer which heals the soul and that which heals the body. Will any one pretend that such a time will ever come? All the medical trusts on earth to-day, or that ever can be organized, will fail of this result.

In Cincinnati, O., the Court of Common Pleas has recently rendered an interesting decision affecting Christian Scientists. A Miss Evans had been living in the home of a Mr. T. McDowell for about five years.

Mr. McDowell was not unfriendly to Christian Science and his wife was a Christian Scientist. In October he was taken sick with typhoid fever. The physicians gave him no relief, and in ten or twelve days he asked to have Miss Evans treat him in Christian Science. This was done with noticeable improvement for five days.

At the end of this time his mother, two daughters by his first wife, and his employer, being very much opposed to Christian Science, applied to the Medical Board to have Miss Evans arrested under a statute intended to prohibit Christian Science practice.

The doctors were again called in. Miss Evans was arrested Friday, November 11, and the patient died under the doctors' care November 13. Miss Evans was fined by the Police Court, and the case was appealed to the Court of Common Pleas. Judge Hollister of that court rendered an opinion overruling the decision of the Police Court.

The statute under which Miss Evans was arrested, after reciting the usual restrictions upon the practice of medicine and surgery, contained this additional clause, "Any person shall be regarded as practising medicine or surgery within the meaning of this act who shall append the letters M.D. or M.B. to his name, or, for a fee, prescribe, direct, or recommend for the use of any person any drug or medicine or other agency, for the treatment, care, or relief of any wound, fracture, or bodily injury, infirmity, or disease."

Judge Hollister in the course of his opinion said, "It must be remarked that if any virtue accrues to the patient subjected to this treatment, it is not through the operation of any physical substance brought into contact with the body. This consideration calls into operation the very rule rejected in passing upon the demurrer, as not applicable thereto, for it is quite certain that 'drugs, or medicines, or other agency,' used as they are in connection with the subjects, medicine and surgery, can only mean, so far as their actual use in treatment is involved, the physical agency employed by one acting as physician or surgeon, whether used internally or externally, and were not intended to cover cases in which the application of the remedy does not partake of physical attributes, but is the operation of some subtle influence flowing from the mind of one person to that of another, or growing out of the contact of the spiritual nature with the great source from which it came."

It is a well-known fact that the act of the Ohio Legislature was especially intended to prevent Christian Scientists from practising. The language was as broad as it could well have been. If the words "Christian Science" had been used it would not have strengthened the act, and the above decision has as great effect and is as broad in its results as if the act had contained these words.

In the light of the decisions of the Rhode Island and Ohio courts, it is difficult to conceive of legislative enactments that could reach Christian Science practice. Christian Science feels quite safe in the view that human legislation is not sufficiently powerful to prohibit the operation of divine Law in human affairs. Notwithstanding the assumptions of human power, Christian Scientists have yet an old-fashioned notion that God is supreme.

The Ohio judge points out a view of the question that possibly was not in the minds of the medicos and Solons when the said legislation was enacted. Thousands of religionists besides Christian Scientists would have been affected by such legislation if it could have been enforced. It would strike a blow at every method of healing disease not sanctioned by materia medica.

It would strike a special blow at the Roman Catholic Church, one of whose chief tenets has always been a method of healing independently of drugs and medicine. What is true of the Ohio legislation would be true of any attempted legislation anywhere.

For more than thirty years Christian Scientists have been proving their ability to heal diseases without medicine or other material means. Many thousands of cases attest this ability. It is no longer a matter of doubt or speculation. It is as susceptible of absolute proof as any other human fact, and Christian Scientists challenge the world to disprove the fact that its methods heal where all other methods wholly fail.

This article is already too long to go into the citation of particular cases, but all the cases desired can be furnished to any sincere seeker or inquirer. Cancer, malignant tumors, consumption, broken bones, and broken tissues have, in numerous instances, been healed through the power of Christian Science prayer, without the assistance of any material means whatever.

If this be true, and I confidently challenge its contradiction, as well might the Legislature attempt to legislate Almighty God out of His universe as to undertake to prevent healing by virtue of His law.

S. J. Hanna.