To the Editor of the Transcript.

The utterances of Dean Farrar in Saturday's Transcript are the swellings of the tide of progress, and are welcome words to all who believe more in Christianity than sectarianism. The bigoted love of old error is, however, painfully strong still, and there are quiet preparations being made for bitter war by churches and the medical profession against the Christian Scientist. The homœopaths are now arming, forgetful of the days when their measure of truth was ignored and they persecuted. Perhaps the sectarian world is seeking to find some object on which to exercise the gathering wrath born of its own consciousness that something within the folds is wrong which is breeding consequences. Does the decay in church membership and the consequently weakened treasury so often bewailed by the modern congregation, seek to find its cause in the new and rapidly growing sect? Do the doctors feel the pinch? What if it calls itself "Christian" and is not according to evangelical views, is it Christian to attack it? What if the science is only in name and not in fact, is that a reason for an era of persecution? Do people die from so-called neglect of "proper remedies"? Surely the morgue and hospital are witnesses that there are deaths from civilized neglect, as the emaciated bodies of the starved, cry out against the humanity, the Christian (?) humanity that could have saved them, and did not. Are doctors infallible, or shall we thank God for the blessing of being killed scientifically, while we wonder at the changes of scientific view in the professional kaleidoscope.

Somebody's ox must be gored, seeing that there is such a bellow from the herd of sects. If the Christian Scientists teach humbug, then let men ask, is the church guiltless, are the denominational creeds satisfactory? Is even the Apostles' Creed so genuine and enlightening as to be just the thing for the soul of the intelligent preacher to pin faith to? Will the Athanasian creed be found attractive? Surely the old Westminster Confession or the close communion Baptist bigotry leaves something to be desired; and maybe Wesley's sermons and discipline would not go down many spiritual throats to-day without a deal of pushing. What are the Christian Scientists doing? do you answer, Not believing outside the church what the church demands? well, he or she is very blind not to see that inside the churches there are thousands upon thousands who do not believe what the churches hold, but then they subscribe, and keep on, and that makes a difference. The faiths need reconstruction.

If the believing ill, makes the Christian Scientist do well, is it not better than to claim to be orthodox, yet do nil. What have the Christian Scientists done? I will tell you (and mark you, I don't belong to them nor believe with them), they have gotten a hold upon lackadaisical would-be invalid women and removed the curse from their husbands and homes, awakened their minds to a sense of responsibility to their fellows, sent them out to minister to human needs, made them too busy to think of their own imaginary ill, sent them to study their Bible as they never did before, awakened in them a desire for knowledge, and developed unknown activity. They have brought happiness and light into dark and gloomy homes, made despairing impoverished husbands and fathers, whose pockets were a Klondike for the physician, happy in the consciousness that all their earnings would not be swallowed up in doctors' bills and the home overshadowed by the angel of death, they have built places of worship where the distracted have found peace, and the idle employment. If they cannot pronounce other people's shibboleths, shall we stop their well doing? No, not if we could, for we cannot. Christ would say while they do well, as the broad-minded Gamaliel said of old, let them alone; "If it be of God ye cannot overthrow it, if of men it will come to naught." What if it be one of the divine spades to dig up the hard beaten sectarian soil that has so long been unproductive? It no doubt is an offence against law when the life and interests of others are jeopardized by exposure to infectious or contagious diseases; but since when has the "regular" practice of medicine become such a certain science that it shall be the only one paid to experiment? If an adult desires any special line of treatment or none, shall he not have liberty to exercise his choice? It is all right to have a case reported so that a legally appointed medical officer may diagnose the disease and if infections compel isolation, but the method of treatment is for the patient and friends to determine. No treatment for any disease is specific, and as it is a fact that fifty per cent of the treatment is mental suggestion, then if the other fifty is divided up between the pathies who give medicine, it will be seen that those who do not, have quite as much success as those who do. No class of professional men know better than the clergy and physicians how splendidly humbugged we all are. Churchman.