THIS paraphrase is suggested by the extremities to which some well-meaning people are driven, in their endeavor to make good their position as exponents of the gospel of Christ, and opponents of the gospel of healing. The feat they have undertaken is certainly a difficult one, and failures are not surprising.

It is generally conceded that physical healing was wrought by Jesus through spiritual means alone; that he effected these results in harmony with divine law which is constant and ever operative, and that in keeping with his definite command his disciples continued these works after him, as a proof of their ministry. It is also conceded that the sick and so-called incurable still abound; that they are in need of deliverance, and that they would as surely be blessed, convinced, and won by kindred "mighty works" to-day, as they were in apostolic times.

Now to make these concessions and yet, logically and consistently therewith, to insist that materia medica is the divinely appointed means to health, and therefore has and should maintain a monopoly of the right of way; and further to hold that it is not only wrong but "blasphemous" to ask or expect to find relief save in keeping with its dictum,—to maintain this position is, we repeat, an impossible feat to perform, and were the undertaking less pathetic and eventful, it would furnish its spectators plenty of entertainment.

Stated briefly, their problem is this,—to adjust a gospel and guide which enjoins us to look to God alone for salvation from sin and its every consequence, to a contention and practice which asserts that we must indeed thus look to God, but that we must also look to our pills.

We all know more or less about the possibility of making oneself quite comfortable in a self-contradictory position, and we were reminded of our own past thinking when we read in the editorial column of a late religious exchange, the declaration that we may just as well expect to be kept from starvation without the use of food, as we may expect to be kept from sickness, or be cured of it when it comes, without the use of "appointed ministrations." The writer advises that when we are hungry we should pray and exercise ourselves to get some suitable food, and when sick, pray, and take the right course to get well by sending for a "competent physician." Do not suppose, he says, that God will treat your sickness and your hunger according to different principles, or that they stand in different relations to faith. Such a supposition is "vain and false; in fact, it is blasphemous."

Now from our present point of view, it seems to us that any effort to make it appear that Jesus had no right to feed the multitude with bread, for the reason that he did not heal them with drugs, is both inconsiderate and ill advised. The stickler for drugs will have to settle the question, however, not with those of us who have come to entertain a different opinion, but with the statement of the gospel narrators as to Jesus' habits and teaching, and we shall be interested to know how he comes out. Meantime it might be well for everybody to remember that the conceded necessity of food is grounded in facts and conditions which, while unideal, and to be escaped from through spiritual attainment, are nevertheless very unlike those that have begotten the asserted necessity of physic.

The demand for food upon this life plane springs from normal human conditions, and the need is supplied, according to the gospel writers, even for the sparrows and ravens, by divine provision. "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? ... Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?" (Luke, 12: 6, 24).

Jesus never taught that it is abnormal to be hungry or that it is wrong to indulge a wholesome appetite, but he did teach, and most emphatically, that sickness is abnormal, the result of sin in the last analysis, and therefore that the conditions which call for physic are incongruous with a life of holiness. The identification of disease with a state of sin, in the individual or race, is very explicity declared in the story of Luke, where he says, "Behold men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before him. ... And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." (See Luke, 5 : 18—25; John, 5 : 1—16.)

The remedy for sin, as all will allow, is spiritual, not material; and since with the removal of the cause, the effect disappears, the logic of both the teaching and demonstrations of Jesus is expressed in Paul's thought of transformation by the renewing of the mind. (Romans, 12 : 2.) That is, sin, and the sickness and death which it entails, are to be dominated, overcome, and destroyed through revealed Truth, the realization of the Mind which was in Christ Jesus.

The demand for physic springs from an abnormal human state and experience, the legitimacy of which Jesus always denied and which he eliminated, and instructed his disciples to remove through the power of spirit, the exercise of faith. (Matthew, 17 : 14—21.)

Therefore, though our position be deemed "vain," "false," and "blasphemous," we still are led, by sober reason and the example of the Great Physician, to hold that the taking of food to satisfy hunger, and the taking of drugs to remove disease, have very different ethical qualities, and very different relations to faith.

Further, if the phrase "appointed ministrations" means anything, as used, it must mean "appointed" drugs and doctors; and this begs the whole question. Christian Scientists take issue, not as to the need and appointment of effective means for the relief of sickness, but, simply as to the nature of these means, and they aver and are proving that the best means are those which were used and commended by Jesus and his disciples; namely, spiritual.

We are tempted at this point to allow another religious exchange, of the same date as the one already quoted, to say a few words by way of illumination of the divine appointment idea. They are as follows:—

"The odium medicum to-day is probably as intense as the odium theologicum during any previous period. The criticism of the way President Garfield's physicians and surgeons managed his case was singularly bitter on the part of some members of the profession, and the autopsy showed that some of these strictures were amply justified. President McKinley's medical attendants have by no means been free from similar reflections, and many of the European surgeons think that the failure of the operators to drain the wound cost him his life."

In view of the ever-changing and hopelessly confusing diversity of means and methods used by contending medical schools, and their conceded inability to cure or even relieve many varieties of physical ailment; and in view of the fact that Jesus neither used nor commended the use of these "God ordained agencies," and that their employment is being discarded and condemned more and more by eminent physicians, we can but think that it would be well for our critics to retire this "divine appointment" argument long enough to make an earnest and sincere effort to discover if Jesus did not, after all, know of a better way, and intend that we should follow it.

Christian Science affirms, that the true and divinely appointed means for healing the sick are spiritual, and it offers every man a practical method of determining the matter for himself, which has led to some world-wide and tremendously significant results.

Horace Bushnell has a pertinent thought on this subject, to the effect that the human endeavor to live the life of faith and the life of the senses, at the same time, is worse than foolish, and he adds, "This is the underlying difficulty in the religious experience of so many of us. We are not willing to carry our faith far enough." W.