Our critic lays the foundation for his argument by stating, "The laws of nature are the expressions of the will of God." Mrs. Eddy says: "In one sense God is identical with nature, but this nature is spiritual and is not expressed in matter" (Science and Health, p. 119). It is probable that our friend has not considered where his assumption inevitably leads. God's laws certainly do not dispense disease and destruction, and to assume that they do is to become involved in just such unthinkable hypotheses as have turned many a good man away from the thought of such a monstrous concept of God; whereas, if God were understood as divine Principle, as infinite good, and if His laws were understood as promoting life and harmony, men would regard God correctly and would recognize Him as the protecting Father, and as the author of "every good gift."

No Christian Scientist would advocate that a man should trust God without obeying His law. In fact, an intelligent trust involves an understanding of God and obedience to His will. Jesus followed perfectly the will of his Father, yet he never obeyed a "law" of sin or of sickness. He proved that God's law rightly interpreted saves from all evil, and that sickness is neither sent by God nor produced by His laws. The Bible affords no warrant for rashness, or for attempting that which one is not able to accomplish, yet it also affords no excuse for yielding either to sin or to sickness. Christian Scientists do not ignore present human conditions, but they comply with them as far as necessary, until progress enables them to obtain results in a better way. The lives of the constantly increasing number of successful Christian Scientists afford ample proof of this. If our critic refuses to accept the Scriptural evidence of divine healing, it may be that he is not prepared to accept more modern evidence; yet many physicians frankly acknowledge the successful healings of Christian Science.

In my previous article I quoted from a government report in which Professor Fisher, chairman of the committee of one hundred, states: "There was no reason why it [the profession] should have lost hundreds of thousands of patients to Christian Science except that these patients were for the most part benefited, and greatly benefited, by Christian Science after having received no benefit, often injury, from the profession." Some years ago, in the case of The People vs. Merrill Reed et al., heard in Los Angeles, twenty witnesses were placed on the stand and testified to the healing they had received through Christian Science. These witnesses were people well known in the community, and their testimony, given under oath, was subject to cross-examination. The cases healed ranged from tuberculosis and sciatic rheumatism to a deformed foot, spinal trouble, and insanity. In our own state of California there are nearly one hundred cities and towns where public meetings are held every Wednesday evening, to which visitors are welcome, and where may be heard and seen direct evidence that Christian Science heals all sorts and conditions of men, restoring them morally as well as physically.

Can it be that in the face of such evidence our critic would have all this good work stopped unless every Bible student and every practitioner through prayer could first show that he had attended a medical college or could pass an examination in materia medica? Or when he remembers that those of his own profession habitually charge fees, collectible by law, does he object to the reasonable charges made by Christian Science practitioners for their services? And can such objection have any weight in view of the fact that, as Professor Fisher says, many of the patients have been "greatly benefited by Christian Science after having received no benefit, often injury from the profession"?

Our critic cheerfully offers to "lay low" diphtheria bacteria with a "well-given" dose or two of diphtheria antitoxin, but he quite overlooks the fact that this latest application of modern "preventive medicine" is in itself a serious menace to health and life. In Chicago three years ago last winter antitoxin was made compulsory for all diphtheria cases and contacts; nevertheless, one of the midwinter weekly bulletins of the health department showed a diphtheria mortality thirty-three per cent greater than for the same period of the previous winter when the use of antitoxin was optional. A medical magazine published in St. Louis gives a list of the morbid symptoms said to follow the injection of antitoxin and other such serums into the blood, and expresses the opinion that such patients never recover their original normal condition. A few years ago in the city of St. Louis more than ten children died within a week from the effects of antitoxin administered to them by physicians. These children, so the record showed, did not have diphtheria at all, but the antitoxin was given to them as "preventive medicine." It did indeed prevent them from having diphtheria, but it cost them their lives. Was this "scientific medicine" "the application of God's laws"?

Our critic ridicules the thought that to cultivate fear of disease in the minds of children and adults could lead to harmful results; but many writers of prominence differ with the doctor on this point. The San Francisco Star of Feb. 12, 1912, commended Mayor Rolph for his words of caution to those planting pictures of the ravages of tuberculosis in the minds of school-children. Dr. P. L. Myer of Toledo, in an article published in the journal of the American Medical Association in 1906, says: "Had we not better hedge a little before the great lay mind grasps the fact that they were frightened into panicky laws and restrictions over will-o'-the-wisp possibilities and not probabilities or actualities. With all the wonderful strides of our science in a hundred years we still have the public as abjectly cowed today, before the omnipotent hosts of bacteria, as it was by the evil spirits and ghosts and witches of a past century." More recently this same journal of the American Medical Association published an article which states that "an insane terror of infection may make life very miserable without appreciably lengthening or strengthening it." This article closes the discussion by stating that the aseptic Eden, which seems to be the ideal of the germophobes, is unattainable.

Our critic three times repeats his demand for "regulation of the practise of the art by law," and he expresses wonder that so many good people object to legislation which would impose greater restrictions than those already in force. These people do not object to proper restrictions for the practise of surgery and medicine, but surgery and medicine do not by any means occupy the entire field of "the healing art." Can it be that our critic has failed to see that the logical effect of such "regulation" as he advocates, if inaugurated or administered by physicians of the "regular" or allopathic school, would be to suppress every other method of healing?

If medicine were truly scientific and if its practise had invariably proved successful, the matter might be regarded differently, but honest and experienced physicians are the first to admit that modern medicine is not a science.