It has been popularly held for ages that there was an...

Olcott Haskell

Stockton (Cal.) Mail

It has been popularly held for ages that there was an irreconcilable conflict between science and religion; yet true religion involves an understanding of God, and cannot conflict with the facts of His universe. Thus viewed, religion should interpret truth, and its practise cannot either ignore or suppress facts. God is eternal Principle, and to learn of God is to learn the law of Life.

Christian Scientists are only beginners in this infinite study, yet they recognize that there is more to man than what is seen materially—that the intellectual the moral, and the spiritual are potent and never to be neglected factors in his life, and must be taken into account before harmonious results can be attained. It is on this basis that the teachings of Jesus are of value, for he certainly understood the laws of health and right living.

Jesus healed multitudes, yet all these have passed through death, and Jesus himself had to combat the "last enemy." This is not an argument against his teachings, nor does it discredit in the least the genuineness of New Testament healing. Likewise the fact that Mrs. Eddy is not with us in the flesh today does not detract from the correctness of her teachings.

While respecting the honest efforts of physicians of the many prevailing schools of medicine, Christian Scientists as a rule prefer to employ such methods as they have found to be most effective. A perfect application of Christian Science would lead one to do the right thing at the right time in every instance, but no Christian Scientist has as yet fully attained to this. Christian Science treatment would not have gained wide-spread acceptance were it not, on the whole, successful. If a single instance of failure to secure results within a few days is to be taken as cause for condemning this method of treatment, what shall we think of the daily failures of materia medica? Or what shall be said of the not infrequent cases where children who were well have been given "preventive medicine" which resulted in suffering and death?

Even a perfect system would need to be perfectly applied to produce perfect results, and there is not today any school of practitioners so universally successful that it is in a position to condemn the failures of others. The best course would seem to be to let each person employ such methods as his observation and experience justify him in regarding as safest and best.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit