Significance of the "Cole case"

Archibald McLellan

As long ago as 1899, in Number 22 of Volume I of the Christian Science Sentinel, in answer to the question, "Is a righteous prayer, voluntarily sought by the sick, and used as a means for healing, capable of becoming a crime?" Mrs. Eddy said: "Under the Constitution of the United States, we answer, No! If the Scriptures are valid and their requirements just, importunate prayer, to preserve human life, has the sanction of Christianity, and in no case is criminal. The higher courts of our land will never construe prayer a crime. This I said over thirty years ago; and every case of persecution and prosecution of Christian Scientists for this pathological practice, has, by appealing from the lower to the higher court, proved this saying true. Our superior courts have always sustained these cases as belonging to the individual rights guaranteed to every citizen by the constitutions of the nation and states."

In deciding the so-called "Cole case" in the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court of that state, the opinion of the court, which was drafted by Judge Emory A. Chase, was entirely favorable to Christian Science; but more significant even than the opinion itself were the words of Chief Judge Bartlett, appended to it. He said: "I concur with Judge Chase in the construction of the statute, but I go further. I deny the power of the legislature to make it a crime to treat disease by prayer." That the chief judge should have used words almost identical with those of Mrs. Eddy, and that he reiterated what she first expressed some forty-seven years ago, was not a mere coincidence. It was proof that Truth "is imperious throughout all ages" (Science and Health, p. 98).

Commenting editorially on this decision, the Brooklyn (N. Y.) Eagle said: "It has taken a man four years in our courts to learn that he may pray to God to heal his sick body while healing his sick soul. The headquarters detectives and the local magistrate were not disposed to allow that. Our Court of Appeals is unanimous in its opinion in the Cole case that man cannot limit God."

Not the least important fact in connection with the decision just handed down (which we quote on pages 143-145 of this issue), is that this decision unequivocally recognizes the right of a legislature to declare that an act for the regulation of the practice of medicine does not forbid the practice of the religious tenets of a church in the healing of the sick. The words of the chief judge mean that not only did the legislature possess the right to make this declaration, but also that to have declared otherwise would have been to violate an inalienable right which even the law-making power of the state could not ignore or subvert. The entire supreme court of Kansas expressed substantially the same view in the case of State v. Wilcox, 64 Kansas Reports 789.

Another important question at issue in the "Cole case" was as to whether the treating and healing of the sick by prayer is a tenet of the Church of Christ, Scientist, and in deciding this question the court said: "The tenets of a church are the beliefs, doctrines, and creeds of the church. ... It appears from the record that it is a tenet of the Christian Science church that prayer to God will result in complete cure of particular diseases in a prescribed individual case. Healing would seem to be not only the prominent work of the church and its members, but the one distinctive belief around which the church organization is founded and sustained. It is claimed that the church extends its influence and spreads knowledge of its power by practical demonstration on the part of its sincere practitioners in securing the overthrow of moral, mental, and physical disease."

Incidental to the consideration of this latter question, the court was of course first compelled to pass upon the status of Christian Science as a religion, and of the Church of Christ, Scientist, as a church under the meaning of the statute. That it took an affirmative view in regard to both these incidental but important questions, is proved by the decision in favor of the defendant, and we may therefore assume that, so far as the laws of New York are concerned, these points have been judicially determined. It would therefore seem reasonable to hope that those critics who have been loath to admit either the Christianity of Christian Science or its right to be called a religion and its organization to be called a church, will also consider these questions settled. That this decision of a court of last resort will largely put an end to the contention of interested parties, that the healing of the sick, irrespective of the means employed, is per se the practice of medicine, is another hope which Christian Scientists may confidently indulge.

Archibald McLellan.

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