"Fear hath torment"
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," runs an old saying, and it was never more aptly illustrated than in the fear-producing wisdom which is the outcome of the preventive campaign of enlightenment that has been waged so vigorously the last few years under the guise of the public good. Disease has been so persistently harped upon, compulsory examinations of children and adults have aroused so much fear, that the intended good to be accomplished thereby has become largely a negligible quantity. In other words, people have worried themselves sick over troubles which doubtless never would have materialized if their thought had not been dominated by the horrible presentations of disease constantly thrust upon them. Here and there the thinking public is awakening to the perniciousness of this practice, and in a recent editorial the Philadelphia Inquirer gives its readers some very pertinent observations as follows:—
The United States public health service is engaged in sending out all sorts of bulletins regarding health. The doctors have been telling us that the span of human life has been increasing. According to the health service it is not. That is to say, there is longer life among the young, but among those who are over forty-five the death rate is actually increasing. The doctors have been saving babies—or the mothers have because of better care—so that not so many of them die at a tender age, and once they get a start they live to become men in increasing numbers. But old, age is becoming rarer. The saving of life is at the beginning, not at the other end.
And yet the medicine men have been overwhelming the public with all sorts of advice and all sorts of "don'ts." They have discovered germs and bacteria and have told us how to fight them. In the old days—when, it seems, more men lived to greater ages—such things as germs and bacterial were unknown. So were many of the modern diseases. Men were not bound down by all sorts of rules. They were not aware that death lurked in everything they ate or drank. They pursued the even tenor of their way oblivious to danger and they lived longer. We could not have believed this had not the public health service of the United States so informed us through its official bulletin.
How is this to be accounted for? Let the doctors do the accounting. But they have evidently not succeeded. Is it because they have failed to cure that the best of them are losing faith in medicines and devoting much more attention to prevention? The truth about our friends the doctors—good men who have been doing all that they can—is that they have not yet brought the practice of medicine to a scientific basis. Their art has very largely been one of experimentation for centuries. And the experiments are constantly changing. Meanwhile, despite all the discoveries and all the rules drummed into the brain of the human, beginning with his school days, average life after forty-five is growing shorter. So reports the public health service. Perhaps if men were not frightened at every turn by the constant harping on disease they would not be so prone to fall victims to it. In any event the sermons on disease which the health authorities constantly spread through the public prints apparently do not produce the results aimed at.
At least that is the inference to be drawn from the report of the public health service which, by the way, tells us in the same bulletin that "bad temper is sometimes merely a symptom of bad health." Is it? Might it not be nearer the mark if that statement had read: "Bad health is the effect of bad temper"?
That the motive of this education of the public is good, no one will question; but that already its methods are deplorable in their results, must be conceded. Indeed one can but wonder what the effects will be when the present generation of children, their thought imbued with fear from the beginning of their school life, arrives at maturity. The world is slow to recognize that in its desire for health and long life it has departed from that divine wisdom which assures those who dwell "in the secret place of the most High" deliverance from "the pestilence that walketh in darkness" and "the destruction that wasteth at noonday,"—the very evils materia medica is so industriously combating, but with far different weapons,—and is thus serving "other gods," inviting the trouble it fain would escape. On page 173 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says: "The idols of civilization are far more fatal to health and longevity than are the idols of barbarism. . . . Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air? Nothing save divine power is capable of doing so much for man as he can do for himself."
There is only one kind of fear which Christian Science countenances, and that is the fear of sin, for the outcome of sin is disease and death. It believes in prevention, in the understanding of divine Truth and Love which casts out all other fear and induces that sound mind which is the precursor of a sound body. This is thoroughly in accord with the teaching of the beloved apostle, who declared that "perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment." Mortals know only too well the influence of fear, for many of them go through life in the grip of this relentless taskmaster because of their ignorance of the omnipotence of Love to cast out the destroyer of their peace. How essential then that we who have been privileged to know the truth which makes free should do our utmost to promulgate the true gospel of health, of that wholeness of mind and body which tends to length of days, even to life eternal. It is sound common sense which Mrs. Eddy gives us on page 167 of Science and Health, when she points out that "our proportionate admission of the claims of good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence,—our health, our longevity, and our Christianity."
Archibald McLellan.
