Rarely is one allowed the doubtful privilege of reading a letter from the pen of a minister of the gospel so replete with statements which dishonor God, discredit Christ Jesus, and repudiate the whole Bible, as the one which appeared in a recent issue attacking the editorial, "A Mad World," reprinted from The Christian Science Monitor.

It is the height of absurdity that after nineteen centuries of Christian teaching and in the most thoroughly Christianized nation in the world, the churches should be closed because of the fear of a so-called epidemic and the foolish belief that the power of God has suddenly become less than that of a microbe. It is equally preposterous to find a Christian minister so under the mesmeric spell of the materialism of medical so-called science that he is willing to concede more power to a drug than to Deity. Had what is known as orthodox theology been more concerned in teaching the spiritual fact of a Godlike man than in perpetuating the material fable of a manlike God, we would have been spared the humiliation of reading at many church entrances the last few weeks the legend, "Closed on account of the epidemic." Rather would such an epidemic have "died a bornin'," and the legend, "Closed on account of the churches," formed a fitting epitaph.

That fear is the foundation of disease and inharmony is made plain in constantly recurring texts throughout the Bible. Job said the thing he greatly feared had come upon him, indicating that the fear of evil had brought its manifestation in discordant conditions. Fear made the rod which Moses hurled to the ground seemingly become a serpent, but when he fearlessly handled it, it became a rod again. It was the faith and understanding that knows no fear which enabled the three Hebrew boys to come unscathed through the fiery furnace; which preserved Daniel in the den of lions; which allowed men to escape unharmed from the boiling oil.

Throughout his ministry Jesus destroyed sin, healed sickness, and harmonized discord on the one basis that since God did not make them they had no reality, and their seeming existence was but a false belief that matter, God's suppositional opposite, could be endowed with life and intelligence. There was, therefore, no foundation for fear since there was nothing to fear. When we realize the loving Father's all-power and all-presence, we overcome fear. When fear is destroyed the inharmony ceases, whether to human sense the error seemed to have been moral, mental, or physical. John, the beloved disciple, tells us, "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. . . . Perfect love casteth out fear."

Now to anyone in the least familiar with the gospels it should be perfectly clear what Jesus meant when he said to the Jews, "If ye continue in my word ... ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." He had been teaching them of the Father, God, Spirit, endeavoring to have them realize the spirituality of the real man in God's image and likeness, the understanding of which sets man free from all the seeming material laws of sin, disease, and death. Jesus' statement that "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly," indicates the import of his teaching and demonstrations.

Our critic's statement that "the germ theory of disease is as firmly established as the principle of mathematics" would be at once startling and disconcerting if it were true. It is a man made theory, purely and simply, and is refuted by very many eminent medical men and investigators. Dr. John B. Fraser of Toronto conducted one hundred and thirty-three experiments with various kinds of disease germs (nineteen with germs of pneumonia), in attempts to produced the disease in human beings from the germs. In no case was he successful, and his conclusion was that while germs may be the product of disease they are decidedly not its cause. Dr. Walton Hubbard states the case very nicely when he says that because polliwogs are in a mud puddle, it does not prove that the polliwogs made the puddle, since they are there because it is a good place for polliwogs.

The biochemists have repeatedly shown the fallacy of the germ idea, and have proved that while it may be a very pretty speculative theory, it is very far removed from a scientific fact. A medical theory of to-day becomes a medical fact to-morrow and a medical discard the next day, and so the change goes on as it has constantly done throughout almost forty centuries of medical history.

In a dispatch from Des Moines, Iowa, recently published in many newspapers, it was stated that the officers and soldiers stationed at Camp Dodge, near there, who were Christian Scientists had not been affected by the epidemic. In a letter before me from the Naval Training Station at Great Lakes, Illinois, the statement is made that during the epidemic a company commander asked if there were any Christian Scientists in his company. As these stepped forward they were asked to volunteer to act as nurses in the hospital. Not one of them was attacked by the disease as a result of this service.

Christian Science is founded solely on the Bible, and the Christian Science church is "designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17). Since the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, explains how to gain the understanding of God and His creation, including man, through which understanding the sick are healed, the sinning regenerated, and inharmonious conditions harmonized in precisely the same manner that Jesus performed such works, it teaches man the truth about disease and instructs him how to protect himself against it. If we cannot find this protection in the Bible after proper instructions, then truly we are "of all men most miserable."

Since God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," since He is infinitely good and a "very present help in trouble," He is more to be relied upon than a medical science falsely so called, which is in a constant turmoil of shifting theory and practice. There are very many noble, self-sacrificing men in the medical profession who have performed herculean services during the prevalence of the epidemic. Unfortunately their efforts have been circumscribed by the limitations of matter, and matter has always proved a broken reed in times of stress.

On page 134 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "Man-made doctrines are waning. They have not waxed strong in times of trouble. Devoid of the Christ-power, how can they illustrate the doctrines of Christ or the miracles of grace? Denial of the possibility of Christian healing robs Christianity of the very element which gave it divine force and its astonishing and unequalled success in the first century."