TOO LIGHTLY REGARDED by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 45.

TOO LIGHTLY REGARDED.

By Editor

An esteemed physician recently said, in reply to a question as to whether it is best to seek healing through "Christian Science":—

"If you have nothing the matter with you but a morbid imagination, if you have been almost scared to death because of a disease you didn't have, Christian Science is just the thing for you. . . . But if a man has a real malady, Christian Science won't help him at all."

There is more of the same import. To our mind this is treating a serious matter altogether too lightly. "Christian Science," as taught by Mrs. Eddy and others, is either from above or beneath. Tested by the Word of God, it is from beneath, and is akin to its sister, Spiritualism, more latterly growing popular under such catching names as "psychic force," "Christian Science," etc. Christian Science denies the essential doctrines of Christianity and the atonement, while it masquerades under its name. It has a power, which is in a sense the power of God, but it is perverted and exerted through the evil one. It does heal or remarkably stay disease, and has so done again and again, through a power above that of the human. It heals or stays diseases of the body that it may fasten a more dread disease upon the soul. It gives to the flesh a seeming freedom that it may bind the mind in the thraldom of delusion.

It is one of the gilded baits which the adversary uses to ensnare souls. It is the beneficent act of the libertine to draw a soul from virtue to death. And many, many earnest, sincere souls are ensnared thereby, and in turn ensnare others.

Now to say to one who has an imaginary malady, "Go to Christian Science," is, tho spoken in irony, treating the matter altogether too lightly. To say that it can not help one with a real malady at all, is to ignore facts and testimonies as clear as ever supported a physician's reputation.

"But people have died treated by 'Christian Science' healers;" just so, and they have died treated by physicians, according to the books—many, many who would not have died, had their treatment been purely negative.

We would not be understood as condemning the medical profession. Many of them are among the worthiest of men, but "Christian Science" is not to be thus ignored; and to treat it as a mere figment of the imagination, or to prosecute and persecute by statute law its devotees, will not help the M. D.'s, while it will multiply converts to the deception. And, after all, what about "hypnotism," etc., used by reputable physicians? Is it not of the same order?