same overmastering belief or conviction on His part that those who came en rapport with the Divine Life, with the spiritual dynamo of the universe which we call God, became so spiritually positive that their supremacy over material limitations was absolute. On one occasion He said: "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."**

Again He says: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."t The early Church history as chronicled in the Acts of the Apostles is almost as rich in instances of cures of almost all manner of diseases, and even of the raising of the dead, as is the story of the life of Christ and His earthly ministry. Thus we find, for example, the case of the congenital cripple who had never been able to walk a step and who was daily borne to the gate Beautiful of the Temple to ask alms, and whom Peter instantly cured through a realization of the teachings of Jesus touching the supremacy of the spiritual; the case of Æneas, instantly cured by Peter after he had been bed-ridden for eight years with palsy;§ and the still more wonderful case of Tabitha, or Dorcas, who had died and had been laid out in the upper chamber ready for burial, when it occurred to her friends to notify the apostle Peter, who immediately repaired to the house of mourning, and in answer to his prayer she was restored whole and well to her friends. *

Again, in the case of the man at Lystra, another congenital cripple, we have the description of a life that had never known what it was to walk, instantly, in obedience to the august declaration of the Apostle Paul, leaping and walking, to the amazement of the people, who declared in their wonder that the Gods

*Mark, 11: 24. +Matthew, 7: 7. Acts, 3: 6-8. Acts, 9 33, 34.

||Acts, 9: 36, 39, 41.

had come down in the likeness of men.*

During the ministry of Paul in Asia, as he journeyed from city to city, his demonstrations of the spiritual power over disease everywhere enabled him quickly to spread the Gospel. He is related to have cured various diseases, and even insanity, by absent treatments.† The young man Eutychus, who fell from the third loft and was taken up dead, it is reported was restored by the Apostle Paul.t

The demonstration of the power of the apostle's thought over the venom of the viper is also described in the story of Paul gathering the bundle of sticks, when a viper came out and fastened on his hand, but he shook it off into the fire and felt no harm; and when the natives beheld that instead of his body swelling and his falling down dead, he suffered no harm, they believed him to be a god.§ And this narration is followed by the account of the cure of the father o, Publius, the chief man of the islandf who was stricken with bloody flux.||

The apostle James makes the positive and unequivocal declaration that "the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up." Here, it will be noted that the supremacy of the spiritual over the material limitations is as clearly stated as it was in the passage from Mark, where Christ is represented as commanding His disciples to accompany their preaching with the healing of the sick, and where He distinctly declares that the sign of discipleship will be the power to demonstrate the supremacy of health over disease by the appeal from matter to the spirit or to God.

From what we find in the Acts of the Apostles and in the teachings of the New Testament, and from other chronicles relating to the Primitive Church before it became corrupted, it is apparent

*Acts, 14: 8-10. †Acts, 19: 12. Acts, 20: 9. Acts, 28: 3-6. ||Acts, 28: 8-9. ¶James, 5: 15.

that the apostles, the early preachers and the early Christians all alike took Jesus seriously and did precisely what He so solemnly commanded, and that their power was no less potent or pronounced than Jesus'. Indeed, to those who believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures and who hold that Jesus was divine and therefore not a victim of illusion, it would seem that there is no escaping the conclusion that Christ held that diseases of all kinds, organic no less than functional, were absolutely subservient to spiritual domination. He knew no distinction between functional and organic in the treatment of disease. He did not believe, as we have seen, that cures through the recognition of what He believed to be the omnipotent power of a God of Love, were limited to any kind of disease. Furthermore, He did not believe that the power to cure disease or to make man recognize his spiritual supremacy or essential divinity, was owing to any peculiar power resident in Himself. Indeed, He expected greater things from His disciples, if they remained faithful to His teachings and to the recognition of the spiritual law which He held to be supreme. For He says on one occasion: "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do."* He believed that the more men came en rapport with Deity or in at-one-ment with God, the greater would be the recognition of their rightful power or the dominion which the Creator had given to man, and that with that recognition would come more and more complete supremacy over all physical conditions. Christ never seemed conscious of any limiting laws which prevented victory, save the lack of a realizing sense of God's power or dominion, given to His ehildren when He created them in His image and likeness. Only the unbelief in spiritual supremacy, the materialistic thought that environed Him, and the complete dominance of

*John, 14: 12.

sense perception that He encountered on every hand were regarded by Christ as obstacles to the manifestation of victory over all forms of disease and unhappy conditions. That He Himself felt the effect of this unbelief born of materialism, and the necessity of His at times getting away from its deadly atmosphere, is abundantly indicated in the Gospels. Thus we find that in certain places Christ could do no mighty works because of the unbelief of the people.

Again, how real must have been His realization of the need of spiritual strength which led Him to withdraw at night alone into the mountains to pray— that is, to commune with the Infinite Father and realize His oneness with God.

On one occasion the disciples could not cure a case of so-called obsession, or what modern physicians would term insanity in a violent form. Christ promptly cured the case, and in answer to the disciples' question as to the reason why they were unable to effect the cure, Jesus did not claim any special power resident in Himself, but intimated that He had simply gained greater power, through spiritual absorption and prayer, than they possessed; that is, that through prayer He had come more completely en rapport with the divine or spiritual reservoir of Life and Love. These and other passages that might be cited prove clearly that in Christ's consciousness there was no question but what through holiness and spiritual supremacy man could come so into oneness with God as to reflect the supreme spiritual truth and overcome inharmony, disease and unhappy conditions incident to the material life.

Recently Dr. McComb in a paper in The Century referred somewhat slightingly to those who are to-day treating disease as Jesus, His apostles and the early Christians are represented as doing, by referring to their method as one “in which men and women are treated as if they were disembodied spirits." "We distinguish," he continues, referring to

himself and his theological associates, "with science, between 'organic' and 'functional' disorders, and we believe that the legitimate sphere for moral and psychical methods is that of functional and not organic.'

The Rev. Dr. Worcester, rector of Emmanuel Church and head of the medico-religious dispensary to which we have referred, shows what the modern orthodox churches, that have been forced to take notice of the amazing growth of Christian Science, due largely to the thousands of cures effected after physicians had passed the death sentence on the patients, offer in lieu of the clear, positive and direct teachings of Jesus and their result in His ministry and in the early church, if orthodox Christianity is correct in regard to the inerrancy of the New Testament. Dr. Worcester in the New York Times recently said in referring to their work:

"By turning over to doctors those persons who require medical treatment we have not only lost no patients, but almost all of those whom we have treated ourselves have been greatly benefited, and many have recovered entirely.

"The functional nervous disorders treated by us at Emmanuel Church include neurasthenia, hysteria, psychathenia, mild melancholia, fixed ideas, phobias, and bad habits.

"One important part of our work has been the treatment of alcoholism both in men and women; also drug habits, sexual perversion, etc."

Rev. Samuel Fallows of the Reformed Episcopal Church is another orthodox clergyman who has come into prominence by an effort to mix Christian healing with modern medical practice. In the New York Herald Rev. Dr. Fallows recently said:

"My treatment is no secret.

"I first employ the psychic methodI give human suggestions and persuasion. I appeal to the reason, and thus encourage the troubled and hopeless. I iterate and reiterate certain common-sense ideas,

until the sub-consciousness of the individual before me is reached.

"I used the best of Christian Science and the best of materia medica.. Linking the curative principle included in Christ's teachings with the best in medicine, I think I have found the most hopeful of all remedies, for hope is revived and confidence restored."

Now certain facts in this connection are worthy of consideration. The orthodox church as such upholds the inerrancy of the New Testament and claims that Christ was God in human form; yet its practice clearly proves that it either does not believe that Christ spake wisely or truthfully when He taught and commanded His disciples to cure "the lepers" and "all manner of disease," or else it does not believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures.

If these men will come out frankly and take the position of the Unitarians or that of the liberal religious leaders who reject the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, if they will say to the world that they do not believe the alleged miracles were ever wrought, upon which the Christian faith has been so largely nourished through the ages, then their stand will be consistent. But all those churches which hold to the divinity of Christ and the inerrancy of the Scriptures, and refuse to accept the teachings of the New Testament in regard to the cure of disease as taught by Jesus, are discrediting Christ and His claims by their recreancy in regard to these things.

One of the many eulogistic articles that have recently been written concerning the work of Emmanuel Church appeared in The Outlook. It was from the pen of Dr. Richard C. Cabot, the well-known Boston physician. At the outset the good doctor says something that is eloquently suggestive as to the reason that has led to this sudden harnessing together of religion and medicine by the two professions that for over twenty years have ridiculed Christian

66

Science as crazy idealism. He says: Partly because the church has lost its interest in the human body, and partly because the doctors have lost their interest in everything else, comes Christian Science, and triumphs."

Here we have the secret of this belated religio-medical activity. Dr. Cabot points out the fact that: No one can be treated at Emmanuel Church without the diagnosis and approval of a physician. Each patient brings a letter from his physician, or, if he has none, is referred for examination to one of the physicians of the parish, who have agreed to examine, free of charge, all who apply for admission to the Health Class. If the patient is found to have no organic disease and to be otherwise suitable for psychical treatment, he is then taken in charge by Dr. Worcester, Dr. McComb, or one of their assistants."

Of the remedial means resorted to "suggestion," he observes, "is the one most used."

Dr. Cabot further states that he has studied the records of the cases treated between March, 1907, and November of the same year, a period of seven months. He found that there had been 178 cases taken. All, of course, were persons whom the physicians had declared to be affected merely with functional disorders. Of this number, 82 were treated for neurasthenia; 24 for insanity; 18 for fears and fixed ideas; 22 for alcoholism; 10 for sexual neuroses; 5 for hysteria; and 17 miscellaneous. Of this number, 55 appear to have dropped out of sight, as the reports show that the results of the treatment in these cases are unknown. Most of them probably received little or no benefit, or they would most likely have reported results. Forty-eight were known not to have been improved. Twenty-eight reported slight improvement, and 47 were much improved. Thus it will be seen that 103 were either not improved at all or did not see fit to report results; 28 were but slightly helped, making a total of 131; while 47

were much improved. We are glad to know that Dr. Cabot and the reverend gentlemen who are at the head of this movement feel much encouraged at the above results following these sifted cases of persons who were only suffering from functional diseases, although to us the results seem surprisingly meager. From our observations we are thoroughly convinced that if Christian Science treatment of the sick had not been far more successful, this church would never have made such surprising and steady gain in America; yet it must be remembered that Christian Scientists take Jesus' words and the statements given in the Bible in regard to disease, quite seriously. They believe He was neither untruthful nor ignorant; that He meant what He said when He declared that the healing of the sick in His name was one of the signs that marked His discipleship. They believe the Bible record of the cures made by Jesus, the apostles, the seventy and the early Christians after Christ, to be historical verities which prove the truth of Jesus' teachings in regard to sickness. And to the thousands and tens of thousands of persons who have been cured after regular physicians have failed to benefit them, and in numbers of cases after the regular doctor had pronounced a death sentence on them, their cures, together with the new exalted faith and moral enthusiasm that they have derived from the new understanding of the Christ truth, have led to a belief that the founder of Christian Science has rediscovered the truth which Jesus taught, lived, practiced, and which was a priceless heritage of the church before the days of Constantine,a heritage that largely explains the rapid spread of primitive Christianity.

But to return to the central thought of this paper. Do the millions of orthodox Christians who accept plenary inspiration and the Divinity of Christ, and do the ministers of the churches whose creeds teach these things, carry the sign that Jesus declared should prove them

His disciples? Do they attempt to do as He solemnly commanded them to do in the presence of sickness? There can be but one truthful answer to this question. Even those who are driven by the rapid growth of Christian Science to do something, adopt a method that frankly discredits Jesus' theory and claim and the results that are said to have followed His treatment and that of His disciples. Jesus commanded the disciples to heal "all manner of disease," to "cleanse the lepers" and raise the dead; and if the Bible report is true, the Nazarene and His disciples during the life of Christ on earth and after the establishment of the Christian Church, did these things. Organic disease was as quickly and successfully met as were functional disorders, if the records of the New Testament are trustworthy, and if the Bible, as the great orthodox world claims, is inerrant,

there can be no question on this point. Hence is it not perfectly clear that the attitude of orthodox Christianity to-day in regard to the treatment of the sick indicates all but universal infidelity to the long-cherished and defended theological position of the orthodox churches touching plenary inspiration and the Divinity of Christ? And if the Bible is to be taken as the very Word of God, it necessarily must be true. If Christ is the very Son of God, He would not have been ignorant of the laws of life. This, it seems, ought to be a very solemn thought for the millions who think they believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and the Divinity of Christ. It may also help them to understand one great reason for the astonishing growth of Christian Science during the last two decades. B. O. FLOWER.

Boston, Massachusetts.

W

WE HAVE had Socialism defined and described by its critics and its enemies in nearly every magazine and newspaper in America. It is no more than fair to the non-Socialist readers to say nothing of fairness to the millions of Socialists in the world to have Socialism defined by the Socialists themselves.

It is a well-known fact that the enemies of a cause never state its purpose or program fairly. The critic, though he states facts, may nevertheless so arrange those facts and so emphasize certain ones and so omit others as to entirely distort the whole and mislead the reader.

Socialism, after all, is a relatively simple, definite and clear proposition. And yet we have the amusing spectacle of