Christian Scientists have often been threatened with legal persecution for the good work they are doing, and in a few cases the attempt has been abortively made. In Georgia, they have framed a law which seems designed to make our action illegal. But it is in vain. Christian Science is the Science of Christianity, and this we must be allowed to formulate and practice. As we have no state church, so we have no anti-church state; and our religious freedom is not to be curtailed in the interest of a hoary and decrepid theory of physic, erected into a craft as a source of wealth and social respectability. We claim the prerogatives of our national birth-right.
Besides, Christian Scientists practising their holy vocation, are not mere empirics and quacks. Most of these are in the ranks of our enemies, who use drugs, and pills, and knives, and blisters, and other such tortures. Our method is scientific. It is based on Principle, and animated and guided by Principle. It does not experiment on the sick, the wounded and dying, as the old physical method does. We always know just what we are doing. They, therefore, are the empirics, and we are the scientists, as we claim. Besides, we make our work the subject of systematic study; and graduation from our chartered schools is guarantee of legal qualification; while our connection in Association and Church proves our social and religious standing and rights.
We therefore approve the following letter of H. P. Bailey to a friend:—
