The way in which agitation in legal circles, intended to secure decisions against Christian Scientists, is resulting in decisions in their favor, suggests an interesting retrospect. We find that the leaven of Christian Science has permeated the other modes of human consciousness, and we may wonder why the medical thought was first stirred, then the theological, and finally the legal. We shall find that Law, dealing with man in relation to men, presents greater unanimity of thought, is more scientific, and hence more nearly correct than medicine dealing with man's body, or theology dealing with man's soul. For right conduct or brotherly kindness, we need to understand Love; for right thinking or orthodoxy, we need to know the Truth; for right living, or health (which is one with holiness) we need to be acquainted with Life. "But the greatest of these is Love."
The theory of soul in the body which vaguely pervades modern thought comes no doubt from the land of the pyramids. The Egyptians drew pictures of the soul, winged like a hawk, escaping from the dying lips with the latest breath. The tenement of clay they preserved with spices and balm, that the soul might once more find its narrow home. What the people of ancient Egypt presented picturesquely our people of the West try to believe literally; but the unimaginative are puzzled if asked what the soul is. What body is seems to them plain enough, and "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," seems a common-sense motto. But immediately two questions arise: What shall we eat and what shall we drink? and how shall we dress in order to preserve life in the body? That mode of human thought described broadly by the word Medicine, has appeared in answer to these questions.
In this field are numberless remedies for ills that should never exist. The enumeration of them would be startling. Newspapers grow wealthy by announcing them as they come and pass. If a manufactory should send out vehicles to all parts of the land of such a kind that repair-shops were needed by thousands to keep them in running order, and if the repairers had opposing theories in regard to the defects, as the vehicles went from one shop to another to be patched up and altered, what botch-work they would represent at last when cast aside decrepit and useless. Wisdom would suggest such change in the first building as might make certain a usable and well-working product, even though the repairers might cry out against scientific manufacture. The repairers and patchers of man's body are many and their theories are as diverse as the four elements. Some use chemical earths and mineral waters, and some prescribe air, and others fire. Some use acids of strength and others use tinctures of faintest tinct. Sulphates and chlorides and bromides are believed in by some, while others trust to infusions and decoctions. Once blisters and scarifications, cupping and hot iron searings were in vogue. The pharmacopœia or drug-book includes poisons of all kinds, corrosive acids, neurotics and narcotics, from mineral salts of mercury to vegetable aconite. Food is also named a medicine, and its quantity and quality prescribed. There are so many of these repair-shops for man's body that he cannot visit them all, but as they are divided into schools he can try all their methods. If he has tried medicines in heroic doses, or in delicate attenuations, medicines chemical and herbal, medicines tonic and sedative, stimulant and narcotic, antiseptic, antithermic, antiloimic, antinephritic, antipodagric; if he has tried electricity, static or galvanic, bathing in water, hot or cold, salted or sulphurous, mud baths and vapor baths; if he has tried the masseur or the osteopath; if he has tried to obey the innumerable laws, prohibitions, and cautions of hygiene, and still is no better, but rather growing hopeless, joyless, one might well think that the repair-shops had proven their failure, and expect recovery only through reconstruction. Here is where Christian Science blesses the race. It was discovered by Mary Baker Eddy when she recovered from an accident pronounced fatal, through the reconstruction of Mind, by which term the Cause of all Good, that is God, is meant. This experience made the records of healing given in the Scriptures vital and real to her, and after study, and prayer, and experience in "doing the work of God" the Science of Christ-healing was understood, then founded and established for the race in a text-book. This Science shows how the reconstruction of man's sense of Life is achieved as he becomes transformed by the renewing of the mind, and obeying God as his Life, finds health the consequence. For then the need of a pharmacopœia disappears. Being well he needs no repair-shop of any kind.
