Mexico weekly ledger., 1894-09-20

o"i ihuiu ueeu W say tnat q f00l was
born every minute. These are bigger
fools than existed during Barnum' IS
time. Referring to this matter the
Chicago Inter Ocean says:
Christian science, so called
though it isn't a science and it isn't
Christian, is fad which appeals
to certain highly Imaginative grossly
superstltious and Unbalanced men,
talltles as did the black art, of which
1t is diluted, chastened and subli.
mated outeropping, in earlier DAYS
when medicine and alchemy, as
tronomy and astrology were so sadly
mixed up as to obtain the same
general classification in the public
mind. Christian Scientists of to. day
hold to the miracles of the old and
new testaments as the most valuable
| portions of the book, and accept as
literally true in this age and genera
ton the scriptural declaration that
faith can move mountains. If faith
can move mountains, which are
very stubborn and unportable things,
so they logically reason from false
hypothesis, it can with equal or even
greater ease remove ulcers, infiam-
nations, bacteria, bacilli and other
bodily distempers, which, since they
are removable by faith, can have no
real existence, and are but phan-
tastes of an Imagination which is
disordered by reason of insufficient
functional secretions of that all
necessary quantity. And upon such
conclusion, if man be I'LL. e.,
inadequately supplied with faith of
his own secreting--the Christian
Scientists, who are possessed of an
overplus. would gather around him
and, by some sort of magnetic in
duction carried on through prayerful
processes and a concentration of
thought, instill into his imperfect
personality a sufficient additional
supply of faith to counteract the ef-
fects of mis- overbalance of material
ism.
So long as they confine their in
teresting treatment to adult persons
of sane mind, who voluntarily sub.
NIT to it, society has no issue to
make with the Christian Scientists
any more than it has with persons
who prefer to live on vegetable diet
Or persons who refuse to bathe. But
they do not confine their treatment
to adults Or to willing persons. They
have repeatedly come into collision
with the authorities because they
have refused to allow medical at
tendance upon sick or injured chill
dren or denied the prayers of hedrid-
den persons for doctor. Moreover,
they have now branched out in an
other direction which has brought
them into collision with the powers
of government established by ration
al persons. In Burlington, Iowa,
where, it seems. Christian science
has a large number of devotees, the
school authorities have been served
with a formal demand that the
children of the Scientists be given
no instruction in either physiology
or geography, because, forsooth,
their progressive parents have be-
come convinced that human beings
are possessed OF no material bodies;
that the earth is not the substance it
appears to ordinary eyes or part of
a material universe, and they-the
progressive parents-do not want the
minds of their offspring numbered
with gross materialism which might
vitiate or obstruct the wellsprings of
That faith which should be their
dominant characteristic.
1t is satisfying to know that the
members of the Burlington school
board have paid no attention to this
absurd demand, and that the chill
dren of the Christian Scientists will
continue to imbibe knowledge as to
their physical construction and the
physical confguration of the earth's
surface. To further negative bad
home influences it might be wise to
give them special courses in neuras-
themes and evidences of insanity.