Webster City freeman. [volume] (Webster City, Hamilton County, Iowa) 1884-1946, 1917-09-18

good practice few years ago Is not
good practice today.
am not criticizing the doctor
he does the best he can with the
poor weapons which have been CIV
EN- him. am sympathizing with
him, because just when he thinks
he has it, he finds he has not. 49,
In practising medicine / soon
found that there was a certain men
tai element in every case, and as it
was obvious that this element could
not be reached by any material
means, began to try to estimate
just how large a factor it was in
every case that came to me. At first,
i thought some cases were quite
largely physical, and others quite
largely mental. but as time went on
and through practice my observation
of the mental side of the question
became more keen, saw that many
types of sickness were wholly men
tai, and finally came to see that they
were all entirely so.
This did not mean that was a
Christian Scientist when had ar
rived at this point,-far from it! l
decided that since | had to deal with
so large a mental question, which
the medical profession either wholly
or almost wholly ignored, 1 would
study mental healing from every
standpoint from which it had been
presented, with the idea that |
would find in all literature on the
subject the presentation of the same
principle, and so would have a
broader view of the question than
any single writer, and with this
knowledge would be able to heal.
Accordingly, I studied everything |
could find, from mental therapeutics
to Christian Science, and as stud
led 1 saw that all were alike except
one, and that one was Christian Sci
ence.
Christian Science was the only one
that had so large a grasp of the
allness of God as to refuse to dishon-
or Him by admitting that anything
that He had made was imperfect or
could become imperfect; was sick
when He created it, or had within
it any God-given quality that could
allow 1t to become sick. 1t was the
only one in which there was no COM
promise with matter, and which dar-
ed to deny the material world, the
flesh, and the devil, because they
were contrary to His creative per-
lection; the only one that dared to
deny the actual existence Of any
thing unlike God, and therefore the
only one that offered assurance Of
healing after human hope and hui
man will. and human. reason had
failed.
Do you suppose that when saw
all this l accepted Christian Science?
Nc! Instead, for two years read
everything l could find against it
(and it was at a time when there
- a.
was much criticism), in the hope OF
convincing myself that it was not
true, for / saw that the spirituality
of Christian Science would not mix
with my profession, and I did not
not want to give up the practice Of
medicine. But the more l read
against it, the more I became con-
WINGED of its truth, and here am.
1t does heal, and it does save, just as
it did in Jesus time. We need to
know something about God, howey-
err, in order to appropriate the heal
ing, and throughout the entire
teaching of Christian Science the ne
cessity for spiritual understanding
in order that we may know Gods
law is constantly insisted upon.
A study of the lives of the most
prominent characters in the Bible
reveals the fact that their closeness
to God was the result Of their deep
and constant meditation of Him, and
that knowledge of God has always
been essential to the demonstration
of His power over material condi-
tions. We are prone to think that
Abraham and Moses, Elijah and
Elisha, John the Baptist and Jesus,
were arbitrarily chosen of God to
fulfill particular mission with no
reference to their acquired spiritual
understanding, and that their ability
to demonstrate Gods power was a
special gift bestowed upon them for
the occasion. 1t is true that they
were chosen of God for the work
which they did, but in exactly the
nan xrnv that and gOp6 man