Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/247

Rh which my books afford, unless I am personally present. Nor should patients anticipate being helped by me through some favored student. Such practice would be erroneous, and such an anticipation on the part of the sick a hindrance rather than help.

My good students have all the honor of their success in teaching or in healing. I by no means would pluck their plumes. Human power is most properly used in preventing the occasion for its use; otherwise its use is abuse.

To say that it is sin to ride to church on an electric car, would not be more preposterous than to believe that man's Maker is not equal to the destruction of disease germs. Christ, Truth, the ever-present spiritual idea, who raises the dead, is equal to the giving of life and health to man and to the healing, as aforetime, of all manner of diseases. I would not charge Christians with doubting the Bible record of our great Master's life of healing, since Christianity must be predicated of what Christ Jesus taught and did; but I do say that Christian Science cannot annul nor make void the laws of the land, since Christ, the great demonstrator of Christian Science, said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”

I have expressed my opinion publicly as to the precautions against the spread of so-called infectious and contagious diseases in the following words: —

“Rather than quarrel over vaccination, I recommend, if the law demand, that an individual submit to this process, that he obey the law, and then appeal to the gospel to