nts and conceive our
prejudices from mere surface considerations. Call life what you
will,--leave out the symbolic word "God" altogether,--the facts remain.
The true scientific spirit must reverence and adore the power that lies
behind creation. It is as inconsistent for the bacteriologist to be an
unbeliever as it is for the Christian Scientist to deny the value of
bacteriology. Medicine is infinitely farther advanced than Christian
Science, and yet Christian Science has grasped some truth that the
natural scientist has stupidly missed. When an obsession is thrown off
and courage substituted for fear, we witness as important a "cure" as
can be shown to the credit of surgery. If the Christian Scientists and
the other faith-curers were only less superficial and less narrow in
their explanation of the facts, if they would condescend to study the
diseases they treat, they would be entitled to, and would receive, more
respect and consideration.

The cure and prevention of disease through the agency of man are
evidently part of the divine plan. Our eagerness to advance along the
lines of investigation and practice is but that divine plan in action.
The truly scientific spirit will neglect no possible curative agent.
When scientific men ridicule prayer, they are thinking not of the real
thing which is above all possible criticism, but of the feeble and often
pathetic groping for the real thing. We ask in our prayers for
impossible blessings that would invert the laws of God and change the
face of nature--very well, we must be prepared for disappointment. The
attitude of prayer may, indeed, transform our own lives and make
possible for us experiences that would otherwise have been impossible.
But our pathetic demands--we shall never know how forlorn and weak they
are. Prayer is the opening of the heart to the being we call God--it is
most natural and reasonable. If we pray in our weakness and blindness
for what we may not have, there is, nevertheless, a wonderful
re-creative effect within us. The comfort and peace of such communion is
beyond all else healing and restoring in its influence upon the troubled
and anxious mind of man. The poet or the scientist who bows in adoration
before the glory of God revealed in nature, prays in effect to that God
and his soul is refreshed and renewed. The poor wretch who stands
blindfolded before the firing squad, waiting the word that ends the life
of a military spy, is near enough to God--