EASING HUMANITY’S BURDENS (Chapter three)

Some of Chapter 3 reminds me of Mary Baker Eddy’s including, in Science and Health, comments from medical practitioners on the inadequacy of medical science.  Peel says, “…I have drawn my examples almost entirely from the self-critical medical literature…”  Both writers give full credit to medical people who work so earnestly to help human kind.

Mrs. Eddy introduces the self-critical comments of the doctors she quotes, with “With due respect for the faculty, I kindly quote….” (See S&H pp 162-164.)  And Peel has already quoted examples of Mrs. Eddy’s respect for the “cultured class of medical practitioners” (ibid p. 23).

All of which seems to indicate that really not much has changed since Science and Health was written.  The medical people and Christian Scientists are all doing the best they know how at this time for ‘tired humanity’.  (See S&H 494:4.)

I am touched the way Peel puts us all in the one boat, so to speak, when he quotes from Science and Health: “The cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in the one divinity” (p. 571:19).

And, as I finish Chapter 3, I feel great love for all who are working to ease humanity’s burdens, and this certainly does include the medical people, who sometimes have what seems to them to be huge bundles of guilt.  Peel quotes Jesus (Luke 4:23), “Physician, heal thyself’, in expressing his love for all.  He writes, page 31, “’Physician, heal thyself’ is a must for both the medical doctor and the Christian healer.  And neither can afford to stand in judgment on the other.” 

Joyce Voysey