Sri Sai Baba`S:Charters And Sayings

TWENTY-NINTH TALK 587

forcing their ideas u^Ton us, just as the Church used
to get the Civil Law to enforce its doctrines. It w^s
the Civil Law, you know, which burned all those
people. The Church, finding it could not make them
say that they believed certain things, would decide
that this was a case where the Civil Law should Jbe
called in, and handed them over with the hypocritical
prayer that there should be no shedding of blood,
which prevented the Civil Law from cutting off the
poor fellow's head decently, and made it burn him
instead.

The doctors of the present day are enforcing upon
us some of their ideas by law. They are enforcing
vaccination. In certain cases they enforce other
kinds of inoculation. Now there is no doubt that, by
giving you a milder form of the disease, they make
you much less liable to take the more serious form
called smallpox. That is an unquestionable fact—I
think it has been proved to be so. But many of you
know that, by making yoi^ immune for a time (it is
only for a time, mind) against that particular disease,
they run a distinct risk of giving you others. It is a
question whether, on the whole, the remedy may not
be w^orse than the disease, in the actual amount of
suffering entailed. That is an arguable point. We
can taj^e no sides, but it is at least an arguable
matter. The danger of it all is this—that the doctors,
in gaining* power, enforce certain ideas, but, when
they find them unsatisfactory very frequently change