What is healing? This question is fully answered in Science and Health, to all who follow its teachings, in demonstration of the words and works of Jesus Christ. Thereby we learn that "there are really but two modes of practice; one is quackery the other is Science," (S. and H. p. 321). Since Science is the word of God, which is spiritual,—"quackery," then, must include methods of medicine, mesmerism, hypnotism, spiritualism, prayer to a personal God (which "affects the sick like a drug," S. and H., p. 489), and all other material methods. They all ignorantly claim that sin and sickness are real, either as mind or as matter, and that their method of healing is also real and good or God-given, thus ignorantly claiming that one reality can destroy or take the place of another, which according to Science and Truth is an impossibility. The question What is healing? then, is answered at first partially, and in the end fully, as it is seen, acknowledged, realized and demonstrated, that Christian Science is the Word of God, which finally heals the world of all quackery or the sin of believing that sin and sickness are real or God-given, when, in fact, God—Good,—and His true idea or reflection alone is real.
In order to make this Science practical to human sense, we follow the instructions of Jesus, by agreeing with our adversary, quackery and its mortal methods (as we seem to human sense to be in the way with it),—only to disagree with it, in the same relation that Truth has to a lie, or as Science to illusion, Intelligence to non-intelligence, something to nothing, and so on. The true idea and reflection of God (who is Life, Truth and Love) meets every mortal, material supposition that life can rightfully, or scientifically, be something opposed to God and His spiritual reflection, man in His image and likeness.
Quackery, then, is human delusion, or one claim of sense over another as good or evil (since it believes in both as realities). As the Scripture teaches, this human delusion claims its origin with the Adam lie which hides itself behind another error of its own belief, when the voice of God (Science) is near enough to expose its nakedness. This false claim of creation is a murderer and a suicide from the beginning since all its materia medica and religious beliefs agree, either willingly or unwillingly, with the false knowledge and testimony of the five personal senses. This supposed knowledge promises to make men as gods (minds) but fulfils nothing in Truth.
