The importance of the healing work in Christian Science, the healing of both sickness and sin, is a subject upon which too much cannot be said, because this healing presents the certain proof of the validity of our pretensions as Christians, and conforms to a standard by which we must be adjudged true followers of Christ Jesus.
During all ages of the Christian era the healing of the sick has been conceded to be a legitimate subject for prayer. We know that Jesus healed the sick by prayer, and that in the centuries immediately succeeding his earthly career this healing was an important factor in upbuilding the Christian Church. The following extract from an article in the current issue of the Christian Science Sentinel is a comprehensive statement of the position of the early Christian Church:—
"According to the testimony of the Church Fathers, many of whom were men of great learning as well as piety, the 'signs' and blessings that Jesus promised 'shall follow them that believe' continued for a considerable time after the days of the apostles. Such a critical and skeptical historian as Gibbon, speaking of the causes which led to the rapid spread of Christianity during the first centuries of missionary activity, says, 'The Christian Church, from the time of the apostles and their first disciples, has claimed an uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of visions, and of prophecy, the power of expelling demons, of healing the sick and raising from the dead. ... In the days of Irenacus, about the end of the second century, the resurrection from the dead was very far from being esteemed an uncommon event' (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I., pp. 539, 541)."
