In the endeavor to express our mental concepts there is often a keen sense of the inadequacy of speech fully to define them. Nevertheless, this does not justify us in manifesting a poverty of expression, or in using that which is ambiguous, obscure, or erroneous. Hence the necessity of submitting our methods of speech as well as action to the most careful scrutiny, choosing only the fittest and best, and discarding all that is inferior. It is as important that progress be made along this line as any other, and if we watch carefully we may find many expressions that we can well afford to lay aside for those which are better.
In the relation of experiences in Christian Science the term "impersonal healing" is used frequently, and it is a question whether or not it really conveys the thought intended. The Standard Dictionary defines the word impersonal as "not having or implying personality." If this definition is to be accepted, there can be no such thing as impersonal healing, unless we can conceive of healing as afloat in the atmosphere somewhere without any relation whatever to any person.
Healing always implies some person healed, therefore in the exact sense no healing can be impersonal. This, of course, cannot be the sense in which the term "impersonal healing" is used, although it would be implied according to the Standard definition. What, then, is meant? From the nature of the cases generally cited, the phrase evidently is used to indicate that no intentional or consciously directed effort has been made on the part of one person to heal some specific ailment in some other person. Cases of healing generally referred to as of this class are such as may have resulted from listening to a Christian Science lecture, from a conversation with a Christian Scientist regarding an ailment when treatment was not asked for, or from the reading of Christian Science literature, especially Science and Health, or some other work by its author.
