Suppose some of us to be suffering from fatigue, pain, or any inaction or abnormal action of our so called material bodies suppositionally controlled by physical law. Suppose that instead of taking medicine or resorting to any other material remedy, we decide to confine ourselves to the realization of the truth of certain ideas. Running parallel to this process of realization is a return to the natural working of our so-called physical functions. That this is true is known to Christian Scientists, who consciously set about and carry out this process of realization, and as a result experience the disappearance of fatigue, pain, etc.
But what are the ideas, the realization of which proves to be remedial and is paralleled by a normal condition of the material body? They are ideas which contradict the reality of matter and of physical law, including of course material bodies. They are ideas which are assertions of the reality of the spiritual to the exclusion of the whole material concept. No idea can be expressed, although it may seem to be paralleled, by that which contradicts it. Therefore, although a certain degree of realization of the foregoing ideas is paralleled by the appearance of a material body, we must not conclude that this body is the real expression, reflection, or appearance of these ideas.
In our demonstrations, therefore, we must not be satisfied with the appearance of a "normal" physical body, however satisfactory it may seem when compared with some previous state of illness, but we must realize that a material concept of the body is not scientific and is therefore under the ban. For, as we have said, physical evils can be remedied in the realm of consciousness only by a contradiction of the reality of matter and its asserted laws as a whole; or in other words, since that thought alone has power which holds to the nothingness of matter, we cannot hold as real or be satisfied with an appearance which belongs to an order whose nothingness we are asserting.
