IN the 5th chapter of John's Gospel we read that Jesus said to a man whom he had healed, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." This admonition of Jesus provided all mankind with an unfailing prescription for the prevention and cure of disease. All other statements connected with his healing ministrations are in accord with this, and have substantially the same meaning when analyzed and rightly understood; it may therefore be considered the basis of all spiritual healing, both of mind and body.
In contrast with medical theory and prescriptions, this command of Jesus in the exercise of his mission as a physician is unique and startling. Even when viewed from a moral standpoint it still stands separate and apart from all scholastic theology in that it classifies disease as the effect of sin and strongly emphasizes the necessity of uplifting and purifying the individual consciousness in order to gain and retain health. Jesus had healed the man before these words were spoken, thus proving that the supposed law or claim of sin which had produced the physical ailment had already been destroyed by the power and operation of spiritual law, as understood and demonstrated by him. The man's consciousness was therefore partially regenerated or he could not have been healed. This conclusion and the premises leading to it must be recognized as essential and inevitable, or Jesus' remark would be lacking in consistency and would bear no relation to the healing which had just been accomplished.
This one instance, recorded through all ages since its occurrence, should be enough in itself to arouse humanity to the recognition of disease as something else than physical, and to seek its prevention and cure through spiritual rather than material means. The healing of disease by Christian Science is an exemplification of the truth of Jesus' words and works, and is accomplished wholly through its theology, which uproots error and begins at once to rid the human consciousness of sin. Christian Science includes in its analysis of sin all forms of thought which claim to have origin, intelligence, or power apart from God, or which are unlike infinite good. It includes the collective sense of error as well as the individual belief in or expression of it. It declares that all human action and conditions are the effect of thought, so that it matters not whether any instance of disease is the direct result of individual yielding to sin, or has its cause in the universal belief in a law of disease, or whether it is superinduced by fear—it is all included in the scientific classification of sin, and Jesus' remark is applicable to all these conditions.
