LONG ago, the prophet Jeremiah said, "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed." Just before this he had deplored the mortal tendency to turn away from God, — "the fountain of living waters," — and to seek help elsewhere. He evidently had a glimpse of the great truth revealed in Christian Science, that only as we are healed by God, by divine Truth and Love, are we really "made whole." Mrs. Eddy says, "If God destroys not sin, sickness and death, they are not destroyed in the mind of mortals, but seem to this so-called mind to he immortal" (Science and Health, p. 231).
Until Christian Science was given to the world, no one seemed to see how great a wrong it is to perpetuate disease by presenting its images to thought and by keeping them ever in view. An even more tenacious form of error is the false belief as to what constitutes health. Mankind have been taught to believe that health is dependent upon matter and obedience to material law, and thought has thus been turned away from God, who is man's Life and the only source of his health. Furthermore, attention has been diverted from the necessity for obedience to moral and spiritual law, which alone can give health in its true sense. Health has usually been regarded as a physical condition, and many would say that it can exist independent of one's mental or moral state, a conclusion which Christian Science would deny. Christian Science teaches that health means wholeness, or holiness, the divine Mind and Life expressed in man's entire being, — in all that he thinks, says, and does, — and from this point of view it seems little less than sacrilegious to think of establishing health by means of pills and potions.
In Christian Science healing is something more than the adjustment of physical disabilities, although, on account of previously entertained opinions, this is usually all that is looked for by the patient who seeks its aid. To the student of Christian Science, however, healing is a process rather than a finished product. In this process material sense is displaced by spiritual sense, — the "old man" of fleshly belief dying daily (to quote Paul) and the "new man" appearing in the light of Truth. While it is true that entire and permanent relief from the severest suffering, and even from its accompaniment of so-called organic disease, may be instantaneous (such is the might of Truth), this does not constitute healing in its larger, truer sense. Entire mental transformation is needed in order to reach this goal. When Peter became a follower of Christ Jesus he at once became a student of healing through spiritual law. Before the first day of his discipleship had closed he witnessed many marvelous cases of healing, among them that of his wife's mother, and these cases were multiplied as time went on, until the healing work came to include the raising of the dead.
