THERE is no basis for comparison between Christian Science and other healing methods, for the simple reason that it is totally unlike anything else. Christian Science is a wholly spiritual system, and excludes the use of all material agencies, healing sickness and sin by the same divine Principle; whereas all other methods, including those which are called mental, rest upon a material foundation. While Christian Scientists do not discountenance the use of other means by those who believe in them, the frequent misstatement of their method of healing and the source of its power, makes it seem necessary at times to reiterate some essential truths regarding Christian Science and its practice, not by way of controversy or defense, but to prevent needless confusion on the part of inquirers.
While Christian Science teaches that matter, in the absolute sense, is not a reality, and refuses to admit that sin and disease are facts or factors in man's real being, it does recognize that these conditions exist in human belief as false mental states to be corrected and eliminated. The point at issue is how these conditions are to be dealt with and overcome. Christian Science takes note of them only as errors, and treats them with the truth of man's spiritual being and perfection in God which it reveals: and therein is the secret of its success, for one must know that even the smallest error cannot be corrected so long as one is ignorant of or does not apply the truth. Christian Science does not make the mistake it is sometimes charged with, of meeting error with error, or of seeking healing from the same fountain that sends forth disease, but it stands on that truth which all human history confirms, that there is nothing good but God: or, in other words, that there is nothing true or right apart from infinite Mind.
How to escape from or to avoid suffering and disease is the problem mankind have grappled with for ages, and, although progress has apparently been made along certain preventive lines, involved in a change of education or environment, mortals still remain in the grasp of materialism and its attendant evils. The efforts of medical, ethical, and religious systems, combating sin and disease on the basis of their admitted reality and power, have not subdued these evils or delivered mankind from their oppression. It should be evident to the most pronounced materialist that human redemption calls for a more effective system of treatment than the so-called human mind has yet put forward, or, it might be added, is capable of putting forward; for along the line of mortal material mentality no possible antidote to the belief in evil can be found.
