During the past few months the writer has read several lengthy reviews of books on Christian Science, which purport to "explain" how its healing work is done. It seems a pity that intelligent people should waste their time in writing long accounts of something they do not understand; for, until one has healed a patient through Christian Science prayer, he cannot understand the process.
These authors may have read the Bible and Science and Health many times, perchance, and yet be ignorant of how Christian Science healing is effected. Not until one has entered a sick-room and found, for instance, a child tossing about in a high fever, or in great pain, and sitting down beside the sick, has silently taken that child to God in prayer—a prayer of absorbed adoration and confidence in which self is entirely forgotten, until the child became quiet, then fell into a peaceful sleep, and later wakened quite restored to health,—not until one has had some such experience, can he fully understand how Christian Science healing comes about; and even then it is most difficult to describe the process in words.
All this learned talk about the "sub-conscious mind," etc., may appear to be very imposing to those who do not know what Christian Science healing and practice is, but to those who do, it is altogether foolish and profitless, since it quite overlooks the one great factor in Christian Science healing; viz., God. The Christian Science practitioner has awakened to the fact that God really and truly exists; that lie is beside us, closer than breathing, ready to hear and save, if (and this is a large "if") He is approached as Christ Jesus instructed us, with absolute and entire confidence and reliance. This is the crux of the whole matter, absolute and entire reliance. This does not mean that we shall hold on to a medicine bottle with one hand and to God with the other, it means the casting aside of everything else—reliance on God and God alone. Is there any religious body today, save the Christian Science church, that so honors, trusts, and worships God? A Christian Scientist trusts his life to God, and this, surely, is true worship.
