CHRISTIAN SCIENCE practitioners are sometimes criticized on the score that they do not know enough about disease and its symptoms; but their critics overlook or fail to appreciate the fact that this method of treatment, on the part of both practitioner and patient, is entirely mental. Healing in Christian Science involves the bringing about of better thought conditions, the allaying of fear, and the awakening to a more spiritual concept of being. If, however, the practitioner's mind is itself dwelling on the thought of disease and its fear-arousing manifestations, he is on the same mental plane as his patient, and is not, therefore, in a position to improve that patient's mentality. Suppose one who aspires to heal by mental means applied himself to learn the various names and forms of disease, and became conversant with their symptoms, nature, action, and probable course, what advantage would this knowledge be toward reassuring either himself or his patient, or toward changing a consciousness of sickness to a consciousness of health? Does not human experience indicate that too much is already known of these things, and too little known of the truth that alone can remedy them?
If Christian Science treatment, like other methods, were administered to the human body, it might be admitted that a thorough knowledge of that body would be essential; or, if Christian Science treated disease as disease per se, it might also be admitted that a knowledge of disease would be necessary; but Christian Science, unlike other methods, deals wholly with the mortal or human mind as the offender and sufferer and in its redemptive work disclaims the necessity of any other knowledge than the knowledge of God as a healing factor. What possible benefit could there be in studying the laws and penalties which the human mind has itself laid down concerning its body, when its salvation lies in reversing these false laws that it may be governed by Truth alone? For a Christian Scientist to concede the claim of material law would be to render himself incapable of resisting its asserted authority, for such concession would destroy his faith in divine power. The only law whose jurisdiction in the case he acknowledges is the law of God, and this law is spiritual, not material; preservative, not destructive. It is ever a law of health and holiness, never causing man to suffer, never resulting in disease and death, but enfolding all creation in eternal safety. This divine law, as understood in Christian Science, governs the body as harmoniously as it governs the universe, and through his knowledge of its supremacy the Christian Scientist is enabled to heal in opposition to material decrees.
What would be one's opinion of the banker who required his clerks to pass an examination on the substance, construction, and design of spurious money, or of the school principal who demanded of his staff that they know all about the mistakes made regarding numbers, grammar, spelling, etc., when, as every one knows, it is his familiarity with genuine money that enables the bank clerk to detect and reject the counterfeit, and his acquaintance with the correct rule that equips a teacher for his work? Likewise, it is one's knowledge of the truth in Christian Science, and not a knowledge of error, that makes him free from error. One might be thoroughly informed regarding the characteristics of bad money and not be qualified to have charge of the true, or be conversant with all the errors ever made by school children and not be qualified to teach; and similarly one might know all that the human mind believes regarding disease, and have the last word on that subject at his fingers' ends, yet be unable to heal. And all because it is a knowledge of the right side of a subject, and not of the wrong, that is needed.
