THE healing of disease through spiritual power, although manifestly a good thing for the human race, has not generally been accepted without resistance. Mankind has been educated along material lines. Even what is called spiritual education or religion has generally been so associated with materialism and so tainted with material views as to throw the preponderance of belief and confidence on the material side. Thus educated human beings distrust spiritual power, doubt if it can be made available, and either are prone to ascribe to some material or semi-material influence those "signs following" which Jesus advocated and illustrated, or to disbelieve them altogether.
Christian Science teaches how one can learn to place complete reliance upon spiritual truth, and because it does this it is revolutionary. It shows clearly that commonly accepted views tend to perpetuate fear, and that even the pride which often prompts the rejection of Christian Science is but a product of fear. It shows that the attempt to reconcile spiritual truth with material theories and experiences is illogical upon its face. Such attempts are always associated with fear, because they inculcate limitation. No one would be afraid if he knew he could prove the nature of infinity. If he be envious, it is merely because his false education and the result of it in his experience and observations make him think that he is losing or lacking something because somebody else has greater possessions than he himself. When one learns how to rely upon spiritual power, he no longer distrusts it. Educated through Christian Science, one begins to let go his fear, which had found support only in those material or semimaterial systems incorrectly called science or religion.
If the human race had been taught differently, it goes without saying that its mental attitude, and consequently its history, would have been wholly different. When human beings resist that which would deliver them from their troubles, it is not because of knowledge but because of ignorance, even though that ignorance be called knowledge. Indeed, the history of the race shows that what is considered to be the learning of one age is ignorance to the next age, and in that way we see that mere human learning has no definite principle or basis. In the time of Jesus the people who persecuted and finally crucified him were swayed, not by understanding, but by fear, induced by ignorance. We all agree upon that now, because the perspective of history makes the whole situation clear. We do not blame those people, if we are wise, but we see that their tendencies, their passions, their prejudices, were the result of a long train of environment and so-called education, and that really we must place the blame or the condemnation not on them, but on the evil which, because of their lack of opportunity to know any better, actuated them. Showing thus the impersonality of evil, Christian Science teaches us to remain unmoved in the face of opposition, which sometimes takes the form of senseless condemnation.
