Whatever may be claimed to the contrary, it can be safely said that Christian Scientists are daily doing their part in lifting the burden from sorrowful humanity. Mrs. Eddy believed, with the Talmudic philosopher whom she quotes in the Preface to "Miscellaneous Writings," that the best way to help a man is to help him to help himself. Whether he is poor or sick, the same rule applies. To segregate these needy ones, in either small or large groups, simply intensifies the situation, makes their troubles seem all the more real — they think, talk, and hear nothing else but. the varying phases of poverty or sickness.
The Christian Science practitioner knows that his mission today is the same as his who came of old "to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." He knows that back of him, sustaining him, is the same omnipotence that was with the Master when he bade Lazarus break the seeming bonds of the grave and come forth to life and happiness; the same omnipresence that healed the servant of the centurion even while he talked with the ever-compassionate Saviour. Mrs. Eddy writes: "If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness" (Science and Health, p. 365).
This is no impossible ideal! The Master healed the multitudes of all manner of diseases, and when we have his positive assurance that they who believe on him shall do the same and even greater works, is it presumptuous to try to emulate his manner of doing them? The farther one advances in his understanding of the allness of God, good, the more clearly will he appreciate the consequent nothingness of error and be able, "as one having authority," to bid it depart. Such an experience — and it is vouchsafed again and again to those that are faithful — evokes the deepest joy and gratitude of which the human heart is capable. To be equipped with the understanding which heals the sick instantaneously is the acme of attainment, the goal which he that would follow in the Master's footsteps keeps ever before his vision.
