Why is it that some cases under Christian Science treatment respond more quickly than do others under the same metaphysical process?
Helpful articles in answer to the above question appear frequently in the authorized Christian Science literature, and the following passage of Scripture recently quoted in one such article has been found most enlightening to the writer. In the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, the great apostle wrote, "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." And in the translators' introductory note to the chapter (King James Version) we read, "By Christ's resurrection, he proveth the necessity of our resurrection."
This statement of the apostle is explained by Mrs. Eddy in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p.324), as meaning, "If the idea of the supremacy of Spirit, which is the true conception of being, come not to your thought, you cannot be benefited by what I say." Neither the preaching of Paul nor the practice of a present day disciple can bring about a speedy recovery from the belief in sickness until the thought of the patient is healed. Whenever a belief in disease is changed through the understanding, in Science, of the alone reality of God, Spirit, and of the consequent unreality of diseased conditions, the body responds thereto.
