Sometimes the one seeking healing through Christian Science is tempted to query too much as to when the relief may be expected and why it has not yet seemingly come about. Such questionings Mrs. Eddy writes of on page 60 of "Retrospection and Introspection": "Material sense asks, in its ignorance of Science, 'When will the raging of the material elements cease?' Science saith to all manner of disease, 'Know that God is all-power and all-presence, and there is nothing beside Him;' and the sick are healed. Material sense saith, 'Oh, when will my sufferings cease? Where is God? Sickness is something besides Him, which He cannot, or does not, heal.'"
If it were not that even exclamations of that sort are after a fashion, a yearning for God's goodness, they would be utterly useless. Of themselves they are mere negations, for which the only remedy is positive knowing of the truth. The very time taken up with plaintive asking about the future or about the nature and origin of supposed evil can always be far better occupied with a sincere search for what is absolutely effective practice now. In other words, each one needs to inquire as to why spiritual healing must be immediate and permanent in the present. Each one is entitled to insist on proving at once and forever what he learns through Christian Science. In so insisting, however, one must always be infinitely patient and thorough, for, as Christ Jesus pointed out, the healing that may have seemed difficult comes only through prayer and fasting.
Continuous prayer, which is simply the surety of God's goodness in action day in and day out, and fasting, which is the rejection of the evidence of the physical senses for the abundance of spiritual consciousness, are indeed the only means for the demonstration of eternal health and happiness. "Health," Mrs. Eddy says in "Rudimental Divine Science" (p. 11), "is the consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else. In a moment you may awake from a night-dream; just so you can awake from the dream of sickness; but the demonstration of the Science of Mind-healing by no means rests on the strength of human belief. This demonstration is based on a true understanding of God and divine Science, which takes away every human belief, and, through the illumination of spiritual understanding, reveals the all-power and ever-presence of good, whence emanate health, harmony, and Life eternal."
