Scriptural records show the art of healing as practiced by the Hebrews to have been a very simple process. The Levites were the sole practitioners, and their form of practice consisted mainly of reminding their patients of God's promises of protection. Recognizing but one cause for disease or discord, namely, deviation from divine law, they administered but one remedy, a moral and mental one designed to turn the thought of the patient toward God. In the twenty-sixth verse of the fifteenth chapter of the book of Exodus is found a treatment that lifted Moses and his followers out of a sense of fear and lack. It is a simple statement stressing the necessity for obedience to divine law and promising exemption from disease as the result of this obedience. It reads: "If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee."
In rather striking contrast to this simple procedure is the history of material medicine. In this connection it is interesting to remember that Æsculapius, the father of material medicine, was a student of Chiron the Centaur. Mythology shows the Centaurs to have had a great fondness for wine; also that Chiron, receiving a fatal wound as the indirect result of this fondness, found his best salve powerless to heal his injury. The statue of Æsculapius in the temple at Epidaurus was formed of ivory and gold, and represented him as an old man with a full beard, leaning on a staff round which a serpent was climbing, the serpent being the distinguishing symbol of this divinity. Hippocrates, who was possibly the first person to classify diseases, thereby gave a new impetus to the point of view of man as a material organism.
It is here, in a helpless and hopeless state, that the average person finds himself before he is willing to listen to the joyful message of Christian Science, which defines man as spiritual. When one is willing to listen to this message and to accept it as the truth, then he is ready to apprehend divine Mind as the power which heals. Giving ear to God's promises, he strives to shut out all thoughts of fear, worry, disease, and discord, which belong to the consciousness typified in the Scriptures as Egyptian; and then he finds that his body soon responds to his improved thinking. He now understands, in a measure at least, what Mrs. Eddy means when she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 197): "The less that is said of physical structure and laws, and the more that is thought and said about moral and spiritual law, the higher will be the standard of living and the farther mortals will be removed from imbecility or disease."
