When the student of Christian Science apprehends the mental and spiritual nature of health,—the consciousness of spiritual wholeness,—he perceives the impossibility of true healing by any other means than the divinely metaphysical method employed by Jesus the Christ, and operative to-day in Christian Science. And because every form of human distress is relieved, the seeming predisposing cause of all wrong conditions being removed through Christian Science healing, the student of this Science finds that the term "healing" has a far more comprehensive meaning than the common usage of the word implies.
The Science of healing is the knowledge of the operation of perfect spiritual law made manifest in harmonious action, and is not confined to restoring to normal conditions the functions of the human body, although the practical significance of physical healing continues to be, as in Jesus' time, a satisfactory proof of the redemptive power of Truth. Truth must certainly be divinely metaphysical. But the so-called human mind objects to metaphysical healing because of its inability to comprehend anything outside the fictitious realm of matter, and because the process of spiritual healing is removed from any so-called science in which mortal belief is a factor. The human mind is wont to lose itself in the bewildering mazes of material psychology, mental science (so called), and in various modes of mortal belief claiming to heal, but having no higher basis than the mesmeric influence of so-called mind over matter; but, like the process of treating matter with matter, it is of no permanent benefit to humanity.
Christianly scientific healing is the operation of Truth in human consciousness; and because Truth is unchanging divine Principle, its efficacy to heal must be the same as when it was practiced by Jesus and the apostles. Whatever is true must be scientifically true, and susceptible of demonstration at any time and in any place. The teaching of Christian Science admits of no break in the continuity of divine law, but discloses the fact that all good comes to humanity by way of discovery of that which has always existed. Christian Science demonstrates the fact that all discordant conditions, as the results of erroneous thinking, must be corrected by realization of the absolute Truth, and never by the substitution of one human belief or suggestion for another. This was surely what Jesus insisted upon when he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Following the example of the Master, we must make the truth practical in human experience. The life of Jesus was a demonstration of how to make the divine available,—how to bring the true to bear upon the false. This is a problem which always confronts the student of Christian Science, whose previous education has involved a struggle to adjust the human to the divine through a confused interweaving of Spirit and matter, or the impossible task of serving "God and mammon."
