Christian Science maintains that God, who is the only creator, is perfect, and consequently that His creation is likewise perfect. Hence the teaching of Christian Science, that spiritual creation is never in need of restoration or renewal. This spiritual creation never falls, and so never needs to be redeemed; never sickens, and never needs healing; never errs, and never needs to be corrected. Moreover, the spiritual creation is the only real creation,—the creation spoken of in the thirty-first verse of the first chapter of Genesis as being "very good." That then is the truth about creation, God's creation of perfect spiritual ideas.
But mortals believe in another creation, which they call the material creation; and it is this material sense of creation wherein all the trouble seems to lie. It is subject to discord of every description; in belief it suffers, sickens, sins, and dies; and it is from the material sense of creation mortals need to be delivered or resurrected. As stated by Christian Science, the position is perfectly plain: there is in reality only the spiritual creation of God, in need of no renewal, restoration, redemption, deliverance, or resurrection; there is, in belief, a material creation, which "groaneth and travaileth in pain;" and it is from this false sense of creation mankind needs to be saved. Who will say that the need for this salvation is not the crying need of the world? It is indeed clamant in the case of every mortal; there is not one who does not require deliverance from the thralldom, the slavery of material beliefs. Every disease, every sin, results from the belief that matter is real, that the so-called material creation is real; and this erroneous belief must be destroyed in order that disease and sin and death shall disappear.
Now the purpose of Christ Jesus was essentially that of restoration. His teaching and his practice both witnessed to the fact. He demonstrated the fact when he rose from the grave after his body had been crucified. Every healing he brought about proved the reality of spiritual creation and the unreality of the material sense of things. When the case of the one with the withered hand was before him, he said: "Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other." This does not imply that the man whose hand was healed was made entirely whole, because entire restoration would have meant complete deliverance from every material belief; but what certainly happened was that he was partially renewed and restored, in so far as the healing of the hand indicated the gaining of a much better sense of activity and health. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 241) Mrs. Eddy writes, "The Bible teaches transformation of the body by the renewal of Spirit." And that is exactly what happened every time the Master healed a diseased person.
