It is noteworthy that students of Christian Science who have made some degree of progress are more often heard to express their gratitude for greater spiritual enlightenment than for the alleviation of physical sickness. One reason for this may be that as they have advanced they have learned to apply their understanding of Christian Science more as a preventive agency. It is true that one's gratitude should always be for that higher understanding of man's true being which brings the realization that all of the supposed ills of the flesh which one has seemed to experience, were never real, never had any actuality in man's true history.
As one makes a scientific study and application of the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, a higher understanding of spiritual selfhood and man's true relationship to God is attained, and it is learned that man has never had any existence separate from God; that anything which opposes or denies the complete perfection of God and His likeness, man, is but error's own false argument. Then a great spiritual awakening is experienced which inevitably results in the healing of the claims of disease and sin, and in the overcoming of discords which have seemed to be associated with one's experience. One also learns not to make the admission that error ever had a real past, because God's creation can be and is expressed only in that which is good, harmonious, Godlike.
We should be just as willing to forget the erroneous belief of a material past, with all the false suggestions of so-called mortal mind, as we are to awaken from an unhappy dream to find that the experiences we seemed to have in it were mere illusions. Why, then, in recounting the blessings which have come to us in Christian Science, should we even desire to remember or rehearse the details of past suffering, the conditions or symptoms in which the discord manifested itself, its degree of intensity, the length of time it occupied before recovery, or the conversations which were held concerning it?
