WHAT was it that distinguished Christ Jesus from the rest of mankind? The Christian Scientist does not hesitate to answer: he knows that it was the Master's spirituality. Pure, unselfish, loving, compassionate, merciful, spiritually-minded, he stands out after nearly two thousand years as the greatest religious Teacher the world has ever known, and the greatest demonstrator of the healing power of spirituality. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes of him (p. 51): "Jesus was unselfish. His spirituality separated him from sensuousness, and caused the selfish materialist to hate him; but it was this spirituality which enabled Jesus to heal the sick, cast out evil, and raise the dead."
It seems extraordinary that with the example of Jesus before them men have been so slow in admitting the healing power of spirituality. Instead of perceiving the fact and endeavoring to understand its significance, what do we find? That throughout the years since Jesus taught and healed in Palestine, there has seemed to be an increasing tendency to rely on matter and materialistic methods of healing. Witness the hold that allopathy, the current and more generally accepted form of medical practice, has upon mankind to-day! The redeeming feature of the situation is that not a few who practice this system of healing are seeing for themselves how great a part thought plays, not only in healing disease but in causing it, and are recognizing in consequence the need for thought-adjustment, thought-rectification, as an important factor in the work of healing.
One may wonder at the hold material systems have over men, but the explanation becomes apparent when it is remembered how real matter seems to them to be, and how they attribute power to matter in so many directions. Is not the body material? they say. Is not the body dependent upon matter for its existence, and constantly under the influence of material laws as it performs its functions? Matter does seem very real to mortals; and because of this fact they as strongly believe in the power of matter both to destroy and to heal. And until this belief about the reality of matter is changed, it can scarcely be expected that mortals will alter their views as to its power to kill or cure.
