THE effort to demonstrate the rules of Christian Science in healing the sick impels the practitioner continually to examine the basis from which he is working. The necessity for adhering strictly to the teachings of this Science, as given in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, is ever before him. These instructions and admonitions, with the Bible, are his great source of enlightenment and encouragement. Thus the Master's example becomes the Christian Science practitioner's guide.
The question first to be decided is whether diseased matter and the false beliefs of the human mind are to be acknowledged as real. The question, What is man? is ever in the forefront; and the correct answer must fill the mental horizon. From the pinnacle of truth in this respect, one's view is unobscured, and mortal mind with its false beliefs is seen in its proper relation to a problem. The effort of the carnal mind, or animal magnetism, to put forth matter's conditions as the vital point to be considered, and the false claim of this so-called mind that causation is material, will not confuse and darken the vision of the practitioner if he abides in spiritual altitudes.
Mrs. Eddy clearly states and explains that the healing power of Christ Jesus was due to the fact that he knew what, in Science, constitutes the perfect man, and that he held this perfect man always clearly in view. Jesus viewed sin, and mastered it, as something external to himself, as having nothing in common with the correct sense of God and man. He could treat sin and sickness, even death itself, as nothing, because he knew they did not belong to either God or man. The element of so-called original sin did not enter into the perfect man of whom Jesus was conscious. His own words upon this point are to be found in John: "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me."
