IN her autobiography, "Retrospection and Introspection," the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science states on page 24 that in February, 1866, she was healed through spiritual power and means of an injury caused by an accident. Continuing the record, she writes that in the latter part of that year she "gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon." Not long after her healing and before she had attained this "scientific certainty" that all causation is Spirit, Mind, and all effect primarily and wholly mental, Mrs. Eddy was tempted by a return of the symptoms of the condition from which she had suffered for many years. But as the truth about God and man became clearer to her, she realized her complete and irreversible healing.
Perhaps the memory of her experience had something to do with the handling of the subject of relapse by our Leader in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Therein, on page 419, she states: "If your patient from any cause suffers a relapse, meet the cause mentally and courageously, knowing that there can be no reaction in Truth. Neither disease itself, sin, nor fear has the power to cause disease or a relapse." Here is scientific instruction! We are to "meet the cause" instead of attempting to deal with the apparent effect. It is evident from the second sentence just quoted that the seeming cause of a relapse may be either sin or a belief that disease is a physical, self-created condition, which belief would naturally engender fear. Now Christian Science, reasoning from the standpoint of God, good, as the cause and creator of all that is veritable, deduces the fact that sin, disease, and fear are erroneous—are unreal and powerless. Hence, the cause of a relapse being error, it is to be met and mastered by Truth.
Naturally, the suffering induced by indulgence in sin can be relieved only as the sin is seen for what it is, a deluding falsity, and then is completely forsaken and thus forgiven. Note the experience of one who had been healed of all desire for intoxicating liquor when he learned through Christian Science that his true desire was for good only. Some years after this healing he became ill, and it was found that he was still believing that sin had power over him, for, although he had been healed of the belief that alcohol could bestow pleasure, he was nurturing the equally false belief that it could produce evil, that his past use of alcohol was liable to result in certain diseases. He was healed of the illness as he had been of the liquor habit when he dealt with the cause of the trouble by accepting Paul's statement: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."
