An interested inquirer once confronted a student of Christian Science with the following question: "You and the doctor employing material remedies have the same goal— the healing of the patient. Why should you not cooperate?" The correct reply to this question strikes the very keynote of Christian Science by emphasizing its essentially spiritual character. The object of the doctor is to restore physical health or ease in matter, while the object of Christian Science is to acquaint mankind with God and with man's spiritual nature, thus opening the door to "signs following" in the healing practice. The one is commonly satisfied to restore his patient to his normal physical status. The other opens to him the apprehension of the facts of being—eternal facts new to his awakening consciousness.
It will appear, then, that sickness and adverse conditions such as sorrow and lack present indeed an opportunity to set forth these facts at a time when the one suffering from adversity is readiest to receive help. In such an hour an individual is most likely to recognize the insecurity of material belief, the insufficiency of life as mortal mind conceives it. If at this point he is led to turn to the "eternal verities" of which Mrs. Eddy speaks (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.110), he will be able to say, with her, that "loss is gain" (Poems, p. 4), since the dark hour, as mortal sense would define it, is capable of being translated into a notably shining one. Then there is not only a vanishing of the disability but the dawning of a new consciousness of good, a sense of joy and wellbeing unknown before. In short, there has been a demonstration, or evidence gained of the divine presence beyond the sense of personal selfhood, available in the hour of need. This opens up innumerable vistas. More must be learned of this perhaps unanticipated blessing.
We thus grasp the remarkable fact that in the light of Christian Science there is no adverse circumstance which cannot be rightly regarded as a splendid opportunity to prove God's healing power. It is stimulating and inspiring to realize that, as it is beautifully expressed in Science and Health (p. 574), "the very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares." Disease, acute or chronic, family or business complexities, grief, lack—all these apparently untoward conditions may be so handled that the truth which is realized increases one's well-being; for genuine prosperity consists not in a continuance of the illusions of a false existence, but in an emergence into the joy and power and satisfaction of life eternal.
