"It is a fact!" These words sometimes suggest a relentless finality. Too often, in human experience, they imply something evil from the effects of which there would seem to be no escape—no hope of recovery.
There appears to be much in the workaday experience of men and women the world over that is hard and embittering, much that would cause them to fear and wonder. Not a few are definitely appalled with things as they seem to be. If we are not careful, we accept the suggestion and determine to breast the issue as best we can. But more often than not we do this because we have not, at the moment, any counterfact of good with which to displace what seems to be an evil fact.
Is it possible that, in spite of this all too obvious testimony of material sense, however hard and terrifying it may be, there is a spiritual counterfact which men can know and of which they can make positive use in destroying what is the mere passing result of a badly misinformed human sense of things? The answer of Christian Science to this question is affirmative and definite. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 233) Mary Baker Eddy has written these remarkable words: "The counter fact relative to any disease is required to cure it." There is a ring of assurance and certainty in her words. Before they were recorded Mrs. Eddy had proved for all time, and beyond all cavil and doubt, the truth which destroys disease. Again and again in her own personal experience and that of others she was called upon to face much that was harsh and embittering, including many and varied forms and phases of suffering and disease. Yet, never once did she entertain a shadow of doubt that the counterfact relative to the particular form of disease would cure the distressing condition and bring to the one in need an ever-increasing sense of harmony and peace.
