In the year 1866 our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, discovered Christian Science. This Science reveals the great truth that Spirit is All-in-all, and that matter or mortal mind is but false mortal belief. Since that time Christian Scientists have had many proofs that this truth is leavening human thought. Instead of considering matter as something which exists objectively outside of consciousness, leading physicists now recognize that matter is but a subjective state of consciousness. In reality, as Christian Science teaches, matter is but another name for mortal mind.
If we believe in the reality of matter, our healing work will seem difficult, if not impossible. If we accept the belief that there is a material body that needs to be healed, or that there is some material growth or organic difficulty that needs to be corrected, we may have little success in healing. We need to recognize that disease is wholly mental. A simple illustration may help to make this clear. Grief, an entirely mental state, causes tears to flow from the eyes. No material remedy would be effective in stopping the tears; but a change of thought which healed the grief would stop them. In this case it is readily seen that the problem is mental and is healed by right thinking. The physical sense of body is the manifestation of material thinking, and disease is but a false belief. Ever unfolding spiritual understanding is efficacious in healing every phase of disease.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 269), "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul." A careful study of this statement is very helpful in working out our problems.
