When Job was struggling to replace his former belief of health, substance, and friendship, which had proved to be but a house built on sand, with a right understanding of true values, as bestowed of God, his friend Elihu, who sought to turn him from human to spiritual concepts, saw that the need was for "a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness." This might be called the keynote for healing practice.
The Christian Scientist, perceiving logically and spiritually the great fact of his sonship, as God's idea, proceeds to prove this in all the situations where material sense would have him accept the multiform phases of false belief. He has to prove the fact of spiritual reality concerning himself and all that his consciousness embraces, as well as the nothingness of the arguments of the adversary, and keep on doing so as long as there remains in him any need for proof. And in the proportion that he gains his own dominion over various phases of materiality and learns to express his sonship with God, he will find mankind turning to him for help to prove its dominion and sonship.
In this healing work, understanding compassion is greatly needed, for it enables the Christian Scientist to lay down his belief in material existence with all its ramifications, so that nothing will obscure the light of Truth shining through his consciousness. In the proportion that he learns to bind "the strong man," or mortal mind, he is enabled to give up laborious arguments in healing the sick, and gain the calm and happy assurance of the Christ-presence.
