It is impossible to overestimate the importance of healing to the Christian Science movement. Before our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, lectured, taught, or wrote of her revelation, she healed. Her healing work was in demonstration, elucidation, and proof of all that she was later to explain to her followers. Our Master, when asked by emissaries from John the Baptist if he were "he that should come" (Matt. 11:3), pointed to his healings as sufficient proof of his spiritual identity as the Son of God.
In an overwhelming majority of cases, mortals seek Christian Science because they need its healing touch. Healing is the evidence of all we preach to the world, a world burdened and distressed by theories and ways of life "without works"—without the proof of healing.
Recognizing the prime importance of this phase of our movement, it behooves us to see how we can improve our healing work and make it more effective. In the Bible, it is often said of Jesus that he had compassion on those whom he was healing. His approach to his work is indicated in these words (John 12:32): "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." In his feeding of the multitude, in the stretching forth of his hand to the sinking Peter, in his love for little children, in his healing of the lacerated ear of the soldier sent to capture him, in his prayer for his enemies, even on the cross itself, Jesus expressed the essence of compassion and tenderness toward suffering mankind. Even Pilate characterized him as a "just person" (Matt. 27:24).
