IN the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes under the marginal heading "Healthful theology" (pp. 138, 139): "Our Master said to every follower: 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature! . . . Heal the sick! . . . Love thy neighbor as thyself!' It was this theology of Jesus which healed the sick and the sinning. It is his theology in this book and the spiritual meaning of this theology, which heals the sick and causes the wicked to 'forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.' "
The early Christians healed sickness and even raised the dead through spiritual power alone for about three hundred years after the Master's ascension. This proves beyond doubt that it was not the personal presence of Jesus which was requisite to heal, but a spiritual understanding of the divine Principle of his teachings. But doctrines, dogmas, rites, and forms of worship, at variance with his simple theology, smothered spiritual inspiration in the technicalities of ecclesiasticism. The truths which Christ Jesus had taught were adulterated often beyond recognition. The result was that Christendom, for the most part, instead of acknowledging one incorporeal God, Christ, the impersonal Saviour, and man, God's spiritual and perfect reflection, began to believe in a manlike God, a personal, corporeal Christ, and a fallen man.
Jesus taught and demonstrated perfectly the purely spiritual nature of the healing Christ, and he promised that we would do the works he did if we believed—understood—his teachings (see John 14:12). In contrast to this, and in spite of the healing works of the early Christians, scholastic theology has promulgated a doctrine that Jesus himself was God, and that his works were therefore peculiar to him and are incapable of emulation. It thereby forsakes the most important and practical part of Jesus' theology, namely, its healing power.
