Christian Science reveals that matter has no intelligence either to cause bodily ills or to heal them. Therefore, searching in matter and diagnosing the body to find the cause and cure of so-called physical discords is like dissecting a motion picture screen, rather than the film, in order to be rid of an ugly picture. Instead of putting the cart before the horse, mistaking effect for cause, Christian Science goes to the root of the problem by attacking disease as a false belief. It shows that this belief— which is both the disease and its cause— stems from an erroneous sense of existence, which falsely holds man to be material and mortal, subject to sin, disease, and death. It explains ignorance of the true nature of God and man, and the fear and sinful beliefs resulting from such ignorance, to be the procuring causes of bodily ailments. Under the marginal heading, "Sin or fear the root of sickness," Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 404, 405): "Healing the sick and reforming the sinner are one and the same thing in Christian Science. Both cures require the same method and are inseparable in Truth. Hatred, envy, dishonesty, fear, and so forth, make a man sick, and neither material medicine nor Mind can help him permanently, even in body, unless it makes him better mentally, and so delivers him from his destroyers."
This fact that disease is a product of mortal thought, not of matter, is being increasingly understood even by those who are not Christian Scientists. Poverty, friction, despair, worry over inharmonious family and business conditions, are more and more considered causes of physical difficulties. Disease has not lessened despite the long and honest efforts to combat it through drugs, hygiene, and surgery. So-called mental methods of healing disease, if based on the human mind, may appear to bring temporary relief by overcoming disease through human opinions, mental manipulation, or hypnotism. But only with the understanding in Christian Science of the truth of God, Spirit, as All and as the Life of man, can the basic error of all human difficulties, namely, the belief of life, substance, and intelligence in matter, with its train of sin, sickness, and death, be successfully fought and destroyed.
These words of Isaiah proclaim God's plan of salvation (45:22): "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." This salvation includes the deliverance from disease as well as sin, as our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, taught and proved and as Christian Science reiterates today.
