A Christian Scientist had long enjoyed an almost uniform sense of good health, which he attributed to his understanding, gained through Christian Science, of God as the only Life, and which he took very much for granted; but the time came when he found it necessary to establish his sense of health on the sure foundation of Christianly scientific demonstration. The aggressive mental suggestions poured into thought: Your health has been undermined, you have lost your health, you may not recover, and so on. In blessed reassurance came the inspired words of Isaiah (59:19), "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." And so it proved.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 297), "It is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change in either a health-belief or a belief in sickness affects the physical condition." A belief in health based on the illusion of health as a physical condition is no more stable or real than a belief in sickness, for both are built on the sands of human variableness and have no foundation in Truth.
What then is health, and where is it to be found? Christian Science reveals health as a condition of Mind, of God, Spirit, not of matter. Hence scientific health is spiritual, an emanation of God. It is found in an understanding of God and exists wholly apart from the supposititious conditions of matter. Health is associated with holiness; the words health, holy, and whole have the same Anglo-Saxon derivation.
