Christian Science healing is based upon the understanding of the allness of God, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter. Its foundations were laid when Mary Baker Eddy glimpsed the reality of Spirit sufficiently to be restored from what was deemed a fatal injury as she pondered the account in the Bible of Jesus' healing of the palsied man (Matt. 9:2-8). From this experience she learned the availability of spiritual power to heal the sick. Then she went on to the discovery of the Science of spiritual healing, which has been practiced widely in the intervening years, restoring thousands of hopeless sufferers to health and useful lives. Its works exemplify the promise of the Master to those who understand his teaching (Mark 16:18), "They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
In describing her system of healing in "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 21): "My first plank in the platform of Christian Science is as follows: 'There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.'" This "first plank" she terms "the scientific statement of being" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 468), and it underlies every Christian Science treatment. As we take our position unreservedly for the allness of God and the nothingness of matter and for man as God's image and likeness, we are prepared to deal with disease from the standpoint of its unreality.
The mental preparation by which we come to understand the illusory nature of disease is illustrated in the Bible in the experience of Moses which made him ready to encounter the esoteric magic of Egypt (Ex. 4:1-8). Writing of this experience, Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 321): "When, led by wisdom to cast down his rod, he saw it become a serpent, Moses fled before it; but wisdom bade him come back and handle the serpent, and then Moses' fear departed. In this incident was seen the actuality of Science. Matter was shown to be a belief only." And she concludes, "The illusion of Moses lost its power to alarm him, when he discovered that what he apparently saw was really but a phase of mortal belief." Just as Moses had to see that what appeared to him palpable and fearful was "but a phase of mortal belief," so we must see that even what appear as the most dreaded forms of disease are phases of belief only. In any case of illness we must see that we are dealing with beliefs and not with bodily conditions.
