The healing works of Christ Jesus form the pattern of spiritual healing in this present age. The restoration of the man at the pool of Bethesda, as recorded in the fifth chapter of John, is a perfect illustration. This man, ignorant of his true spiritual status as an idea of God and his consequent immunity from evil, listened to the arguments of the carnal mind and even repeated them to Jesus. Did he not say in effect: I have nobody to help me; I see no way out of my predicament. Jesus' reply was simple. He said, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." The man must have been responsive to the Christ-idea which Jesus presented, for he found himself instantly free of his affliction of thirty-eight years' standing. It was not Jesus' words alone which enabled him to heal instantaneously, but his profound spiritual understanding of God and His law, the law of infinite good.
When world thought was ready to receive the Christ-idea, Jesus appeared humanly and proved God's law to be a law of exemption from every phase of evil— from sin, sickness, and even death itself. Because of his spiritual origin and his understanding of God, Jesus could have claimed immunity from his trial, crucifixion, and entombment, but he submitted to them so that he might show all mankind the way of deliverance from all evil. In his final demonstration, called his ascension, he proved conclusively that man is completely apart from materiality of any kind.
Over eighteen hundred years later, human slavery was abolished in the United States of America. This was not an accidental happening. This liberation was destined to take place in a nation dedicated to the rights and privileges of the individual. Close upon the heels of this momentous occurrence came the discovery of Christian Science, declaring mankind's ability to free itself from enslavement to matter and its so-called laws through spiritual right thinking and living. This discovery of the Science of Christianity was not an accidental happening either. It was revealed to Mary Baker Eddy because she was spiritually-minded enough to discern the law of God operating in the healings of Christ Jesus, and then to demonstrate this law in healing others as well as herself.
