More and more frequently people are asking, "What is Christian Science?" Its Discoverer and Founder, Mary Baker Eddy, in answer to the question, "How would you define Christian Science?" says, "As the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony" (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1).
The law of God is ever active and irrevocable. It is fact and not theory. It has the "certainty" which the writer of Proverbs mentions (22:19-21): "That thy trust may be in the Lord, I have made known to thee this day, even to thee. Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge, that I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth?"
Healing in Christian Science is divine healing. It comes direct from God and has no connection with matter and its methods. This Science enables the honest seeker to understand God aright and to utilize the law of God, infinite good. Because God is omnipresent and omnipotent, disease has no origin or activity, and it has no history with which to perpetuate itself.
In "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy asks the question (p. 9), "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system?" Then she answers: "This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my system from all others."
Because Christ, Truth, disposes of every belief in a power apart from God, evil can find no response in thought that is obedient to Christ. The true Christian Scientist comprehends and loves God and rejoices with the Psalmist, who sang (Ps. 103:2, 3), "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases."
Permanent healing is accomplished through the prayer that makes mankind better spiritually and morally as well as physically. As we live and love Christian Science, the law of God, more and more understandingly, our spiritualization of thought and desire results in health, joy, and holiness.
Entirely inconsistent with the all-just law of God is the fallacy of physical diagnosis, which often outlines states and stages through which disease and sickness are believed to advance. Mrs. Eddy warns in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 370), "A physical diagnosis of disease—since mortal mind must be the cause of disease—tends to induce disease." All progress is spiritual; therefore even if disease and evil were real, they could not progress. But there is no reality either in the so-called first symptom of a disorder or in the last stage of disease.
Because God is ever-present Life, the idea of God, man, is diseaseless, ageless, and deathless. We need to be alert to deny any belief in material cause or in mind and life in matter. These falsities are forms of physical diagnosis as is also willful searching to find out more about disease. Material knowledge and human advice are not the ways to health. It is thought, not physicality, which has first to be cured.
Christian Scientists do not work primarily to heal matter; they endeavor to obey the First Commandment (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." This commandment is the basis of all divine healing. When we obey spiritual law, we cannot be tempted to consult material laws and codes. Immortal Mind produces in man health and harmony. Scientific healing power relies radically on God and His law as revealed in the First Commandment.
When honestly seeking healing in Christian Science, we cannot waver between the human and the divine. We must expel and destroy the errors of mortal mind. Human will and the false stimulus of blind enthusiasm are destructive to freedom and health and have no place in the Science of God. Will power is never a cure for disease, but is often its cause. When the human mind yields to immortal Mind, the power of Mind over matter is proved, and human will is healed.
We are not at the mercy of disease when we understand that man is not imprisoned in matter, for he lives in God and is the expression of God's being. God is the forever source of all good.
We need to be alert not to associate with ourselves or with anyone else the thought of disease, its symptoms, or the need of physical diagnosis in any form. No name mortal mind has invented for a malady can give the disease any reality, because every so-called ill is merely a false belief in a power apart from God.
There is need to reject even our own diagnosis of the effects of food we have eaten, of temperature of the day or of the body, or of the many hours we have worked. Christian Science makes clear the need to look to God and not to the body for health.
Mortal mind's diagnosis is often based on the theory that at specified ages children have contagious diseases and that at certain times adults have other ills—a timetable for ailments, all beliefs of life and age in matter. We need to be alert to reject such timetables and also to stand irreversibly on the premise that because God is All, evil is not even a claimant. Accident, injury, age, and disease cannot in reality prove fatal, because Life, God, is the center and circumference of being, as Christian Science teaches. Progress Godward manifests itself in spiritually clearer views of God and His universe, including man.
God does not know declining years, neither does man, who fully represents Him. Because man is subject to God only, he is not subject to age. Immortal Life is the forever Principle of man. The more the consecrated seeker for Truth learns to understand God aright and to obey the First Commandment in thought and life, the more abundant will be the manifestation of health and harmony in his experience.
Christ Jesus, our Way-shower, proved powerless the claims of materia medica, drugs, surgery, and human theories about health. He never resorted to physical diagnoses, but he healed disease. To a man sick of the palsy, Jesus said (Matt. 9:2), "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." When the scribes protested to themselves, Jesus rebuked them. He said, "That ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house." And we read that "he arose, and departed to his house."
Christian Science is doing the works prophesied in the Bible and will continue to do them in the proportion that Christian Scientists, surrendering humbly to the will of God, become more Godlike and love God supremely. Observing or catering to material and hygienic theories and physical diagnoses of any type is not being obedient to the divine law, which heals and saves and regenerates.
Human reformation is a step in the right direction, but there is a more constructive step needed, and that is spiritual regeneration. Christ Jesus made this clear in his wonderful beatitude (Matt. 5:8), "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." As mankind awaken to the reality of God's omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, nothing can prevent the fulfillment of His purpose expressed in divine healing.
