It is possible to heal the sick in Christian Science only because sickness is unreal to begin with and health is the continuing fact of being, past, present, and future.
"If disease is as real as health, and is itself a state of being, and yet is arrayed against being, then Mind, or God, does not meddle with it," writes Mrs. Eddy (No and Yes, p. 5). Christian Science does not grapple with a genuinely diseased condition of matter and change it into a healthy condition of matter. It reveals a genuinely perfect, wholly spiritual state of being; and the light of this revelation dispels the mindless darkness we have come to term disease.
He who would utilize safely and soundly the might of Christian Science must keep this truism in mind, for it is by working from this spiritual standpoint alone that one gains genuine Christian Science healing. Otherwise, the would-be Christian Scientist runs the risk of believing that Christian Science is merely one more way, though possibly a superior one, by which to change physical discord into physical harmony, to supplant poverty with material abundance, and to improve an erring material universe until it eventually becomes an unerring material universe.
The spiritual reality of being, the spiritual universe, including man, is not the culmination of a gradually improved material universe. Created by God, Spirit, the spiritual universe exists now, for He maintains it in a state of unchanging perfection throughout eternity and as the full expression of Mind. The imperfect, material universe is not a steppingstone to the real, the God-created. It is but an illusion, as it always has been, and it is destined to disappear in proportion to mankind's recognition of spiritual reality.
Mrs. Eddy asserts in Science and Health (p. 14): "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth. This understanding casts out error and heals the sick, and with it you can speak 'as one having authority.'"
Over what is this authority to be exerted? Over the lying assertions of the carnal mind. Without any sort of law backing it up, this mind makes one false statement after another. It says, for instance, that man is not the likeness of his creator, that he is a sinner, that disease is real and inescapable, that matter is substance. But these statements are but the empty, impersonal utterances of that nonexistent mortal mind which Jesus called "a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44).
These statements are powerless to harm us unless we begin believing them, unless we proceed to act as though there were truth in them. As Mrs. Eddy says in her book "Unity of Good" (p. 17), "A lie has only one chance of successful deception,— to be accounted true."
God is infinite Mind; therefore there is in reality no mortal mind, and its statements about God, man, and the universe are without power or authority. However, if by believing them we invest them with a spurious authority, we suffer from their errors. The remedy is to withhold credence from these suggestions of evil and base all our thinking and acting on the facts that God is infinite good and that we are His spiritual reflection. Christian Science reveals these facts of being to us; it does not attempt to improve the lies of mortal mind, but destroys them.
It is not the mission of Christian Science to make the tempter tell us more palatable, more believable, lies, or even to make human existence pleasanter. Christian Science has this latter effect, to be sure, but only because it destroys the lies and reveals the facts. The purpose of this divine Science is to silence the voice of materialism and to disclose that right where the lie seems to be uttered and believed, there the universe of divine Principle, God, is always man's environment and dwelling place.
When Jesus urged his disciples, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48), he was telling his followers to demonstrate that they were what he knew they already were: spiritual, not material; perfect, not imperfect. He who allows himself to believe that he is demonstrating Christian Science from a condition of mortal, material existence and working up from this to a condition of spiritual existence is attempting the impossible and will be disheartened by the consequent difficulties.
One of the commonest of the mistakes which follow in the train of this basic error is that we look to matter and its conditions to determine how successful our work in Christian Science has been. Very often the prayer of Christian Science finds immediate response in healing and harmony in the flesh. But if the human evidence of God's power is not immediately forthcoming, let us turn fully to the divine evidence for reassurance, instead of letting mortal mind's claim to continuing existence convince us we have failed.
What can senseless matter know or report of the activity of Mind? If matter denies the effectiveness of Christian Science treatment, does that prove Truth to be powerless? It proves nothing, for matter and all its claims are lies from beginning to end.
A glorious spiritual universe awaits our recognition and acceptance. Its Principle is God, the all-knowing Father-Mother, whose every thought manifests tender love, abundant good. In this divine reality of being, man enjoys perfect health, limitless wisdom, complete fruitfulness, because he is the manifestation of the one Ego, or divine consciousness. Nothing can ever sever man from this radiant state of being, for man and God are eternally inseparable in the secure oneness of Mind and idea, Life and living, Love and loving.
The Science of the Christ has brought the news of this divine universe to human consciousness; and the healing work of the Christian Scientist will be effective in the measure that he holds to this glorious reality, not only as basis and premise but as goal.
