TODAY a concept of law causes the natural scientist to take practically nothing for granted. He willingly disputes the testimony of the physical senses when that testimony does not agree with his concept of natural law. But having questioned the evidence of the material senses, the natural scientist turns for confirmation of his theories to the very physical senses which he questioned in the first place. For every step in scientific research, every new discovery, must be rendered tangible to one or more of the physical senses before it can be accepted by the scientific world.
The Christian Scientist's sense of spiritual law, which is unerring, leads him to dispute the evidence of the material senses, but unlike the natural scientist he does not depend upon these senses to confirm his findings. He knows that knowledge gained from the physical senses can never lead him to spiritual Truth, for matter has no cognizance of Spirit. Thus, like the great Master, Christ Jesus, he turns to spiritual sense to show him what is true and what is false, and he humbly prays for more of that understanding of Spirit which penetrates blind material sense with the rays of the healing Christ, Truth.
Thus he learns that it is the sense of matter which deceives, not only in the first instance but also in the second. Mrs. Eddy puts it this way in Science and Health: "Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees. It feels, hears, and sees its own thoughts" (p. 86). So when one turns to God in prayer for healing, his thoughts are raised to a higher sense of the perfection and health inherent in man as God's reflection, and he learns that it was mortal belief, rather than his physical senses, which claimed that he was sick in the first place. Therefore when he is healed through prayer, he learns that he is well, not because his senses tell him he is, but because divine Principle so informs him.
