In Christian Science healing we might point to two important aims—the detection of disease and the destruction of it. But from the fact of God's omnipresence and omnipotence and of man's real existence as God's eternal idea, Christian Science deduces that there is and can be no disease, no evil power or presence. How, then, are we to detect and destroy that which does not and cannot exist?
This Science leaves no point vaguely hinted at or unexplained. It instructs us in the art of detecting belief in disease, belief in the reality of the unreal, belief that nothing is something. That is why knowledge of what we are believing is essential in Christian Science, if we are to correct erroneous thought processes by understanding their unreality.
When we contemplate the maze of health and disease theories which are taught mortals as truth, we should be properly grateful to Mrs. Eddy for her system of Mind-science, by which people are being awakened to Jesus' spiritual method of detecting and destroying disease.
This system, Christian Science, is educating mortals out of material theories concerning health and is revealing health as a quality of Spirit, reflected by man, God's idea or reflection. It teaches them how to detect and destroy belief in disease, for themselves and for their patients, either before or after the belief seems so fixed in human thought that it appears to material sense to be a bodily symptom and sensation.
This spiritual capacity, by which we detect and destroy belief in and fear of disease, increases as our thoughts and lives become more spiritual. Mrs. Eddy possessed this ability to a superb degree. That is why she could heal herself and others so quickly and completely.
Under the marginal heading "Disease foreseen" on page 168 of Science and Health, she writes, "I have discerned disease in the human mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it, months before the so-called disease made its appearance in the body." Our Leader continues, "Disease being a belief, a latent illusion of mortal mind, the sensation would not appear if the error of belief was met and destroyed by truth."
A striking example of Jesus' superb skill in the spiritual method of discerning mortal thought processes and healing disease by the understanding of their unreality is given in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. It is related that Jesus discerned and responded to the mental appeal of a sick woman and asked, "Who touched me?" (verse 45.) His disciples misconstrued his question, believing that it referred to physical contact and thereby disclosing their limited spiritual discernment.
In her book "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy comments on Jesus' healing of this case. She says (p. 57): "When Jesus turned and said, 'Who hath touched me?' he must have felt the influence of the woman's thought; for it is written that he felt that 'virtue had gone out of him.' His pure consciousness was discriminating, and rendered this infallible verdict; but he neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detected and dismissed."
Christian Science reveals the process of Mind-healing to be distinct from so-called faith healing, or hypnotism. It teaches its students to watch carefully and prayerfully their own thought processes and to destroy as unreal any belief in or fear of disease which may be surging at the door of their own thinking or the thinking of their patients. They may well ask themselves: "Do I believe in disease? Do I believe there is disease? Do I believe disease is dangerous?"
If they do and are allowing such beliefs to remain unchallenged, they are unfaithful to their Master and to their Leader. Furthermore, they are unfaithful to God Himself. Why? Because they are entertaining as real that which God, the only cause and creator, did not and could not make— an evil power opposed to His allness. Such careless belief would violate the great commandment (Mark 12:29, 30), "Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength."
It was natural for Jesus to heal diseased conditions of the body by the power of Truth; and we too can correct wrong belief with right ideas. Actually, what is termed disease is merely an erroneous mode of mortal belief, unchallenged, but susceptible of correction by right and spiritually true thoughts imparted by divine Mind through spiritual understanding.
Mrs. Eddy healed sin and bodily disease readily and completely by the power of divine Mind alone. She thereby proved that there is no disease and that, through discernment of spiritual truth, it is not difficult to destroy what material systems term disease, even when it is called dangerous. If one finds himself entertaining the suggestion that there is disease and that it is dangerous and difficult to heal, he can be sure that he has not completely abandoned material thinking on the subject and has not accepted wholly the true system of healing sin and disease.
Christian Science explains this system, and it gives us the only genuine method by which we may become consciously aware of erroneous modes of material thought before they objectify themselves as pain and disease. This Science is instructing mortals how, through spiritualization of thought, to discern man's real being as God's idea and to classify as unreal any discordant modes of mortal thought called sin or fear or belief in pain and disease.
A bodily symptom of disarranged matter is never a cause of pain or suffering, but is the effect of belief in the reality of sensation in matter. The disclosure of the unreality of hidden thought processes differentiates between Christian Science and material, or humanly mental, systems of seeking to find the causes of diseases.
It is explained impressively in Science and Health (p. 379), "The Christian Scientist finds only effects, where the ordinary physician looks for causes"; hence the bodily condition to which the matter physician looks for a cause of suffering, the Christian Scientist knows is effect, the product of belief, not of Truth, and is therefore unreal.
Man's individual being is evolved solely by God, good, the only cause and creator, and is therefore spiritually healthy, immune to the evil belief called disease.
Through spiritual sense the false testimony of material sense is found to be unreal and causeless. Spiritual sense, a faculty of Mind reflected by the real man, may be developed through the earnest study of the Bible and the writings of our Leader. But this study must always be for the purpose of imbibing the spiritual meaning and putting it into practice. Knowledge of the letter alone will not equip the searcher for Truth with the ability to detect and destroy belief in disease.
But knowledge of the letter, coupled with an ever-increasing degree of the spirit, will develop spirituality and ability to obey more and more fully the practical demands of Science. This obedience is indispensable to our progress in the attaining of spirituality and the love of God and our fellowmen, which characterized Christ Jesus and his follower, Mrs. Eddy, and which enables one to detect and destroy disease.
