One who is suffering from a disease as the result of hateful thinking needs to replace his hatred with love. Such a change in thought will bring desirable results, because obviously love is better than hatred. This change in thought can well bring about a change in the body. Even medical men are acknowledging this fact today. But the full and permanent effect of divine Science is not experienced until the scientific relationship of love to God is recognized and mentally expressed and the hatred ruled out of thought by this expression.
In other words, a Christian Science treatment begins not with human thought but with God. God is Love, and spiritual love is one of the divine qualities. A human effort to stop hating one's neighbor and to think lovingly of him actually has divine support, but unless one is conscious of this support, acknowledges it, and mentally expresses his confidence in it, the human effort to be loving lacks Science. And lacking Science, it can fall short of its mark.
In giving a Christian Science treatment, the practitioner recognizes both the disease and its cause as phases of mortal belief. Mortal mind causes disease. A person suffers from a particular disease because it is one of this false mind's suggestions. And the suggestion includes the belief that the patient himself is thinking wrongly and seeing and feeling the symptoms. The case may be further complicated by some unlovely traits that the patient feels he cannot help clinging to as though they were his very identity. And the practitioner may be tempted by the suggestion that this clinging is voluntary and that the patient is therefore causing the disease to persist.
