The questions are sometimes asked: What is the place or function of the denial of error in a Christian Science treatment? How much time and attention should be given to this phase of the work? It would be difficult to give any generalized procedure, for each case is individual, and the method used in treating a case depends largely on what is necessary to change the patient's belief from sickness to health and from sin to holiness. When the allness of God, divine Love, is sufficiently realized, there is no necessity for the argument, since Christ, Truth, naturally rebukes error and establishes the harmony of God's government.
But in the application of Christian Science many of us have not attained such a complete understanding and so need the argument to prepare our thought for the pure conviction that heals. At different places in her writings our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, has referred to the place of the denial of error in the work of Christian Science healing. She says: "Belief produces the results of belief, and the penalties it affixes last so long as the belief and are inseparable from it. The remedy consists in probing the trouble to the bottom, in finding and casting out by denial the error of belief which produces a mortal disorder, never honoring erroneous belief with the title of law nor yielding obedience to it."Science and Health, p. 184.
As our Exemplar and Way-shower, Christ Jesus rebuked error in various instances in his healing practice. The Bible tells us that he "rebuked the fever,"Luke 4:39. he "rebuked the foul spirit,"Mark 9:25. he denounced the carnal mind as "a liar, and the father of it."John 8:44. The purpose of the rebuke or denial is to uncover the falsity of error and to stir the human consciousness to a higher state of thought in which the harmony of God's law is recognized as the natural and normal state of true being.
