The material universe is a universe of beliefs. The Christ, Truth, as taught and demonstrated by Christ Jesus, and brought into activity today through Christian Science, saves us from these beliefs. They are corrected and improved by this saving Truth until they finally yield to the divine laws that they counterfeit.
Let us consider three beliefs that greatly affect the healing practice of Christian Science and see how the Science of Christ helps us correct them: the belief that sickness, or discord of any kind, is external to consciousness; the belief that the health and harmony resulting from Christian Science treatment are physical changes; and, perhaps one of the most subtle, the belief that health is in or because of matter.
When we are confronted with a discordant condition, the more alert we are in recognizing it as a false belief, the more promptly we can apply spiritual law to it. We cannot apply truth, which is spiritually mental, to a physical condition that we suppose to be outside consciousness. As long as we believe the difficulty to be a condition of matter, we are unable to reach it. But when physical conditions are resolved into the thoughts, or beliefs, that produced them, these beliefs can be exchanged for spiritual ideas. As Mrs. Eddy instructs us in Science and Health, "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul." Science and Health, p. 269; It is not metaphysics to attempt to apply statements of truth to physical conditions. Mrs. Eddy says, "It is mental quackery to make disease a reality—to hold it as something seen and felt—and then to attempt its cure through Mind."p. 395;
It is vitally important also, when one has been healed through Christian Science treatment, that he learn just what has happened. He has experienced a yielding of false belief to spiritual law, not a change in matter brought about in some mysterious way through prayer.
If we understand that belief produces all so-called physical effects, we can see that as a belief is improved, or corrected, the product of that belief is improved. We then begin to realize how necessary it is to spiritualize our consciousness through the study of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings. We read in Proverbs that as a man "thinketh in his heart, so is he."Prov. 23:7; There can be no more difference between what we think, our conscious and unconscious beliefs, and our human experience, including our body, than there can be between what is on a film and the picture it produces when it is projected on a screen.
If one believes that a disease or any condition that has been healed was actual and physical, he is liable to a recurrence of the condition. But if he learns that the disease was a belief and that the improved physical condition is evidence that the belief has yielded in this instance to the spiritual truth, he no longer fears it and it disappears from his thought.
An experience I had may help illustrate this. I had been reading Science and Health and some copies of the Christian Science Sentinel for only a few weeks without any thought of healing. At a periodic appointment with a surgeon I called his attention to a growth on my body. He seemed quite concerned, wrote down a specialist's name, and said I should see him immediately, as this kind of thing had to be removed expertly or it would return.
On my way home I thought about what I had been reading of Christian Science, and that if it were true (and I was sure it was) it could heal this. But I mistakenly thought that I didn't know enough about Christian Science to ask a practitioner to help me. I decided that I should continue to study. Then, when I was prepared, I would go to a practitioner and with his help I could be healed. The next thought was, "But it has grown rapidly and could be much larger by that time—and what if it has a name that would make delay dangerous?" Then I reasoned, "What's the difference how large it gets? A large error is no more real than a small one. And what does it matter what it is called? If it isn't real, a name won't make a bit of difference to the truth when it destroys it."
I tore up the note with the specialist's name on it and began the daily study of the Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly, reading little besides that and Christian Science literature. I actually forgot about the growth until a few months later. I was quite discouraged and was thinking that I didn't understand any more about Christian Science than when I began to study it. Suddenly I thought, "Yes, and what am I going to do about that growth?" I looked, and it was gone. I found myself saying, "Why, it was never there!"
Then I made an appointment with a practitioner, because I wanted to know how this healing came about. When I had told her how I reasoned it out on my way home that day, she said, "Why, my dear, you put it out of consciousness, and that's the only place it ever was." That was over twenty years ago, and there has never been any return of the condition.
This was how I began to learn what Christian Science healing is, and each healing I have had since then has added something to this understanding. And this understanding is necessary for steady progress toward our goal of complete resurrection from the belief that life is in matter. Christ Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."John 8:32; Actually Truth frees us from false belief rather than from a physical condition. Although to human sense this appears as a physical change, and we are grateful for release from suffering, we need to know what has actually taken place, and that it took place in consciousness.
The third belief referred to is what Mrs. Eddy calls a "health-belief." She says, "It is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change in either a health-belief or a belief in sickness affects the physical condition." Science and Health, p. 297;
We sometimes go along believing, consciously or unconsciously, that good health, good sight and hearing, intelligence, or success are attributable to physical conditions, that they are the result of healthy organs, a strong body, good ancestry, or human ability and personality. We may even think that our study of Christian Science, whatever its extent, has helped maintain these so-called good material conditions. This is a dangerous state of thought because it can lull us into thinking that matter, which is an illusion, can be made better, healthier, and more abundant, or that something that originated in matter can be perpetuated by Spirit, to which matter is unknown. Further, it lays us open to the loss of qualities and faculties, which we believe are the result of material conditions, whenever the conditions change because of age, disease, or injury.
When our sight, for instance, is normal, we are apt to think, "I have good sight." But if it seems to weaken, we refer to it as a belief of poor sight. Isn't normal sight, when it is thought to be in material organs, just as much a belief as poor sight? While we are enjoying good sight, good hearing, good health, or good business, we should be instructing these health-illusions out of themselves. We then would not only gain the understanding of what constitutes sight, hearing, success, but we would be winning our exemption from the so-called states and stages, ups and downs, of health illusions.
This education, or improving belief, is spiritual regeneration. It is not an intellectual exercise, but must be motivated by a sincere desire to understand God and His creation. Our aim must be to see the nothingness of matter, not to attempt to get more of it or to make it better. Nor can belief be temporarily put aside until we are healed; the desire to know the truth must be deep and genuine. The unchanged physical condition is evidence that false belief has not really yielded.
Some beliefs are more stubborn than others. This is because they have their roots in the very foundations of material existence, in the belief that there is life in matter. Something spilled on a fabric can be removed, but a blemish that is woven into the fabric requires reweaving in order to remove the defect. The universe of Spirit, Mind, and its divine laws, which were revealed to Mrs. Eddy and set forth in her writings, make it possible for us to get at the foundation of false belief, to improve and correct it until the whole fabric of false belief disappears— gives place to the spiritual facts of being. Is this not the transformation Paul was urging when he wrote to the Romans, "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God"?Rom. 12:2.
