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;
