When Mrs. Eddy gave its final, full name to the textbook that she wrote to explain and establish her discovery of Christian Science, she decided upon the title, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Actually, this title connects health with law, since a science operates within the framework of law and requires obedience to law. "Key to the Scriptures" links Science with Christianity, and health with the healings recorded in the Bible, particularly those of Christ Jesus.
Mrs. Eddy had glimpsed the connection between law and health when she was healed of the effects of an accident feared to be fatal. Then, through Bible research, prayer, and demonstration, the revelation came to her of the healing Principle by which Christian worship must be characterized. So she could assert in the textbook, "If Christianity is not scientific, and Science is not of God, then there is no invariable law, and truth becomes an accident." Science and Health, p. 342;
Of Science and Health itself Mrs. Eddy writes: "Although this volume contains the complete Science of Mind-healing, never believe that you can absorb the whole meaning of the Science by a simple perusal of this book. The book needs to be studied, and the demonstration of the rules of scientific healing will plant you firmly on the spiritual groundwork of Christian Science."
"Our Master healed the sick," she explains further, "practised Christian healing, and taught the generalities of its divine Principle to his students; but he left no definite rule for demonstrating this Principle of healing and preventing disease." ibid., p. 147; Mrs. Eddy was the pioneer of the actual proof of the healing law she discovered and named Christian Science. Since the first publishing of Science and Health in 1875, millions of healings have taken place through the impact on health of the application of the law of God that the book sets forth. Great numbers of people throughout the world gratefully acknowledge that they have been restored to health and mental freedom through the power of Christian Science.
Divine Healing Law: Available in Every Period
Spiritual healing began long before Christ Jesus appeared or Christianity was given its name. It was not new to the Hebrews. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Elisha occasionally healed directly and purposefully through divine means, thus establishing the fact that there is available a law of health, that prayer can invoke the power which manifests divine law, and that this healing power belongs to every period.
One can scarcely read the four Gospels without noting the great emphasis the Founder of Christianity placed upon health. Jesus explained that his mission on earth was to do the Father's will, and surely that will was evident in his compassionate healing of individuals and multitudes. Health, then, is more than personal advantage; it is a divine requirement, a demand of God.
Jesus knew the relation of health to right thinking, and so he said on a suitable occasion, after healing someone, "Sin no more." John 5:14; Not that all sickness is the result of personal sin, but it is always the effect of the sinful sense that Paul termed "the carnal mind" and explained as "enmity against God." Rom. 8:7; This explanation stresses the point that sickness, whether it is the effect of sin, fear, ignorance, or false belief, is always contrary to the Father's will and consequently without sanction from Him.
After Jesus' ascension above the mortal sense of existence, his followers obeyed his directive to go into the world and preach the gospel, heal the sick. The Acts of the Apostles tells of numerous healings his followers brought about in the period immediately following the ascension. The Gentiles were responding to the upsurge of Christ, Truth, as it spread its healing power throughout their lands.
The ante-Nicene fathers testify that the healing demanded by Jesus continued, to a degree, for about three centuries. But materialism crept in as the marvelous example of the Master receded into the dim past. Medical means and theories took the place of the divine method of attaining health. Healing was no longer considered essential to Christian worship. There came bleak centuries with little proof of an understanding of the divine law that governs man's health. Theological wanderings from the Master's teachings even included the belief that it was God's will that men should suffer and that they were to bear sickness meekly and with patience.
Mankind have endeavored to bring certain material elements—elements of the earth considered medical—under their control in an effort to better conditions of health, instead of turning from the earth to Christliness as the means for attaining physical harmony. And this materializing of healing methods continues to present times.
History shows that Christianity and all that pertains to it have a way of springing up at times with fresh vigor of development. This is what occurred when Mrs. Eddy discovered the law of Spirit, God, and gave her discovery to mankind in Science and Health. Through its impact health is again recognized and proved by those who follow her to be a spiritually mental state and the eternal condition of the sons of God.
Surely the ever-present law of health is as usable today as it was when the Saviour attracted to him the multitudes that yielded to the might of that law. Probably the main reason that Jesus' method was abandoned through the centuries preceding the coming of Christian Science was that aggressive materialism had buried divine law out of sight in the minds of most Christians. Matter seemed more powerful to them than Spirit, God.
True Consciousness Includes Permanent Health
To help one understand how spiritual healing is now widely demonstrated, one needs to know what health is. Webster gives an interesting hint in this definition of "heal":"To restore to original purity or integrity."
The concept of health as "original purity or integrity" accords with the teaching of the Bible and Science and Health that man is the image and likeness of his Maker and that he includes purity and integrity as his original inheritance from God. Man in this light reflects rather than produces health—reflects it from his source, the divine Mind, or God.
Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health, "All the varied expressions of God reflect health, holiness, immortality—infinite Life, Truth, and Love." Science and Health, p. 518;
To acknowledge that one's real consciousness is absolutely spiritual and perfect, as Mind's reflection, is basic in the practice of healing taught by Christian Science and outlined in its textbook. According to the revelation of Science, man is an individual consciousness, the incorporeal likeness of divine Mind; and this real identity, or consciousness, includes unchanging, indestructible health as its normal state. Health is a built-in characteristic of Mind's image. And so Mrs. Eddy could say in another of her writings, "The true consciousness is the true health." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 298;
Because health is a built-in characteristic of real consciousness, it can never be taken out of man. It is forever present to be brought to light; hence a change of consciousness is always a goal of Christian Science practice. When ill health appears to have its way with someone, his remedy in Science lies in his ability to change his thought of existence from material consciousness to spiritual consciousness, from the awareness of matter to the discernment of Spirit, or divine good. Since true consciousness includes permanent health, along with an infinitude of other divine characteristics, it must be seen that impermanent, fragile flesh and its inharmonies are merely sense impressions, supposed contradictions of the real substance of man; and they are powerless to harm God's image.
Christian Healing as Science
Webster gives as one definition of "science": "Knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method."
Mrs. Eddy thoroughly tested the law she discovered by healing many people of their ills. She saw that Jesus was applying divine law as he brought health to light through his healings. In her Rudimental Divine Science she defines Christian Science "as the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony." Rud. p. 1;
Mrs. Eddy's deep comprehension of the order and health brought about by the Saviour's works showed her that the hodgepodge of good and evil, order and disorder, health and disease, life and death, always confusing humanity, was not the truth of being. With profound compassion she went about the task of separating the real from the unreal, the works of the Father from the deceits of the evil one.
Since the early Christian centuries, just as before them, there have undoubtedly been instances of spiritual healing. People have loved God and have prayed to Him with deep faith in His power to restore health. Their very Christliness and their adoration of Deity have brought them into intimate contact with the Giver of all good. And this has sometimes brought healing.
But Christian Science healing is more than faith cure or even the ardent prayer of petition. Its law-governed system involves immortal truths and the demonstration of the tangible forces of Spirit.
What is the system of Christian Science, the system that restores the original purity and integrity of thought constituting health? To heal consistently one must acknowledge and deeply yield to the truth of the infinity, the allness, the supremacy, the goodness, of the one creator, divine Mind. One must know that the real selfhood of a patient is, in fact, the image and idea of that Mind, hence an incorporeal, sinless manifestation of Mind. In the healing treatment one also denies the reality of the material senses, which evolve and experience disease, and one casts them out of thought as alien to God's man, whose senses are spiritual.
Specific details of a sickness are detected and denied existence on the basis that God alone is the creator of health and that man cannot lose it. With such basic facts in thought, Christian Science treatment can include a myriad of healing ideas. The system of argument, as outlined in Science and Health, is wonderful, for it leads human thought away from the materialistic and destructive to the spiritual and immutable. But unless the comforting spirit of Christ is expressed, the results of the argument are inconclusive. Spiritualization of thought has not been achieved.
Every human being has spiritual sense, and this sense unites each individual with divine Mind, or Truth. The degree of spirituality that one manifests depends upon his honest love of God and man. And Truth can never be deceived about this. It is through spiritual sense that divine Truth, or intelligence, finds an open door to human thought, enters it, and governs it. Governing human thought, it governs the human body evolved by that thought. And because divine Truth is intelligence itself, it brings purpose and direction to every atom of the human body. Intelligence rules out of consciousness the negative mental forces that would constrict, contract, congest, or distort the organs and action of the body. Intelligence then establishes in consciousness the forces of Truth that harmonize, unfold, and develop right action essential to health. And the forces of Truth—love, harmony, purity, integrity—operate invariably as law.
The Psalmist said, "Thy law is the truth." Ps. 119:142; Christ Jesus declared, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32; Mrs. Eddy says (in a sermon included in her Prose Works), "The ego is not self-existent matter animated by mind, but in itself is mind; therefore a Truth-filled mind makes a pure Christianity and a healthy mind and body." The People's Idea of God, p. 5;
The concept of "a Truth-filled mind" is one step out of human dualism—belief in good and evil, Spirit and matter, Truth and falsehood—in the effort to free oneself from the tyranny of human, material beliefs and thus to find health and peace as the living idea of divine Mind. The goal of Christian Science, as Science and Health presents it, is the revelation of spiritual selfhood, or idea, inseparable from Spirit and without any connection with matter. Even the attainment of "a pure Christianity and a healthy mind and body" does not permit one to stop reaching for and becoming fully conscious of the absolute selfhood of man, who, in divine Science, is Life's perfect image.
Christian Science has proved for more than a century that the Father acts through the law of health and that once this law is understood it obliterates states of mind that contradict the truth of health and would make mankind helpless.
Law may have various definitions; but none is more apropos of its use in healing mankind than Mrs. Eddy's definition of law as divine, a concept pervading her writings. In her book Miscellaneous Writings she declares, "The law of God is the law of Spirit, a moral and spiritual force of immortal and divine Mind." Mis., p. 257; And in the textbook, "Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God." Science and Health, p. 243.
The force that is divine law is in constant motion, producing, governing, and maintaining all that God creates. To understand this law as the only law brings divine control into human affairs. It stops the destructive forces of sin, disease, deterioration—all negative beliefs—and eliminates them from the individual's consciousness. In this way God's will is done, and health is demonstrated as the only law of man's being.
A basic doctrine of Christian Science, which Science and Health asserts, is that all disease is mental, hence a knowledge of the patient's mental state is required, rather than of his physical condition. The body will respond inevitably to an improved state of thought, simply because thought is entirely responsible for what appears to be a physical disorder. Moral and spiritual obedience to the demands of Deity produces the peace of mind and the conscious unity with God basic to the experience of health.
Scientific Healing Illustrated
Here follows the report of a healing that gives some insight into the spiritual system of Christian Science and the part played by Science and Health in the healing work.
A Christian Scientist writes:
"A woman called me to say that she had a lump on her breast along with bodily pains and that she was extremely fearful.
"Since she is a member of The Mother Church and a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, we discussed Mrs. Eddy's teaching relating to the diagnosis of physical symptoms, where she states in the textbook, Science and Health (p. 370), 'A physical diagnosis of disease—since mortal mind must be the cause of disease—tends to induce disease.'
"We discussed the admonition in relation not only to a medical diagnosis but also to an individual's diagnosis from the standpoint of material sense testimony and sensation in matter. Such diagnosis was seen to be only mortal mind's effort to act as cause and to attempt to claim identity. Christianly scientific analysis begins with spiritual perfection and ends with spiritual perfection.
"The woman's complete and present freedom and total independence, in reality, from any claim of matter or material so-called law were voiced, and thought was turned to the spotless, pure, and perfect fact of her true, spiritual nature as the only reality of her being.
"Healing took between two and three months. The woman's loyalty to Christian Science and her increasing determination to remain steadfast to the teachings of Science aided greatly in her gaining freedom.
"My metaphysical work began with gratitude for her obedience and loyalty. I was also grateful for the understanding that there is no disease of any kind for anyone, that there never had been, and there never would be. And I was grateful for our Leader's discovery of this truth as Science and Health records it.
"The most important element to be handled was that of fear. Aggressive and persistent general belief, as well as relentless medical beliefs relating to this sickness, was thoroughly and carefully denied existence.
"The work uncovered habitual qualities of thought that needed to be eliminated as mortal mind impositions—passive, negative, dependent states of thought, which beliefs of heredity and childhood conditioning claimed as part of her identity. The result of such thinking had been evidenced in an apathetic study of Christian Science and in resentment and frustration toward her husband for his less than brilliant performance as a provider and husband.
"As the work progressed, the woman began to understand the subjective nature of her entire experience and to realize and accept her responsibility for it as well as her God-given ability to express the divine will. Instead of demanding from others, she began demanding right thinking, obedient thinking, of herself.
"Because there had been a chronic problem of supply in her home, it was pointed out that supply is related to individual spiritual activity. How active was her thought spiritually? How intelligently and gratefully was she making use of her present sense of supply? How abundant was her love of God? Did she really appreciate Mrs. Eddy?
"The thought came to her that she had secretarial skills and might look for a part time job. Within a week she had found employment ten minutes from home and timed so that she would be home to care for her daughter after school. It was also arranged for her to be at home with the family during the summer months, as her college-age daughter could fill in for her during that time.
"After a few weeks on the job, she called to say that the lump and pains had disappeared. Her husband was delighted with the additional income. She remarked how really wonderful it was to be free of the terrible gnawing fear and of course the false evidence. She was also very grateful for proof of her ability to cope with new and expanding activities."
And here is the record of a healing of the effects of an accident, another kind of human problem that Truth reaches effectively when it is properly applied.
"I came home one night to find my eldest daughter had been taken to the hospital as the result of an automobile accident. She was driving illegally and was at fault. Both cars involved were demolished. No one else was seriously injured. My daughter's head had gone through the windshield. There was glass in one eye, and the eyelid was torn to shreds.
"Her instinctive response had been to turn to the truths of scientific being, to turn the nightmare back to its nothingness. She identified herself as a Christian Scientist and asked someone to call me, but an ambulance was summoned instead. When the hospital called home, my youngest daughter called a practitioner. My husband, who is not a Scientist, was out of town and could not be reached. I authorized a surgeon to remove the glass and sew up the lid. But as he said, 'I can only sew it up. I can't make it work.' The fear of disfiguration and permanent damage was very strongly suggested.
"From the moment this lie of mortal mind was presented to me I rejected it and turned to the supreme law of infinite Love as the only law, operating and acting in my daughter's behalf as a law of annihilation to the false claims. The conviction that divine Mind was mercifully ever present and all-powerful was so strong that I felt free to dismiss the practitioner.
"For two weeks my daughter and I stayed closeted in Science and touched something of 'the beauty of holiness' together. Her remorse over the illegal driving was healed by Mrs. Eddy's assurance (Science and Health, p. 404):'If the evil is over in the repentant mortal mind, while its effects still remain on the individual, you can remove this disorder as God's law is fulfilled and reformation cancels the crime.'
"It was some months before the eye and eyelid functioned normally. Although a slight line remains on the eyelid, she models without makeup. The beauty and harmony of her spiritual birthright are forever intact and show bodily."
The impact of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures on human thought is gradually having its effect. Many open minded individuals who devote themselves to helping the sick are acknowledging that thought is deeply important as the cause of disease and that it is in thought that healing must be attained.
A marvelous thing about spiritual healing as it is applied through Christian Science is that the truths are applicable to every type and kind of human problem. Nothing is too severe, nothing is too mentally hidden, nothing is too boastfully wrong to resist the power of the loving Father's will. His law is revealed, and it needs only thoughtful, compassionate, and intelligent prayer to give humanity the beneficence of its divine and perpetual control.
