The Bible records that when Christ Jesus cured the man with dropsy, he "took him, and healed him, and let him go."Luke 14:4;
It is clear from the various gospel accounts of healing that the Master was not mesmerized by the appearance of disease, even though he evidently saw the need sometimes to take the patient to one side, away from the crowd, before he addressed himself to the difficulty in order to heal him.
Jesus was not limited by suggestions of time or age. In many cases those he healed may have had only a grain of faith or spiritual understanding. Mrs. Eddy makes it plain in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, that the dark beliefs of sickness and sin were destroyed because Jesus saw the truth of man clearly. She writes: "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."Science and Health, pp. 476-477; The Master's healing practice was based on his understanding of God. He must have felt his oneness, or unity, with God so completely that no process of mental reasoning was required to raise his thought Spirit-ward —it was already there!
Jesus' healings were almost always immediate. But we need not feel depressed if, in our own practice of Christian Science, we don't always feel the inspiration necessary for an instantaneous healing. Mrs. Eddy has shown us that we can rise to this point of inspiration by a process of argument. Through affirmations of spiritual truth and refutation of the claims of evil, the healer's thought is lifted from the material evidences of discord to the facts of true, spiritual being, to the discernment of man's perfect identity as God's child. This seeing accompanies the light of Christlike love, and the receptive thought of the patient responds to this light.
It is the Christ, the power and emanation of God's grace shining through the transparency of spiritualized consciousness, that heals. Speaking of Jesus' capacity to express the light of Truth, Mrs. Eddy says: "The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted their lives higher than their poor thought-models would allow,—thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying."ibid., p. 259;
Another lesson we can learn from the Master's practice is that the healer should let go a personal sense of responsibility for the patient. When metaphysical work, or prayer, has been conscientiously done, we shouldn't mull over the case or wonder how soon the patient will shake off the disease. We can realize clearly that in reality there is no past record of inharmony to threaten man, no mortal history to leave a mark, no medical prediction that can operate as law. God is in control.
Paul, who became one of Jesus' most loyal followers, shows how to trust God's perfect care for the sick. When he was preaching to the Christians at Troas, a young man in the audience became drowsy and fell from the third loft. We are told that Paul went down and embraced the youth, who had been picked up as dead, and assured his troubled brethren that the youth's life was intact. The efficacy of his prayer is clear, for, the story concludes, "they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted."Acts 20:12.
Jesus has marked the way for the effective practice of Christian Science. Like the good Samaritan, we need to come where the patient is and lift him up, pouring in the oil and wine of love and healing inspiration, trusting implicitly in the healing Christ to destroy the false evidence of the senses and reveal the divine harmony of man's true being, which in fact was never threatened.
