Healing occurs when we feel the ineffably tender relationship that exists between us and our Father-Mother God, who already knows all our needs and who in reality has already satisfied them out of His limitless self-containment and wisdom. Then spiritual healing comes in peace, in a quiet realization of an eternal fact. And it is invariably possible, because nothing can withstand omnipotent, divine Love.
There is healing power even in the letter of Christian Science. But the words, however true, must be accompanied by the spirit of our conviction of their truth. This spirit comes through our awareness that God loves all—the healer and the patient alike—and that we also love Him with our full heart.
Christ Jesus, the Way-shower, was well aware of God's love for him and spoke of it many times. And in the sixteenth chapter of John we read that he said to the disciples (v. 27), "The Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God." Genuine Christian Science treatment includes the wordless consciousness of divine presence, that loving touch of infinite Mind which transcends the words. The Bible has called it "a still small voice," I Kings 19:12; or in the original Hebrew "a sound of a gentle stillness."
Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, writes in Science and Health: "It is a question to-day, whether the ancient inspired healers understood the Science of Christian healing, or whether they caught its sweet tones, as the natural musician catches the tones of harmony, without being able to explain them. So divinely imbued were they with the spirit of Science, that the lack of the letter could not hinder their work; and that letter, without the spirit, would have made void their practice." Science and Health, pp. 144-145;
The question is sometimes asked: "How can I be sure that in treating myself or others I am not merely repeating the words of truth? How can I know when I have achieved the understanding, the spiritual sense, that has the power to heal?"
This surety is ours when we actually feel that quietude of divine presence, that inner, unshakable peace which partakes of nothing material and is filled with love. This tells us that God is All and matter nothing but illusion. It is the evidence that we have reached a moment of spiritual understanding. This is the healing and its proof.
Because God is the only real power, all power, knowing no opposition, He acts effortlessly in the quietness of His allness and oneness. Though gentle, God's power is irresistible. When felt, it indicates that the material senses have been silenced, that the disease claiming to need healing has been healed, that the threat—even if it was the threat of death—has been dispelled. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Science speaks when the senses are silent, and then the evermore of Truth is triumphant." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 100;
A crucial event in the career of the prophet Elijah was the occasion when God taught him that divine power is not to be found in cataclysms of wind, earthquake, or fire but in the still small voice testifying to the divine presence. This essential lesson came to Elijah at a point in his life when discouragement had utterly immobilized him. Though he had restored a child to life, destroyed the prestige of Baal, reaffirmed in Israel the worship of the one God, brought rain to the drought-ridden land, nevertheless he had finally been forced to flee into the wilderness because of Jezebel's determination to kill him. He even asked God if he might die.
However, in his great need an angel— a thought from God—came to Elijah with spiritual sustenance, which enabled him to go on to Mount Horeb. There God revealed to him a special quality of spiritual power—the stillness that testifies to the unity of God and man, a relationship that cannot be disturbed nor disrupted even by the most violent convulsions of material belief.
How sweet and heavenly the presence of God, Love, must have seemed to Elijah after the turmoil and threat of wind, earthquake, and fire! How reassuring the divine, infinite power clothed in a gentle stillness! This perception of the pure, silent nature of spiritual might so strengthened him that he went forth again to fulfill a career as one of Israel's mightiest prophets. In the end, we are told, "Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" II Kings 2:11; instead of succumbing to the belief in age and death.
Science and Health states, "If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness like dew before the morning sunshine." Science and Health, p. 365.
In a sense all Christian Science healing is instantaneous. For though the healer may need to use the arguments of Science to prepare his thought for the ultimate clarity—the acceptance of the allness of good and the nothingness of evil, the sense of God's love as all-embracing—healing comes at that moment of understanding. If one's prayers are on his own behalf, he recognizes at once, "I am healed!" If one's efforts are on behalf of someone else, he still knows when the work is done and the belief in disease or other evil obliterated.
When pure spiritual sense touches thought, the Christian Scientist does not consult matter or mortal mind for assurance of healing. He knows that evil has been defeated and good is triumphant. The still small voice has spoken with infinite power and has been heard.
