When authorities predict that incidence of a certain disease may reach epidemic proportions, what is the responsibility of Christian Scientists? It is fundamental to the practice of Christian Science to do what our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, expected we would do: prayerfully respond to mankind's needs. She writes, "At a time of contagious disease, Christian Scientists endeavor to rise in consciousness to the true sense of the omnipotence of Life, Truth, and Love, and this great fact in Christian Science realized will stop a contagion."
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 116.
The spiritual understanding that God is omnipotent, All, is like an invisible but formidable line in our consciousness that divides reality from unreality. This "line" is a barrier against every suggestion of evil, since fear of evil can never trespass where God's allness is understood. And the demonstration of what we understand, expressed in morality and spiritual purification, reverses the threat that disease can exist at all, much less spread, with the truth that God, good, is already everywhere - a fact which precludes evil.
Understanding that disease is illusory, more a mental suggestion than a physical phenomenon, does not make us indifferent to the fears of others or hardened to suffering. Our Master, Christ Jesus, exemplified the fearless, loving attitude of a true Christian toward someone suffering from contagious disease when he touched and healed an "untouchable" leper.
See Matt. 8:2,3. If he had thought that disease was inevitable or irreversible, he could not have destroyed it.
