In today's marketplace of sophisticated high-tech medicine, it could seem naive even to raise the question about whether it is necessary to have a thorough knowledge of sickness. Medical practice asserts that the more information a physician and patient can have concerning the detailed physical causes, action, reaction, and symptoms of a disease, the greater is the likelihood of effecting a cure.
That's one outlook. Yet there's another perception of what is essential to real health and well-being. The fact that there is healing which is practiced from a radically different standpoint—a spiritual standpoint rather than a material one—doesn't mean it is any less practical. In fact, to look carefully at the actual work of its leading proponent and his students would show how totally practical and effective this healing method truly is.
The method we're referring to is pure Christian healing, or metaphysical healing, so successfully practiced by Christ Jesus and his disciples in the early Christian era. It is presented to humanity today in a comprehensible and systematic manner through the teachings of Christian Science. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, makes this compelling statement about the purpose of scientific Christian healing: "The question, What is Truth, is answered by demonstration,—by healing both disease and sin; and this demonstration shows that Christian healing confers the most health and makes the best men."Science and Health, p. viii.
