For many people it's natural to pay heed to the relationship between health and thought, and we often hear today of "the mind-body relationship." Hypnotherapy, holistic medicine, and visualization are only a few of the current systems attempting to relate what people think to how they feel. Although these methods are commonly based on something besides drug therapy as a healing agent, they all look to the human mind for healing power. Scientific, Christian healing, however, turns to something apart from the human mind for help. It heals spiritually, and what sets it apart is that its basis is Christian and that it looks entirely to God, the divine Mind, for healing, reformation, and even for proof of man's immortality.
When Mrs. Eddy founded Christian Science in the late nineteenth century, the healing systems most popular in Western society were material medicine (both homeopathic and allopathic) and treatment based wholly or partly upon hypnotism. Mrs. Eddy's discovery, however, exposed the fact that neither the human mind nor matter is a healing agent. Although many leaned on what they thought was the power of the human mind to heal, Mrs. Eddy found that this dependence upon human thought was not of lasting benefit and that physical symptoms often reappeared in a more aggravated form. Her continued disappointments in seeking a cure for her own ailments impelled her to look entirely to the power of God, the one Mind.
Mrs. Eddy did, in fact, find healing when she went directly to God and discovered what she later identified as "Life in and of Spirit." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 24. She glimpsed that her life was actually spiritual, and this realization of how God made man—spiritual and perfect, as He is—had the profoundest effect on her. She was immediately healed. But more than that, she discovered the Principle and rule of Christ Jesus' own healing works and devoted the rest of her life to sharing her discovery and making it plain to others.
