Mary Baker Eddy affirms, "Christian Science never healed a patient without proving with mathematical certainty that error, when found out, is two-thirds destroyed, and the remaining third kills itself." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 210. Occasionally we may wish for that "remaining third" to hurry up and self-destruct! If a particular wrong seems very apparent, but the healing hasn't been immediate, perhaps we wonder what is holding it up.
Evil is often less apparent than one would believe. Sometimes, particularly with a physical trouble, we treat the symptoms—try to change the material condition—instead of affirming the spiritual reality of man's present perfection in God's likeness. "If only I could make this go away," we think. This kind of reasoning may seem a natural tendency, yet it ignores the real problem. Why? Because it focuses only on the manifestation of the underlying erroneous, mortal thought. The erroneous thought itself is the actual culprit, and it is uncovered and destroyed through a perception of the spiritual facts of God and man.
If your cat was alarmed at the sight of a dog, would you treat it for raised hair? You would not waste your time, for you would know that fear was the cause of the trouble.
