Medical immunization means building up in the body resistance to the development of disease. In Christian Science, immunization involves active spiritualization of thought, which has the effect of conditioning the body with health. The spiritualization process continues until our thought is completely awake to the truth of being—that man is spiritual in God's spiritual universe, secure from any possibility of harm. All along the way to this full realization we need to counteract suggested physical causes consciously and consistently. Successfully done, this work allows no vacuum in thought in which disease can begin to grow.
Christian Science shows that nothing so resists the development of evil as does the development of good. The development of good is what this Science is all about. "Beloved Christian Scientists," writes Mrs. Eddy, "keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210; Such active spiritualization of thought repels the secret morbidity that might invite morbid secretions in the body.
Spiritual ease is the norm of original spiritual being. Disease, or dis-ease, is always a threat of reversal of normal ease, as the word implies. However, disease can be made to serve a useful purpose. It can awake us to take more active possession of the thoughts we allow to govern our bodies.
Germs of disease are but suggestions of error that have been allowed to germinate in unresisting mental states of apathy or ignorance. Even when such suggestions infest popular belief with contagion, spiritual resistance makes individual immunity possible. And the right thinking of even one individual, when based on divine Principle, tends to break the mesmerism for the whole community.
Spiritual intelligence has power to arrest and nullify the mental molecules of any malady; it can prevent their growing from suppositions of ignorance into symptoms of fear and then into conditions of suffering. With mathematical precision the rays of scientific truth penetrate the anatomy of disease and expose it. As suggestion supported by false belief claims to have its result in suffering, so suggestion deprived of false belief can have no result.
False belief (or spiritual ignorance) is the only susceptibility to disease. Correcting false belief with spiritual understanding neutralizes it. That is why spiritual understanding is the atmosphere of health and the basis of ultimate immunity from all disease.
Spiritual understanding always begins with God. God is Spirit. Man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is spiritual. A physical belief cannot attach itself to a spiritual idea. Can integrity have a cold? Can joy be lame? Of course not! Such divine logic actively entertained is the "secret place" of safety from which all ills fall into disbelief. Spiritual understanding is secret in the sense that the material senses cannot know it. Therefore disease, even as a supposition, cannot find it.
When thought is invested with the facts of Truth, it cannot become infested with suppositions of error. In the beautiful psalm that spells out the multiple protections resulting from dwelling "in the secret place of the most High," the Psalmist says, "A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee."Ps. 91:1, 7;
But good is contagious. Christ Jesus proved this wherever he went. What he taught and proved is so contagious that it is spreading still, and will continue to spread until it permeates the whole atmosphere of human thought. The healing record of our Way-shower shows his consistent communication of the saving love of God to the lame, the blind, the leper —all who were receptive to his compassion. Compassion opened the way for divine Love to relinquish the fear and ignorance that had misinformed their minds and malformed their bodies. So healings were instant.
Communing with God, good, as Jesus did, we too can communicate only good. We cannot begin too early to teach our children, and show them by our own example, how to counteract the volume of suggestions that would apply to them as mere physical beings. No other generation has been so exposed to such widespread broadcasting of symptoms of disease in "living color." Children need often to hear that they are the image and likeness of God, not progeny of matter, subject to physical impositions handed down from generations of unsolved problems in matter. They need to know that the health-giving atmosphere of Spirit is ever present, and as natural and essential to them as water to a fish, or air to the flight of a bird.
What are called "children's diseases" are myths of matter. No child ever thought up one of them! Receptivity to good, irrepressible joy, and buoyancy are the childlike graces derived from Spirit that cannot be reversed into dis-eases of matter.
The children of God are innocent. But innocence is not ignorance. Real innocence is total receptivity to the thoughts of God and to nothing else. In a material world this means that thought must be weaned from the drift of material reasoning and won by the provable practicality of divine logic. Lovingly, wisely, and oh, so patiently, children must be taught to observe the hygiene of pure thinking, which resists impurity. Imbued with obedience to the laws of God, they are a law to themselves of exemption from the claim of physical laws that cause disease.
The Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the Lord's Prayer are the essence of protective and directive Truth to live by. Imbibing them gives built in resistance to all that is unhealthy, unhappy, and unholy in the human race. That is why Christian Science makes them mandatory as the first lessons in Sunday School, according to Article XX, Section 3, of the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy. Sunday School provides for the early introduction of the child thought to the healing values of Spirit. Spiritual prophylactics begin in the infant class and develop with maturing understanding.
Spiritual preventatives, instilling trust in God, eliminate fear; they keep thought open to resources beyond the human—the boundless resources of the divine Mind. Love for God and man sweetens disposition and lessens indisposition.
Doctors tell us tension and pressure are behind many physical ills today. Pressure cannot build up except in a confined area. Watch any singing teakettle. Only when it is tightly covered does it get its full steam up and shriek its whistle! Spiritually conditioned thinking eliminates the tight feelings that can only occur within the cramped quarters of the five senses. Here, and here only, within the limited senses, we find the spawning place of all tension, frustration, and pressure.
Given an outlet, human pressure cannot build up. Mankind's outlet is infinite in God. His Word says, "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament." Dan. 12:3; Spiritual ignorance is closed thinking. Wise thought is wide open to the divine Mind.
When a star pointed to the way of the healing Christ long ago, the Bible tells us it was "wise men" who followed it. Today, those who are wise will follow the Science of Christ that makes Christ healing practical. Mrs. Eddy tells how it all begins with Love. She says, "The star that looked lovingly down on the manger of our Lord, lends its resplendent light to this hour: the light of Truth, to cheer, guide, and bless man as he reaches forth for the infant idea of divine perfection dawning upon human imperfection,—that calms man's fears, bears his burdens, beckons him on to Truth and Love and the sweet immunity these bring from sin, sickness, and death.Miscellaneous Writings, p. 320.
The "sweet immunity" of Truth and Love understood belongs to all of us— the big ones, the little ones.
But we need to grow into it.
Be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good,
and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. . . .
Be not overcome of evil,
but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:2, 21
