We're never helpless in the face of adverse material evidence. There's always something we can do when confronted by disease, lack, failure, or enmity. We can change the evidence. Mrs. Eddy states in Science and Health: "Erroneous belief is destroyed by truth. Change the evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real to this false belief, and the human consciousness rises higher." Science and Health, p. 297.
How do we "change the evidence"? Not by doing something to matter; not by humanly manipulating circumstances or people. We change the evidence of error, the testimony of material sense, by discerning through spiritual sense the evidence of truth and demonstrating what we discern.
Clearly, this isn't a mental exercise in which we close our eyes to a distressing situation by contemplating abstract spiritual ideas. Christian Scientists don't merely "tune out" error by ignoring it and focusing thought on spiritual truths. As we realize the facts of spiritual being which contradict the false evidence of the senses, error is not only put out of thought, it is destroyed. The presence of health, abundance, and opportunity is demonstrated right where disease, lack, and limitation appeared to be.
Let's look more closely at this Christianly scientific method of changing the evidence.
Our first step is to recognize that the evidence we perceive through our physical senses is unreliable and delusive. Take, for example, the feeling that the stationary train you're sitting in is moving—an illusion brought on by the passing of another train. Another example is that a ship seems to sink below the horizon. Education and experience teach us that these appearances are untrue. The evidence of ill health, poverty, and sin is proved equally delusive by those educated in the Science of Christ to discern spiritual reality.
The more we understand of God's true nature and the perfection of His creation, the more readily we discern the falsity of what the material senses perceive. This is why it's so important to educate ourselves spiritually through the study of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings. The more we use our spiritual sense, the less easily we are impressed by physical sense testimony. And the more quickly we are able to reject false evidence.
Our method for changing the evidence is fundamentally the same, whether we're confronted by accident, disease, or inharmonious relationships. Let's see how we might pray scientifically to change the evidence of disease, which is always a false belief, to the evidence of health, which is a spiritual fact.
Scientific healing was exemplified in the works of our Master, Christ Jesus. Referring to these works, Mrs. Eddy writes in Unity of Good: "He annulled the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God. He showed the need of changing this mind and its abortive laws." Then she adds, "He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this change through the higher laws of God." Un., p. 11.
Those whom Jesus healed were restored to normalcy when the misconceptions of fear or sin or ignorance that had held them in bondage were cast out of consciousness by the Christ, Truth. In some cases he identified the specific mental change essential to the healing. To the man cured of a longstanding infirmity at the pool of Bethesda, he counseled, "Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." John 5:14.
If a healing seems delayed, this can indicate to us that more of a change in consciousness is needed. It may be that our prayerful work needs to be more specific. Often fear hasn't been totally destroyed. If this is the case, we need to draw closer to the heart of divine Love and realize more fully that man is the very object of God's tender, unremitting care. The healing power of God's love reaches human consciousness through the action of the Christ. This ever operative influence of Truth annuls the impositions of false, material law and restores harmony.
Sometimes the necessary change in consciousness requires overcoming moral weakness or sin. If a moral error has produced the physical discord, the evidence will disappear when the sin has been seen, forsaken, and driven out of thought by the redeeming power of Christ, Truth.
Occasionally, the influence of thoughts not our own seems to cause sickness. It's usually well to address what is termed in Christian Science "animal magnetism," or the belief of mental action opposed to God. We nullify this belief by denying the claim that a mind apart from God exists and can transfer injurious thoughts to another mind. Since God, good, is the origin of all true consciousness, man receives all his thoughts from divine Mind alone.
When the necessary change has taken place in consciousness—fear has been removed, the suggestions of disease corrected by their spiritual counter facts, any moral errors detected and ejected— the evidence of health will appear. A change in consciousness is accompanied by a change in bodily evidence because mortal mind and body are not separate; they are one.
Illustrating the relationship between mortal mind and matter to one of her classes, Mrs. Eddy explained, "It is like the man who said, 'My wife and I are one—and I am that one!'" We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1979), p. 94. Mortal mind must always be silenced and subdued by truth before health can be restored to the body. In his parable of binding the strong man, Christ Jesus asks, "How can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house." Matt. 12:29.
The body is not really guilty of wrongdoing. It's only the blackboard on which mortal mind writes its thoughts. The body should never be feared or hated. It need not be thought of as an enemy but a friend; not a master but a servant to be treated kindly and cared for wisely. The body manifests health in the proportion that mortal mind yields to divine Mind's absolute harmonious control.
In the statement from Unity of Good quoted earlier, we are told that Jesus' demand for "a change of consciousness and evidence" in those whom he treated was brought about "through the higher laws of God." The laws of divine Science nullify in the treatment of disease the claims of matter, the so-called laws of physics, and medical opinion.
Our demand for a change in the consciousness of disease and in its bodily evidence is met through understanding that God's laws are supreme and ever available to negate the false claims of the corporeal senses. As we accept and realize the scientific basis of health—that all is Mind and its manifestation of perfection—this becomes law to our experience. The evidence of error yields to truth, and we are lifted higher in spiritual understanding.
In every circumstance requiring healing we can always discern the spiritual facts that contradict the material lie and that reveal in its place the presence of wholeness and harmony.
