Article November 21, 1953 Issue

BETHESDA TODAY

ROBERT WILLIAM BAYLES

In the fifth chapter of John's Gospel is an account of a healing by Christ Jesus of an impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, and it brings out several valuable points in Christian Science. Among these are the Master's disregard of material means for healing, the immediacy and availability of God's power to heal, and Jesus' counsel to the healed man to protect his healthful status. All three are very important to Christian Scientists.

This Scriptural record clearly illustrates that the Master did not depend upon the material healing methods of his day. Someone else, ignorant of or indifferent to spiritual power, might have had much sympathy for the impotent man and so might have said, "I will wait with you for the movement of the waters and will aid you to be the first one into the pool." But the Way-shower understood man to be spiritual, God's image and likeness. This truth of being had then and still has sovereignty over the false beliefs of inharmony, and Jesus knew that this sovereignty did not require matter to aid it. Spiritual understanding proved its dominion in the restoration of soundness and wholeness.

An important requisite for the student of today who strives for Christlike understanding is an unwavering conviction that God, infinite Spirit, is all-powerful, needing no material aids. If one is tempted to look to material remedies, as the sick man of that day looked to the pool, let him remind himself that Jesus utterly disregarded matter's alleged healing power. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy illumines this point where she writes (p. 167), "The scientific government of the body must be attained through the divine Mind." It is interesting to note that she does not say "may" be attained, but clearly states "must be attained," and then she continues: "It is impossible to gain control over the body in any other way. On this fundamental point, timid conservatism is absolutely inadmissible. Only through radical reliance on Truth can scientific healing power be realized."

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