Article September 21, 1899 Issue

God not the Author of Sickness

Dayton (O.) Weekly Herald

How very many people there are in this world who honestly and sincerely believe that God sends sickness and various kinds of affliction upon them for some reason, they know not what, but out of which they are trying to hope and believe that some good will come if they endure patiently. For such people our hearts naturally go out in sympathy, and it is with the utmost solicitude for their well-being that we insist upon their taking higher views of the Fatherhood of God, and abandon all belief that He sends evil upon humanity in order to bring about a higher reign of righteousness. Such captious conduct would receive a sound rebuke if administered by an earthly parent to his tender offspring. No. This cannot be true, and it should only require the simple statement to show us how far it will lead us from the Truth if persisted in. I have never known a case of such resignation to result in the highest good; and I feel warranted in saying that the facts are just the opposite. The tendency of such a course upon the mass of suffering humanity is to quench the small spark of love's flickering light which already shines upon their upward pathway, and to cause the gloom of despondency to settle like a pall about them.

Now let me ask you, as one who has had experience, to reverse this entire process of reasoning. Think of God as your only Father, infinite and eternal, and whose tender mercies have never been impeached; that you are His child, made in His image and likeness, and that in your apparent weakness He holds you in the hollow of His hand; that He is the Life, the Truth, the Way, and because He lives you live to claim the blessings of eternal life now, and, my word for it, His loving-kindness and His tender mercies will cover you over like a mantle of glory, and "Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."

Your sickness and suffering are not sent of God. They are the result of your own lack of fidelity to the higher law of Love, which will teach you, if you will only listen, to give up your lusting after the inducements held out by mortal mind. But if you will not do this by rising in the consciousness of Love and Truth to a higher plane of thought, then you must suffer till you will be glad to give them up. This you will observe is quite a different thing from becoming resigned to a doleful endurance under the belief that God wants you to suffer. Would it shock you if I should ask, "Do you want your own little child to suffer?" Of course you do not. You only want him to learn the way of Truth and Love and higher living, and you much prefer that he learn that way without the many bitter experiences that you have had. Simple, isn't it? Yet this law of Love and Truth is the very heart and soul of Christian Science. It is Christ enthroned within. This highway of right living you will find very clearly set forth in our denominational text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker G. Eddy.

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