Article August 21, 1902 Issue

Man and Evil

Arthur R. Vosburgh

Rochester (N. Y.) Herald

A critic quotes Mrs. Eddy's statement that "Man is never sick;" but he neglects to point out that when Mrs. Eddy speaks thus of man she has in mind man as an immortal spiritual identity—man as God's child. Christian Science insists that the spiritual man is the real man, that life is essentially spiritual, and that this alone gives us the true sense of man as God's likeness. The whole purport of Bible teaching is intended to give this higher sense of man as spiritual and immortal. No one denies that, to their physical sense, mortals become sick. What is contended is that as we get the higher sense of man and life as spiritual, the higher will dominate the lower.

"Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. It is more than fancy, for it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through a right apprehension of the Truth of being" (Science and Health, p. 460).

This writer quotes the words of Jesus that "they that be whole need not a physician, but that they are sick," and applies it as proving that Jesus recognized that the condition for sickness exists and needs a physician. No one questions for a moment that as a condition of the human sense sickness is here to be met, but 'we believe that Jesus' method of meeting it is the true one, that Christ himself is the Great Physician, and that the normal working of the Christ-life is to cleanse from sickness as well as sin. This was surely the way in which Jesus instructed his disciples.

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