Article February 20, 1904 Issue

Healing the sick is not the ultimate aim of Christian Science

Ezra W. Palmer

The Critique

Healing the sick is not the ultimate aim of Christian Science. It is merely one of the necessary steps in the growth of the spiritual man. Jesus healed the sick and Christian Scientists follow Jesus, but Jesus nowhere gave out the thought that this included the whole of man's growth. Christian Science traces all discord,—all sin, sickness, and death,—back to its ultimate cause, lack of understanding of God. God is omnipotent, good, the cause of all that really exists, and on this basis Christian Science denies the reality of disease. We have schools and spend millions to overcome ignorance in our children. Has ignorance a real existence? No. It is merely an absence of truth, which has real existence, and which the Psalmist says hath a price above rubies. To a Christian Scientist, it is not logical or conceivable that God created disease, and since He did not create it, it has no real existence, but is merely a false conception manifested on the body. It is classed with ignorance which clearly has no inherent reality, being merely the absence of truth.

It will thus be seen that the basis and practice of materia medica and Christian Science are wholly at variance. Materia medica looks to material means for help in time of sickness; Christian Science to God alone and discards all material aids. Materia medica looks to the effects as manifested by the body and attempts to remove these by material remedies. Christian Science looks beyond and sees the fundamental error in the mortal thought which controls the body, and by the enlightened understanding gained from the study of the Bible and Science and Health overcomes the causes through prayer, and thus the effect disappears.

Ezra W. Palmer.
The Critique (Denver, Col.)

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