Article September 3, 1904 Issue

All Disease Unreal

An expression very often heard at Christian Science experience meetings, and elsewhere, is that all diseases are alike to God. Of course those who have carefully studied the Bible and Science and Health understand the sense in which this statement is made, while those who have not made such a study, and those who come to the meetings to learn what the teachings of Christian Science are, naturally infer that by this expression is meant that it is just as easy to heal one disease as another, which, although true, is by no means the experience of the average practitioner.

From such an inference, people, almost of necessity, come to the conclusion that Christian Scientists must claim that it is as easy to heal a person in the last stages of consumption as to heal one with only a cold, and they say reason and common sense are agreed that such cannot be true. Thus at the very outset of their investigations many people are biased against Christian Science, if not altogether turned from further investigation; whereas, if they had understood the true meaning of the expression, it would probably have appealed to them.

The sense in which all diseases are alike to God is that each and every disease is contrary to the law of God and therefore unreal; that the law of God insures health and happiness, and destroys disease. Probably the true meaning of this statement can best be illustrated by reference to simple examples in arithmetic, as 2 plus 2 equals 5, and 5 minus 2 equals 2, each of which is alike to the basic law of mathematics, that is, contrary to its law. Without any knowledge of arithmetic, the child would necessarily have to learn first how to detect and correct the first error, later how to detect and correct the second, and so on, until, possibly, the pupil, grown to maturity, might be able to point out and correct errors in the most difficult problems in the higher branches of mathematics. All mistakes, from the simplest example in addition up to and including the most difficult astronomical calculations, would be alike to mathematics, in that each would be opposed to its fundamental law; but no one would contend that it was quite as easy to point out and correct a mistake in an astronomical calculation as to point out and correct a mistake in addition.

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