Article December 5, 1908 Issue

THE HEALING OF A DEMONIAC

ETHELYN ANN GILL

The scientific sense of the healing recorded in the fifth chapter of Mark which has come to me in the measure of my present understanding of Christian Science, I trust may prove as valuable to some one else in the healing of mental disease as it has been to me. The man whom Jesus healed was evidently suffering from the belief in insanity, which is often the result of unsound or unspiritual reasoning. He "had his dwelling among the tombs."—in a material sense of life; and we are told that "no man could bind him, no, not with chains." It seemed that no material agency could heal him, not even the most powerful. The record goes on to say: "And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones." This discontented and unhappy mortal refused to leave his self-righteousness, and continued in the false sense of life typified by the tombs, all the while wounding himself by his selfishness and stubbornness, or belief in matter as substance.

But we are told that "when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshiped him." Although he discerned but faintly the Christ-consciousness which Jesus represented, he was attracted to it and loved it, and then began a struggle which ended in the triumph of Truth. Mortal sense "cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not." This vehement demand to be let alone was made as the healing power of the Christ began to be felt; for mortal sense was stirred to its depths, and enraged almost beyond endurance by the knowledge of its own nothingness. Christ Jesus had said, "Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him. What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country." It would appear that Jesus gave no heed to the demand or evidence of evil, but continued his work of healing the man, though false sense seemed tenaciously persistent.

The story goes on: "Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea." As spiritual discernment awakened in the man's consciousness, he saw that the multitude of selfish and sensual thoughts proceeding from self-righteousness and the false sense of life were as the "great herd of swine feeding;" and as this discernment increased, it was made plain that the "unclean spirits" and "devils" were one and the same with those selfish and sensual thoughts, or swine, which when detected and cast off by reformation are destroyed; and thus the man was healed. These "devils," or evils, were detected and cast out by the consciousness, but the man was not healed until he himself saw the old self, or mortal mind, externalized in all its swinish nature, and was willing to cast it off, by denial and repudiation, into the sea of nothingness. Mrs. Eddy says, referring to this particular case of healing, "The Scripture seems to import that Jesus caused the evil to be self-seen and so destroyed;" and elsewhere she says that "the way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in truth through flood-tides of Love" (Science and Health, pp. 411,201). Much helpful thought along the same line may be found through the study of "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 107,112), in which it is made clear that error is no part of man's true consciousness.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES