Article December 26, 1908 Issue

The question naturally arises

Frederick Dixon

Loughborough (Eng.) Monitor

The question naturally arises, Was the healing power of Jesus inherent solely in his own spirituality—was it bestowed by him on his immediate followers—or did he claim it as the right of every one, in all the ages, who was prepared to follow him? If we accept the Bible, there can be but one answer. He made the power to heal the test of his own claim to be recognized as the Christ, and of the claim of all men and women, in every age and country, to be regarded as his followers. "Go your way," he said, when the Baptist sent to demand if he were the Christ, "and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached:" while it is not merely that in the first Gospel the command to heal is made a universal one to his followers, but in the second and fourth it is made the actual test of their faith—"And these sings shall follow them that believe;" and again, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." It is surely sufficiently plain that Jesus did not confine Christian healing to "semimoral and seminervous diseases," and that he not only, as no Christian Scientist has ever disputed, claimed that this "power was in the hands of the Christian church," but made it the test of Christianity.

It only remains to notice the last and most remarkable of our critic's statements, that the power used successfully by Christian Science, and which is "in the hands of the Christian church," is "suggestion." To be quite frank, in order to practise what is termed healing by suggestion, it is not necessary to be a Christian at all. It is just as possible for it to be practised, for what it is worth, by "all infidels and heretics." It is not Christian, because it professes to effect healing by the very power which it claims produces sickness. In a word, it is a "house divided against a house." and, as Jesus said, cannot stand for that very reason. Finally it is not power, because it is not of God. It was to this belief in the power to destroy disease through the cause creating disease that the Jews referred when they said, "This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub." Jesus' answer was final: "If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you." The kingdom of God, and with it the peace of God, never came to any man through mental suggestion; but it does come to all who realize, in the words of Mrs. Eddy, on page 496 of Science and Health, "that it is the spiritual idea, the Holy Ghost and Christ, which enables you to demonstrate, with scientific certainty, the rule of healing, based upon its divine Principle, Love, underlying, overlying, and encompassing all true being."

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