Article January 2, 1909 Issue

It is never possible to be perfectly sure what an individual...

Frederick Dixon

Birmingham (Eng.) Despatch

It is never possible to be perfectly sure what an individual writer means by "faith-healing;" but if, as is commonly the case, the bishop meant the prayer to God to remove something He has either directly caused or indirectly permitted, then Christian Science has no affinity with it. Christian Science is based on the fact of the allness of God; that is, of good, and the insistence that nothing really exists but God and the spiritual universe. It follows from this that sorrow and sickness and sin, in a word everything that is unlike God, are unreal, inasmuch as they are inherent in a purely relative human sense, which actually is ignorance of God. The prayer, then, which will destroy this is a realization of Jesus' words that our Father has already given us all that we require, and the corresponding effort to demonstrate this by gaining a more scientific knowledge of God, and consequently of the truth which Jesus said would make men free.

Such a knowledge is as far removed from mental suggestion as anything well could be. Mental suggestion is the claim that one human mind can control another, and as no one has ever dared to pretend that the human mind is entirely good, it is manifest that such a theory leaves one human being at the mercy of another for whatever that other may define as good or evil. Now Jesus said, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." It consequently follows that the fruit of a mind capable of thinking good and evil cannot be good. It is, in the plain words of the Jehovistic document of Genesis, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the eating of which is described as producing death. It is equally manifest that healing cannot be effected through such a means. Jesus brushed the whole idea aside, from a Christian point of view, when he said, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation," for the claim of the human mind to the power to suggest health and sickness is just such a kingdom. "But," he went on, "if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you." The kingdom of God, and with it the peace of God, never came to any man by mental suggestion, and it never will. It is here that the difference between Christian Science treatment and any other mental treatment becomes a great gulf fixed; and the fact emerges that instead of producing tragic effects Christian Science has healed unnumbered cases not only of functional but of organic disease, and is destroying by precisely the same means sorrow and want and despair and malice and sin for did not Jesus declare, "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk"?

Christian Science, as the world will some day come to perceive, is no less scientific than Christian in its operation. The demonstration of its teaching is based on a recognition of the fact that causation is spiritual and not material. The question consequently arises. Is there an absolute spiritual law, working out in unvarying harmony, of which the wayfaring man may avail himself? Mrs. Eddy maintains that there is, and points out that Jesus broke every physical law, and demonstrated in doing so that the law was not God's law. The truth is that he healed the sick, not by breaking God's law, but by the strictest conformity to it. What he did break was the human sense of law. So long as man believes that physical causation is governed by law he will be subject to that law, but when he learns that there is no law but God's law he will realize why Mrs. Eddy has written, on pages 52 and 313 of Science and Health, that Jesus of Nazareth was not only "the best man," but "the most scientific man that ever trod the globe." He knew more of law than any other man, because he knew more of God, of Truth; and, knowing more of Truth than any other man, he necessarily demonstrated that knowledge more fully. These demonstrations have been called miracles because they were wonderful to those who believed that law was physical, instead of understanding that it was the working of that divine Mind "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." And because this law really is law it can be demonstrated to-day, as it was demonstrated by Jesus, whose therapeutics was moral and whose physiology was spiritual.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

It is never possible to be perfectly sure what an individual...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access