Article October 2, 1909 Issue

St. Peter and St. Paul both healed the sick in the way...

Frederick Dixon

Dublin (Ireland) Express

St. Peter and St. Paul both healed the sick in the way Jesus had taught, and the way Jesus taught was contained in the words, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Now, as one of the greatest of scholars and churchmen has pointed out, the Greek text of the Gospel of St. John draws a marked distinction between "the truth," by which the writer means the absolute truth, and "truth" without the article, by which he is in the habit of referring to a mere relative sense of truth. It is plain that the more a man knows of absolute truth, the more scientific is his knowledge, and the greater his knowledge of God. This may help to explain why, in the epistles, both St. Peter and St. Paul make use of an expression translated in the Authorized Version "knowledge of God," but which should actually be translated full exact, that is, scientific knowledge of God. It is this scientific knowledge, this full knowledge of God, which obviously constitutes the knowledge of the truth which Christ Jesus said would make men free. This, it is to be suspected, was the knowledge possessed by St. Peter when, at the Beautiful gate of the temple, ignoring all the material conditions which constitute lameness, he said to the cripple. "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk."

The healing of the lame man was what is commonly described as a miracle. It cannot, however, be too often insisted that the words translated miracle in the Bible have not, and never have had, any supernatural significance. They mean sometimes that which is wonderful, sometimes simply a sign. For instance, the word translated signs, in the last chapter of Mark, in the phrase, "These signs shall follow them that believe," is the word elsewhere translated miracles, so that it might equally be translated, "These miracles shall follow them that believe." The more a man knows of the truth of anything the more he necessarily and naturally believes in it. Therefore, the fuller a man's knowledge of God, the more scientific his knowledge of truth, the stronger his faith becomes, and the greater his ability to take advantage of the promise of Christ Jesus: "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." In those words Jesus himself made Christian healing a test of Christian faith. There is no possibility of escape from this. On the day when the orthodox churches separated the healing of sickness from the healing of sin, and declared that for one a man must go to a church and for the other to a hospital, they made the effort to divide the seamless garment, and wrote in the pages of their church histories the record of the decline of their faith. "Whether is easier, to say," Jesus had demanded, "Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk."

Christian Science is the effort to make this healing as practical in the world today as it was in the first century. The disciples themselves did not always succeed in healing the sick, and Christian Scientists have never pretended that they know enough of God never to fail in helping those who come to them for healing. They are painfully aware that at present they are demonstrating very imperfectly and insufficiently this truth which makes men free, but they are at least striving humbly and persistently to let that Mind be in them which was also in Christ Jesus, for they know that just in proportion as they gain the Mind that was in the Christ they will gain that absolute knowledge of Truth which constitutes that full or exact knowledge of God, the possession of which Christ Jesus promised the world would enable men to perform not only the works he had performed, but even greater works than these.

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