Article October 22, 1910 Issue

The writer of the letter on consumption very truly says...

Frederick Dixon

Essex County (Eng.) Chronicle

The writer of the letter on consumption very truly says that Christian Science teaches that disease exists simply in the mind, and that the physical manifestation is caused by mental conditions. At the same time, the deduction might be drawn from this that Christian Science teaches that disease can be healed by some operation of the human mind which produces it. That the mind which causes disease can temporarily affect the conditions which it has itself produced, may be true, but this does not constitute healing, and this is seen in the fact that patients who have been relieved by various sorts of mental suggestion, are in no way less susceptible to the ravages of disease in the future.

The human mind undoubtedly believes in the power of good and evil. It, therefore, was perfectly typified by Jesus, when, speaking to the Pharisees, he declared that a house divided against a house cannot stand. "But," he continued, "if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you." Now, the only way in which the finger of God ever comes upon man is in the exact proportion in which he gains the Mind which was in Christ Jesus. That the Mind which was in Christ Jesus did not believe in the reality of disease was proved by the way in which he healed sickness and raised the dead; and that this Mind did not believe in the power of evil was proved when he told Pilate that he could have no power at all if it were not given him by God.

Nobody, presumably, believes that Jesus meant by this that God endowed a man with the power to do wrong; he meant, obviously, that the only power Pilate could exercise lay in the fact that he himself, for the sake of humanity, had determined to prove, in the face of the world, that it was impossible for the Roman governor or for the Jewish high priest to destroy life, and so had determined to permit them to attempt to do so. That is to say, that Jesus, who knew so much more of God than any other man who has ever lived as to have earned the title of the Christ, permitted the Roman to use his human authority for the sake of demonstrating the powerlessness of that authority over the divine authority which had made spiritual man the indestructible image and likeness of God. The only reality or power evil can ever seem to manifest is the temporary sense of power and reality which a lie appears to enjoy until it is exposed. Consequently, just as Jesus raised himself after the crucifixion, through the knowledge of his own spiritual indestructibility, which constituted him the Christ, so every man becomes able to destroy sickness and overcome sin in the exact proportion in which he, too, gains the Mind which was in Christ Jesus, the knowledge Jesus possessed of eternal life. For, as he himself said, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

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