Editorial March 19, 1910 Issue

CAUSE AND ITS LOCATION

John B. Willis

In no one thing, perhaps, has Christian Science more helpfully influenced human thought than in its redirection of the world's attention to the very simple truth that effects are to be adequately dealth with only as we address ourselves to the removal of their final cause. Failure to act on this very common-sense requirement has defeated much honest and sincere effort to administer justice and better human conditions. Sheer ignorance, or the bias of prejudice and superstition, has so entirely mislocated the actual responsibility, so overlooked the real explanation of things, that the cause of ills has not only remained entrenched, but in the long run even effects have been aggravated rather than remedied.

This is nowhere more clearly manifest than in the endeavor to relieve the sick. The theology of the Christian world has always declared disease and death to be the outcome of sin, and yet when sickness comes to the great majority of Christian people today they practically ignore their explanatory faith, and unless the patient is subject to gross sensuality, some overt sin, the alleviation of his suffering by a poulticing process is the one end and aim to which effort is directed. The Christian Science concept of healing as a reclamation, a regeneration of human consciousness, presents an entirely different point of view. It focuses thought and endeavor, first, last, all the time, upon the removal of cause, a false belief, thus rendering it practically possible for the sick to wrest a distinct and abiding gain from an experience which otherwise is found to be profitless as well as painful.

It is apparent that if in every case of sickness the final cause were at once attacked, so that the experience became the occasion of spiritual exercise, of assertive truth-knowing, not only for the sick but for the circle of friends surrounding them, its significance would be wholly changed, and what is now reckoned as loss, and that alone, would become one of the "all things" that "work together for good;" and this can but eventuate when we have learned in Christian Science to find the seat and explanation of all disharmony in that false sense of God and man from which, as all Christians agree, Christ, Truth, is a present and perfect Saviour. Then the meaning of St. James' words, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations," will be fully entered into and the day of our overcoming will be at hand.

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