Article May 6, 1911 ISSUE

THE MINISTRY OF HEALING

ROBERT NALL

What are the qualifications required for healing the sick? This is a perennial question, one that every student of Christian Science has asked at some time or other, and it will not be difficult to answer if considered from the only true view-point. In nothing was Mrs. Eddy more emphatic than in teaching that here personal sense must be lost sight of. Study the whole chapter, for instance, on Christian Science Practice in Science and Health. It is, to use the author's own words, "aflame with divine Love" (p. 367), which heals. Among the first things that she herself learned was that her own prayers failed to heal her, and it was not, as she relates, until the spiritual sense was discerned that she found relief. This is the A. B. C. of Christian Science healing—this apprehension of the all-important fact that it is not human might nor human power that can accomplish the task, but the "living, palpitating presence of Christ, Truth" (Ibid., p. 351). This is part of the great lesson which needs to be learned. Every beneficiary of Christian Science wants to engage in this ministry of healing. It is divine work. It appeals to us because of its intrinsic worth, because it is the reflection of Love which enriches the giver and receiver alike. And it is the high privilege of all to engage in it.

If we see difficulties in the way, they are self-created; therefore they can be overcome by a greater fidelity to Truth. We know, as we have grown in the knowledge of the faith that we hold, that all truth must have its source in the one infinite intelligence, and that it is this truth alone which heals. When we are unable to apprehend this, we may be letting material concepts, the beliefs in the physical, obstruct the entrance of spiritual light. We may be raising self-constructed barriers, thus hindering our progress toward that condition of emancipation from erroneous thought without which we cannot be channels for divine Love to do its work. We are to know ourselves as spiritual; to know that the basis of all healing is spiritual; that Mind is All.

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