Christian Science healing consists in destroying, not symptoms,...

Frederick Dixon— Sevenoaks, England.

Sevenoaks Chronicle

Christian Science healing consists in destroying, not symptoms, but the cause of disease. This cause is always a mental one, so that symptoms which seem dangerous may be rooted in causes far less difficult to destroy than those which produce symptoms which seem far less dangerous. Now, in order to destroy the cause, it is necessary to overcome in the human consciousness the belief which constitutes it. A belief of very long standing, especially when the results are not dangerous, may be more difficult to eradicate than a belief of comparatively short existence, even though the symptoms produced by the latter seem more threatening. Consequently, it is perfectly possible to be months, and even years, expelling a firmly fixed belief that one is clinging to oneself, while it may be comparatively easy to overcome a more recent belief to which another person is clinging. This is just an indication of the immense range of Christian Science healing, but in a way it explains what a recent writer in your paper is inquiring about.

A man, to give an example, might have been dropped as a child and had his spine injured. By the time he is forty or fifty, the belief of curvature of the spine has become an actual part of his human mentality. It might take him years to get rid of this belief, though there is no reason why it should take him five minutes; but, all the same, he might heal a drunkard or a man suffering from consumption or cancer during the process of healing himself. The healing of the drunkard and the man with consumption or cancer would, indeed, be an actual part of the destruction of the belief of inharmony in his own consciousness, which was necessary to the overcoming of his own belief in the reality and permanence of evil, either mental or physical.

It has been made quite plain in the recent correspondence in your columns, that even those who have doubted Christian Science healing admit the healing done by the apostles. Now, Paul raised the dead, yet Trophimus was left sick at Miletum. How was it that Paul, who raised the dead, did not succeed in healing Trophimus? More than this, it is an accepted belief of the church that Paul's "thorn in the flesh" was a physical disability. Dean Farrar, I think I am right in saying, described it as weak eyes. How was it that Paul raised the dead and yet failed to overcome his own "thorn in the flesh"? It was, I take it, for the precise reason which I have tried, however shortly and indifferently, to explain in this letter.

Finally, may I point out that the critics of Christian Science find it a great deal easier to point out the deficiencies of Christian Scientists than to imitate the healing done by those Christian Scientists. Every week, the clergy of all denominations are entering the pulpit to preach against sin; every day they are going round their parishes, teaching people how to avoid sin. What would the writer of the letter, who signed himself "One who wants to know," think if a Christian Scientist were to say, How is it that the whole clergy of the world are teaching their congregations how to overcome sin, when they have not overcome it for themselves? The question is exactly on all fours with the one which has been asked in your columns, and may I invite the person who asked that question to answer my question? It is not pretended that any human being is without sin. How then can a person who is a sinner preach the gospel, which is to heal sin for sinners, if a Christian Scientist who is sick cannot pray for others, suffering from sickness, to be saved form sickness?

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