Article September 28, 1912 Issue

TRUE HEALING

CLARENCE W. CHADWICK.

IT is indeed true that "the time for thinkers has come" (Science and Health, Preface, p. vii). Humanity is rapidly awakening to the fact that it is living in a thought world. The advancing scientific mentality of the twentieth century is willingly resolving things into thoughts, and thus a truly mental or metaphysical basis for thinking and living is coming more and more into prominence.

As cherished theories and beliefs are summoned to appear before the bar of Spirit, there to ascertain that there is no law of continuity for material thought, its ways and means, two marked phases of human activity are in evidence: first, a joyful acceptance of both the theory and practise of Christian or metaphysical healing on the part of countless thousands who had begun to think along advanced lines; and second, a zealous and persistent determination on the part of the advocates of material systems to hold their subjects in line and even to make light of the achievements of those who have found in Mind what they failed to find in matter. In describing this disposition of the human mind Jesus has well said: "Ye have taken away the key of knowledge [spiritual understanding]; ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered." Christian Scientists know the source of all such opposition to spiritual truth; they know it is not people who are arrayed against the teaching of Christ Jesus, but the universal mortal belief in a power opposed to God, and when they pray for the enlightenment of all mankind they simply know spiritually what constitutes the kingdom of heaven and man's connection with it. This is the opposite of hypnotic suggestion, of personal or human-will influence; it is Christian healing, and not mere experimentation.

Material methods of treatment, viewed from a strictly scientific or Christian standpoint, are but the exchange of one human belief for another. They are the substitution of a mistaken sense of health for a material belief of disease. In the truest sense of the word it may be said that doctoring or curing is a form of human idolatry, in that it acknowledges "other gods." It makes a graven image of the mortal body and bows down and worships it unceasingly. Primarily it is a deception, in that it promises something to humanity which it does not and cannot bestow upon it, viz., health and happiness. Taking drugs or indulging any other form of body worship is wholly an experience of mortal mind; neither God, divine Mind, nor the real man, have any part in experiences. A lifeless, non-intelligent drug can make no appeal to mind or body, and no law of God governs its use. A drug's so-called influence upon the system is dependent solely upon the human thought and belief that are associated with the drug. There is no action, or influence, without thought to impel and to govern it.

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