Article March 7, 1914 Issue

The Christianity that healed the sick in the first century...

Charles D. Reynolds—Manchester, N. H.

The Union

The Christianity that healed the sick in the first century and proved itself a health-giving power, is the Christianity which Christian Science is making operative in the twentieth century. The healing accomplished by Jesus and his followers in the early centuries is being repeated today, and proves that sanitation and hygiene are terms that apply as properly to mental conditions as to physical. This is no new doctrine. The Founder of Christianity proved that the most important department of the science of life and health is not in the physical but in the mental. According to his teaching, therefore, to exclude the human mind and character and limit the work of sanitation and hygiene to mere physical cleanliness is superficial. The one-sidedness of such a course was criticized by the Master himself when he chided the Pharisees because they limited their efforts to keeping clean the outside of the cup and platter and neglected "that which is within."

Christian Scientists are today strictly following their Master's injunction to "cleanse first that which is within." This teaching is now being applied by them as Jesus applied it, with the result that sickness and disease are being prevented and healed by scores and thousands of cases. The method may differ from the ordinary means, but the results are undeniable, as the statistics gathered from time to time will prove. No one denies today that it is in the human mind that the worst forms of sickness and disease originate, in appetite uncontrolled, passion, anger, fear, and the myriad forms of selfishness. Any teaching that enables humanity to overcome and eradicate evil from consciousness is essentially therapeutic. Every sin destroyed is so much sickness destroyed or healed. On this point Mrs. Eddy writes in the text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," on page 135, "The same power which heals sin heals also sickness." The Christian Science movement is a complete verification of that statement. It is correct to say that any system which does this is sanitary and hygienic, though it be mental and not physical. Pure food, pure air and water, and a clean body and environment, are indispensable to health at this period, and they are not inconsistent with the Christianity of the Christ; but let us not think that this is the whole of the problem of health.

There is plenty of occasion for closer cooperation and mutual understanding between those who work by differing methods. While many other well-intentioned people are trying to cleanse "the outside of the cup and the platter," Christian Scientists are devoting themselves to what they understand to be the vastly more important task of cleansing the human mind by eliminating from consciousness all that is contrary to divine Truth, which Jesus taught and practised with such healing success. The spiritual is above the material, and he who follows the former will find himself made free from bondage to the latter. He who consistently practises the teachings of Christian Science, to that degree finds himself freed from evil conditions; he cannot be the victim of those failures which tend to fill our prisons, jails, almshouses, and reformatories.

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