The repot of Dr.—'s lecture in a recent issue contains...

News Tribune

The repot of Dr.—'s lecture in a recent issue contains a reference to Christian Science which is complimentary, but, as is often the case, it is liable to give your readers a wrong impression of Christian Science healing. From a purely material standpoint it would look as though Christian Scientists "made a business of being well." But even if that were true, the Principle by which this is effected is not only radically different, but is the antithesis of the so-called or alleged principle of persons who "make a business of being sick." The point really is, that persons who make a business of being sick are sick because they lack a knowledge of the Principle of health.

Christian Scientists are well, not because they make it a business to be well, but because in thought and action they are applying the divine Principle of being, existence, and living. In other words, they are making manifest the real and true relation between God and man, which is based upon the law of absolute harmony. Sickness is a condition of discord, or, to divide its synonymous term, it is a condition dis-ease, that is, a lack of ease in the sense of harmony and an absence of friction or trouble. Even as in Jesus' time, when his work was first recognized as simply the healing of disease instead of as a spiritual mission, so Christian Science has in most instances been viewed as a new system of therapeutics, and because its basic proposition is the allness of Mind, persons who have not studied it carefully have gotten the impression that it is allied with the psychological theory of mind over matter, that is, the influence of the human mind. Mind, as used in Christian Science, refers to the divine Mind, or God, and is distinguishable from the so-called mortal mind, which, as Mrs. Eddy says, "is not a factor in the Principle of Christian Science" (Science and Health, Pref., p. x). This mortal mind is the one to which Paul refers as the "carnal mind," which is "enmity against God," or "the old man with his deeds," which must be "put off."

It is true that we have the physical healing in Christian Science in thousands of cases which have refused to respond to any and all medical and other material theories, including so-called psychological methods, hypnotism, suggestive therapeutics, and other human forms of so-called mental healing. These cases are evidences of the correctness of the basic law of Christian Science. They are the "signs following," but, as Mrs. Eddy says, "the mission of Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration, is not primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to demonstrate its divine origin,—to attest the reality of the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world" (Science and Health, p. 150).

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