Article May 22, 1915 ISSUE

Disease Not Real

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

The teaching of Christian Science, that disease is not real, is not always hospitably received, even in quarters where it is most needed; yet it is the best friend of the sick, for it offers them the only means of escape. If disease were real in the way that love and goodness are, it would indeed be a sad outlook, for mankind would forever be attended with its haunting fears and pains. If it were real, it would be useless to doctor it, since there is no process that can destroy reality. Christian Science, however, heals disease on the basis that it is not real, and it takes this ground because disease is not of divine origin.

It may be asked here why Christian Scientists treat disease at all, if they do not believe in its existence. It may be answered that, strictly speaking, they do not; they treat only a false belief in disease. For example: A gentlemen who had lived in the South once told the writer that tomatoes, at that time called "love apples," were regarded as poisonous, and had been known to cause serious and even fatal illness. Now, would an enlightened physician, having to doctor such a case, regard the illness as a reality or as a false belief?—that is, would he set himself to antidote the imaginary poison or to dispel the patient's hallucination? From a purely physical standpoint, could a person be made ill by partaking of a suppositional poison? If man is a materially organic being, as is generally taught, how could the poison that was not there, poison the person who did not eat it but who thought he did? On the other hand, if a wrong thought caused the illness, why should not the right thought heal it and be the natural and only remedy therefor? Then if it should be discovered that wrong thinking causes all disease, would not right thinking be the rational and only effective remedy?

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