Article June 7, 1919 Issue

Classification and Limitation

JOHN M. DEAN

In that wonderful chapter on Genesis, which is a very important part of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy in her analysis of the allegory of material creation says (p. 528), "Beholding the creations of his own dream and calling them real and God-given, Adam—alias error—gives them names." This has been a failing of mortal man in every age, and thus it has come about that, once subscribing to the reality and necessity of disease, the next step has been to classify it as acute or chronic, organic or functional, of mild or of serious import. Christian Scientists have largely mastered this false concept, and yet it requires constant watchfulness on their part to avoid being ensnared by its insidious suggestion.

Even the apostles seem to have been mesmerized by the belief that some special difficulty confronted them in their efforts to heal the demoniac boy. Jesus, however, proved that this form of error was no more difficult to destroy than any other type of evil, and he rebuked his followers for their failure, in the words, "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." Clearly Jesus did not mean that this particular form of disease presented any obstacle to healing, for the sequel shows otherwise; rather did he seek to impress the lesson that by true spiritual prayer, with its consequent fasting from the false evidence of the material senses and from their Adam habit of classification, a case such as this would be dissolved into its native nothingness as readily and as completely as any so-called minor type of error.

Just as no student of mathematics was ever healed of the belief that two and two are five by one who also trusted in that fundamental error as if it were the truth, so one cannot be truly healed of diseases or sins by another who believes in their reality. The nothingness of any error is proved when the error is overcome through purely spiritual means; for to the thinker it must be plain that realities, or in other words, God-created things, cannot be destroyed. In Christian Science, therefore, disease is regarded as unreal because it is subject to destruction, and nothing can never be more than nothing, whether it calls itself an infinitesimal microbe or claims to be a veritable mountain of error. The size of a cipher does not determine its value, for whether large or small it is still a cipher.

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