Article September 20, 1919 Issue

Subduing the Belief in Disease

JOHN L. RENDALL

One of the fixed beliefs of the human mind is that disease is very real and that it operates because of certain laws of cause and effect. The student of Christian Science is learning that disease has no more reality than the human mind concedes to it, and that it has no law back of it by which it is produced, maintained, or operated. This at first thought may seem to be an extreme statement, and yet its verity is being proved beyond question in Christian Science practice, in which the fundamental difference between reality and unreality is clearly demonstrated.

On page 145 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy we read: "The struggle for the recovery of invalids goes on, not between material methods, but between mortal minds and immortal Mind. The victory will be on the patient's side, only as immortal Mind through Christ, Truth, subdues the human belief in disease." The patient, then, is that condition of human belief which calls itself "a sick man;" in other words, it is sick thought which needs to be healed, and this is done by substituting Truth for error, reality for unreality, and harmony for discord.

This must of necessity be a purely mental or spiritual process, since the elements to be eliminated obtain only in human belief and the remedy is alone found in spiritual understanding. There is therefore no use spending time in the contemplation of that which is called physical or inert matter, for scientific demonstration deals with conditions as they really are, not as they may seem to be. The human belief of disease, or the human belief of sin, has no real entity. Jesus' teachings set forth the fact that sin and sickness are one and the same thing, and that the operation of God's healing law destroys them, and because with Him "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," the same law is operative now and forever.

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