Editorial May 8, 1920 Issue

Protected Health

Gustavus S. Paine

What is known as "public health work" has, so far, by no means satisfied even the doctors themselves. Though many have been more or less eager to extend this work, the task has seemed, from their standpoint, enormous and the means available merely a constantly varying mass of theories and practices. County health officers, state health officers, and local health officers find their methods oftentimes in sharp conflict. The serum depended on yesterday is discarded to-day. The effectiveness of fumigation and even of quarantine is seriously questioned. Advice given to parents in one locality is the exact opposite of that in another community. In fact, the whole question of how to combat disease from a physical point of view seems an endless flux of sheer experiment. To say this is in no way to disparage the efforts of the medical men and women who are honestly seeking to do their best. Instead, it is simply to state a fact recorded in the innumerable medical journals and in the books on the subject.

To the student of Christian Science, all this difference of opinion is not surprising. The whole campaign for "public health" that is being pushed throughout the world by every sort of suggestion is based on the untenable supposition that health is a condition of a material body. It is usually an attempt to combat disease by explaining disease. Thus it is mainly an analysis of what is supposed to be diseased matter, with some speculations as to what might be improvements. Now any sincere investigation of Christian Science shows plainly that true health is the orderly activity of Mind, quite apart from belief in matter. This fact the average worker on a medical basis has ignored. Sooner or later, however, every earnest seeker is bound to discern the truth. Then zealous effort will no longer be futile, for it will be really turned in the right direction and will find its fulfillment in Principle expressed without limit.

Only as health is understood to be idea manifesting divine intelligence, is it truly conserved. Conscious reasoning in accord with intelligence is conscious spiritual vigor. It perfectly resists any suggestion of disease. The essence of Life, or Spirit itself, could never be touched by any suppositions of matter. Because Life cannot be comprehended through the physical senses, no doctor has ever determined by material analysis what constitutes resistance. With its whole activity, the one divine consciousness is indestructible. In other words, to any suggestion of destruction it presents complete resistance. Thus each one must learn for himself what the consciousness of right activity is and must prove in his own experience that this consciousness is his all-sufficient defense. Really this consciousness is not something to be gained, since it actually is right now the cause for all the true living there is. Each one, then, needs calmly to consider what his entire being consists in even now. As he does so, he goes forward with quiet assurance forever. Health, rightly understood, is purely spiritual, and cannot be assailed by any illusion of danger.

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