Article February 26, 1921 Issue

Health

CARL MARTIN BRASHEAR

In a primary grade at school the children were asked, "What is the difference between health and sickness?" One little boy gave this reply: "Health is when you are feeling good, and sickness is when you are feeling bad." This simple statement of what constitutes health and its so-called opposite is a gem of truth that only the fortunate ones who have had the advantage of an acquaintance with Christian Science teachings can really appreciate and comprehend. On page 120 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, has stated, "Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear reliable testimony on the subject of health." Health is, then, a condition of consciousness. God being the one Mind, health is one of His attributes, and good health is the only health there possibly can be. "What seem to be disease, vice, and mortality," Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 11 of "Rudimental Divine Science," "are illusions of the physical senses. These illusions are not real, but unreal. Health is the consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else."

Living is an expression of Life, and Life is God, and unless God fails us health is ever with us, and we can rest in the assurance of Paul, when he said, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God." There can be no more truth in a statement of ill health or poor health than there is in a statement that two times two equal five. Nothing but ignorance would make such a statement. You could get no ill nor sorrow from a statement that two times two equal four, because it is the everlasting truth, and in truth there is no ill. In health there is no disease; ignorance of Life—of true being—is the soil from which spring our fears called disease. Mrs. Eddy, writing on page 62 of Science and Health, elucidates this when she says, "Our false views of life hide eternal harmony, and produce the ills of which we complain."

Before we knew anything of the teachings of Christian Science, we perhaps viewed existence—our being—as beginning in and supported by the material body. We readily admitted that should anything happen to disorganize or destroy this material body, our life would then have no habitation or foundation. From this condition of thought we very logically deduced that the condition of the material body had everything to do with the care and keeping of our health. We believed, therefore, that life, health, living, depended on and were regulated by the body. It was the false view of what constitutes life and therefore life's condition, health, that was bound into ever narrowing circles. The record of the true history of creation ends with these words: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Paul's admonition to put off "the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind" and to "put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness" is our joyful duty to-day, if we are to change our concepts of what constitutes life, health, and salvation.

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