Editorial January 14, 1922 Issue

The Christ-healing

Frederick Dixon

The world is apt to use the word Science in the most casual way. It is true that this way may not be more casual in its reference to Science than to dozens of other words, but it leads to a greater confusion than in most cases. There is nothing whatever empirical about Science. Literally, the word means that which you know, not that which you are guessing at, nor even experimenting about. Thus, the only Science which can possibly exist is an exact knowledge of Truth, and this was precisely what Jesus meant when he declared, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Anybody who will stay to think must realize that this is an absolutely scientific statement. A knowledge of Truth must be a scientific knowledge because a knowledge of anything but Truth is a contradiction of terms: the imposition of ignorance has to be exposed by an understanding of Truth, or Principle. Thus, in the very nature of things, knowledge of the truth is a demonstrable knowledge, and as such is capable always of scientific proof. This is why the scientific knowledge of God, Principle, is really the only scientific knowledge there can be. And it is why a great schoolman, building truer than he knew, once declared there was no Science but this knowledge of spiritual reality, or Truth.

It was this fundamental fact which became so plain to Mrs. Eddy in the days when, hour after hour, and by experiment after experiment, she was searching for the secret of the Christ-healing. She saw clearly enough that this healing must have been based on scientific knowledge, and, as she progressed in her own investigation, she began to realize the gulf which separated belief from faith, and faith from knowledge. For centuries one form of faith healing after another had produced temporary effects, but these effects had passed away with the presence of the individual, and were traceable to faith. The healing accomplished by George Fox and by John Wesley, to take only two examples, was of this nature. Mrs. Eddy realized, that even if you could endow a church with something of the living faith of such teachers, the healing would still lack the scientific permanence and regularity of the healing taught and practiced by Christ Jesus, and would really be nothing but another phase of the faith healing accomplished by a doctor, through apparently material means.

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