Editorial June 10, 1922 Issue

"The divine method of pardon"

Duncan Sinclair

One of the most interesting of the healings recorded of Christ Jesus is to be found in the second chapter of Mark's gospel. Jesus had entered Capernaum, and while there "one sick of the palsy" was brought to his notice. The Master was touched by the faith the action revealed, and he straightway said to the sick man, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." Certain scribes who were sitting around began to criticize his words, and to ask, "Who can forgive sins but God only?" Immediately the reply came from Jesus: "Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins." Having thus spoken, he commanded the paralytic in the words, "Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house."

It is quite apparent that Christ Jesus, with his deep metaphysical knowledge, looked upon disease very differently from the scribes of his day. To him, sin and disease belonged to the same category, and could be healed by the same method, namely, by the spiritual understanding of Truth. It is probable that his critics looked upon sin as a mental condition for which men were more or less responsible, but on disease as something to a great extent beyond their control, since they believed it to be, as so many to-day believe it to be, an effect resulting from relentless material law.

Whatever the form of sin the paralytic man may have been indulging in, there can be no doubt that the desire to continue in it was destroyed, and that upon its destruction he experienced physical healing so marked that he was able immediately thereafter to arise, take up his bed, and go "forth before them all." It was wonderful! And it was an example of the divine method of destroying sin and sickness, the method employed by Christian Science to-day. Time and again it has been the lot of the Christian Science practitioner to have to handle cases of disease which have only yielded to treatment after a moral fault has been detected. So long as the sin remained there was no physical healing; whenever it was obliterated, or was entertained no longer in thought, the disease disappeared.

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