Article May 3, 1924 Issue

A critic would evidently have us believe that the healing...

Charles E. Heitman, Committee on Publication for the State of New York,—Olean

Times

A critic would evidently have us believe that the healing of disease by spiritual means is identical with and inseparable from mysticism and superstition, and is due to nothing more than a blind faith in the power of God. Speaking only for Christian Science, and without reference to the other modes of healing to which he may have been referring, I will say that such views are entirely without foundation in fact. As evidence of this I shall quote as follows from page 1 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy: "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love." This passage briefly but clearly sets forth the fact that it is faith, based upon spiritual understanding, by means of which healing is effected in the practice of Christian Science.

Christian Scientists hold that this understanding consists in knowing that truth to which the Master refers when he says, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." It is interesting at this point to note the Master's significant use of the word "know" in connection with the truth. He says nothing about resting our hope of salvation from sin and disease upon a blind faith in the truth, but distinctly says that we must know—understand—the truth; and it is the dawning of this understanding which, according to Christian Science, marks the birth hour of that faith which heals the sick.

Christian Science further holds that it is man's inherent desire to know more of this eternal truth, to understand more of the real nature and character of God and His spiritual universe, including man, and not doubt and uncertainty, as the critic would have us believe, which acts as the impelling force behind all helpful research. Reasoning, therefore, from this premise, Christian Science logically concludes that an understanding of Truth, described in the Bible as God, alone constitutes real, scientific knowledge. Bearing directly on this point, we are told by no less an authority than Professor Haldane of Oxford University, in an article appearing in the Hibbert Journal, that "God is the ultimate and only reality" and that "we must rid ourselves of the idea, so characteristic of the present, that the physical interpretation corresponds with reality itself." Continuing, he adds, "I think that future generations will look back with the same wonder on the popular materialism of the present time as we look back on the old popular beliefs in astrology and witchcraft or the ancient Greek conceptions of the physical world. ... The mechanistic theory of life has all the distorting defects of gross forms of superstition."

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