Editorial May 24, 1924 Issue

Disease Unreal

Duncan Sinclair

Fifty-Eight years ago Mrs. Eddy made the discovery that disease is unreal. She was lying on what her friends thought would prove to be her deathbed, as the result of an accident which her physician had said would probably be fatal, when the truth flashed upon her that divine Mind alone is causative and every effect mental. With like rapidity she discerned that whatever was unlike perfect Mind was unreal,—and she was instantaneously healed. She had made the great discovery that evil in every form, including sickness or disease, is unreal.

After this healing Mrs. Eddy devoted herself to the study of the Bible, finding overwhelming proof therein of the power of God to destroy all unlike good. She read in its pages how faith in God had time and again saved and protected men, even faith but meagerly supported in some cases by spiritual understanding. She perceived that the wonders wrought by Christ Jesus were the result of his knowledge of God; that every healing he accomplished was due to his understanding of the perfection of God's being, and, consequently, that whatever seemed to be imperfect was no part of God's creation, had no real existence, no reality. Accordingly, she identified Christian Science healing, which results from the understanding of the allness of good and the unreality of evil, with that of the Master, who had instructed his followers, as Matthew records, to "go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils."

Many try to underrate, if they do not endeavor altogether to disparage, the discovery of Christian Science, claiming that the sick may be healed through spiritual means without admitting the unreality of evil. But such an attitude dishonors God; for, as Christian Science maintains, since God is infinite good, evil must be unreal. It is impossible to conceive of infinite good containing within itself a trace of that which claims to be its very opposite. Hence Mrs. Eddy rightly held that Christian Science differs radically from every other system. On pages 9 and 10 of "Unity of Good" she writes: "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? This: That by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my system from all others."

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