Article June 14, 1924 Issue

The Only Physician

MAJORIE N. BUFFUM

In this day of so many hygienic rules and regulations, in spite of greater comfort and cleanliness in every way than before, we still seem to see a great amount of disease and suffering. We are also aware of much dissatisfaction with purely material methods of healing, evidenced in the search for health outside of material methods, and the attempts to reintroduce healing into the churches. But with what reluctance do mortals, as a whole, let go the very kernel of the trouble! Surely a sinning, sick, and dying mortal is not God's image and likeness! Does not the Bible tell us that God made man in His image and likeness? By gaining the understanding that the real man is that image and likeness, mortals are lifted out of discordant conditions, including sickness and sin, in spite of all skepticism and denial. Thus Jesus teaches; and likewise Christian Science.

Jesus said nineteen centuries ago, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick: ... for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Do not his words indicate that it is sin, and the thought of man as a sinner, that causes sickness? When we cast out of our thought the picture of ourselves and others as in any way subservient to sin, knowing that as God's image and likeness man reflects goodness and purity only, we shall rise out of sin and its accompanying effects,—sickness and death. God is all-powerful. Convinced of this, men can strive with, and overcome with ever increasing assurance, all that is unlike the One "altogether lovely." In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we read on page 393: "Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man."

The belief that God sends sickness, instead of being our salvation from it, has held mankind in bondage too long. Jesus the Christ showed us the way out of this bondage by healing sickness and sin and showing us how to do the same. By learning to understand God, through Christian Science, we also learn the status of the real man, the image and likeness of God; and so we are continually replacing the corruptible with the incorruptible, as Paul tells us must be done. We have all heard a little, frightened, lonely, or hurt child cry "Mother" as instinctively as it breathed. It is just as natural for poor humanity to cry out to our Father-Mother God in every difficulty; and the answer is always at hand.

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