Editorial September 5, 1925 Issue

Spiritual Healing Versus Mental Quackery

Albert F. Gilmore

The student of Christian Science learns that fundamentally health is spiritual harmony, and, accordingly, that it is in no measure dependent upon material conditions. He learns that man as the expression of self-existent Being is spiritual and perfect now, reflecting eternally the harmony which constitutes health. Moreover, he also learns that the scientific restoration of the sense of health can be attained by mortals only in degree as they gain the right understanding of health,—that is to say, as they learn about God and man.

When the sense of health has been displaced by a belief in the reality of discord, harmony can be scientifically restored only through spiritual means, without the intervention of matter or the use of material remedies. The ability, then, to heal discord and restore health is gained only by changing from a material to a spiritual sense of existence; for health is established only upon a recognition of the fundamental facts of being. This entails the knowledge that God is infinite —All; that He is good, the only presence and power; that man, being God's very image and true likeness, is like Him in nature and quality—perfect; that in consequence evil is not real, that it has no entity or presence. This understanding, properly applied, destroys the mortal beliefs of sin and disease, and restores harmony.

It is learned in Christian Science that man is not a material creature, but is spiritual, like God. So-called mortal mind declares to the contrary, that man is both material and spiritual, that because of his material conditions he is subject to sin and disease, and that he undergoes birth and death. The Christian Science practitioner, in undertaking to restore the sense of harmony which is health, bases his treatment upon the ever-presence of God, infinite good, man's perfection, and the consequent unreality of evil and discord of every type. With this understanding he goes forward to meet the claims of error which insist upon their reality.

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