Editorial November 5, 1927 Issue

Healing a Sacred Ministry

ALBERT F. GILMORE

THAT Mrs. Eddy placed the art of healing by spiritual means upon a high plane is manifest to all her students. Of its hallowed nature she writes in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 54), "The work of healing, in the Science of Mind, is the most sacred and salutary power which can be wielded." And she follows with a tribute to those of her students who have entered conscientiously upon the healing ministry.

Faithful students of Christian Science ask themselves, What is this healing ministry; what are its demands; what is comprised in it? And the answers they make to these queries determine to a great degree their status as Christian Scientists. As in Jesus' day healing the sick was the proof of the truth of his teachings, so it seems in our day this same ministry is the paramount necessity, if we would prove our Leader's words. Erroneous belief manifested as disease must be destroyed to prove God's allness; and no other demonstration seems to carry the same degree of proof, or equal possibility of convincing the doubtful of God's presence and the availability of His power to destroy all that is unlike good. Moreover, mankind believes it has no greater need than to be healed of its ills. Salvation from sickness is even more eagerly sought than salvation from sin, for sickness involves suffering, while sin may claim as its concomitant pleasure derived from the gratification of so-called physical sense. But both conditions involve falsity, and are to be healed through the scientific application of spiritual truth. Healing, however, does not stop with the gaining of freedom from sin and disease. Salvation, which is every mortal's destiny, is complete freedom from all false belief, from every erroneous concept of Life and substance. Every falsity must be destroyed in order that the ultimate state of man in God's likeness may be brought into realization. Accordingly, whoever undertakes to destroy false belief, however it may be manifested, under whatsoever name it may parade, is having part in the establishing of God's kingdom on earth; he is a reaper in the fields already white to the harvest; he is engaged in the healing ministry.

A Christian Scientist is in duty bound to make use of the truth he has gained; otherwise our Leader's teachings are to that person theoretical rather than practical. While it may be said that Christian Science held as theory is better than any other hypothesis because it sets forth divine Science, the truth about God and man, yet until it is proved to be the truth one has not really gained the understanding which wins salvation. The so-calleld mortal mind, inherently lazy, would oppose every effort to make practical use of the Science which becomes its destroyer. Accordingly there is great need for watchful care lest the arguments of error delay the demonstration of divine power in the destruction of the claims of evil. In its subtlety, mortal thought would induce one to look to another for aid even though one has the understanding to meet his own need; it would retard spiritual progress through inducing the effort to profit by another's demonstration, thereby depriving one of the blessing which invariably attaches to the demonstration of the power of good over evil. One of error's arguments is that it is easier to call for aid than to help one's self, for the latter necessitates the putting into practical use of one's own understanding. The alert student is fully awake to all these offerings of the tempter and puts them in their rightful place, the category of falsities.

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