What is Disease?

Duncan Sinclair

What is the nature of disease? Christian Science answers the question. The answer was also known to Christ Jesus; and because of the fact he was able to heal all manner of disease. As we know the answer given by Christian Science, and realize its meaning, we also may heal disease. Mrs. Eddy's discovery of the nature of disease must be reckoned as among the greatest ever made. At the time she made it no one on earth was aware of it but herself; and when she announced it, the world in general jeered because it seemed an absurdity to the carnal mind.

What, then, is the answer to the question? It is that disease is unreal—illusion. Mrs. Eddy gives it indirectly, but most emphatically, when she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 188), "What is termed disease does not exist." Disease not exist! Unbelievable, says the unspiritualized thought, the thought, that is, without an understanding of divine Science. But one has only to study Christian Science earnestly and impartially to find out that the statement is based on absolute and incontrovertible Truth. The reasoning is very simple. In Christian Science God is understood to be infinite good. Since God is infinite, nothing that is real exists outside of Himself. Consequently, what is called evil—the opposite of good—has no real existence. And disease is not good. Therefore disease is unreal; or, in other words, "disease does not exist."

What a wonderful discovery! As we think of it the words come to us from Jeremiah, "I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord." For what happens when the allness of God, good, and the unreality of disease are realized is that so-called disease is healed. That was Mrs. Eddy's experience; and it may be the experience of every obedient student of Christian Science, for everyone can put the method of Christian Science healing to the test for himself. In doing so one must first satisfy his reason as to the logical nature of the truth revealed by Christian Science as to the allness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil, including disease; then he should strive through affirmation of the truth to bring about the realization of it. And whenever he has reached the point of realization, he will find that the disease has commenced to disappear, or has already disappeared.

Christian Science is sometimes blamed for holding out to invalids a means of cure which is unreliable. But a system which unnumbered thousands have found reliable cannot be held responsible for the imperfect understanding of it which assuredly accounts for any seeming failure. Nothing is more certain than that truth destroys error whenever the former is known, however long the error may have been believed to be true. Mrs. Eddy states the position with her usual clarity in Science and Health (p. 495) when she writes: "Truth casts out error now as surely as it did nineteen centuries ago. All of Truth is not understood; hence its healing power is not fully demonstrated." The reason for any seeming failure to heal disease in any case is not that the truth which Christian Science reveals is not equal to the task, but that enough of Truth has not been understood.

Every Christian Scientist who has been for a length of time in the practice of Christian Science is aware of the material-mindedness which so often is behind disease: years, perhaps, of thinking from a material basis; years, perhaps, of sinful thinking and acting; years, perhaps, of yielding to the body at its least physical whim, its least suggestion of pleasure or pain—these have not infrequently gone to produce the predicament in which the invalid now believes himself. And naught but right thinking from an absolutely correct spiritual basis will heal him. Drugs, physical manipulation, suggestion, will only affect him in the measure of his faith in them, and that temporarily. The divine Mind alone is capable of acting on human belief so radically as to cast out completely its fallacies, including that of disease.

The work of healing in Christian Science is one, primarily, of spiritualizing thought, of getting it away from the material, the sensuous, the personal, to the spiritual. And with that end in view not only may Christian Science treatment be given, but the patient should be directed in his endeavor to find, and to hold before him continually, the truths of spiritual Being as these are revealed in the Bible and in Mrs. Eddy's writings. By this means he will become convinced of God's—good's—allness, admit the truth of Mrs. Eddy's discovery, that "what is termed disease does not exist," and demonstrate the fact.

What hope for suffering humanity do Mrs. Eddy's words just quoted contain! As one thinks of them John's words in Revelation come joyously to remembrance: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: ... and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

Duncan Sinclair

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