Divine Healing

Duncan Sinclair

In Christian Science the term "healing" has a wide signification. Thus, there is the healing of sickness and sin, the healing of sorrow, the healing of a sense of loss or bereavement, the healing of poverty. Indeed, the word may fitly be used to indicate the overcoming of any inharmonious condition. More usually, however, it is applied to the cure of disease and the overcoming of sin, since it is probable that to-day many more people become interested in Christian Science because of the desire to be rid of these than of any other difficulty.

On page 450 of "Science and Health with Key to theScriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good." And a sentence farther on she says, "The Christian Scientist knows that they are errors of belief, which Truth can and will destroy." Here we have a concise statement of the attitude of the Christian Scientist towards evil, disease, and death: it is his aim to lessen them through the spiritual understanding which assures him of the allness of God, good, and of the illusory nature, or nothingness, of evil, disease, and death.

Now, the genuine Christian Scientist will not allow himself to deviate from the method of healing set forth in the words of our Leader just quoted. Not for a moment does he permit himself willingly to forget the truth of the allness of good and what this implies, namely, the unreality of evil in its every seeming phase; for he knows that in the degree he realizes these facts he is able to help — yea, to heal — those who come to him asking his aid. What he strives to do is so to realize the truth as to make evil unreal to the sick and sinful: once this truth is clearly perceived, healing takes place.

Sometimes the sick are greatly helped by regarding disease as a dream-state of consciousness. That Mrs. Eddy thought of disease in this way is shown by her words on page 417 of Science and Health, namely, "To the Christian Science healer, sickness is a dream from which the patient needs to be awakened." Sickness a dream! Sickness no more real than the shadowy nothings of the dreams that haunt the troubled pillow in sleep! It would be no easy matter to number those who through Christian Science have proved this to be true, having awakened from what was considered grave illness to a condition of health with a suddenness that has sometimes startled themselves. Healings have taken place in Christian Science practice of all manner of disease — so-called acute and chronic, so-called organic and functional — through the realization of God's allness and evil's nothingness.

In his efforts to realize the truth for his patient, the Christian Science practitioner must be watchful lest evil appear real to himself. What does this entail? A constant turning on his part to God, divine Truth and Love, in prayerful desire for purification of thought; the living of a life consecrated to the demonstration of good — a life through which flows the living water of love, a life of humility, patience, truthfulness, uprightness. It cannot be stated too frequently that if Christian Scientists would obtain the healing results possible in Christian Science practice, their lives must be lived at a high spiritual level. They should know the letter of Christian Science thoroughly through study of its textbooks, the Bible and Science and Health, and they should possess its spirit in abundant measure.

Furthermore, the Christian Scientist must be radical in his adherence to Truth in the practice of divine healing. He knows that God is infinite Spirit and, in consequence, that matter is unreal. He must, therefore, hold to the truth of Spirit's allness in order to keep himself from regarding matter as having any power. On page 445 of Science and Health these words occur: "You render the divine law of healing obscure and void, when you weigh the human in the scale with the divine, or limit in any direction of thought the omnipresence and omnipotence of God." It is the so-called human consciousness which appears to be cognizant of matter. The effort must be made, then, to keep before us the truth of God's omnipresence and omnipotence, thereby ruling out of that human consciousness erroneous material belief; for thus is divine law allowed to operate to the destruction of all unlike good, all unlike harmony.

"Behold," says Isaiah, "the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear." How true the prophet's words are seen to be when read with the understanding of God which Christian Science gives its students! God's power to save and to heal is unlimited, and Christian Science reveals the method whereby it is made available. Duncan Sinclair

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