Article May 24, 1930 Issue

The Christly Method

CONSTANCE HEWARD

All Christian people must acknowledge that no higher ideal can be set up in their hearts than the perfect life of Christ Jesus, the master Christian; and they cannot close their eyes to the fact that one of his most imperative commands is that his followers shall heal the sick. In this, as in every other instance, he demanded of others what he himself demonstrated. Yet the fact remains that this command to heal the sick as he did has not been generally obeyed among Christians. The Preacher declares that "God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." So today, mortals are still delving into material ways and means in their search for health, and in some instances dealing more and more with matter, albeit the Master said, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing."

In order to understand this statement of Christ Jesus we must open our eyes to one great fact in his earthly career which stands out with indisputable authority, namely, that in healing the sick in no instance did he resort to any of the supposedly curative agencies then in use. Neither did he manipulate; nor did he use so-called human will-power. He acknowledged only one will, the will of God; for he said, "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me," thereby indicating that God's means for healing the sick, the means Jesus employed, are purely spiritual. Yet many of those who are earnestly seeking to follow Christ Jesus still resort to material remedies in time of sickness. Because of ignorance as to how he performed his wonderful works, they turn to material systems for release from sickness. This is where Christian Science comes in with its blessed truths; for it shows mankind how the miracles brought about by Jesus and his disciples may be repeated in this present time, and by the same Christly method.

On page 369 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Jesus never asked if disease were acute or chronic, and he never recommended attention to laws of health, never gave drugs, never prayed to know if God were willing that a man should live. He understood man, whose Life is God, to be immortal, and knew that man has not two lives, one to be destroyed and the other to be made indestructible." It was what Jesus knew of Truth that healed the sick. It was his perfect understanding of the immortal nature of God and His image, spiritual man, which enabled him to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and renewed vitality to the so-called dead.

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