Article August 23, 1930 Issue

Mental Surgery

JOHN PERCY STEVENS

BECAUSE Christian Science includes the perfect remedy for every discord that can present itself to human thought it must include medicine, climate, and operation. Christian Science, however, reveals the fallibility of the human concept of medicine, climate, and operation and unfolds the perfect medicine of Mind, the perfect atmosphere of Love, and the unerring operation of divine Principle. In Hebrews we read, "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow." In this beautiful Scriptural statement we find the skill and technique of the real surgeon, the Word, to be perfect.

Many a glorious victory has been won in the practice of Christian Science surgery by first quieting and reassuring mortal mind, indignant because it believes that nothing is being done for the patient; that no remedy or operation is being resorted to. This assurance is brought about by leading the disturbed thought to acknowledge the presence and activity of the right idea and of its infinite capacity to correct any inverted image that personal sense may have imposed upon human consciousness.

In the Preface to the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we find the real operation clearly defined as follows (p. xi): "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation." It should be noted that this perfect definition of the real operation makes no reference to the removal of disease, but to healing through the removal of its seeming reality in mortal thought.

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