Editorial February 28, 1931 Issue

The Universal Remedy

Violet Ker Seymer

Christian Science offers to those who are oppressed with sickness, sinfulness, hopelessness, the universal remedy of spiritual enlightenment, and the rules for its application. It diagnoses human need as primarily mental. The average individual regards himself as, in the main, physical and mortal at the present time and as liable to become spiritual only after the transition called death. Then he may perhaps expect to leave his body much as a butterfly leaves its chrysalis. Now Christian Science starts from the premise of spiritual perfection and follows it through to its conclusion. It reveals God, good, as invariable, and man, His likeness, as also invariable, and subject to no prior stages of imperfection. Spiritual man has never been and is not now the prisoner of pain or physicality; nor is he doomed to err and to suffer either perpetually, or even temporarily.

The diagnosis of Christian Science goes deeper than the evidence of the physical senses. Medical diagnosis deals mainly with material appearances and is often nonplussed by them, even going to the length of labeling certain cases incurable. This is only because the material remedies it offers cannot reach and heal the sufferer's mental state. But Paul writes, "All things that are reproved are made manifest by the light." Whoever honestly throws open all his mental doors for the reception of Christian Science cannot fail in due course to be awakened from his distressing beliefs and released from their consequences. But there must be no mental closets barred against this regenerating message, through self-justification or self-pity. No one would wish to evade the healing light of Truth, for as Mrs. Eddy states on page 504 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously." The pure knowledge of God and man in His image is the universal remedy which Christ Jesus applied, and which Christian Science is applying, without measure or adulteration. When the creator bestowed life upon His image He included health. It is inconceivable that in God's plan one should be compelled to live and at the same time compelled to suffer.

Mrs. Eddy writes, "God's preparations for the sick are potions of His own qualities" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 268). We partake of these spiritual potions or healing qualities as we seek them whole-heartedly, with undivided, spiritual faith. These spiritual qualities neutralize unbelief, and all suffering. One may specialize in dwelling upon those spiritual qualities in which he seems most conspicuously lacking. The sufferer learns to acknowledge God, Spirit, as the only creator, and in all humility he reaches out for the demonstration of man's spiritual identity, which expresses itself in perfect harmony. The result is that he soon becomes conscious of greater patience, mercy, purity, unselfishness, courage, and buoyancy. His thoughts and aims are now alight with the one divine purpose of proving his God-likeness, and so he finds himself less self-centered. He turns abidingly to the potions of divine qualities which distill their healing influence in human consciousness.

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