Article April 9, 1932 Issue

In the interesting account in your October 26 issue of an...

Francis Lyster Jandron, Committee on Publication for the State of Michigan,—Grand Rapids

Herald

In the interesting account in your October 26 issue of an address on spiritual healing, the speaker is quoted as condemning those who try to avoid mixing spiritual with material means of healing by endeavoring to rely on the spiritual without any material aids. Christian Scientists have a sincere regard for the speaker's lofty motives and earnest endeavors to do good; nevertheless, radical reliance on spiritual means is a fundamental characteristic of Christian Science, and to it is due the numberless cures which have been brought about through Christian Science. These cures, by the way, comprise the healing of the very diseases which the speaker says are incurable without medical aid.

Attempts to heal by suggestion can reach no higher than their source, and that source is the limited human concept of health in which the suggestion originates. But spiritual healing takes in a much broader range than human thought is able to grasp, for it is based on the understanding in some degree of the self-acting divine Principle, which is God, infinite good, subject to no limitations. It may be contended. that a willingness to break away from our conventional mental moorings is not always readily attained; but it must be acknowledged that material means of healing fall far short of meeting human needs, and the steps already taken by Christian Scientists in the direction of the spiritual ideal which Christ Jesus demonstrated with no medical cooperation, are progressive steps which have had far-reaching effects in bettering health and morals.

The Christian Science view of this vast question is clearly set forth in this passage from Mary Baker Eddy's book "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 58): "Stating the divine Principle, omnipotence (omnis potens), and then departing from this statement and taking the rule of finite matter, with which to work out the problem of infinity or Spirit,— all this is like trying to compensate for the absence of omnipotence by a physical, false, and finite substitute. With our Master, life was not merely a sense of existence, but an accompanying sense of power that subdued matter and brought to light immortality."

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