Editorial February 4, 1933 Issue

At the Pool of Bethesda

Violet Ker Seymer

The man recorded in Scripture as lying by the pool of Bethesda looked to others to carry him into what were believed to be, at a certain season, healing waters. His conviction was that, unless he were the first to reach the water after "an angel" had troubled it, there could be no further opportunity for him to be healed for another year. For thirtyeight years he had lain impotent, his thoughts centered on materiality, because as yet he knew nothing of divine omnipotence. When Christ Jesus spoke to him, his mental and physical state was immediately changed, and at the Master's bidding he rose and carried that which for so long had carried him.

It is the same today. Many, believing themselves morally and physically prostrate with sin, fear, and suffering, are inertly lying beside some pool of Bethesda, sad both in retrospect and in prospect, still looking for physical restoration to health through material means. The man of long ago expected healing through physical immersion. The man of today seeks immersion in sulphur baths or other supposedly remedial waters.

When material faith turns, disillusioned, from its false gods, Christian Science is at hand to tell sufferers that their sole need is for spiritual immersion, the baptism which Mrs. Eddy defines on page 581 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" as "purification by Spirit; submergence in Spirit." Christian Science turns them to the untried spiritual resources by which Christ Jesus healed. The man by the pool had not been rendered impotent through matter, but through false beliefs, and for this reason purely material means could not restore him to health. The rising that Jesus required of the man Christian Science also requires—the mental rising out of debasing, depressing, man-made theories and material reliances by which one is, sooner or later, laid low in mind and body.

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