Editorial August 4, 1934 Issue

Conversion and Healing

W. Stuart Booth

In case one who is not a student of Christian Science should be told that Christian conversion and healing go hand in hand, he might be puzzled and incredulous. Perhaps he has been taught to regard conversion as an ecstatic or emotional experience associated with the acceptance of certain religious beliefs, and so he would fail to see how it has aught to do with healing. In this connection it will be well to note the expressed thought of Christ Jesus when he was referring to the materially-minded men who rejected his doctrine, opposed his unselfish endeavors, and misinterpreted his healing works. Their attitude and action he described in the words of the prophet Isaiah: "For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them."

Is it not possible, then, that men have had a wrong concept of both conversion and healing? Certainly Christ Jesus had the proper sense of both, as is evidenced by his redemptive and healing works, whereby he brought release to those who had been bound by sin and sickness. He was deemed blasphemous by some of the scribes because he proclaimed forgiveness of sin to one who had been brought to him to be healed of palsy. The critics were confuted, however, when, in response to the Master's command, the erstwhile helpless one arose, took up the bed on which he had been carried, and went to his own house. Yes, according to Christ Jesus, who was the best authority on the subject, healing and conversion are conjoined.

Now Christian Science explains the message and method of the Master so clearly and conclusively that men are enabled thereby to follow his example as he commanded, and prove that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" in the healing of both sin and sickness by overcoming the false beliefs which lie back of them. Those who study and consistently apply the teachings of Christian Science learn that conversion is a change of their governing and guiding desires and disposition from matter to Spirit, from evil to good, from error to Truth. They learn, as Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 369, 370), that "no man is physically healed in wilful error or by it, any more than he is morally saved in or by sin." Continuing she says, "To be every whit whole, man must be better spiritually as well as physically."

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