Editorial March 9, 1935 Issue

Spiritual Understanding and Healing

Duncan Sinclair

Two passages of Scripture stand out before the thought as one considers spiritual healing. The first is from the one hundred and seventh Psalm: "He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions." The second is from the fifth chapter of the epistle of James: "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." The Psalmist refers to God as healing and delivering men through His Word, while James draws attention to the value of the prayer of the upright. Both point to the use of spiritual means in the solving of the problems incidental to human experience.

In Christian Science, healing is the result of spiritually right thinking. When one is sick, sinful, sad, sorrowful, or lacking in what are termed the necessities of life, he is in need of healing; and this comes about as he learns to think correctly about himself and his relationship to real Being. What, then, is real Being; and what is man's relationship to it? Real Being is God, infinite Truth; and man is the image or reflection of God, Truth. Moreover, God is perfect; consequently, man is perfect, since he reflects the qualities of real Being.

Because God and His image, man, are perfect, inharmony or error is no part of God or man. Inharmony or error, then, does not really exist—it is nothing. Thus, the evils which claim to afflict mankind, such as sickness, sin, sorrow, and lack, are without entity; they are illusory beliefs of mortal mind, false concepts of material sense, which are destroyed through spiritual understanding or spiritually right thinking. Mrs. Eddy writes on pages 367 and 368 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Because Truth is infinite, error should be known as nothing. Because Truth is omnipotent in goodness, error, Truth's opposite, has no might. Evil is but the counterpoise of nothingness."

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