Editorial February 3, 1940 Issue

Declaration, Denial, Demonstration

George Shaw Cook

Under the marginal heading "Remedy for accidents," Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 397), "Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why, and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact proportion to your disbelief in physics, and your fidelity to divine metaphysics, confidence in God as All, which the Scriptures declare Him to be." And, as indicated, it may be said that a declaration of spiritual truth in order to be effectual must be based not only upon conviction, but upon understanding. Furthermore, from a practical standpoint, declaration, unless followed by demonstration, is valueless.

Students of Christian Science in their effort to demonstrate the truth of its teaching, especially in the field of moral and physical healing, find it necessary to deny the claims of error as well as to affirm the truth. Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 412), "To heal by argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical." And she continues in the same paragraph: "Mentally insist that harmony is the fact, and that sickness is a temporal dream. Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony."

The obvious purpose of the affirmation of Truth and denial of error which constitute a Christian Scientist's prayer or treatment, is to enable him to reach the point of realization. Were he able always spontaneously and immediately to realize the absolute and unchanging perfection of being as it exists in divine Mind, he would have no need to convince himself of that fact by argument. He would be able instantaneously to heal any condition that presented itself, and that, it goes without saying, is the ideal which Christian Scientists should be striving to attain.

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