Editorial March 16, 1940 Issue

"There is no disease"

George Shaw Cook

Doubtless Mary Baker Eddy took into consideration the generally accepted belief in the reality of disease and the fact that such belief, entertained by one who is uninstructed in Christian Science, is more than imagination, when she wrote (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 460): "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal, —that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction."

The Christlike compassion which reflects divine Love sufficiently to heal the sick would inevitably lead the practitioner to consider the fact that many who are seeking help in Christian Science have not yet reached the point where they are able to discern disease as unreality. Therefore, in talking with patients, practitioners of Christian Science would not prematurely make statements which would tend to antagonize, discourage, or confuse the one whom they undertake to help. Rather, would they leave the seeker free to discover for himself, through reading the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, or from simple explanations given him at appropriate times, that sickness is not real because it is not of God. They would heed the prophetic words of Isaiah concerning the Christ, "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young."

While using great wisdom in making audible statements of Truth to those not yet prepared to understand declarations which are perhaps somewhat startling, the practitioner will, nevertheless, in his own thinking, hold firmly to the fact that, as our Leader says on page 393 of Science and Health, "Man is never sick, for Mind is not sick and matter cannot be." Man is the exact likeness of God, divine Mind, and since God, Spirit, obviously is never sick, man, His image or likeness, cannot be so. Thus it will be seen that however real sickness may appear to the material senses, the actual fact is that it has no divine reality. It exists, or seems to exist, only as a belief of mortal mind.

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