Editorial January 22, 1944 Issue

"Let Truth uncover error"

Paul Stark Seeley

The practice of Christian Science includes the denial of any reality in sin, disease, mortality, and death through understanding the true idea of God as infinite, perfect Mind, and man as His sinless, healthy, harmonious expression. In this healing work some particular phase of habitual wrong thinking in the patient's thought is often uncovered and destroyed, and the healing thereby facilitated.

Sometimes students have, however, overemphasized the need to uncover some specific error in order to accomplish a healing, and have given more attention to uncovering error than to the realization of the spiritual truth of God's allness and man's oneness with Him, the discernment of which confers Truth's healing power. Well-meaning workers have been known to dig deep with the spade of inquisitiveness, or to pry with the chisel of suspicion, into a patient's past. Such an attitude often discourages or frightens the patient, and avails nothing in building up his faith and trust in God and His saving Christ, which is the real purpose of Christian Science practice.

The scientific way is not to be in any wise indifferent to the uncovering of error, but to let the uncovering come in the way of Truth's ordering, and not through a personal inquisition accompanied, perhaps, with personal condemnation. It is right and necessary for an individual to recognize his mistakes and correct them. But to pick out some particular error in his experience and jump to the conclusion that it is, for certain, the one from which subsequent troubles have evolved is a grave mistake. Such human reasoning often leads one sadly awry.

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