Article July 22, 1944 Issue

Disease Is Not True

SADIE SWETT

One day Carolyn Lane was riding home from the seashore with her parents. She sat in the rear seat of the car counting her fingers. At length she said: "Mother, I have eleven fingers." Of course that statement was not true, but Carolyn Lane believed it was true. So her mother told her to hold up both hands, and one by one she counted her fingers aloud. When the last finger was reached on the count of ten, Carolyn Lane was at a loss for an explanation. Finally she said, "Well, Mother, I had eleven fingers!"

Years later, Carolyn Lane's mother was called to the home of her family, where her sister lay at the point of death. A physician, after a thorough examination of the patient, had said, "She has a very large internal tumor."

Carolyn Lane's mother had always been a student of the Bible and the teachings of Christian Science, and she knew the Psalm beginning, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Now she turned wholeheartedly to God for help, and refused to be impressed by the name "tumor." In fact, whenever the name came to her thought, she called it "nothing." Why? Because it was not of God and could not, therefore, be something; it had to be nothing. From out the fullness of a vast experience in the application of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, its Discoverer and Founder, points out in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 395), "It is no less erroneous to believe in the real existence of a tumor, a cancer, or decayed lungs, while you argue against their reality, than it is for your patient to feel these ills in physical belief."

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