Article March 22, 1952 Issue

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING

FLOYD C. SHANK

A Common misconception of Christian Science healing is shown in the saying that Christian Science may be good for mental difficulties, but when it comes to physical disorders, something material must be done. This inaccurate view springs from the teaching that mental and physical diseases are distinct from each other and must therefore be treated by separate and distinct methods.

Jesus healed both physical and mental illnesses by the one divine power. He taught his followers to do the same. In the Gospel of Luke it is written (9:1), "Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases." No distinction was made. To Jesus what mortals ordinarily call physical disease was apparently but a phase of mortal thought. By means of immortal Mind he corrected, or "cast out," all erroneous processes of mortal mind, including errors, or "devils," termed physical.

Christian Science accepts Jesus' classification of all disease as primarily mental. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of this Science, declares in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 293), "Matter and mortal mind are but different strata of human belief." Material systems sometimes set forth the theory that certain mental conditions cause physical disease. But while such observations by materia medica and psychiatry may appear identical with what Christian Science teaches, such is not the case. These human theories, after conceding that mental conditions produce disease, leave their premise and conclude that the effect is not mental but a material condition apart from and uncontrolled by its mental cause. This deduction implies that material remedies must be sought to care for what is admittedly the effect of mortal thought.

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