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.

It is here that Christian Science asks, "If mortal mind, erroneous human thought, is the cause of a discordant condition of the body, is not this erroneous bodily effect a mental phenomenon, like its cause?" It must be. Therefore the remedy must be Mind and its scientific right thoughts, which alone can replace or correct wrong thoughts. The one real divine Mind is infinite and therefore the only source of real thought. Erroneous and ungodly mortal thought is therefore unreal, because it is without an actual source, or cause. This true understanding of the reality of Mind and its ideas, and the consequent unreality of mortal belief, both as cause and as effect, destroys the false evidence of disease in specific cases.

This healing method is the Science of Mind-healing, in which divine Mind is found to be the remedy for all ills, mental, so called, and physical, so called. Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 169), "Science not only reveals the origin of all disease as mental, but it also declares that all disease is cured by divine Mind."

Jesus, by his cases of healing recorded in the Gospels, furnishes the human race unchallengeable evidence that this is the true scientific method of diagnosing and healing bodily disease. He dispelled and healed disease by divine Mind just as readily as by the same divine power he destroyed and healed sinful illusions. When healing a case of palsy he once asked (Luke 5: 23), "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?" In the implied answer to this question Jesus declared the whole condition to be a mortal belief, or mental delusion, both in cause and in effect. The man obeyed Jesus' command to rise and was free.

Jesus did not tell the sick man he must cease thinking sinful thoughts before he could get well. That would have been unkind in his case, but the Master so completely expressed the Christ, Truth, that its light shone forth vividly and the deceptive appearance of the disease as matter separate from mortal thought was exposed as an illusion instead of a reality. The patient was healed and regained the ability to walk, which he believed he had lost. His bondage had been imposed by an illusive process of the human mind and not by an evil material power called disease, nor by the divine Mind. This truth realized spiritually by Jesus dispelled the delusion both in cause and in effect. "It breaks the dream of disease to understand that sickness is formed by the human mind, not by matter nor by the divine Mind," our Leader tells us (Science and Health, p. 396).

Christian Science does not say that mental errors cause physical sickness and then try to heal the sickness merely by telling the individual he must stop his erroneous thinking if he expects to recover. It would be unchristian to do this, and the Christian Scientist is a Christian healer, as Jesus and his early followers were. Through prayer he does for the patient what the patient for the moment cannot seem to do for himself. He does this through understanding prayer, in accordance with the promise of the Apostle James in his epistle (5:15), "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."

In this prayer the Christian Science healer understands and exercises the all-power of the divine presence, demonstrating the unreality and powerlessness of the patient's mistaken fear that he is in the grasp of a dreadful power called disease. Awakening to this great truth, the erstwhile sick man finds himself free to express the real qualities of his being—God's qualities— health and harmony. The evidence of God's supposed opposite vanishes through a wholly spiritual process of handling disease as mortal mind both in cause and in effect. Not a vestige of the illusion remains. The healing is complete. God's allness is acknowledged and experienced. This is Christian Science healing.