THE CAUSE AND CURE OF DISEASE

MAURICE MC C. CHURCH

Mark's Gospel contains the well-loved description of the healing of a sick woman who, with hope and expectation, made her way through the crowd thronging Jesus and touched his garment. Then, the account records (5:29), "She felt in her body that she was healed of that plague."

This woman had been sick for a long time, for twelve years. She had tried to get relief from many sources, "had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse." What happened then when she touched Jesus' garment, and how was she healed so quickly?

Christian Science answers these questions. And the answers it gives bring hope to the chronic invalid, to every chronic sufferer from every so-called disease known to humankind. To the reader who asks, "Can I also be healed in such a manner?" this Science answers, "Yes."

The woman's touch signified her faith in the Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5). And Christian Science teaches that Mind is God, divine, supreme, infinite Life, Truth, and Love. The first necessity in Christian Science is to gain this true and wonderful sense of God.

Think what it means for us to realize that God is infinite divine Love. Love knows nothing unlovely. Hatred disappears before Love. Who can hate in the presence of Love? Fear vanishes; Love casts it out. Ugliness is replaced by beauty; Love confers beauty on its object.

As we gain this true and glorious concept of the one infinite God we begin to grasp the meaning of that wonderful verse in John's Gospel (1:3), "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." We begin to see that everything not made by God—and this means everything unspiritual, ugly, or unsound—was not made at all and so has to be seen as illusion and false belief. Since God is infinite, there is no room for the un-Godlike in the realm of reality.

Let us consider further this sense of God as infinite. Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 275), "All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause, and effect belong to God." Thus God, Mind, Love, is not to be regarded as merely the cause or source, but as also including effect and condition.

As we begin to understand this truth, we begin to see how the healing of the woman with the issue of blood took place. For God, who is infinite and includes cause and effect, must embrace man as His conception; and this is exactly what Christian Science teaches.

Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 470), "Man is the expression of God's being." Man, the expression of divine Mind, is never subject to disease. Disease, whether appearing to be the result of over-action or underaction of so-called material organs, is not caused, seen, or felt by Mind. It was not made by God and therefore has no entity at all.

The woman's condition seemed to be caused by the human mind, which believes in the power of fear or sin or matter; and the disease disappeared as she put all her trust in the Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus." So "she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague." Even though it may seem to one that the heart, stomach, lungs, are in some way defective, the trouble is always the result of false material thinking, and the remedy always lies in right scientific thinking.

A man who had suffered from stomach trouble and ulcers for nine years decided to visit a Christian Science practitioner for help. For three weeks the pain and discomfort had been continuous, and he had begun to fear that the disease might be the result of a more serious malady than he cared to contemplate. During the forenoon before his appointment he set himself to see Truth and Love expressed by everyone, to see as God causes His idea to see, and to reflect the thoughts of divine Mind. So it was with hope and expectation that he went to keep his appointment.

He knew that his human body, though it might seem to be a thing of flesh and blood, was but the expression of his human thinking. After talking with the practitioner he was led to see more clearly than ever before the fact that his real body, or identity, was the embodiment of all right ideas, which make up man's individual reflection of God. This, he realized, was the spiritual body which Jesus manifested at the ascension; and one gains it not by trying to spiritualize the human body, but by spiritual rebirth. For as material thoughts are replaced by pure spiritual thoughts, so will the human body— the expression of human thinking —improve until the real self is fully demonstrated.

This true concept of body as the embodiment of spiritual ideas came to him as a great inspiration. It was this concept, he saw, which enabled Jesus to appear among his disciples after the crucifixion, "the doors being shut." This sufferer perceived clearly that nothing malignant or harmful could have part in the real body. Therefore he need not accept disease in his thinking. He left the practitioner's office happy and well, for he too had felt in his body that he was healed.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

SERVICE TO MANKIND

December 4, 1954

Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit