Article March 27, 1954 Issue

THE CHALLENGE TO DISEASE

RALPH B. SCHOLFIELD

All of us are called upon at various times to visit sick people. Whether our visit be one of sympathy or of duty, our attitude towards disease and more especially towards the patient may have a profound effect. To give comfort, hope, and encouragement to an invalid may free him from the bondage of disease, whereas the opposite attitude of hopelessness or fatalism will only bind him more securely than ever with the chains of disease. Even though no words may be spoken, an invalid may feel the confidence or the hopelessness of a visitor. Hence the importance of our mental attitude when we are in touch with those who are bowed down beneath the load of sorrow, sickness, and distress of all sorts.

One of the first things a Christian Scientist finds in his experience is that instead of agreeing with disease and discord he challenges them naturally, and resists their right to enslave man. But it should be clearly understood that this challenge is not merely a superficial statement that "all is well," but it is a reasoned and reasonable attitude by which the Christian Scientist seeks to acknowledge and confirm what he has learned regarding cause and effect.

The Christian Scientist learns that the primal and self-existent cause of all true existence is wholly constructive and good, for were it otherwise there would be universal chaos. The nature of this primal cause is defined in Scripture as God, or Love; and in both the Old and the New Testament this Love, or God, is acknowledged as the only true power. Therefore when he is faced by a case of disease, the attitude of the Christian Scientist is bound to differ from that of one educated in medical and material theories to attribute power to evil and disease.

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