CHRISTIAN SCIENCE brings to the world the same drugless method of healing that Christ Jesus practiced. Its diagnosis is mental, its medicine is divine Mind, its effect is permanent. Its greatest advantage is that it reveals God's man—spiritual man, made in Mind's image, constituted of His ever-harmonious energies and substance. In this real man health is perfect and eternally established. Human beings are secure in health only in the degree that they demonstrate their true, Christly selfhood as children of God and maintain a sense of unity with Mind by expressing the qualities of Mind.

The carnal mind, the opposite of divine Mind, produces a material concept of man, the opposite of the real, spiritual man; and it produces the illnesses that befall a mortal. This so-called mind also produces material medicine. It is surely time for all men to realize that the mind which produces an ill cannot cure it. Christian Science avers that it cannot. Something higher than matter is needed to correct physical discord. Only divine Mind can make such a correction; and this it does through Christ, Truth, which destroys the belief in a mind that is not God and a man who is not Godlike. Christian Science wakens human beings to know and utilize the Christ-power embodied in individual man, a power ever available to heal both sin and sickness.

Another great advantage of the drugless method of Christian Science is that it penetrates where matter cannot reach. It searches the inmost secrets of the mind and brings to the surface of thought the fears and sins and cramping emotions that distort the body and disrupt its normal action. Once uncovered, deleterious states of mind can then be dispelled in favor of health-giving purity, peace, and harmony.

Mary Baker Eddy says of healing by Christian Science (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 33, 34), "It is more effectual than drugs; curing where these fail, and leaving none of the harmful 'after effects' of these in the system; thus proving that metaphysics is above physics."

It is immensely important to know that one healed by Science is invariably benefited morally. Some measure of error has been destroyed. The human mind, which controls the body, has been brought under the government of divine Mind more consistently than before; and this is an essential step in outgrowing mortality. Relying upon matter for help materializes thought and makes it more submissive to mortal mind weaknesses. Relying upon God, who is Love, Life, Mind, spiritualizes consciousness and strengthens it to ward off further possible assaults of sickness.

No spiritually-minded individual can believe that a nonintelligent material drug can actually improve one's morality, make one compassionate or honest or affectionate. Neither can he believe that the spiritual elements of health, such as purity, obedience, and peaceableness, can be actuated by doses of chemical compounds.

The Christian Scientist holds loyally to what he understands of man and the qualities of Mind that constitute his health. In fact, he knows that real health can be won in no other way. He remembers that our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, who bade his followers heal the sick, used no drugs in bringing about the marvelous healings accorded to him in the Bible. He said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:8), "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." God provides abiding health for each individual; and this is the health which the real man possesses even before a prayer is made or a desire for healing voiced.

This leads to the point that health is a Christly state of consciousness and not a condition of matter. Then if one is to attain permanent health it is a question of one's demonstrating spiritual consciousness, or real identity. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 298), "The true consciousness is the true health." From such a basis, one can see why Christian Science healing is a drugless method. It is a sacred religious ministry. It concerns spiritual consciousness, not matter, not chemistry, not metabolism, not electrical energy, not organic structure or action.

If Christian Science treatment fails to heal, the reason is not that there is a fault in the Science but that Science was not clearly enough understood or intelligently enough applied. The possibilities of Science as a remedial agency are unlimited. It holds out to all a remedy for every illness, deformity, or woe expressed by mortals. But its method, as we have seen, is drugless. Any compromise with drugs dashes to earth the hope of spiritual power needed for true healing.

The Bible teaches God's ability to heal without drugs—either dangerous or harmless. The sooner those earnest people who work to allay the sufferings of mankind through drugs recognize the advantages of the spiritual, drugless method of Christian Science, the more quickly will the world be saved from the tortures of disease and the more perfectly will man in God's image, eternally healthy, be brought to light.

Helen Wood Bauman