Editorial April 11, 1964 Issue

Superimposed Pictures

Helen Wood Bauman

Christian Science makes clear that if people understood what symptoms of disease actually are, they would not fear them. They would realize that physical disorders are mental images, or pictures, which they are themselves entertaining so vividly that they impress them upon their bodies. Knowing this, sufferers would no longer be self-deceived and would quickly eradicate symptoms as superimposed illusions.

Mary Baker Eddy, who healed the sick with the authority of profound spiritual understanding, explains in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" how a case of consumption should be treated. She says (p. 425), "Show that it is not inherited; that inflammation, tubercles, hemorrhage, and decomposition are beliefs, images of mortal thought superimposed upon the body; that they are not the truth of man; that they should be treated as error and put out of thought."

One might compare symptoms with figures drawn upon a slate, which are capable of being quickly erased. Since symptoms are mental images superimposed on the body, the normal concept of body is not changed by them any more than the slate is changed when pictures are drawn on it. Symptoms are never in the body but only in false thought. This fact is what makes possible the instantaneous restoration to health. Complete conviction that symptoms are eradicable as thoughts which have no support from God helps one erase them with the truth.

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