Editorial August 10, 1968 Issue

Refuting the Evidence of the Senses

William Milford Correll

One of the distinctive features of healing in Christian Science is the necessity of refuting the evidence of the senses. One must become accustomed to this type of refutation and understand the reasons for it. To establish the higher evidence of Spirit and spiritual law, the human consciousness must be freed from the mesmeric belief in material evidence, or the spurious testimony of the material senses. Awakening to the reality of harmonious being is like awakening from a hypnotic dream and finding that all is well. This is the actual state of existence under the government of God.

Christian Science teaches that one's human experience, including bodily conditions, is the expression of one's beliefs, both individual beliefs and those that one has accepted from general mortal thought. It tells us that the fear of disease and the experience of disease are one and the same, and that the physical sense testimony is actually a mental state instead of a physical one. It is not surprising, then, that the Christian Scientist gives attention to the consciousness of the individual instead of to his body. He applies the truth of being to the thought of his patient; and when the patient's beliefs yield to the truth, this in turn corrects the physical evidence. Such is the method Christ Jesus used.

Jesus understood the nature of God as infinite Love, divine Spirit, and the spiritual and perfect nature of man made in God's likeness. He knew that because God is absolute good He could never have created evil or disease and that He would never have visited these errors on His child, the real man. He knew that matter is not real substance but simply the expression of material mentality. He was not impressed with the evidence of disease. In his healing method he rebuked this false evidence with the authority of spiritual understanding. When he healed the epileptic boy, "he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him."^{Mark 9:25;} And the boy was restored to normalcy.