From time immemorial, for the most part, humanity has accepted the testimony of the physical senses without question. It has viewed the cosmos as a vast edifice of material objects and things, always believing that these phenomena are substantive reality, totally independent of the mind beholding them.

Christian Science is bringing about a revolution in world thought. Slowly but surely it is reeducating the human race to understand the mental nature of all things. It is awakening mankind to the fact that matter is not substance at all but is picturized mortal mind, a counterfeit sense of the vast universe of Spirit, which has been, is, and ever will be the only reality.

In The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Matter is but the subjective state of mortal mind. Matter has no more substance and reality in our day-dreams than it has in our night-dreams. All the way mortals are experiencing the Adam-dream of mind in matter, the dream which is mortal and God-condemned and which is not the spiritual fact of being." ^{My., p. 109;}

As this great scientific fact dawns in our thought, we see that we are masters of our own fate. We are not dealing with material objects or circumstances beyond our control. We are beholding our own thoughts, the subjective state of our own material thinking, and we learn to master this subjective state as our thought becomes spiritualized and empowered with a knowledge of Truth.

One sees, too, that what appears to be his physical body is really but a limited, mortally mental concept of his true spiritual selfhood, and that the functions of this body may be healed and harmonized as human thought becomes conscious of God's loving presence and the real man's unbroken relationship to God.

Spiritual healing, then, is not magical or miraculous. Disease is but one specific aspect of the dream of life in matter, and it can be wiped out of one's experience as the governing material belief is corrected with divinely empowered thoughts emanating from God, the one Mind. Knowing that disease is only false mentality externalized on the human body, one can confidently deny it intelligence, sensation, or action, and instead affirm the actual presence of divine Love. This Love is infinite Spirit, or Soul, the substance, life, intelligence, and action of the real man. One can claim and know that this boundless God is absolute harmony and perfection, and that He holds His beloved child within Himself untouched by sickness, lack, or accident. The clear, persistent, unwavering realization of these great facts acts as a law of destruction to everything unlike good.

When Christ Jesus healed the man paralyzed by the palsy, he simply said to him, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." ^{Matt. 9:2;} Then when this statement aroused criticism in the thought of those around him, the Master said, "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?"

Jesus evidently saw disease as the externalized effect of sin or evil thinking, not as an independent material entity. It was therefore this materiality in the man's thought that he healed, and the physical manifestation of perfect normality inevitably followed as the by-product of spiritual regeneration.

Mrs. Eddy tells us, "Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the currents of matter, or mortal mind." ^{Unity of Good, p. 11;} Then farther on she continues: "He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this change through the higher laws of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, 'That withered hand looks very real and feels very real;' but he cut off this vain boasting and destroyed human pride by taking away the material evidence."

Christian Science can never be used in concert with material methods of healing. It is not a spiritually mental additive that will speed the healing of a case that is already under medical treatment. Christian Scientists respect the selfless efforts of the medical to aid humanity, but they understand that the two systems differ profoundly in method and cannot mix.

Genuine spiritual healing, as Mrs. Eddy teaches it, can be obtained only through a complete and absolute reliance on the power and presence of divine Love. This trust is not foolhardiness. It is not naïve mysticism. It is an enlightened faith based on a scientific, provable understanding of God, man, and the universe. And most important of all, as a multitude of grateful individuals can testify, it works.

When Nathanael doubted that Jesus was the Messiah, Philip said to him simply, "Come and see." ^{John 1:46 .} Christian Science says to any earnest seeker who needs healing, but who may doubt the efficacy of this healing method: "Come and see." Come to the Christ, Truth, with an open mind. You, too, can be healed.

Alan A. Aylwin