Article February 5, 1972 Issue

Christian Healing Lost—and Restored

CORA MASON

In 1879, a little group of people meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, took a tremendous step. "On motion of Mrs. Eddy, it was voted,—To organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing."^{Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy, p. 17;}

More than nineteen centuries before, the Founder of Christianity had set a standard of healing works for all his followers: "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."^{John 14:12;} The Gospels, written down after belief and works had already drifted considerably apart, still leave no doubt of the naturalness of the earliest Christian healing and the expectation that it would continue.

This expectation quickly faded. By the third century, church writers were reporting only healing "traces," and by the end of the fourth, the Church was ready to justify the loss. A sincere reforming churchman, St. John Chrysostom, could write: "Why ... are there not now those who raise the dead, and perform cures? ... When man's nature was weaker, when the Faith had to be implanted, there were even many such; but now God would not have us to hang upon these signs."^{Homily VIII on Colossians (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers);}

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