Editorial October 20, 1973 Issue

Healing Sickness and Sin

Carl J. Welz

Anyone who seriously studies Christian Science soon comes upon the four pages in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, wherein are found at least thirty things to do about disease and its symptoms. They begin on page 390 with this: "When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the testimony of the material senses with divine Science."^{Science and Health, p. 390;} These thirty are but a few of the many instructions given in the Christian Science textbook on the healing of sickness. When we are faced with the suggestion of disease in ourselves or in others, the study of these instructions readies us to put them into practice. And the practice of them results in healing that is essential to all other real progress.

Whatever gains we hope to make in human life, they have reality only as they express what is to be learned through healing the sick. We learn that the testimony of the material senses is all there is to disease of any description. Disease has no reality except in this testimony. And the testimony is false.

True evidence is to be found in divine Science, which begins with God, divine Mind, and examines what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews called "the evidence of things not seen."^{Heb. 11:1;} This was part of his definition of faith. But Christian Science reveals the concrete nature of such evidence. Faith is born of God, Mind, and what it beholds is not separate from fact, but is true substance, practical and demonstrable here and now. The faith inspired by Christian Science is not mere hope; it is scientific evidence.