Editorial July 21, 1973 Issue

Healing Through Christian Faith

Naomi Price

It is a generally accepted human fact that faith can have a good deal to do with the recovery of a sick patient. The presence of a trusted friend sometimes inspires confidence that will help to heal. People respond to simple home remedies and placebos (innocuous pills and potions without drug content given to patients to please them) with remarkable frequency and alacrity when they believe them to be health-giving. In fact, experience shows that almost any people or supposed remedies—from homeopathy to magic—can be at least temporarily effective in improving a physical condition when the patient, or those near to him, have sufficient confidence in them.

There is no mystery in these kinds of faith cure. Christian Science explains that thought determines our outward, physical experience. In fact, Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health, "Science shows that what is termed matter is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author mortal mind." Science and Health, p. 114; Consequently, since the material body and its conditions merely manifest the thoughts that are in the individual's mortal consciousness, there must always be physical improvement when the thoughts in that consciousness are changed for the better either through faith in a person, a drug, or any other material or mental method.

However, this kind of cure leaves mankind in a precarious position. It must follow that if faith in matter and its so-called laws is a factor in physical cure because it changes the mental condition that is making the patient sick, it can also be a factor in making him physically ill. Mrs. Eddy gives this illustration: "A man was made to believe that he occupied a bed where a cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared, and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material contact, because no cholera patient had been in that bed." p. 154;

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