Editorial July 31, 1976 Issue

The Healing Touch

Naomi Price

The Christ-spirit has always been meek, gentle, and unceremonious in its function of healing. The Gospels tell us that sometimes, while healing them, Christ Jesus would touch sick people. The accounts indicate however, that when he did this the act was not ritualistic or forceful as though it were vital to the cure, or as though the physical contact completed a circuit through which some therapeutic influence could flow.

Jesus healed through love and by applying his understanding of the perfection of God's universe and man to whatever situation confronted him. His method was spiritual, not dependent on material remedies, mortally mental arguments, or a ritualistic system. When a leper implored him for help, the Master did not hesitate to touch him as he said, "Be thou clean."^{Matt. 8:3;} When he raised Jairus's daughter from the dead, he lovingly took her hand and said, "Maid, arise."^{Luke 8:54;} But he healed many others without physical touch or helping hand. His human approach was in no way stereotyped or ritualistic. His words and motions varied from case to case according to the circumstances. Surely it is in the light of his own practice that we must interpret his final words to his disciples about the signs that would follow believers: "They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."^{Mark 16:18;}

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "Christianity as Jesus taught it was not a creed, nor a system of ceremonies, nor a special gift from a ritualistic Jehovah; but it was the demonstration of divine Love casting out error and healing the sick, not merely in the name of Christ, or Truth, but in demonstration of Truth, as must be the case in the cycles of divine light."^{Science and Health, p. 135;}