Editorial August 28, 1976 Issue

Learning to Walk in Spirit

Peter J. Henniker-Heaton

Among the wide range of diseases recorded as healed through Christian Science are defective muscular conditions. Christian Science effects this healing on a radically spiritual basis and from a radically spiritual premise. It teaches explicitly that the source of our strength is not matter or physique but divine Mind, God.

Individuals impelled by strong feeling have often performed feats of strength, agility, or speed they have never been able to equal under ordinary circumstances. Early this year a major news service reported that a twelve-year-old California boy lifted one end of a 3,400-pound automobile by a bumper to free his father trapped under it, a feat the boy was quite unable to duplicate later.

On occasion Mary Baker Eddy took special note of displays that exemplified a performer's mastery over fear and physicality. At the Concord State Fair in 1900 she made a point of seeing the high diver plunge through a fiery hoop into a small pool below.^{See We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, First Series (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1943), pp. 19-20;} In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures she illustrates a metaphysical point with the example of Blondin crossing above Niagara Falls on a tightrope.^{See Science and Health 199:25-31;} Anyone who has taken part in a gymnastic contest knows that physical preparation of the team and its members is necessary, but a key factor in successful performance is development of right mental attitudes and morale.