"Am I my brother's keeper?" ^{Gen. 4:9.} Obviously it's an important question. But when Cain murdered his brother and asked the question, he was using it to evade the truth, not to find it.

Sometimes questions are asked for the wrong reasons. And sometimes questions are the wrong ones at a particular time. Learning to distinguish between right and wrong questions can be as important as learning the right answer.

For example, asking questions of spiritual healing— spiritual healing in Christian Science—as though it were simply an alternative to material remedies is really getting off to a wrong start. It is impossible to understand Christian Science healing—what it is, how it happens, where it leads, what it requires—if it is approached from a material basis or equated with conventional medicine.

Christian Science certainly does heal human discord. Mrs. Eddy, who discovered this Science, was first known not as a church leader or innovator but as one who healed physical illness through prayer. An early instance of this spiritual healing took place in modest, everyday surroundings. It was at a boarding-house dinner table. ^{See Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), pp. 3-4 .}

To those sitting at that table, what happened subsequently to one of them probably looked quite material, at least in its results. An infected finger, which doctors feared could lead to the loss of an arm, was healed. But to Mrs. Eddy, who effected the healing through prayer, it was one of many early instances where the reality of God, Spirit, was made evident in the daily lives of normal men and women.

Now, not everyone who was healed by Mrs. Eddy (or healed by her followers in later years) has had an interest in the reality of God. Spiritual healing—what it means, why it is pursued—often has at the outset only an expedient or physical significance for those who have been touched by it. But in order to understand the divine Principle that underlies Christian Science healing, questions having to do with its spiritual purpose and origin must be asked and not be overshadowed by material questions and comparisons, however important.

A good question was asked of Mrs. Eddy: "Must I study your Science in order to keep well all my life?" The questioner was one who said he had been healed of a chronic trouble after one month's treatment.

Mrs. Eddy's reply concluded, "... not to be subject again to any disease whatsoever, would require an understanding of the Science by which you were healed." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 54.}

Often this requirement becomes the dividing line between future success and failure in Christian Science. Healing is not solely a question of whether we are bright enough, good enough, or have sufficient faith in God, but whether or not an understanding of the Science is sought.

Mrs. Eddy was convinced that the divine law which constitutes Christian Science is available to everyone, that God's law literally underlies reality and life. Yet the book she wrote— Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures—is filled with many requirements for demonstrating that truth. Not one of them offsets her conviction, but each one illustrates the spiritual and moral qualifications that develop an understanding of how Christian Science heals.

This woman really did believe and understand God to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Even when her life was at its lowest points, she did not doubt God. Nor did she reject the spirituality of the healing that was essential to New Testament Christianity. The turning came in her own life when she perceived the spiritually scientific link between infinite, eternal Spirit and man.

Christian Science was a radical departure from material treatments, from nascent psychotherapy, and from scholastic theology. This theoretical and practical separation became clear when Mrs. Eddy spiritually understood that God, infinite Spirit, had to be manifested in man, His spiritually mental likeness, and not in a material world or in a material man departing from the nature of his creator.

There was nothing of material sense that supported this view, other than the changes that took place when this spiritual understanding, through prayer, overcame evil—in the form of either sin or disease. In Christian Science, healing through prayer becomes not an end but a crucial means through which the substantiality of evil is proved unreal, that is, unsupported by divine law. Mrs. Eddy understood that philosophical or even fervent religious assertions of this grand spiritual truth were not enough. The very nature of human experience had to change. Lives needed to be transformed and healed in order to confirm the metaphysical truth she had discovered. She realized that men and women actually had to become better.

She wrote of her own research: "I knew the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced in primitive Christian healing by holy, uplifting faith; but I must know the Science of this healing, and I won my way to absolute conclusions through divine revelation, reason, and demonstration." ^{Science and Health, p. 109.}

She said that the revelation of Truth in understanding came "gradually" to her. ^{See ibid. 109:22-24.} An honest recognition of the magnitude and length of her labor—which extended over many years—is not a fact to discourage beginning or veteran students of Christian Science. But it is essential that this fundamental fact be recognized in order to undergird and guide successful modern researchers into the Science of Christianity. As in any science, the researcher must yield to the law that underlies the study field. Christian Science, even though it is distinctly religious, cannot be modified to fit human opinions or wishes regarding it. To attempt to make such modifications or mold it to fit transient human desires will only guarantee the failure of the researcher to understand its spiritual and scientific basis.

The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, is filled with questions. Its author asked hard questions and sought honest answers. But unlike Cain's questions, they do not seek to evade or mislead. They go to the heart of the issue and proceed from the right basis. We who live in an age beginning to grasp the essential demands of scientific inquiry and discipline stand at the portal of spiritual breakthrough—a breakthrough that is establishing primitive Christian healing as a viable means to heal disease and meet human need. And across the centuries Pilate's question to Christ Jesus—"What is truth?" ^{John 18:38.} —will no longer be evaded by looking to material systems for the answer.

Michael D. Rissler