In my country, every ten years the government takes a census of the whole population. A questionnaire is left at every house, and the forms are collected later after they have been completed.

Last year when the official called to collect our forms, he was surprised to find that I had entered "Spiritual Healing" in the space where I was to describe the nature of the work I perform. He asked me, "What is it that you people do?" I explained briefly, and after he had gone I found myself thinking about his question quite a lot. I began to realize more than before how difficult it must be for people who have perhaps never studied the Bible, and who have little understanding of God, to grasp what spiritual healing—Christian healing—is all about.

The word spiritual seems abstract to a lot of people, but it describes the very natural way of thinking and feeling that recognizes God's presence in our lives—not as an anthropomorphic deity who is sometimes kind and sometimes cruel, but as the one God who is divine Love, pure Spirit. The term spiritual also describes our true selfhood in accord with the Biblical description of man as the image and likeness of God, having dominion.

Realizing this spiritual truth of man must have been a factor in the unparalleled healing work of Christ Jesus, who clearly saw beyond the view of man as a sinful or diseased mortal. Jesus expected his disciples to heal, too. He said to his followers for all time, "He that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also."

Mary Baker Eddy certainly proved this. In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she tells of healing people of a wide range of the diseases common in her time, including consumption and dyspepsia. Earlier Mrs. Eddy herself had been healed of the effects of serious accident, when—after reading the Bible account of one of Christ Jesus' healings—she gained a new and profound insight into spiritual existence. After continued study of the Bible, she shared the Science that was the basis of Jesus' remarkable healing results.

Christian Science shows the need for a more spiritual dimension of thought that acknowledges God's all-power and our own true nature as His image. And what brings about this change of thought? The answer lies largely in one simple word—prayer. Not just petitionary prayer but prayer that awakens us to a new sense of God's love for His spiritual creation, which is governed by spiritual laws, not by material circumstances. These spiritual laws can be put into practice at any time in any place by anyone who strives to follow Jesus' teaching and example and accepts the authority of his instruction to his disciples, "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils."

Mrs. Eddy writes of her own healing work through prayer alone: "... When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite recognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein." She continues, "In the same spiritual condition I have been able to replace dislocated joints and raise the dying to instantaneous health" (Unity of Good).

Preparation to heal in this way doesn't involve mere academic instruction; it requires the cultivation of spirituality. It includes a heartfelt desire for the feeling of closeness to God that brings confidence and expectancy of healing.

One student of Christian Science was very interested in this point. She had experienced and witnessed healings, but she very much wanted to prove the immediate effectiveness of what she called "wordless prayer"—the feeling of a true rapport with God.

She saw that she must accept God's law as governing her every action, indeed her very life. She saw, too, that in reality God's presence was always with her, precluding the presence or power of any inharmonious circumstance. And she realized she didn't have to go through a long and complicated thought process in order to demonstrate this when problems needed to be faced.

Then one day when she was climbing the narrow stairs in an old inn, she fell, hitting her head against a heavy wooden door, and twisted her hip. Momentarily she lost consciousness, and this was followed by dizziness.

She describes the experience like this: "My husband rushed to me. I said, 'Leave me.' In a minute or two I stood up. There was a lump on my head, a lump on my knee, a lump on my elbow, and my foot and hip ached. A few minutes later the pain disappeared, and the lumps subsided. My husband and I joked about the dent I had made on the wooden door. He said, 'Just look at you. I can hardly believe that a few minutes ago you were lying out cold on the floor.' I never subsequently had any bruising."

Afterward she said that as she was falling, her thought had risen swiftly and wordlessly to the power that had sustained her over many years, to her Father-Mother God, whom she loved with all her heart. No particular words came to mind, but the feeling of a mighty power working on her behalf remained right through the experience. She felt this was an important milestone in her understanding and practice of spiritual healing. She had felt the loving presence of God throughout the whole experience, answering her silent acknowledgment of His ability to deliver and heal.

This is the kind of thing that people do when they are practicing spiritual healing—genuine, Christian healing.