BEAKERS, TEST TUBES, and Bunsen burners often come to mind when people think of their high-school chemistry class. But chemistry can also describe the interaction between people, or the makeup of a particular group.

There's also mental chemistry, a phenomenon whereby, through the power of God, human thought is transformed to a more spiritual basis, and the result is that some bodily problem is healed.

The experience of my friend Johnye Patricia may help to explain this chemistry.

She was diagnosed with high blood pressure. Sometimes she would spend three hours in her doctor's office, because he considered the condition so serious he wouldn't let her leave until the medication took effect, and her condition was again under control. She deeply appreciated her doctor's care and concern, but he offered no permanent cure.

She also had a drinking problem. Both the high blood pressure and the drinking seemed related to J.P.'s excessive feeling of responsibility for family members and for her computer business. The doctor told her that she needed to eliminate all the stress from her life, that it was making her sick. He recognized that her thinking was affecting her health. But he could only offer her drugs that provided, at best, temporary relief.

After ten years, the idea came to her that a book she had— Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures—might be able to give her the help she needed. One of the things it says is this: "As when an acid and alkali meet and bring out a third quality, so mental and moral chemistry changes the material base of thought, giving more spirituality to consciousness and causing it to depend less on material evidence. These changes which go on in mortal mind serve to reconstruct the body. Thus Christian Science, by the alchemy of Spirit, destroys sin and death" (p. 422).

She began reading and studying the book. She also made a firm resolution to quit drinking. The result was like pouring clean, pure water into a glass of dirty water—gradually, what she read in this book, which is a guide to the Bible, changed her thinking. This had a marked effect on her health. She could feel her health improving, so she persisted in her reading and studying. This led her to make good changes in her family and business. For example, she got the idea to hire a payroll service company to handle payroll.

After several months, she went to a new dentist. He asked if she had any medical conditions. She said she'd been told she had high blood pressure. When he checked it, he found it to be perfectly normal. This confirmed what she had suspected. J.P. feels that the teachings of the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures had changed her thinking and outlook on life. She had reached a deeper understanding of God's goodness and of who she was as His child. This, in turn, had freed her from the high blood pressure and the dependence on prescription drugs and alcohol. J.P.'s healing took place over four years ago and has been permanent.

The Apostle Paul pointed to the need for mental change such as J.P. experienced when he wrote, "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:2).

The human body is governed entirely by what we think. Disease is not a condition of the body independent of mental factors, although this is how it seems. The body is incapable of doing, feeling, experiencing, or sensing anything apart from thought. Maybe that's what Jesus meant when he said, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63). Through entirely spiritual means, he healed people of disease. Jesus showed that matter isn't really a lawmaker. Nor is it true substance. To believe that it is subjects an individual to conditions and circumstances that may appear beyond control. But when we allow our thought to be changed by recognizing the insubstantiality of matter, on the basis that God is Spirit and is All, we find that no condition is beyond Spirit's all-transforming power.