The Law of Restoration

There is a law of restoration available to the healing of every kind of physical disability, and Christian Science reveals it and explains its application. Christ Jesus demonstrated this spiritual law when he healed a man of a withered hand. According to Mark, the Master simply said (3:5), "Stretch forth thine hand." The record goes on, "And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other."

The mandate of our heavenly Father is for indestructible life and perpetual activity, and the real man—God's spiritual son—is held by this mandate in a continuing state of perfection. Because Christ Jesus understood that God's law cannot be broken but governs man invariably, he was able to wipe out the material evidence that contradicted the truth of man's immutability as God's image; and the withered hand was restored to its normal state.

Through Christian Science we learn that the very physical senses which are conscious of a disorder evolve that disorder and that belief produces its own effects. It is often an accepted human belief that damage done to the body cannot be undone. Such was the case of the man whose hand was withered. The belief of incurability had claimed to become a law of incurability that governed the hand. But the Master's understanding that God's law of activity is in full control without interruption forced the physical senses to reverse what they claimed to have done, and the hand was stretched out.

Commenting on the experience, Mary Baker Eddy says (Unity of Good, p. 11): "The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, 'That withered hand looks very real and feels very real;' but he cut off this vain boasting and destroyed human pride by taking away the material evidence."

Christian Science is the same law of God which Jesus demonstrated by his clear comprehension of its presence and power; and this law is as effective today in the restoring of health and normality as it was in the Master's time. In order to experience the full beneficence of God's law of restoration, one must stamp out his belief that some bodily damage done through accident or through the ravages of disease cannot be undone. The law of restoration must be acknowledged as an active force constantly asserting the will of God for man's health; and the might of this force must be seen as resistless.

When one understands that God is All and governs all, this brings divine control right into the present human situation, and the stubborn beliefs acting consciously or unconsciously to perpetuate a condition of disrepair are destroyed. The body responds because it represents a mental state, which cannot resist the changing of human thought from a material to a spiritual basis.

Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 162), "Experiments have favored the fact that Mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance." She continues a little farther on, "I have restored what is called the lost substance of lungs, and healthy organizations have been established where disease was organic." In the same paragraph Mrs. Eddy speaks of having restored carious bones to healthy conditions.

No one need despair if he seems to be controlled by mortal mind's decree of incurability, for this is only ignorant, human opinion, and it can be corrected by Science. Human thought must be adjusted to the truths of being revealed by Christ, Truth. Then the substance of man, continuously and eternally renewed by Love, will be found in his creative Principle.

Neither disease nor accident nor deterioration can override the law of perfection, which is fully enforced by Principle. But this law must be yielded to in the heart's depth of devotion to Truth. No fear, no bitterness over the hard experiences of human life, should linger to retard healing. Only gratitude that divine law has been discovered and made available as Christian Science should be permitted in consciousness. This will bring the individual into full sympathy with God's law of restoration and will silence the mental states that claim to prevent restoration.

Humility made it possible for Naaman to be healed of leprosy. After he gave up pride and anger, submitting to Elisha's requirement to wash himself in Jordan seven times, "his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean" (II Kings 5:14).

The law of restoration is as eternal as God and is made available in every age and circumstance through His tender love for His creation.

Helen Wood Bauman