Spiritual Healing

John B. Willis

The emphasis which Jesus laid upon the healing of the sick begets the inference that he attached a value to this feature of his ministry which many of his professed followers seem indisposed to recognize. While all realize in some degree what such an experience must mean, the gain of physical freedom in the Christ-way measures but meagerly the significance which attaches to such an event, for if sickness is thus proven to be subject to the rule of spiritual apprehension, not only is the verity of Jesus' words, "The truth shall make you free," established, but his teaching about God and man and evil must be accepted as also true. This being the case, the skepticism which has so distinctly characterized modern thought is left without occasion or excuse.

For all who are open-minded, the indisputable healing effected through Christian Science settles forever the question of the possibility of annulling material law, a fact that instantly relates itself to all the deeper inquiries and problems of life. In the teaching of Christian Science, the physical betterment which is experienced by the truly believing figures as an incidental, as the sequence of a far greater salvation; and while many may have asked for treatment only that they might find relief from pain, the goal set before them has always been spiritual, and the logical relation of any immediate physical benefit to the higher, ultimate gain is well worth thinking about.

In world though, and as well in the bulk of Christian thought, the reign of law has stood for the material order; hence the tragedy of world experience has ever assaulted the averred wisdom, justice, and compassion of the Almighty. Today the healing of sickness in Christian Science compels a recast of the prevailing concept of law, and makes clear that in overcoming sin, disease, and death the Master proved that divine law and material law are not one, and not correlatives but opposites.

This is one of the most transforming realizations that can come to human sense, and it effects an entire change of one's concept not only of law, but of the Lawgiver, of God and His government. Escape from disease through the attainment of spiritual consciousness makes it manifest that sickness, with all that pertains to it, is negative to truth. It can no more have the substance of Spirit than darkness can have the substance of light. Truth can eliminate nothing that is true, and the conclusion is irresistible that evil, with all its forces and laws, so called, is entirely apart from Truth and its manifestations; in a word, that it is unreal, a product of false sense which can but disappear as we acquire a knowledge of God. We are thus led through the demonstration of spiritual healing to a recognition of the verities of being, those eternal positives which Christ Jesus declared, and an apprehension of which constitutes the substance of faith. The immediate outcome of this arrival is a new sense of the power of right consciousness, and of our privilege to attain to "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

In the same degree the fear of evil, that bete noir of the great bulk of even religious consciousness, must pass away. The realization that good alone is, inevitably banishes anxiety and dread. "Fear thou not; for I am with thee," is now understood as never before, and men are thus saved from a disability compared with which most physical ills seem trifling. To the true Christian Scientist, anxiety has become an outlaw, and the peace that "passeth all understanding" is his abiding possession.

This is the larger significance of spiritual healing, that it leads to the understanding of the nature of being; as Mrs. Eddy has said, it establishes "the Science of God's unchangeable law" (Science and Health, p. 135). It likewise begets an inspiring sense of the sovereignty of man, and so makes Christlike living a practical proposition.

John B. Willis.

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Perfection and Reality

January 9, 1915

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