"He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." According to this inspired declaration, God, divine Love, is the only true giver. From a human standpoint discord seems real and disease and lack seem to have a creative cause. Good does not, however, produce evil, for a fundamental truth given in the first chapter of Genesis, upon which we may safely base all right reasoning, is that God, Mind, made all that was made and it was good.

It follows that the mind called carnal in the Bible and named mortal mind in Christian Science must be illusive and cannot be a creator of reality. The discords of human living are the expression, then, of a counterfeit mortal mind. We prove through Christian Science treatment that these discords may be eliminated, or healed, through a realization that the divine Mind is the only giver and is continually imparting good and only good to man, who is made in God's image and likeness.

A Christian Science treatment is not the influence of one human mind on another human mind. Such a false conclusion would indicate a belief that it is the practitioner's human mind which heals. Christian Scientists are endeavoring to follow the example of Christ Jesus, and he made it clear that he depended on the Father, the divine Mind, for his healing ability. How could he have said this more plainly than in the words (John 14:10), "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works"?

Should a practitioner of Christian Science feel a sense of pressure or personal responsibility, might this not indicate that he may have been forgetting that healing comes not through one's human ability but through a realization that divine ability, which is man's by reflection, is always available to us and adequately powerful? We have the privilege of expressing the divine Mind through intelligence and through realizing that man, God's reflection, has no mind which can recognize sickness, produce pain, or be conscious of inharmony or discord of any sort.

A Christian Scientist reaches his patient, not through his own human mentality, but through divine Love, infinite, all-knowing Mind. We have the promise of Mary Baker Eddy that instantaneous results are assured when we follow this scientific healing method, for she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 365), "If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness like dew before the morning sunshine."

True meekness is born of the conviction that Love is the source of all spiritual understanding, enlightenment, and success. The New Testament accounts of the healing work of the Nazarene reveal his ineffable humility. He was always aware that his so-called miracles were the effect of divine power. Egotism, false pride, self-conceit, and vanity are cast out when divine Love is acknowledged to be the instrumentality through which all good comes to us. As the words of one of our hymns expresses it (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 354):

A Christian Science practitioner had a case which seemed to require very earnest, prayerful work. Then one day, after he had done his very best to realize the perfection of God and man, the reality of good, and the unreality of the discord, he asked himself: "Now what do I expect? Do I expect my patient to get well as a result of this prayerful reasoning?" This question roused him to the realization that the time had come to rest in the conviction of God's perfect, finished work. He realized he need only know that divine Love had given to his patient good and only good and that this had been accepted. It was then that his patient knew he was well and awakened to reality.

The belief that the human Jesus, rather than divine Love as expressed by Christ Jesus, was the healer led to the conclusion that others could not follow his example. The reinstatement of Christian healing has come through Mrs. Edd's discovery that the individual whose consciousness is imbued with divine Truth heals through his God-bestowed ability to know that good is everywhere and evil is nowhere. Our Leader tells us (Science and Health, p.26), "Divine Truth, Life, and Love gave Jesus authority over sin, sickness, and death." Did not our Master promise that we would do the works he did? Therefore, we pray each day that the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established and maintained in our consciousness. (See Manual of The Mother Church, Art. VIII, Sect. 4.)

Fear of failure, doubt, and discouragement are seen to be unnecessary and foundationless when we look in the right direction for comfort, enlightenment, and reassurance. We become calm, fearless, free, and sure in proportion to our realization that Love gives to each of its ideas continuous right activity, harmony, health, and perfection, and we can demonstrate these qualities as we see our true selfhood as the reflection of God.

Throughout Mrs. Eddy's writings may be found many instructive statements which tell us that divine Love, the only intelligence, consciousness, Principle, or Mind, is the one unfailing, positive, permanent healing power. One such statement is the following from page 132 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany": "Divine Love will also rebuke and destroy disease, and destroy the belief of life in matter. It will waken the dreamer—the sinner, dreaming of pleasure in sin; the sick, dreaming of suffering matter; the slothful, satisfied to sleep and dream. Divine Love is our only physician, and never loses a case."