Among the many directions which Mary Baker Eddy gives for healing the sick, perhaps none is more explicit than the following (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 417): "Maintain the facts of Christian Science,—that Spirit is God, and therefore cannot be sick; that what is termed matter cannot be sick; that all causation is Mind, acting through spiritual law. Then hold your ground with the unshaken understanding of Truth and Love, and you will win."

The affirmation that "all causation is Mind, acting through spiritual law" is closely akin to the Master's prayer, beloved of all Christians, which affirms (Matt. 6:13), "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever." Both are concerned with divine law, through which Mind acts to produce effect—the kingdom—and through which the harmony of God's creation is demonstrated in Christian healing. A dictionary states that power, strength, vigor, energy, and force agree in the idea of ability to do, and Christian Science explains law as spiritual and moral force.

Law is the action, or force, which links cause with effect, and the law through which divine Mind acts to evolve and control its spiritual kingdom is the tender, just, intelligent will of God. Since cause is Spirit, effect is spiritual. Spirit cannot evolve matter; hence matter has no law. God's law is Mind's mandate, and Mind's mandate for man is health, a state of spiritual wholeness, which includes harmony, understanding, fearless freedom, perfection of character, in fact, all the qualities of infinite Spirit.

Christian Science is the divine mandate. It demonstrates the spiritual facts of being, which God ordains, and proves that whatever seems to obscure the divine order is illusion, unsupported by Principle and incapable of defying it. Acting in obedience to God's mandate, we heal ourselves and others, for thus the real self is revealed, and this self manifests invariable health.

The ancient healers looked beyond the changing world of mortal concepts and glimpsed the real kingdom, in which man has perfect health and is without guile or taint of sin. They were conscious of heaven's atmosphere and partook of Spirit's nature. Christ Jesus preached the nearness of God's kingdom and utilized its laws to destroy the false laws of matter and sin which seemed to be operating in opposition to health. He was constantly proving that Love's will for man is good and that it does not support sickness and mortality. He gave men a touch of heaven and inspired many to labor to awaken humanity from its sordid, earthly dream. He was demanding obedience to divine law in the active demonstration of good as the only means of entering Spirit's realm when he said (Matt. 7:21), "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."

As we come to understand the divine order of being through Christian Science and realize that man is incapable of imperfection, we gain a better comprehension of the Ten Commandments and see the relationship of health to moral law. The Master said that whoever would break one of these Commandments and teach others to do so would be called the least in the kingdom of heaven, and that those who would teach men to obey them would be called great in that kingdom. Obedience to the moral law is essential to the demonstration of health, for even though this law is set forth as rules for human behavior, its basis lies in the fact that in heaven's changeless order man loves God supremely and his neighbor as himself. He is obedient to Mind, for Mind invariably enforces its mandates. Divine Love controls its own idea.

Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 392), "To cure a bodily ailment, every broken moral law should be taken into account and the error be rebuked." Disobedience to moral law is hurtful to health. That it is impossible to disobey moral law without a definite physical reaction was illustrated by the experience of a group of attorneys who were eager to examine the lie detector soon after its invention. These men submitted to the test, and each agreed to lie concerning his age when a question about it was asked. Regardless of the fact that no one was actually deceiving, or being deceived, not one individual was able to falsify without a vigorous physical reaction showing up on the instrument.

Since this apparently harmless breach of moral law produced so distinct an effect on the body, what must a pernicious, deceptive breach produce? What must greed for matter, profanity, hatred, adultery, dishonesty, envy, and the like produce? There can be no true manifestation of health without strict obedience to moral law, for obedience to God's will is the changeless fact of man's being, and disobedience to it is disorder and is inevitably externalized in physical disarrangement, inharmony, ill-health.

The understanding that Mind acts through law to produce the effect of reflection destroys the belief of a carnal mind acting through hypnotic force to produce the effect of illusion. Christian Science overcomes false laws because it silences false mental action. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 400), "The action of so-called mortal mind must be destroyed by the divine Mind to bring out the harmony of being."

The Master proved the eternal presence of God's law-controlled kingdom, and Christian Science, the Comforter which he promised mankind, makes divine law universally available. It rouses men to know themselves as God knows them, in fullness of health and perfection of nature. Through Science, divine Mind is revealed as governing all, and health, the divine order of manhood, is coming to humanity as dawn comes to darkness.

Helen Wood Bauman