Healing occurs in Christian Science when we spiritually behold what actually exists. Merely visualizing what we want to be true does not accomplish anything.

God, not man, made all, and He made it good. The healing process is one of spiritually beholding what God has made. Evil, which He did not make, then disappears. The reason it disappears is that its existence, so called, is only as a thought image, and this thought image is in a mind which is not God. We call this mind "mortal mind."

Mortal mind visualizes its own images, and they are false. These images include all that God did not make—all illusions—and they have names. Sin, sickness, discord, lack, limitation, fear, uncertainty, chance, obstruction, confusion, death, are some of these names. These are the objects of mortal mind's visualizing. We can destroy any one of these objects, or illusions, scientifically by recognizing it for what it is and by beholding the truth in its place.

Some so-called metaphysical systems work from the standpoint of mortal mind and attempt to heal by having mortal mind visualize something it calls good. This is the very opposite of Christian Science healing.

Elisha, the prophet, illustrated the true method when he healed his servant of fear. The enemy had surrounded the city and, as the account reads: "His servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?. ... And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (II Kings 6:15, 17).

Elisha did not tell the servant to try to visualize chariots of fire. The chariots, symbolizing God's presence, were already there. Divine Love had provided them. Elisha took away, through prayer, the mental blindness which could not behold truth, and the servant saw the situation as it really was.

When Christ Jesus healed, he did not visualize a withered hand made whole, or a Lazarus alive, or a sea made calm; Jesus beheld what was really there. If by his personal power he had visualized perfection where imperfection had been before, Jesus could not have said, "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5:30). And if he had not said this, we might be led to believe that his works were accomplished by his personal power and that we could not hope to emulate those works. But Jesus clearly pointed to God as the doer of the works, and because of this, he assured us, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also" (John 14:12). Through Christian Science we too can behold the real and destroy illusions.

Elisha's power was not his own, but "the spirit of Elijah," which he received when Elijah (Elias in Greek) "went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (II Kings 2:11). This was the spirit of Truth, the same Truth Jesus manifested, the impersonal, ever-present Christ. Mrs. Eddy gives a definition of "Elias," part of which reads, "Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 585). And in "Rudimental Divine Science" (p. 1), we find her defining Christian Science thus: "As the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony."

The power that revealed the chariots of fire, that restored the withered hand, that brought forth Lazarus from the grave, and that heals all the errors of mortal mind's visualizing today is this divine law. It is available to all.

Effective utilization of this law comes with honest seeking for truth, laying down all preconceived notions of what material pattern we should like to see. We should refuse to be tempted by the suggestion that we might get what we want if we visualize it hard enough, and we should wake to the truth of God's perfect universe here and now.

If a healing of disease or of some other inharmonious condition is desired, we begin with God. God is Love, infinite Mind, perfect good. Man is God's perfect likeness, lovely and loving, limitless, intelligent, harmonious. This is true now; it is not going to come true at some future date. Prayer in Christian Science, therefore, cannot make it come true; it can only reveal that which is already true.

The situation we face does not actually need changing; it needs to be understood in the light of divine Truth. As we acknowledge God as Love, as the only Mind, as infinite good, as All-in-all, and hold thought to the spiritual reality—perfect God and perfect man—the law of God, of Love, of Mind, of good, operates, erasing that which is unreal and bringing out clearly that which is real. The result is healing. It is the demonstration of Truth.

Mortal mind tries to get rid of evil by visualizing good, but it fails because all its images are illusions. The divine Mind always beholds good. When evil appears, it is an illusion of mortal mind, and it can be eliminated only by eliminating mortal mind concepts. Christian Science is the law of God which enables us to accept as our own the divine Mind and behold God's goodness, wiping out mortal mind and its illusions and demonstrating reality.

Carl J. Welz