We hear a great deal about the effort being made through medical and biological research to determine the causes of disease. This is a merciful effort and deserves the respect of mankind. But the Christian Scientist knows that such research must eventually turn in the direction of mental causes, simply because all physical inharmonies are the effect of thought, as Christian Science has thoroughly proved.

Christ Jesus, who was the greatest healer of disease the world has ever known, showed again and again that only the mental state of a patient needs to be changed. His advice to those he healed ranged from pointing out their need to believe or to have faith in Christ to sharply admonishing them to cease sinning. And Jesus did not confine healing to his own capability; he said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." ^{John 14:12;} What is more, he taught his followers to heal.

Mary Baker Eddy was a true follower of Jesus. She recognized that healing the sick and sinful is a Christian duty. And she understood perfectly that spiritual healing probes and corrects the mental state that causes disease, thus freeing the patient from his self-imposed condition. Among other things she says, "Disease is a thing of thought manifested on the body; and fear is the procurator of the thought which causes sickness and suffering." ^{Rudimental Divine Science, p. 10;}

Sometimes the symptoms of disease are built up consciously by the patient. Sometimes they are built up unconsciously through the silent influence of general belief. But fear is the hypnotic force behind such building. Always, disease is a mental picture, and it must be eradicated from thought if it is to disappear from the body.

Christian Science explains further that the body itself is a structure of thought and that this makes mind and body one—that is, the carnal, or mortal, mind, of which flesh is the embodiment.

Furthermore, Christian Science makes it plain that the mental action, which produces a material structure called body and then superimposes upon it symptoms of disease, is hypnotic, for mortal mind, the opposite of divine Mind, or God, is hypnotism. This fact uncovers the mystery of the cause of all diseases. Stop the hypnotic action of mortal mind and the symptoms of disease are eradicated.

The Christian scientist can get at the hard mesmeric core of false mental action by realizing that God is the only Mind and that He is omniaction. A basic truth revealed by Christian Science is the allness and oneness of divine Mind. And this Mind, being Love, produces no disease, no discordant states of thought, no hypnotic illusions of symptoms.

When I was a child, I knew a high school boy who became morbidly interested in hypnotism. He obtained books from the public library on the subject, and he experimented on some small boys in his neighborhood. One day he hypnotized a willing youngster, and then he could not waken him out of the deep sleep he had produced. There was a great commotion among the indignant mothers in the neighborhood; but no one knew what to do. Eventually the false mental state wore off. If I remember correctly, there were no more experiments in hypnotism in that neighborhood!

A mother who is a Christian Scientist would know what to do in such a case. She would rise mentally above the clamor and fright, and she would realize that God is the only Mind and that her child, who has been experimented upon, is really the unmesmerizable idea of divine Mind. His awakening would come quickly. Her identification of the youngster as a divine idea instead of a mortal, subject to hypnotism, would be fundamental in her healing work.

I mention this incident to illustrate how one works metaphysically in Christian Science to dispel the illusion of disease symptoms. He destroys disease symptoms by proving that they are nothing but mental pictures built up in thought by the beliefs of a mind that is not only hypnotic in its action but powerless when confronted by real, spiritual action. Spiritual knowing is true action.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy explains: "You command the situation if you understand that mortal existence is a state of self-deception and not the truth of being. Mortal mind is constantly producing on mortal body the results of false opinions; and it will continue to do so, until mortal error is deprived of its imaginary powers by Truth, which sweeps away the gossamer web of mortal illusion." ^{Science and Health, p. 403.}

By evaluating symptoms as a "gossamer web of mortal illusion" and then becoming conscious of his real identity, one is able to prove that he can no more experience pain or deformity or disarrangement than can the Mind he knows to be All.

Mortal mind action is always hypnotic, and all that hypnotism can produce either on the body or in human experience is illusion. But illusions are no more harmful than we make them through the intensity of our belief in them. Indeed, disease is "a thing of thought." When we spiritualize our present state of thought by admitting only the divine Mind and its creation to be real, we stop hypnotic action and attain thought which acts in accord with the one Mind. Then disease is permanently healed.

Helen Wood Bauman