It is normal to be healthy. Everyone should express wholeness, activity, and freedom in both mind and body. In Truth we are all the offspring of God, and nothing less than total well-being represents humanly the individuality of the real, spiritual man, who is the manifestation and exact likeness of God, divine Spirit.

Perfect, permanent, normal health is not bestowed by God in a haphazard way on a chosen few or for a limited period. Under the rule of the impartial, immutable law of eternal Life, everyone can expect to display and enjoy the vitality and freedom of health, not just sometimes but always, regardless of age or human conditions. Mrs. Eddy writes, "According to Christian Science, perfection is normal,—not miraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man's individuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 104;}

In this era, when more working hours are wasted through sickness, more pills consumed, more hospital beds occupied, than ever before, it may seem rash to make this assertion that health is the law of God and the normal condition of man. But nonetheless it is true. An understanding of this divine law of health not only was proved by Christ Jesus and his followers but can be proved now, equipping one with the power to annihilate mental and physical disease and establish healthy conditions of mind and body in human experience. The Apostle Paul wrote, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." ^{Rom. 8:2.}

This "law of sin and death" referred to by Paul includes a humanly formulated code of health-laws precariously based upon conclusions drawn from observation of the human body, conjecture, and superstition. They range from statements that there are penalties attached to getting one's feet wet, through hypotheses concerning human age and inheritance, to beliefs based on chemistry and physics concerning the effects of various substances in contact with the flesh. These so-called laws of health are not, in fact, scientific and authoritative. They are speculative and fictitious.

Christian Science explains that the material body is the objectification of mortal mind. Its outline and substance consist of the false thought of the individual. This material body displays the conditions of health or of sickness predominating at any particular time in the mortal thought that produces it, and is wholly subject to mortal mind's variations. If the belief is accepted that certain medical health-laws are legitimate when the conditions to which they refer exist in human experience, the material body is liable to display the physical symptoms of disease and suffer in exactly the manner that mortal mind has predicted.

Later, when the material antidote has been administered, the treatment given, or the time elapsed that mortal mind has laid down as therapeutic in such a case, the symptoms of disease will disappear from the body, not because of the pills or the treatment, but because the mind that governs it decrees that they shall. It is, in fact, the faith that mortal mind places in material remedies that endows these remedies with any therapeutic value they may seem to have.

The question is sometimes asked, "How is it that I'm suffering from such and such a disease when I didn't know that it existed or realize that I was breaking any health-laws that might make me liable to get it?" Or, "How is it that a baby develops a disease when he knows nothing about it?" In such cases patients suffer from beliefs generally prevailing in mortal mind rather than from their own mental acceptance of them. The general belief may be that certain physical effects will follow certain conditions, and this general belief, unless strongly refuted with truth, may govern an individual's experience. Having unwittingly fulfilled these human conditions, he may then manifest the appropriate physical symptoms prescribed by the human theory.

To heal these cases, it is not enough to handle the belief only in the patients' own thought. The sum total of mortal mind's general acceptance of the validity of false health-laws should be recognized as baseless, powerless, and incapable of producing evidence.

It is not enough, either, to be ignorant of or merely to doubt the generally accepted theories concerning health. Lack of confidence in them may not in itself be sufficient to exempt one from penalties generally believed to be legitimate as a consequence of breaking humanly conceived health-laws. All the while general belief gives authority to these laws, it prevails over individual lack of confidence in them. The belief held by the minority is overruled by the majority until individual objection to them rests upon the understanding of divine law.

When one's faith is resting on the divine Principle of health as revealed by Christian Science, "one on God's side is a majority," and the beliefs of mortal mind are challenged with conviction and power. The positive affirmation of the divine law of perfect, enduring health, based as it is on omnipotent Truth, is sufficient to annul all human theories concerning health-laws and provide exemption for mankind from dangers associated with breaking them.

Naomi Price