In the light of the teachings of Christian Science, when reference is made in the Scriptures to Christ Jesus or his disciples laying hands on someone in the healing work, the act has the significance of putting forth spiritual power. For example, when Jesus spoke of the signs that were to follow those who believed in his gospel, he added, "They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." ^{Mark 16:18;} Mrs. Eddy explains that "here the word hands is used metaphorically, as in the text, 'The right hand of the Lord is exalted.' It expresses spiritual power; otherwise the healing could not have been done spiritually." ^{Science and Health, p. 38;}

The healing touch of Christ Jesus and his disciples was the effect of their understanding of the presence and power of God, Spirit, and of man's perfection and wholeness in His image and likeness, rather than any physical contact they may have had with the sick. True healing activity is divine, not human. It is metaphysical—above the physical. It is not a laying on of the physical hands. Its power is spiritual. Jesus and his disciples brought the significance of this spiritual power to bear in their healing work by touching the consciousness of the sick with the truth of spiritual being. And thus, through spiritual means alone, they restored the sick to normal life and freedom.

It is this wholesome kind of healing—this spiritual concept of the ethics and decorum in helping oneself or another in time of need—which Mary Baker Eddy desired to establish in the public practice of Christian Science. She says of the Christian Science healer, "He never lays hands on the patient, nor manipulates the parts of the body supposed to be ailing." ^{Rudimental Divine Science, p. 12;}

As the healer in Christian Science becomes convinced of the wisdom of this counsel, he turns himself and his patients away from any thought of manipulating the human body remedial purposes. He knows the only remedial agent or power is the divine Mind, God. Hence he accepts as mandatory the complete rejection of any theory of doing something to the body for healing. In Christian Science the healing touch is wholly spiritual.

I proved this truth while playing golf. I stepped into a gopher hole and severely wrenched my ankle. The strings of my shoe almost broke with the force of the swelling at the ankle.

As I removed the shoe and sock, I wanted to rub the ankle to soothe the pain and swelling, and the other members of my foursome wanted to carry me to the clubhouse, where a doctor could be summoned to help me. But I realized that to yield in either case would be to agree with the belief that I was either in pain or helpless, and I asked my friends to continue playing and said I would catch up with them later. "Not with that ankle," they chimed in as they reluctantly left me and went on to the next hole.

Alone now, I found the temptation to rub the ankle or to feel it to see if any bones were broken was even more aggressive. But I suddenly remembered something Mrs. Eddy writes: "Be firm in your understanding that the divine Mind governs, and that in Science man reflects God's government. Have no fear that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind, when it is self-evident that matter can have no pain nor inflammation. Your body would suffer no more from tension or wounds than the trunk of a tree which you gash or the electric wire which you stretch, were it not for mortal mind." ^{Science and Health, p. 393.}

Then I reasoned it would be contradictory to make the pain and swelling in the ankle real by manipulating or rubbing it, and then to ask God to heal me by helping me to see the unreality of it. So I turned mentally away from the incident altogether and filled my consciousness with thoughts reflecting and expressing the divine Mind, God, and His irrevocable control over all life and being.

I declared myself to be the man of God's making, the spiritual image and likeness of God, embodying every quality and condition of perfection, hence wholly free and untouched by any sense of accident or injury. I rejoiced in this understanding and knew that this true sense of selfhood existed right where the negative beliefs of pain and swelling created by mortal mind, or the belief of life in matter, claimed to be.

Suddenly I felt a twitch in my ankle, the pain ceased immediately, and the swelling began to diminish as rapidly as it had occurred. Soon I was able to put my sock and shoe back on and then rejoin my friends at the next tee, to their delight and amazement.

To satisfy them that I was perfectly all right and could continue the game without difficulty, I grasped both ends of a putter and jumped over it, coming down hard upon that ankle, but with no painful or adverse effects. And I was able to play the rest of the game with the same dominion and freedom, rejoicing in the fact that the hand, or power of God, had touched my life with spiritual healing.

All that is really needed is for us to reject apparent mistaken conclusions that sickness or disease, injury or pain, are real, and replace such wrong thoughts with the spiritual fact of God's allness and the perfection of man made in His image and likeness. Right thoughts, or the healing touch of the divine Mind, God, ever reflect and express the spiritual, the good, and the true and inevitably result in healing.