The quickest, safest, and most potent remedy for any inharmonious physical condition is the Mind-science that Christ Jesus employed. Our realization that God, good, is All-in-all, and that whatever is unlike Him is therefore unreal and nonexistent, has healing power.

Christian Science makes this knowledge available to any sincere seeker. Its teachings explain and make practical the divine method of deliverance referred to in Jesus' words "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." ^{John 8:32.} The study of divine Science turns the sufferer from the mistaken belief that God is far-off and unavailing, and lifts his thought to see that Christ, the manifestation of God, is ever at hand to set him free. The sufferer then has no need of drugs.

In her search for truth, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, perceived that God is the source of all reality and being, and that whatever is contrary to His nature must be considered untrue and unreal, however tangible it may appear. She writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "It is well to be calm in sickness; to be hopeful is still better; but to understand that sickness is not real and that Truth can destroy its seeming reality, is best of all, for this understanding is the universal and perfect remedy." ^{Science and Health, pp. 393–394.}

My mother found this "perfect remedy" many years ago. A dramatic healing of a supposedly incurable physical ailment had caused her to begin studying Christian Science. However, another problem was troubling her—a severe skin condition that covered both hands and arms. It had plagued her since she was fifteen years old, and not even specialists had been able to treat it successfully. With two babies to care for, she found the condition tormenting.

At her very first Christian Science lecture, when the speaker made clear error's nonexistence, she could see that the physical affliction, not having been created by an all-loving God, had never been part of her true being as His likeness. Her thought was spiritually illumined; the sores began disappearing that very evening, and within three days not one remained. She knew in a measure what joy the leper must have felt when he experienced Christ Jesus' transforming touch centuries before. ^{See Mark 1:40–45 .}

Christian Science reiterates with precision and reverence the Way-shower's mighty works. For this reason it cannot be valued too highly. Through scientific prayer we heal from a purely metaphysical standpoint, basing our work on the allness of divine Mind, God, and the nothingness, the nonexistence, of matter.

Mrs. Eddy's writings accentuate this sine qua non of Christly demonstration. She states, "My insistence upon a proper understanding of the unreality of matter and evil arises from their deleterious effects, physical, moral, and intellectual, upon the race." She continues at the bottom of the next page: "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my system from all others. The reality of these so-called existences I deny, becausethey are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as the sole cause." ^{Unity of Good, pp. 8, 9–10.}

Since bodily discord does not exist as a fact but is only an illusion of material sense, one is healed as his misconceptions yield to the powerful and corrective Christ, Truth; to the recognition that God is perfect and man is His perfect image and reflection, now and forever.

The action of Truth bringing light to one's consciousness destroys the darkness of fear and suffering and lifts thought to behold the all-presence of spiritual harmony. This corrected mental state is then objectified in one's experience as health and freedom.

As a remedial agent, Mind-science has this grand advantage over material methods: true spiritual healing is permanent. When one's consciousness is so roused by spiritual truths that he sees sickness as no part of his real being, he loses fear. He becomes unimpressed with physical symptoms, and this scientific action reduces the erroneous condition to the nothingness it has always been. Then not only is that individual free, but the physical condition does not return. Moreover, from our experience in demonstrating the unreality of one bodily disorder, we are less likely to be taken in by the suggestion that some other inharmony can be real.

Mind's superiority is seen as well in the spiritual uplift and renewal that accompany Christ-healing. Waking to the spiritual facts of being invariably restores one's health; but this is the least of it. As we are healed through the Science of Christ, we, to use Paul's words, "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." ^{Col. 3:10.} More of our true nature shines through permanently.

A man whose testimony appears in the chapter of Science and Health entitled "Fruitage" articulates what many healed in Christian Science have felt over the years. He writes: "While most grateful for the physical healing, my gratitude for the mental and spiritual regeneration is beyond expression." ^{Science and Health, p. 635.}

To acquire greater expertise in putting down mortal mind's claims to power and thereby experience quicker healings, we should not legitimize error by giving it a past. When we're tempted to think of some problem as having a cause or a beginning, let us ask: What was God doing when this supposed difficulty came upon me? Did the Almighty, the all-good divine Principle of the universe, ever abdicate to a reign of mortal discord? Did the infinite, always-loving Mind ever surrender control of its own reflection, man, to an unintelligent, debilitating influence? The answer—that in reality we can never be separated from God—is a comforting and healing one.

Sometimes, as though to shake our trust in God's allness, the devil—mortal mind—would insist that the efforts we've been making to see error's unreality have been in vain. Or we may feel assailed by gloom and doom at the very moment we're about to find complete freedom from some physical disturbance. But understanding Christ Jesus' conclusive demonstrations of God's power enables us to refute this lie and prophesy sure release from any inharmony that confronts us. At times we may have to insist vehemently upon God's allness, but Christ-healing never fails to appear when our consciousness becomes Truth-enlightened, triumphant.

Mrs. Eddy not only blessed others through her discovery of the Science of divine metaphysical healing; she herself was dramatically lifted up from what was thought to be her deathbed when she glimpsed God's laws. She writes of this experience: "A dear old lady asked me, 'How is it you are restored to us? Has Christ come again on earth?'

"'Christ never left,' I replied; 'Christ is Truth, and Truth is always here,—the impersonal Saviour.'" ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 180.}

Nothing can compare with the joy of feeling Christ's touch and realizing that God is holding us unchanged in our already established spiritual perfection and harmony.

Nor can anything equal the sheer remedial power of Christian healing.