Original in German

The Bible tells us of many healings, especially those performed by Christ Jesus. The blind saw, the deaf heard, lepers became well, the crippled walked, and the dead arose. But no matter how far beyond all conventional explanations these healings may be, they are not miracles in the usual sense. Rather, they fulfill God's law by revealing the reality and naturalness of the divine order of being.

The study of Christian Science develops in us a spiritual understanding of the Bible, illustrating the divine Principle, God, that underlies all healings. Through Christian Science we learn to understand why Jesus' healings were not supernatural events. They were scientific evidence of the existence of the eternal, divine Principle, which is Love.

Jesus did not perform his works on the basis of a personal mind or power. He said, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." God, universal divine Love, was manifested through Jesus' selfless nature, and in Love's presence, ill will, envy, pride, disappointment, ignorance—the mental causes of disease—simply melted away, leading to instantaneous healings.

But these works were not done just to provide people with comfortable lives. Jesus healed in order to shake human thinking out of its stupor and to enable it to grasp spiritual truth. This points to the deeper purpose of Jesus' works, namely to destroy sin in mortal thinking and thus make human consciousness more receptive to the spiritual reality of man, able to recognize man's God-given perfection in the image of his creator.

As we see from studying the New Testament, Jesus did not limit the scientific demonstrations of divine Principle either to himself or to his immediate followers. Understanding that divine Principle, Love, underlies all being, he told his listeners, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."

And these works are being done. But today, as then, these healing works are not the expression of human will, nor are they the effect of autosuggestion or other mental influences. Performing them requires more than human knowledge of Jesus' teachings; it requires a deep, spiritual understanding of God and His Christ.

Christ Jesus fully knew and lived the Christ—or God's spiritual idea. The influence of Christ in our thought is to purify and reform our lives, revealing the true nature of man as God's expression. It is Christ, Truth, that cures our ills.

How should we pray to experience healing? It is not enough to implore God for help, or to ask God, Spirit, for a better material body. Nor should fear of disease be the sole motivating factor for praying in the hope that God will remove the disease so we can go on calmly clinging to our old ways of thinking and acting.

Prayers in Christian Science are deep affirmations of divine Truth. They become evident in a quiet, earnest longing for divine Love. They are characterized by self-forgetfulness and joyous acknowledgment of the perfection of God and His creation. They include the readiness to give up material-mindedness, personal convictions, and bad habits. When we pray like this, we touch the hem of divine Truth. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: "Through divine Science, Spirit, God, unites understanding to eternal harmony. The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace. Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each successive stage of progress."

This is how we experience healing. We feel ill will, envy, pride, disappointment, ingratitude, disappear from our thinking and God-derived qualities like love, harmony, joy, and compassion fill our consciousness. Here we glimpse something of our true identity as the expression of God, the highest good, and find how natural it is to be well.

Such devoted prayer also shows that it is not personal merit or "correct thinking" that is the source of healing. We experience with scientific certainty that the healing effect of prayer arises from divine Truth and Love.

This idea that God, not personal thinking, heals is also confirmed in my own healing of sinusitis. Intense pain and high fever seemed to prevent any prayer; I seemed incapable of any clear thoughts at all. But then a Bible verse opened up the heavens for me. As the children of Israel were being pursued by Pharaoh in their flight from Egypt and there seemed to be no escape, Moses said to them, "Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you to-day."

Despite the illness, this Bible verse brought with it the immediate expectation, indeed the natural certainty, that divine Truth and Love were bringing about healing that very instant. My acceptance of this in consciousness was a grateful acknowledgment of a spiritual fact, and in only a few minutes I was completely healed.

Scientific prayers prove the perfection of spiritual creation, including man, and they exclude any error in God's creation because evil is not spiritual or fundamentally the reality or power that it claims to be. Anyone who is prepared, in his selfless and devoted prayers, to let in the truth which has come to humanity through divine Science will follow the Master's leading and begin to do the works that Jesus promised. This opportunity is open to us all.

II CORINTHIANS

God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

II Corinthians 4:6