Mary Baker Eddy - Christian Healing (Authorized Edition)

• Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
• Manual of The Mother Church
• Miscellaneous Writings 18831896
• Retrospection and Introspection
• Unity of Good
• Pulpit and Press
• Rudimental Divine Science
• No and Yes
• Christian Science versus Pantheism
• Message to The Mother Church for 1900
• Message to The Mother Church for 1901
• Message to The Mother Church for 1902
• Christian Healing
• The Peoples Idea of God Its Effect on Health and Christianity
• The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany
• Poems
• Christ and Christmas

H istory repeats itself; to-morrow grows out of to-day. But Heavens favors are formidable: they are calls to higher duties, not discharge from care; and whoso builds on less than an immortal basis, hath built on sand.

We have asked, in our selfishness, to wait until the age advanced to a more practical and spiritual religion before arguing with the world the great subject of Christian healing; but our answer was, Then there were no cross to take up, and less need of publishing the good news. A classic writes,
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve.
The difference between religions is, that one religion has a more spiritual basis and tendency than the other; and

the religion nearest right is that one. The genius of Christianity is works more than words; a calm and steadfast communion with God; a tumult on earth, religious factions and prejudices arrayed against it, the synagogues as of old closed upon it, while it reasons with the storm, hurls the thunderbolt of truth, and stills the tempest of error; scourged and condemned at every advancing footstep, afterwards pardoned and adopted, but never seen amid the smoke of battle. Said the intrepid reformer, Martin Luther: I am weary of the world, and the world is weary of me; the parting will be easy. Said the more gentle Melanchthon: Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.

And still another Christian hero, ere he passed from his execution to a crown, added his testimony: I have fought a good fight,... I have kept the faith. But Jesus, the model of infinite patience, said: Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And he said this when bending beneath the malice of the world. But why should the world hate Jesus, the loved of the Father, the loved of Love? It was that his spirituality rebuked their carnality, and gave this proof of Christianity that religions had not given. Again, they knew it was not in the power of eloquence or a dead rite to cast out error and heal the sick. Past, present, future magnifies his name who built, on Truth, eternitys foundation stone, and sprinkled the altar of Love with perpetual incense.

Such Christianity requires neither hygiene nor drugs wherewith to heal both mind and body; or, lacking these, to show its helplessness. The primitive privilege of Christianity was to make men better, to cast out error, and heal the sick. It was a proof, more than a profession thereof; a demonstration, more than a doctrine. It was the foundation of right thinking and right acting, and must be reestablished on its former basis. The stone which the builders rejected must again become the head of the corner. In proportion as the personal and material element stole into religion, it lost Christianity and the power to heal; and the qualities of God as a person, instead of the divine Principle that begets the quality, engrossed the attention of the ages. In the original text the term God was derived from the word good. Christ is the idea of Truth; Jesus is the name of a man born in a remote province of Judea, Josephus alludes to several individuals by the name of Jesus. Therefore Christ Jesus was an honorary title; it signified a good man, which epithet the great goodness and wonderful works of our Master more than merited. Because God is the Principle of Christian healing, we must understand in part this divine Principle, or we cannot demonstrate it in part.

The Scriptures declare that God is Love, Truth, and Life, a trinity in unity; not three persons in one, but three statements of one Principle. We cannot tell what is the person of Truth, the body of the infinite, but we know that the Principle is not the person, that the finite cannot

contain the infinite, that unlimited Mind cannot start from a limited body. The infinite can neither go forth from, return to, nor remain for a moment within limits. We must give freer breath to thought before calculating the results of an infinite Principle, the effects of infinite Love, the compass of infinite Life, the power of infinite Truth. Clothing Deity with personality, we limit the action of God to the finite senses. We pray for God to remember us, even as we ask a person with softening of the brain not to forget his daily cares. We ask infinite wisdom to possess our finite sense, and forgive what He knows deserves to be punished, and to bless what is unfit to be blessed. We expect infinite Love to drop divinity long enough to hate. We expect infinite Truth to mix with error, and become finite for a season; and, after infinite Spirit is forced in and out of matter for an indefinite period, to show itself infinite again. We expect infinite Life to become finite, and have an end; but, after a temporary lapse, to begin anew as infinite Life, without beginning and without end.