By Helen Wood Bauman

From the February 12, 1966 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel

While medical physicians often admit that thought plays a part in the sickness of a patient, they do not give up their belief in a material basis of his bodily disturbance. This conviction leads to physical diagnosis and to material remedies.

Contrary to this method of handling a case of sickness, the Christian Scientist diagnoses a physical disorder as altogether a mental state, and he applies Christian Science as divine law, working to bring the thought of his patient into obedience to God. When this is accomplished, the body responds accordingly and the case is successfully healed. God’s law rather than material belief claiming to be law is in control of the patient’s thought, and the body, being nonintelligent and nonthinking, cannot resist this control.

In applying divine law for the benefit of his patient, the Scientist is alert to detect the specific material beliefs involved in a case. And he opposes these troublesome beliefs as vigorously as a lawyer would oppose false evidence brought against his client.

Mary Baker Eddy says in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (p. 390), “‘Agree to disagree’ with approaching symptoms of chronic or acute disease, whether it is cancer, consumption, or smallpox.” Later she continues, “Rise in the conscious strength of the spirit of Truth to overthrow the plea of mortal mind, alias matter, arrayed against the supremacy of Spirit.”

Sickness does not strike the real man, who, as Christian Science reveals, is God’s perfect likeness, never capable of disobedience to divine law, never controlled by any other force. This standpoint of perfection should not become hazy in the Scientist’s healing argument.

In order to handle a case of illness effectively, the Scientist should be skillful in detecting the wiles of mortal mind and in seeing where its strengths as well as its weaknesses seem to be. In this way he knows where to build the strengths of his own argument and how to forestall what might seem to be lawful, but is not.

It is not enough for the Scientist to know the arguments of innocence he must employ in defending his patient; he must identify the claims of error specifically in order to expose it as godless and as powerless to oppose his plea for justice that destroys evil and its effects. This procedure in no way gives reality to sickness but handles error’s belief in its own reality.

Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 252), “A knowledge of error and of its operations must precede that understanding of Truth which destroys error, until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears, and the eternal verity, man created by and of Spirit, is understood and recognized as the true likeness of his Maker.”

Abraham Lincoln was an astute lawyer who knew how to analyze his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, and this gave him advantage in the legal cases he handled. In “The Lincoln Reader,” edited by Paul M. Angle, we read of the training Lincoln received under his onetime partner, Judge Stephen T. Logan, of Illinois, a great lawyer of his day. Adopting Judge Logan’s methods, Lincoln “examined the law both of his side and that of his opponent. We have his own statement for the fact that he was never thereafter surprised by the strength of an opponent’s case. By analyzing it he often found it weaker than he first feared.”

The Christian Scientist will not be surprised by mortal mind’s assertions of strength if he thoroughly deals with its basic claims: that life is in matter; that man is a helpless mortal; that death can strike unexpectedly; that there are laws of matter which God cannot cope with; that the patient’s courage is likely to give way if healing does not come quickly.

If the Scientist emphasizes the healing of pain, swelling, and other superficial symptoms in his prayerful affirmations to the neglect of the seemingly stronger and more deeply entrenched beliefs of life in matter and the influence of general belief, he is working from a weak position. He is not separating the identity of his patient from the universal evils which appear to give strength to the side of sickness.

One of mortal mind’s claims to strength rests upon its belief in material laws. We attack sickness at this entrenched point when we deny error’s claim to oppose God’s will—the real, governing law of the universe. We cannot forget the emphasis the Master, Christ Jesus, placed upon divine law, from his support of the law of Moses and the new law of Love he announced (see John 13:34) to his statement of full subjection to God’s will, when he said (John 6:38), “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.”

Herein lies the strength of Christian Science—to inspire us to conform to the divine will. And herein lies the vulnerability of the argument of the carnal mind— that it can reverse the divine will and produce conditions that defy that will.

Sickness is mental, and thus it must be handled. To keep this point in mind strengthens the Scientist in his healing work. It helps him to silence every suggestion that error can surprise him or that matter can either aid or hinder his proving the power of divine law to completely overturn evil’s claim to govern mankind.