Disease is more than imagination; it is a human error, a constituent part of what comprises the whole of mortal existence,—namely, material sensation and mental delusion. But an erring sense of existence, or the error of belief, named disease, never made sickness a stubborn reality. On the ground that harmony is the truth of being, the Science of Mind-healing destroys the feasibility of disease; hence error of thought becomes fable instead of fact. Science demonstrates the reality of Truth and the unreality of the error. A self-evident proposition, in the Science of Mind-healing, is that disease is unreal; and the efficacy of my system, beyond other systems of medicine, vouches for the validity of that statement. Sin and disease are not scientific, because they embody not the idea of divine Principle, and are not the phenomena of the immutable laws of God; and they do not arise from the divine consciousness and true constituency of being.
The unreality of sin, disease, and death, rests on the exclusive truth that being, to be eternal, must be harmonious. All disease must be—and can only be—healed on this basis. All true Christian Scientists are vindicating, fearlessly and honestly, the Principle of this grand verity of Mind-healing.
In erring mortal thought the reality of Truth has an antipode,—the reality of error; and disease is one of the severe realities of this error. God has no opposite in Science. To Truth there is no error. As Truth alone is real, then it follows that to declare error real would be to make it Truth. Disease arises from a false and material sense, from the belief that matter has sensation. Therefore this material sense, which is untrue, is of necessity unreal. Moreover, this unreal sense substitutes for Truth an unreal belief,—namely, that life and health are independent of God, and dependent on material conditions. Material sense also avers that Spirit, or Truth, cannot restore health and perpetuate life, but that material conditions can and do destroy both human health and life.
If disease is as real as health, and is itself a state of being, and yet is arrayed against being, then Mind, or God, does not meddle with it. Disease becomes indeed a stubborn reality, and man is mortal. A “kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation;” therefore the mind that attacks a normal and real condition of man, is profanely tampering with the realities of God and His laws. Metaphysical healing is a lost jewel in this misconception of reality. Any contradictory fusion of Truth with error, in both theory and practice, prevents one from healing scientifically, and makes the last state of one’s patients worse than the first. If disease is real it is not illusive, and it certainly would contradict the Science of Mind-healing to attempt to destroy the realities of Mind in order to heal the sick.
On the theory that God’s formations are spiritual, harmonious, and eternal, and that God is the only creator, Christian Science refutes the validity of the testimony of the senses, which take cognizance of their own phenomena,—sickness, disease, and death. This refutation is indispensable to the destruction of false evidence, and the consequent cure of the sick,—as all understand who practice the true Science of Mind-healing. If, as the error indicates, the evidence of disease is not false, then disease cannot be healed by denying its validity; and this is why the mistaken healer is not successful, trying to heal on a material basis.
The evidence that the earth is motionless and the sun revolves around our planet, is as sensible and real as the evidence for disease; but Science determines the evidence in both cases to be unreal. To material sense, it is plain also that the error of the revolution of the sun around the earth is more apparent than the adverse but true Science of the stellar universe. Copernicus has shown that what appears real, to material sense and feeling, is absolutely unreal. Astronomy, optics, acoustics, and hydraulics are all at war with the testimony of the physical senses. This fact intimates that the laws of Science are mental, not material; and Christian Science demonstrates this.