Spiritual views and healing

The Bible record states that a leper came to Jesus saying, ''Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.'' The Saviour, reaching out, touched him, the untouchable, saying, ''I will; be thou clean.'' Then ''immediately his leprosy was cleansed.'' n1 How? Why?

n1 Matthew 8:2, 3.

Suppose that had happened today in New York, London, or any other part of the world. Might not the critics say, ''It never really happened''; ''It was not really leprosy''; or ''It simply regressed at just the right moment''? But there would surely be some who would ponder and ask, ''But how? Why?''

Clearly, the answer would not lie within the province of the physical sciences. There is another realm of the greatest significance - the spiritual - of which the world, as yet, understands far too little. Because our eyes and ears continually report to us on the apparently solid material world, we often do not think to venture in another direction. Consequently our sense of the spiritual remains tragically underdeveloped.

Little children, with thought still uncluttered by all the ultimately unhelpful testimony of the physical senses, often see very easily into the spiritual realm, accept it naturally, and are blessed by it.

The following event provides an example. A four-year-old girl, stung by a bee , was very quickly released from pain as she sat on her father's knee, realizing with him the presence of God, of infinite Love, and His power to overcome inharmony.

The ringing of his telephone prompted the father to put his daughter down and move fast toward the doorway. Glancing backward and turning forward again, he crashed, face first, into the edge of the fully open door, bouncing back in agony. Before he could think for himself, a small but convinced voice said, ''Daddy! If it didn't hurt for me, it can't hurt for you.'' Her trust was complete, the reasoning divinely perfect, because God created all of His offspring in His flawless image. The same spiritual law that made possible the healing of leprosy was applicable to this case as well. The pain instantaneously disappeared, and not even a mark was left.

The leper had nowhere else to turn. Instinctively he must have felt that Christ Jesus possessed the ultimate answer, and turned to him in complete trust. The Master, we know from the Bible record, trusted utterly in the infinite power of Spirit, his (and our) Father, God, to heal what seemed to be a terrible, irreversible affliction. The disease was, in fact, part of the awful inharmony mankind inflicts upon itself, collectively and individually, through afflictive, materialistic thought patterns.

Everyday examples show how thought affects the body. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, observes: ''Note how thought makes the face pallid. It either retards the circulation or quickens it, causing a pale or flushed cheek. In the same way thought increases or diminishes the secretions, the action of the lungs, of the bowels, and of the heart.'' A little farther on the same page she remarks, ''To remove the error producing disorder, you must calm and instruct mortal mind with immortal Truth.'' n2 The divine, universal law of harmony, when understood and applied through prayer, is infinitely more effective than the ground-level thoughts of mortals can ever be. The latter never leave that dust which returns to dust; the former reveals the heaven of spiritual being.

n2 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 415.

Christian Science is education in the things of the Spirit. Mrs. Eddy describes the rock upon which our inmost hope can rest: ''The Scripture declares , 'The Lord He is God (good); there is none else beside Him.' Even so, harmony is universal, and discord is unreal.'' She adds farther along, ''Keep in mind the verity of being, - that man is the image and likeness of God, in whom all being is painless and permanent.'' n3

n3 Ibid., p. 414.

What greater good could one pray for, and progressively demonstrate, than the harmony of immortal being? DAILY BIBLE VERSE Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. II Corinthians 4:17, 18