Christian Science is another of the newer teachings, which assumes that there is no such thing as disease, reasoning it out so : "What is termed disease does not exist. It is not mind nor matter. Human mind produces what is termed organic disease as certainly as it produces hysteria." That is to say "God is good; disease is evil. God created all things and pronounced them good. A good God can create no evil, hence disease does not and cannot exist." As an offset to this it may be said that God never created sickness, suffering and disease. They are man's own creation; disease, sin and sickness are synonymous - that is, one and the same thing. They come through his violating the law under which he lives. Sickness is the scar of sin. But so used are we to seeing them, that we come gradually, if not to think of them as natural, then to look upon them as a matter of course.

To say that disease does not exist is as absurd as to say that crime, vice, insanity and immorality do not exist. Let any sane man look out upon the world and view the hundreds and thousands of maimed, crippled, halt and blind of humanity and say that disease does not exist. One might as well say that the sun or moon does not shine, or that we ourselves do not exist, but only think we exist, as to say that disease does not exist. We know that these and many other conditions do exist, not as imaginary but as actual evils, all arising out of man's violation of some natural law.

Christian Science teaches that man can supplant God in the exercise of the creative and healing power, which alone belongs to the Creator. Man of himself can do nothing. Let an individual become inflated with the idea that he has powers beyond the ordinary individual, especially healing powers, and it is but a short time before he thinks himself a mighty healer, with powers specially endowed from Heaven. In his pride he would supplant even the Almighty himself. There is a certain class of disease, notably that pertaining to the nervous system, of which worry is only one, and a minor phase in which mental or moral maladies are an essential form of treatment. Hundreds and thousands of individuals, from one cause or another, become chronic invalids. Their diseases are purely imaginary. Physicians know this full well. Yet if a physician were to tell any one of his patients of this class the plain truth, the patient would be mortally offended and seek other medical advice.

The amount of self-pity which the chronic invalid invites upon himself is tremendous. There are multitudes of diseased minds. There are as many, if not more, mental than physical diseases, and these nervo-mental diseases are often cured instantaneously. The mind forces, the power of faith, the all-penetrating power of the will, or will-power, go to prove it.

Imaginary disease can be cured by faith, by belief, by belief in anything; it may be a sugar pellet, or a bottle of colored water as in homeopathy; a bitter and vile-tasting mixture as in the olden days of allopathy; a fetish or charm of any kind, from a horse-chestnut carried in the pocket to a horse-shoe carried around the neck, or put above the door; from a parasitic mind-cure right down through to the good old fashioned religion itself.

Actual or real disease cannot of itself be cured by any form of mind-cure. Real disease is a result of abnormal bodily conditions, whose cause must be removed before any cure or healing power can be effective. Remove the cause and nature will almost immediately restore the individual to a normal condition. The tendency of Nature is to cure even without any mental process or mind-cure. Mind-cure in itself, true mind-cure or the healthy, well-directed, vigorous and intelligent exercise of the mind, is a most powerful influence for the cure of any disease, and one most potent in its influence for good or evil as it may be directed, but the thinking of health must be supplemented by the living of health, where actual disease conditions exist.

It is a law of the mind that "The concentration of attention in one direction inevitably suspends it in another direction."

It is also a law of sensibility that when the attention is diverted from any sensation, as of pleasure or pain, hunger or thirst, the sensation becomes thereby weakened, and when fully diverted, entirely suspended.

Concentration and holding the attention upon any sensation or desire tends, on the other hand, to increase and intensify it. This concentration and repetition of ideas and thoughts is the basis of Mind-Cure. In this way vicious habits, enslaving appetites and abnormal desires of every kind are overcome, and a wonderful degree of Self-Control over the bodily sensations and functions is acquired. Diverted attention is illustrated in divers ways, but in no way better than when soldiers in the excitement of battle often receive severe and dangerous wounds of which they are entirely unconscious until after the battle is over. For the same reason the sense of fatigue from long and wearisome marches will suddenly disappear on coming in sight of the enemy. This, the diverting of attention, is also probably the true explanation of why it was the martyrs of old, while burning at the stake, were seemingly so fully withdrawn from the sphere of sensation as to be wholly unconscious of physical suffering.

This also explains how Christian Science cures. At the outset the condition is not an actual one, but only an imaginary disease. In trying to grasp the mazy intricacies of Christian Science, the invalid entirely forgets himself and his ailments, and finally ends up from his wanderings in the depths of imagination, impressed with the fact that he never had any disease, he only thought he had it; all of which would be quite true.