● ● ● well have stirred Mrs. Patterson’s imagination.77 The discoverer of Christian Science would later write with great respect of the founder of modern nursing, who, in turn, came to place more and more emphasis on the mental and spiritual elements in health. But whereas Florence Nightingale took final refuge in mysticism, Mrs. Patterson felt the answer must be found in science—not the science of the “chemical practitioners” but the spiritual science of the Healer by Gennesaret.
How clearly this was formulated in her mind at this time we do not know; it may have been no more than an inarticulate sense of what ought to be. But with her desperate search for health and the unquestioning authority she gave the Bible it would be surprising if she had not pondered the New Testament records and promises of healing. “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also,” Jesus had said, but was this a matter of blind belief only? “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” he had also said.78
Science, as the word was used in the textbooks which had helped to mold her thought, was just that—knowledge or understanding of truth; the tried, tested, systematic, and liberating knowledge of objective fact. While one could believe anything, one could know only what was rationally and experimentally verifiable, and that must necessarily be coherent with all other proven knowledge, or science. Since science compelled the admission that behind every phenomenon was a law, must there not be a still undiscovered law behind the healings of Jesus?79
A Christianity which taught that God may send sickness as a punishment but that man is entitled to use medicine to get rid of the punishment divinely intended for him was at least anomalous. Such an attitude put religion and science in opposition to each other and both in opposition to logic. What God universally willed for man through law must logically be in accord with the purpose and method of New Testament healing.
77 On Florence Nightingale’s birthday, May 12, 1857, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell opened their epoch-making hospital in New York. Women’s traditional relation with the healing ministry was entering a new phase of authority.
78 [ John 14:12; 8:32.]
79 The air at this time was alive with the question of whether miracles were possible in a world governed by law. More and more writers were suggesting that a miracle may be the expression of a law not yet understood.