An unmarried woman, or one who is faced with being on her own after years of happy marriage, could be on the brink of a great discovery. She could find that, far from being deprived, her life is full, completely enjoyable, useful, and entirely satisfying.

Until comparatively recently, in most countries a woman has had a limited social and legal status. A hundred years ago a Justice of the United States Supreme Court wrote in a decision, "The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator." ^{The New York Times, November 23, 1971;} The implication was that a woman who had never been a wife and mother—or who had ceased to be one—had no mission, no position or purpose in society. This was a common concept of womanhood.

Such a concept of woman's role in the human universe is increasingly being recognized as a gross misrepresentation of the spiritual truth. Christian Science is in the forefront of the battle for women's freedom from such restriction. It maintains that each individual man and woman, created by God, is the full reflection of the one Father-Mother, divine Mind, and has the right to express all God's qualities. It shows that the theory of woman's status as merely half an individual is erroneous. This theory is founded on the false belief that woman owes her existence to the material, finite sense of creation (typified in Genesis as Adam) rather than to God, the infinite, divine Mind, the actual creator of all.

The Bible reveals that God, infinite Spirit, made man—generic man—in His own exact image, and that this man includes both male and female. Each individual representative of the genus, though clearly defined, includes both the masculine and feminine qualities of God's all-inclusive being. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God." ^{Science and Health, p. 516;}

Individuals in their real, spiritual being reflect all the qualities attributable to infinite Love, as well as the ideas of harmony and fulfillment that belong to Soul. Every son and daughter of God expresses the vitality of eternal Life, the affluence of Truth, the creativity of Principle. Each of God's children is indispensable to the full representation of the creator's infinite nature, and has her (or his) place in the divine universe. Each one is unique, clearly defined, independently intact, though united with every other in one harmonious, coherent, spiritual universe. Through divine law each is guaranteed the opportunity to express her (or his) full potential as God's idea; and Christian Science encourages womankind to exercise this spiritual prerogative and thus to demonstrate total satisfaction in her human experience.

Today many legal and social injustices in respect of women, both single and married, are being corrected. The stereotype of woman as merely the helpmeet and mother of mortals is being shattered. Much of this reform is attributable to courageous pioneers.

Conspicuous among these is Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Despite fearful opposition, she became a worldwide church leader, the author of several enduring books, the founder of three magazines and a daily newspaper—all in an era when it was rare for a woman to venture into any occupations but those of wife and mother.

As a middle-aged widow, bereft of her son, Mrs. Eddy was of little legal and social account—according to the attitude of that time. But her understanding of God and His creation sustained her and enabled her to surmount the restrictions of convention, prejudice, and the obtuseness of worldly belief. She proved that the divine Father supplies all the husbanding—the strengthening qualities and the human help—a single woman needs to sustain her. She triumphed in the fulfillment of her God-designed purpose.

Christian Science maintains that a single woman is not half an individual child of God but a whole, complete representative of the infinite Father-Mother. She is not deprived of the spiritual qualities of manhood through spinsterhood or widowhood. If she has no children, she need not accept the false mortal suggestion that her life is empty. Life is God, and the joy of living—in its fullest, most satisfying sense—is not denied the one who has no masculine companion.

Christ Jesus stopped the funeral procession at the gates of Nain. He raised the widow's son to life and "delivered him to his mother." ^{Luke 7:15.} By doing so he restored her position in society according to customs of those times.

Today, Christian Science is restoring to woman her own consciousness of completeness. Thereby it is helping to stop the procession of emptiness, boredom, loneliness, lack of direction and strength, and the sense of social inadequacy that false mortal belief would impose upon her.

The woman who resolutely turns from the limited definition of her own existence as relative only to mortal men, and makes the effort to express her full spiritual identity as the indispensable expression of God, can now demonstrate her own God-given completeness. She can be happier and more satisfied than she has ever been before.

Naomi Price