Article May 2, 1908 Issue

"KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES"

MABEL M. BEESON.

Not long since, I heard this thought advanced in criticism of Christian Science: that if Mrs. Eddy wanted to write a book on any subject whatever, she certainly had the right to do so; but in this day and age to write a book and have the temerity to call it a "Key to the Scriptures," was certainly presumptuous, if not positively sacrilegious. To one's own consciousness there is no proof so positive as individual experience. From this standpoint I can say that Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy has proved itself to me to be a "Key to the Scriptures," wonderful and complete.

To me the Bible had always been a closed book. Although I had been brought up in an orthodox church, and was taught the Bible from my earliest childhood, it had never meant anything to me. It seemed one mass of incongruities and contradictions, and after coming to womanhood I found myself practically without a God; consequently I was entirely at sea in my religious beliefs. Troubles and disappointments seemed to bear down upon me, and I felt that I had nothing upon which I could lean, nothing to which I could turn. A book on so-called "mental science" had been loaned to me, and was read at first with some interest, but very soon the fallacy of its teachings was made manifest and it was put aside as containing nothing of vital interest.

Then came the book Science and Health. I was not seeking for physical healing particularly, but for a tangible, definite concept of God, and I had read but a few pages when a definite and tangible sense of God was presented to me in these words: "If the term personality, as applied to God, means infinite personality, then God is infinite Person" (Science and Health, p. 116). Then, reading further, I came to this simple, direct statement: "The Christian Science God is universal, eternal, divine Love, which changeth not and causeth no evil, disease, nor death" (Ibid., p. 140). From this as a starting-point came the revelation of God as divine Principle, and man as the image and likeness of God. This indeed led my thought into new channels, and subsequent reading and study was followed by an understanding, in some degree, of the truth taught in Science and Health, and the demonstration of its healing power.

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