Article October 28, 1922 Issue

The Key that Unlocks the Bible

MARTHA P. NOLL

During a very trying time in our home, the true sense of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy was brought to me; for with this "key" I was able to unlock the Bible story of Nehemiah, to find its spiritual meaning and make it practical in that time of need. The whole book of Nehemiah is very illuminating, but the sixth chapter seemed to stand out particularly clearly. When Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem heard that the wall about Jerusalem was nearly finished, they tried all sorts of schemes to prevent Nehemiah from finishing it; but he was alert, listening for the voice of Truth. He detected that they wanted to interfere with the good work he was doing. He said, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?" — this "you" meaning material whispering, which is ever at the heel of any good work we are doing.

A member of my family was once taken very ill, and while the truth about the indestructibility of Life was being constantly declared, many suggestions to the contrary were screaming for notice. The story of Nehemiah, however, stood out so vividly before me that when these mortal mind suggestions came (and many came in various forms), the silent declaration would be made: There are Sanballat, Tobiah, and the rest of them again, but I cannot come down to that kind of thinking or agreeing. Spiritual, right thinking is being declared here, — the truth that God is Life, Truth, Love, and that man as God's reflection enjoys these qualities. Why should we leave these declarations and come down to believe the opposite suggestions?

It is almost needless to say that a harmonious condition reigned where, before, disorder and inharmony had tried to manifest themselves. This to me was a true demonstration that the "key" in our textbook unlocks the treasures of Truth so that we can discern between the true and the false, and know, as Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 272), that "the spiritual sense of the Scriptures brings out the scientific sense, and is the new tongue referred to in the last chapter of Mark's Gospel."

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