Article September 27, 1924 Issue

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science...

S. Britton R. Foster,—Belleville

Ontario

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, was not a pupil nor a helper to a noted physician. Being an invalid for years, she sought healing from a study of the Bible, and especially from the works of Christ Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. When at the point of death Mrs. Eddy was instantaneously healed by the spiritual illumination of a passage in the Bible. She writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 103, 104): "The Bible has been my only authority. I have had no other guide in the straight and narrow way of Truth."

It is difficult to reconcile the contention that spiritual healing is not Scriptural with Christ Jesus' commands, "Preach the gospel;" "Heal the sick." The four gospels are principally the records of the healing of "all manner of disease among the people," which Jesus declared was doing the will of his Father, the same Father of whom David wrote, "who healeth all thy diseases." Jesus taught spiritual healing to his disciples and other students, and they in turn to others; so that the early Christians, for the first three centuries, considered healing the sick to be indispensable to Christianity. We are exhorted to have the Mind of Christ; for thus the healing work of Jesus and his disciples may be repeated. The Christian Science church was organized over half a century ago "to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Church Manual, p. 17). Its amazing world-wide growth accords with Jesus' declaration, "By their fruits ye shall know them."

The critic seems to be exercised over the teaching of Christian Science as regards sin, suffering, and death. This teaching, too, is Scriptural, as the Bible declares that to know God and Jesus Christ is eternal life. Sin, whose wages, or result, is death, is the result of ignorance of God. This ignorance of God produces fear, suffering, sickness, disease, and death. To know the truth that sets free is to know the truth about God, eternal Life, infinite divine Mind, unchangeable, eternal, divine Love, filling all space, having all power, and about spiritual man made in His image and likeness. In such a knowledge there is no place for an evil consciousness and its seeming effects. Jesus suffered, not from his own sins, but from the sins of the whole world. Through his unparalleled understanding of God he overcame suffering, death, and the grave for our eternal example. A study of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, will prevent any misapprehension of what is so vital a matter to humanity, namely, the destruction, not only of sin, but of its bad physical effects, by the correct understanding and application of Christ Jesus' teaching.