Christian Science teaches the method of spiritual healing, the method Christ Jesus used over nineteen centuries ago, during his brief but wonderful three years' ministry while on earth. When people are told that Christian Science has reestablished Christian healing they are sometimes skeptical. Did not the power to heal spiritually belong only to Jesus and his early followers? they ask. And was not that power a special gift of God, first, to Jesus, and secondly, to his disciples? It may be answered that history bears witness to the fact that the healing of disease was practiced by the early Christian church for about three centuries at the beginning of the Christian era, and that this is evidence that the power to heal was not limited to the Master, the apostles, and the Christians.

The plain fact is that the Christian church lost in great measure its spirituality, and with the loss its power to heal. That is not to say that in the intervening centuries there did not live many pious men and women, and that these godly people did not benefit their day and generation by combating and thwarting in some measure many of the claims of evil, in certain instances even healing sickness. But the healing of the sick for many centuries was left almost entirely to those who exclusively employed material remedies. Prayer might be used; but usually it was supplementary to some material method, and was not regarded by the generality of Christians even as adequate in itself, notwithstanding that Jesus had resort to prayer alone in his work.

Mrs. Eddy was aware of these things. She had been a devout student of the Bible from her early years—a tender mother had gently guided her youthful steps towards the throne of God. And it was her desire, her longing, some day to rediscover the method of healing practiced by the Master. Mrs. Eddy passed through many a trying experience before she made the great discovery of Christian Science, but every such experience, by spiritualizing her thought, brought her nearer to God, to Truth, and to the understanding of the spiritual laws which govern creation. Ultimately, the significance of the allness of God, good, dawned upon her. Then she discovered the unreality of evil—and the method of overcoming all evil became plain. Furthermore, with the inspiration which always accompanies the spiritualized consciousness Mrs. Eddy discovered that since disease was not of God,—was not good,—that is, since it belonged to the category of so-called evil, it must be unreal. Having made this wonderful discovery, she immediately began to put it into practice by healing all manner of disease. And Christian Scientists all over the world are doing likewise, in the measure of their spiritual understanding.