The advent of Christian Science marked the beginning of the greatest revolution the world is ever to witness. Indeed, its immensity can hardly be grasped, for it comprehends and undertakes the overturning of all modes of mortal thought, action, and living, to replace them with the things of divine Mind. Mrs. Eddy's definition of "salvation," on page 593 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "Life, Truth, and Love understood and demonstrated as supreme over all; sin, sickness, and death destroyed"—leaves us in no doubt as to the extent of the redemption promised through the application of Christian Science. And the fact that thousands of people all over the world are testifying to the healing of sin, disease, and sorrow; to the removal of fear, hatred, envy, and remorse; to a cessation of worry and anxiety; to improved circumstances and better business; to enlarged capacities, increased opportunities; to more love, more joy, more happiness, proves conclusively the availability, scope, and practicability of the salvation thus provided.

Christ Jesus lived among a people who were chafing under subjection to a hated conqueror and restlessly looking for the Messiah who would deliver them from this bondage. He taught them that the kingdom of God was within them, that they could escape from misery by spiritual, right thinking; and he proved his words by unprecedented works of healing and regeneration. At no time during his ministry did Jesus teach that men must die in order to be saved, or that the power of the heavenly Father is not available to heal men's bodies. Not only did he instruct his disciples how to heal sin, sickness, and all manner of evil, but he gave a definite promise that everyone who grasped his instruction should also be to give practical proof of his understanding.

This way of complete salvation was, however, so much obscured and distorted by the materialism which crept into the early Christian church after the third century that the availability of the Christ to heal was lost sight of until our Leader restored it to mankind through the revelation of Christian Science. Her spiritual vision and love for humanity enabled her to correct the distortion which obscured the Master's teaching, and to present it to modern thought in such a manner that its vital essence of healing and its assurance of relief from all forms of human bondage, despair, and degradation are made accessible to all who will come to its study with honestly, humility, and expectancy.

If here is a system which offers freedom from all evils we may ask, Why did not the oppressed, groaning beneath tyranny, accept eagerly the gifts held out to them by Jesus? Why was this wonderful, resuscitating power lost for so many centuries? The answer is to be found in the egotism of mortal mind. Dominated by doctrine and dogma, and obsessed with the desire for worldly position and triumph, many rejected the Saviour, who offered them a spiritual kingdom of love and peace and harmony. Seduced by pride of place, personal aggrandizement, and mere human doctrine, the early Christian church lost sight of the meekness and spirituality of true Christliness and allowed materiality to arrogate to itself power and dominion.

Our Leader states (Science and Health, p. 428), "To divest thought of false trusts and material evidence in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear,—this is the great attainment by means of which we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true." This statement not only shows why we shirk the narrow way that Jesus trod but also gives the recipe for full salvation. Jesus promised his students that God would provide for them, right royally, on the condition that they should themselves seek "first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness"—that is, turn from trust in matter to the realization of the allness of divine Love. In divine order and perfect harmony there is no place for luck or chance, no dependence on personality or mere human influence. Human intellect cannot get us into the kingdom, since "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." Money has no spiritual value, nor can worldly ambition set us at the right hand of God.

The Psalmist tells us that God is "a very present help in trouble." This help is not to be regarded as a vague, solace while we humanly plan ways and means of escape from tribulation. This help is the scientific understanding of the operation of divine Principle, omnipotent and omnipresent, available to guide our every thought and action, and producing every effect. To discard the support of habit, convention, and tradition, to discredit the reports of the physical senses, to account Spirit as the only substance, and matter as wholly chimerical—here is no primrose path, no leaning upon another's efforts. But from the very beginning of our essay the result and the reward are sure, for the demonstration of Christian Science rests upon spiritual law, not upon experiment or speculation.

When we start this process of eliminating false trusts, we find to our amazement that the so-called fundamental laws of material existence prove only to be so many "old wives' fables," the attempted compounding of beliefs that matter is real and powerful, with spiritual facts. There are in reality no material facts. As we eliminate our trust in matter, the evidence of materiality begins to disappear. The so-called laws of race, heredity, physiology, and hygiene; beliefs regarding sex, contagion, temperament, old age, medicine, or false theology—these are all so many bugbears that would frighten the unenlightened thought into acceptance of limitations and hardships unknown to and therefore never sent by our loving Father.

All through the textbook and her other writings our Leader shows us that the law of divine Mind is ever operating to release mankind from subjection to the spurious laws of mortal mind, and that in the light of Christian Science this is a law of annihilation to everything that would tend to harm, limit, or condemn men. Christ Jesus is our Exemplar; and he never acknowledged any truth in matter, never saw man as anything but God's image and likeness, in full possession of his birthright as the perfect child of the perfect Father, inheriting no human frailties, no mortal characteristics, and reflecting all God's qualities. Directly we too realize the illegality of mortal laws, see them as illusion, without authority and therefore without power of imposition, we begin to "divest thought of false trusts and material evidences." Obeying the spiritual law of Truth as far as we understand it, we shall "sweep away the false and give place to the true." The recognition that nothing is impossible to God at once begins to break the mesmeric belief that we must wait for death before we can find relief from our burdens.

From the mortal standpoint, are we sick, sorrowful, or sinning? Are we poor, unhappy, friendless, discontented, or afraid? Are we tired of living, and fearful of dying? Then, we should turn resolutely and expectantly to the Bible and Science and Health, putting aside prejudice and cherished beliefs. We shall thereby understand the Science of Christianity which Jesus lovingly demonstrated for us, and which our Leader has adequately elucidated. And we shall find in Christian Science the truth promised by the Master, the practical salvation and the physical healing that come now, as in his time, even as we are told in Science and Health (Pref., p. xi), as the direct result of "the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation."