Possibly the earliest known Greek version of the Old Testament is the translation of the Jewish Scriptures which was executed at Alexandria, Egypt, some two or three centuries before the Christian era. This is known as the Septuagint version. Herein the Bible student may find occasionally not only delightful but revealing variations from the text as it appears in our King James Version. Take for example the familiar exhortation in the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah (verse 1), "Arise, shine; for thy light is come." In the Septuagint this is rendered, "Be enlightened, be enlightened, O Jerusalem." Did not the famous Goethe, in what are supposed to be his last words, "Mehr Licht!" (more light), voice mankind's innermost yearnings? It is interesting to find a dictionary definition of "enlighten" bringing out these spiritual meanings: "to shed the light of truth and knowledge upon" and "to supply with spiritual light."

Now comes the Science of Christianity to a world sadly darkened by fear, hate, and ignorance of God not only to rouse human thought to its need of more light, but to show how this enlightenment is to be obtained. In an hour of despair, when Mary Baker Eddy was well-nigh lost in the darkness of physical agony, the light of the saving Christ, Truth, began to dawn upon her suffering sense. From childhood she was accustomed to turn to God in times of stress, and now, more than ever, she found herself reaching out for the practical evidence of the Father's help which she had ever sought, and she was healed. She might have sung in the words of a hymn (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 392),

Now it was inevitable, after Mrs. Eddy's restoration to health and her subsequent healings of others, that the good news of the Christ-cure should be committed to the printed page, that all mankind might share it. Thus it was that the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," came to be written. Mrs. Eddy felt under divine orders to write these pages, and sublime was her faith that the message of this book was "the Spirit of truth" (John 16:13), the Comforter promised by Jesus, which was to "guide ... into all truth."

When Christian Science, therefore, echoing the Scriptural call, "Be enlightened, O Jerusalem," says, Learn the Christ-way of deliverance from sickness as well as from sin, that way is made plain for us. First of all, we need to get our Bibles into active use, and gain the spiritual sense of Holy Writ through studying Science and Health. No genuine student of Christian Science would think of going through a whole day without turning to these two spiritual fountainheads for strength, inspiration, and sustenance. A fact amazing to many people is that countless mortals have found healing from disease and solutions to many disturbing problems simply through their individual reading and study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook.

In a recent issue of a prominent American magazine is an article evidently intended to arouse public thought to the need of sending more young men and women to medical schools. It seems that in many localities there is a serious shortage of doctors, and the question is asked, with no little show of alarm, What is to happen to vast numbers of sick folk, if they are unable to secure medical treatment?

Right here a statement of the wise and witty Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes before the Harvard Medical School may be apropos. In her book "The People's Idea of God," Mrs. Eddy quotes him as follows (pp. 5, 6): "I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes." In rehearsing this statement, however, our Leader by no means attempts to belittle the valiant efforts of self-sacrificing men and women in the medical profession to come to the aid of their suffering brethren. Hers is the joyous task of pointing out a better way of healing the sick—the Christ-way, which the Master taught and practiced. And she makes this prophecy (Science and Health, p. 144): "When the Science of being is universally understood, every man will be his own physician, and Truth will be the universal panacea."

What a millennial picture is here presented —"every man ... his own physician"! And yet can this ideal be dismissed as visionary and impossible of achievement? Ever-increasing hosts of right thinkers, known as Christian Scientists, are demonstrating today that through spiritual enlightenment they are able to turn to the Bible and the textbook and without other aid find healing from disease and solutions to vexing difficulties.

Should the answer to some problem fail to appear, however, the Scientist should be obedient to a very important injunction of his Leader. She writes (ibid., p. 420), "If students do not readily heal themselves, they should early call an experienced Christian Scientist to aid them." Then she adds pertinently, "If they are unwilling to do this for themselves, they need only to know that error cannot produce this unnatural reluctance."

The last chapter of the textbook, entitled "Fruitage," is given over to the statements of many Truth-seekers who have found release from manifold forms of discord and disease through their study of Science and Health, and without another's metaphysical aid. As human consciousness has been spiritually enlightened, again and again has healing taken place.

Today the Christ, Truth, calls to all the sons of men, Why sit in darkness? "Arise, shine; for thy light is come." In other words, "Be enlightened, be enlightened, O Jerusalem," and find the truth that makes free.

John Randall Dunn