When an individual suffering from disease or sin accepts the healing ministry of a Christian Science treatment, he has embarked upon a glorious adventure. In 1866 Mary Baker Eddy sustained an injury pronounced fatal by her physician. She turned to the Bible for comfort in this extremity and read the account of Jesus healing a man of palsy (Matt. 9:2-8). This awakened her to the spurious nature of any material sense testimony. The true sense that being exists in God, Mind, became clearly evident to her in that healing and so illumined her consciousness that she was instantly restored to health.

At that moment Mrs. Eddy stood at the threshold of a new adventure—the discovery of Christian Science—the realization that the sick and sinning could be healed by spiritual means alone, the means Christ Jesus employed. Mrs. Eddy founded Christian Science on Bible teachings. In “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” and her other writings we find the Science of Mind-healing, the solution for all mankind’s ills, including poverty, fear, loneliness, despondency.

In her study of Christian Science one mother found healing from despondency when she perceived the truth of Mrs. Eddy’s words (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 158): “We live in an age of Love’s divine adventure to be All-in-all.” Upon the marriage of her daughter, her only child, this mother felt that her usefulness had come to an end; she thought of all the good times they had had together, the companionship they had enjoyed, and feared that now she would be deprived of all of it. She felt that the future held very little of interest for her. As a result, she became ill.

One morning, as this student sat listlessly at her window, a bird’s song drew her attention to the top-most branch of a tree. She had never before heard so beautiful a bird song. It so lifted her thought that for the moment she completely forgot her unhappiness. She was then reminded of our Leader’s comparison of the fowls which fly above the earth to soaring aspirations. She realized that her soaring and singing must be mental; that her physical condition was the externalization of inharmonious thoughts.

She then opened Science and Health to these words (pp. 511, 512): “The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love.” She now knew that her thought must soar beyond and above any sense of either a corporeal child or a corporeal mother; that she must lift her thought to the divine, all-embracing fatherhood and motherhood of God.

This mother then began to rejoice in the knowledge, revealed by her study of Christian Science, that what she loved in her daughter actually consisted of the expression of God’s qualities, which are omnipresent and forever expressed; she saw that therefore not one of these qualities had been taken from her. Companionship and joy she knew were also hers, because she was forever companioned by the joyous ideas of Mind. Consequently, she knew that she could expect the individualized expression of all good in her daily experience without interruption.

Though she was unaware of it, the mother at that moment stood on the threshold of a new adventure. She asked a practitioner for Christian Science treatment. The practitioner helped her to understand more of the Science of her true being and also to comprehend better the all-inclusiveness of God’s fatherhood and motherhood.

As “Love’s divine adventure” began to unfold in her daily round, new fields of activity opened. A talent she had not been aware of expanded into expression. She has since used this talent continuously in blessing not only herself but others. The fear of loneliness and the threat of vacuum by which she had previously been overwhelmed were completely dissipated. She welcomed each new day with enthusiasm and joy. Often she lifted her heart in praise to God, as did Moses (Deut. 3:24): “O Lord God, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might?”

Christian Science shows how to find release from self-forged fetters. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 223), “sooner or later we shall learn that the fetters of man’s finite capacity are forged by the illusion that he lives in body instead of in Soul, in matter instead of in Spirit.”

Any clinging to a landmark of the so-called past which claims that an unhappy circumstance has robbed one of love, companionship, or usefulness apparently shackles one’s courage and initiative. An understanding of Christian Science rends asunder the veil of deception which claims a past as reality. It discloses God’s creation, thus corroborating the statements in the first chapter of Genesis (1:27), “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Divine Science removes ignorance of God, an ignorance that is the foundation of all sin, sickness, and sorrow.

Man has no material past, either good or bad. He has existed forever in omnipresent Mind, as idea, image, reflection—in that Mind, God, which knows no past, no future. What is called the past is seen to be but a shadow, which vanishes at the touch of spiritual enlightenment. Likewise fear of the future is but the conjuring up of mental pictures which have no substance, no reality. If these pictures of fear seem to take form and call themselves actualities, it is because of the credence given them by the individual. Mrs. Eddy makes vividly clear in her exposition of divine Science that so-called mortal mind is not an entity; that its beliefs spring from illusion, whether suggesting discord in a past, present, or future.

Actually, there is no future. No such measurement of time has ever overtaken anyone. No one has ever truthfully been able to say “This is the future.” There is only the now—the ever-present of God’s love expressed by man.

Jesus always looked to his heavenly Father to supply his every requirement. Most Christians are familiar with the Bible account of his feeding the five thousand, obtaining needed tax money from a fish’s mouth, and other instances where he demonstrated his understanding of the ever-presence of all good. There is no record of his ever going without any necessity. His was indeed a divine adventure.

Those seeking courage to venture forth into new paths of Mind’s unfolding will find this courage through faithful study and practice of Christian Science. Turning from the contemplation of material personality—from the belief that persons are able to bring us happiness or take it away—looking “beyond and above corporeality” and claiming the unlimited opportunities that are afforded bv divine Mind, we find man eternally expressing all that God is.

“Love’s divine adventure” is for all—now!