Questioned as to how she would define Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy answered (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1), "As the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony." Mrs. Eddy had glimpsed this law in an hour of intense physical suffering. When she turned to the Bible for comfort, she received so clear a vision of the power, perfection, and goodness of God and His healing law that it healed her. Later she began to write down what had been revealed. The revelation continued to unfold to her until it became an entire book which she named "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." She published this textbook that all the world might share its blessings and learn how to demonstrate God and His law of universal good.

Christian Scientists study this book, for it reveals God and His law of the continuity of good, which Jesus and his followers utilized. Paul wrote of this law (Rom. 8:2), "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." God's law of continuous, uninterrupted harmony and perfection becomes efficacious humanly as we become spiritually conscious of it. To those who perceive it, it is the evidence of eternal, ever-present, unutterable Love, forever the same throughout eternity.

The source of all good is God, and the law of good operates to give good to all permanently. "'Good is my God, and my God is good. Love is my God, and my God is Love,'" declares Mrs. Eddy (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 206). These spiritual facts are constantly being repeated by the genuine Christian Scientist. The loving God, whose law governs all creation, is an eternally good creator. If evil really existed and were actual and powerful, it would belie His infinitude. The discords and tragedies of material sense express the thoughts and beliefs of a mind apart from God. Evil beliefs seem to become a law only through the consensus of human opinions.

Christian Science makes a distinction between the mortal and the immortal man. The mortal is the one we seem to be or behold through the material senses. That condition of thought called a mortal sometimes inherits wealth or a sense of well-being; another mortal lacks and longs for the good things of life and makes an effort to possess them. Until the divine source of good is discerned, human existence is subject to the chance and change of so-called material law, for all that is based on materiality can be lost.

The immortal man, or the real selfhood of each one of us, is the idea or expression of God and is perceived through spiritual sense. He is in possession of eternal life, continuous good forever. If one continues to exist after death, as is generally accepted, then it is logical to conclude that one lives before what is termed birth. It is mortal belief that says man is thrust out of Spirit into matter, that he develops in matter and lies out of it.

The real man, God's idea, continuously reflects the infinite activity, joy, harmony of ever-present, immutable, inexhaustible, spiritual existence. What seems to be a material sense of life is but a false concept of the material, or carnal, mind claiming a beginning and an end for man. The real man lives now and forever in the realm of Spirit, entirely apart from material sense.

Speaking of this real man, our true individuality, Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 63): "In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry." God is, always has been, and always will be God. Man is and always will be man, His reflection. He pre-exists and coexists with his Maker. Hence man is governed by the law of God. He expresses the never-ebbing, imperishable qualities with which God has endowed him. He can never be separated from good for an instant, because he operates in accordance with the law of good forever.

The law of God is the will of God. It is the law of continuous harmony and freedom in the realm of the spiritual, the real, as well as in the so-called human realm, because of the ever-presence, the infinitude, of Spirit. This means that there is no senility, incapacity, limitation, failure, decrepitude, no aging, and no dying for man. One of the most fallacious beliefs of the human mind is that Life eternal is to be gained by the passing through of what is called death. Yet the real man has always existed and always will exist in God and continuously reflects divine being. In proportion as we each become aware of God's law of good, it is manifest in our present human experience as good health, prosperous affairs, happiness, and progress.

Jesus proved by his resurrection that Life was untouched by the crucifixion. He gave to all mankind the proof of man's eternal unity and continuous coexistence with God. Jesus' proof roused his disciples from an uncertain, blind faith in Deity to the clearer understanding of divine being.

God's law of continuity is a very present help in trouble of all kinds. It can be applied to sickness, business tangles, human relationships, or to one's minute private affairs. It disposes of the false witnesses of error that may seem to surround one, and all the varied phases of mortal mind that are expressed in troublesome, painful conditions or symptoms. It is a law of destruction to false, material thinking and its unhappy effects.

A practitioner of Christian Science was helping a friend through a difficult experience of sickness. Both had had many proofs of the care and provision of God for His idea, man. They had experienced the activity of the divine law of Life when applied to their problems. So poignant seemed the struggle, however, that the friend was about to submit to the argument of the last enemy and agree that evil was more powerful than good and that there was a law other than that of God's. All night the contest waged.

The practitioner held faithfully to the spiritual truths she had learned and proved. She was convinced that the son of God was not struggling, that he was not in matter, but that he was living his abundant, eternal life at that instant. Uplifting memories of many victories which had been won through the power of the law of the continuity of good flooded her thought. With the comfort of these proofs and with a heart full of peace, undaunted by the material evidence, she turned away from the bedside, confidently leaving the friend with God, and walked to a window open to the hot, sultry night. The countryside was still, the house silent, the lights low. Suddenly out of the darkness came the song of a bird, a song of praise in the night, like the voice of God reassuring her that He reigned triumphantly.

The worker did not return to the bedside. She slipped out into the darkness of the garden, her thought illumined with the light of Spirit. She walked about thanking and praising God, not desiring in the least to know the physical condition of the friend but resting in the conviction that all was well with her. When the first beams of the new day arose in the east, she returned to the room and found the friend conscious and perfectly normal. Then together they "blessed the most High, ... that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominon, and his kingdom is from generation to generation" (Dan. 4:34). Once more God's law of the continuity of good had been proved.