FROM THE EDITORS July 3, 2006 Issue

WE PROTEST

EACH PROOF THAT PRAYER HEALS—THAT THERE IS ACTUALLY A DIVINE SCIENCE OF HEALING, AND THAT GOD'S LOVE IS UNIVERSAL, ALL-POWERFUL, ALWAYS AVAILABLE—IS A PROTEST.

THE YEAR 2021 will mark the 500th anniversary of one of history's singular acts of protest. In April 1521, a lone German monk stood in the court of Emperor Charles V to defend his controversial books on the Church and theology. Central to Martin Luther's self-defense was his insistence that any believer—and unbelievers, for that matter—can search the Bible to find the practical meaning of the Scriptures. That they can discover how that meanings shapes public worship and private devotion.

Three centuries after Luther protested humanity's right to an unmediated relationship with God and the divine message, in April 1821, Mary Baker was born into a humbler New Hampshire farming family. The dates are an interesting coincidence, and would be only that if she had lived out her life in relative obscurity. Instead, Mary Baker went on to become Mary Baker Eddy. She founded a religious movement that one day will be known as the final Protestant Reformation. The first tenet of her discovery, Christian Science, boldly states, "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 497).

Implicit in this statement is the fact that Mrs. Eddy understood that she had discovered Truth, a word she used variously as a name for God, and a reference to the Comforter—the "Spirit of truth" that Jesus promised would come to "teach you all things" (John 14:17, 26). Also clearly implied is the fact that her discovery came through revelation, as "the inspired Word" speaking to human consciousness. And finally, this tenet explains that the aim of being inspired by God's Word is not a feel-good, temporary type of bliss. Instead, inspiration results in demonstration. It guides the learner to eternal life in Life itself (another term for God), and to better health and character in this life on earth.

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