A truly remarkable statement was made by Mary Baker Eddy when she was asked about a physical injury not yielding to Christian Science prayer. The patient was a veteran suffering from a wound he’d received in the American Civil War. Asked what she thought might be preventing the healing, she explained that both the practitioner and the patient believed that a war was part of the man’s history. Mrs. Eddy must have had a different view of the man, seeing instead his spiritual history, forever at one with God, divine Love (see Ira Packard, “Justification,” Sentinel, May 10, 1913).

Regarding our history, Mrs. Eddy had this counsel: “It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man’s real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being. . . .

“God is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and being. The real man is not of the dust, nor is he ever created through the flesh; for his father and mother are the one Spirit, and his brethren are all the children of one parent, the eternal good” (Retrospection and Introspection, pp. 21–22).