"KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES"

MABEL M. BEESON.

Not long since, I heard this thought advanced in criticism of Christian Science: that if Mrs. Eddy wanted to write a book on any subject whatever, she certainly had the right to do so; but in this day and age to write a book and have the temerity to call it a "Key to the Scriptures," was certainly presumptuous, if not positively sacrilegious. To one's own consciousness there is no proof so positive as individual experience. From this standpoint I can say that Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy has proved itself to me to be a "Key to the Scriptures," wonderful and complete.

To me the Bible had always been a closed book. Although I had been brought up in an orthodox church, and was taught the Bible from my earliest childhood, it had never meant anything to me. It seemed one mass of incongruities and contradictions, and after coming to womanhood I found myself practically without a God; consequently I was entirely at sea in my religious beliefs. Troubles and disappointments seemed to bear down upon me, and I felt that I had nothing upon which I could lean, nothing to which I could turn. A book on so-called "mental science" had been loaned to me, and was read at first with some interest, but very soon the fallacy of its teachings was made manifest and it was put aside as containing nothing of vital interest.

Then came the book Science and Health. I was not seeking for physical healing particularly, but for a tangible, definite concept of God, and I had read but a few pages when a definite and tangible sense of God was presented to me in these words: "If the term personality, as applied to God, means infinite personality, then God is infinite Person" (Science and Health, p. 116). Then, reading further, I came to this simple, direct statement: "The Christian Science God is universal, eternal, divine Love, which changeth not and causeth no evil, disease, nor death" (Ibid., p. 140). From this as a starting-point came the revelation of God as divine Principle, and man as the image and likeness of God. This indeed led my thought into new channels, and subsequent reading and study was followed by an understanding, in some degree, of the truth taught in Science and Health, and the demonstration of its healing power.

Up to this time, however, no especial thought or study had been to the Bible, and it still seemed the book it always had been. Then one day, while reading Science and Health, the following statement (p. 271) seemed to come to me as something new: "The Sermon on the Mount is the essence of this Science." What followed seemed a revelation. In the light of a new understanding came those wonderful teachings of Jesus called the "Sermon on the Mount." "And seeing the multitudes, he went up into the mountain." Right at the very outset a different conception was given as to what the "multitudes" might be, and of the "mountain" as well. So on through the lesson—what are commonly called the "Beatitudes"—to that simple, quiet, convincing teaching, "I say unto you, Love your enemies, ... pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." Pray for them? Surely. In the spiritual understanding of the Science of being and of prayer, what else could one do? Then following came the all-embracing "Lord's Prayer," and on to the closing statement, "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock." The "rain," the "floods," and the "wind" were seen to be the multitudinous forms of mortal thought, and the "rock"—Christ, Truth.

The wonder of it all! For years I had known of the Sermon on the Mount, but had never really understood it before. What had caused this great change? Whence had it come? A study of Paul's letters to the churches followed; then a study of Genesis and the spiritual creation; the history of the children of Israel in their wanderings and experiences; the psalms of the shepherd king; the books of the prophets, and finally the revelation of St. John,—the Bible! What had given it to me? What had caused the light to shine on those seemingly incongruous and contradictory statements? Whence had it come? Had I not been given a "Key" to those pages, and did it seem "temerity" for Mrs. Eddy to call the book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"? Had it not indeed proved a "key," and I realized the truth of the statement on page 99 of our text-bbok, "Truth has furnished the key to the kingdom, and with this key Christian Science has opened the door of the human understanding."

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