To many people, God is a mystery, the great Unknown. Although called supremely good and loving, He is supposed to mete out life and death, good and evil, testing human intelligence and will by forcing us to choose between the very opposites He is credited with creating or allowing.

Paul noted this belief in a mysterious God among the men of Athens. Addressing them on Mars' Hill, he said: "I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." ^{Acts 17:22, 23.}

Centuries later the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote in the Preface to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity.... Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping-stone to faith." ^{Science and Health, p. vii.} Mrs. Eddy's long search to discover the mental causation behind all physical effects led to a physical healing through spiritual means. This healing signaled to her that God, divine Spirit, does reveal Himself in ways that are lawful and logical, as well as relevant to the human scene. Our honest, sincere questions "Where do we look for God? How do we hear Him? When will we know Him?" stem from a deep longing within us. Whether we know it or not, we are looking for our real cause, for completeness, for real Life. These searching questions are cracks or openings in our belief that God is unknowable. And just as water finds and flows into rock crevices, so God's grace moves in and abides with us when our hearts seek Him.

My own search for the logic of a consistent and loving Deity eventually led me to Christian Science. It began many years ago when I was a teen-ager just out of high school. The country was coming out of the 1930's Depression. My plans for college had been postponed, and I was working in an office earning fifteen dollars a week. On my lunch hour one day I noticed two brown leather books in the window of a Christian Science Reading Room. One book was the Bible and the other was Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. They were handsomely bound, and there was a compelling beauty about those two books. I felt intuitively qualities of perfection, intelligence, poise, and warmth. I longed to feel more fully these qualities within myself.

I timidly entered the Reading Room and asked to see the two brown leather books in the window. Yes, they felt warm and supple to my hands. I loved them.

I realized the gentleman in charge was talking to me, something about healing. I startled him when I said, "But I'm not interested in healing. I'm looking for a meaning to life and my place in it. Will these books help me to understand what life is all about? Will I learn whether I have a purpose of my own?" (Here my sincere questions were appearing. What follows is the account of how gently and patiently God's grace flowed into this opening in my thought and ultimately filled my life.)

The gentleman replied that these questions would indeed be resolved, for the truth of God and of man's relationship to Him was revealed in these books. Science and Health would explain the spiritual truth that came to Mrs. Eddy as the result of her deep study of the Bible.

The total cost of the books was $11.50, almost a week's pay. I really couldn't afford them, and yet the attendant's conviction strengthened an inner assurance that my questions would be answered. I borrowed the money and purchased them.

For about a month I read and studied the books, but to my disappointment I felt no further enlightenment. I put them away and did not read them again. But I never forgot those intuitive feelings that had arisen within me.

Later, I married and we had our first child. At the age of four he became ill with what was medically diagnosed as mastoiditis. We were in anguish as he suffered, and more so when the doctor told us he would always be in poor health; medicine held no permanent cure.

Inwardly I cried out against a drowning sense of fear and helplessness. I prayed to God for His help; I prayed for healing. THOSE BOOKS!

They'd been stored away, but I quickly found them. On the very first page of Science and Health I read, "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love." ^{Ibid., p. 1.} The word "unselfed" held my attention. I suddenly became aware that it was not unselfish love but unselfed love.

An all-encompassing sense of light flooded my consciousness, wiping out the dark clouds of fearful, dread-filled thoughts. The light felt both comforting and strong. All sense of struggle dissipated. There was quietness and peace. This must be God, I thought. A material sense of myself and the sick boy faded away in the presence of this light. Yet my identity felt sharp and very much alive.

I had glimpsed that unselfed love is God's love, the only love, the love of Love. It is the mark of the Christ, the Son of God, revealing man's true nature as the reflection of divine Love. God just loves. He loves all His children impartially, one as much as the other. Man does not have to get love, he is already the expression of Love. As the rays of the sun radiate the light of the sun, so man radiates the love that is of God. As each ray of the sun is complete in itself, not getting its energy or strength from other rays, so individual man reflects love directly from God. Can there be a closer relationship than this tender encompassing love of God for His Son?

I slept soundly for the first time in five days. The next morning the child's temperature was normal.

At that time I did not perceive the connection between my own lack of fear and the drop in the child's temperature. I had grown up believing that only by applying salve, pills, drugs, or by having surgery, could healing take place. But now I had experienced the activity of the Christ, the light of ever-present Love, dispelling the darkness of mortal thought. Just this one glimpse of Truth, God, was enough to show that in Science man is God's own image—he is spiritual, not material.

The power of this Science of spiritual being destroyed the medical prognosis that there was no cure for our son. So complete was his healing that he later passed the rigid physical exam given to commissioned officers for the United States Air Force.

Those books—the Bible and Science and Health—contained the answers to my questions. They led me to acknowledge and yield to the logic of Spiritual Science. They revealed God's nature. The understanding of God's allness heals all mankind's ills. Humankind need no longer remain ignorant, asleep in matter. They need no longer feel that God is a mysterious stranger to be feared and not understood. Christian Science, the Science of God, Spirit, is here. "Prayer, watching, and working, combined with self-immolation, are God's gracious means for accomplishing whatever has been successfully done for the Christianization and health of mankind," ^Ibid. writes Mrs. Eddy.

I have often wondered: When I first began to pray—did I find God, or did He find me?