When I was a schoolgirl, I once covered sheets of paper in figures in an attempt to work out correctly a mathematical problem according to the answer given in the back of the book. But I could not reconcile my work to it. Next day, the class was told that the printed answer was incorrect! To come up with such an answer, either the principle of mathematics would have had to be improperly applied, or else the textbook publisher had employed a careless proofreader.

We are all taught to trust the principle of mathematics, and though the student may misapply or misunderstand a particular rule, the principle itself is certain. The textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, brings out the fact that God is the divine Principle of man, a concept of God that I especially welcomed when I first began to study the book. Principle can never fail, I learned. It governed me, as God's image. Principle blesses man because of its unvarying, immovable, ever-present nature as good itself. Science and Health adheres strictly to Principle in its exposition of divine Science, and the last chapter at the back of this book answers to the efficacy of Christian Science with healings experienced by many people simply through reading the book.

Years ago, seeing the financial plight my husband and I were experiencing early in our marriage, a relative told us he'd been looking into Christian Science and suggested we read the textbook. This book proved to be the answer of Truth for us. Our focus on calculations (over pennies rather than math figures) lessened before the spiritual ideas we were reading about. A load of fear about the immediate future lifted. Thought was being loosened from limitation. We began to accept the possibilities of divine Love's provision, and consequently our needs began to be met in various ways. For example, a basket of fruit and vegetables was placed at our door one day when we had nothing in the larder. Another time our toddler, suffering from measles (diagnosed by a doctor), was completely healed overnight through Christian Science.

Old, erroneous impressions of what God is were swept away as we learned to accept Him as divine Mind, the only intelligence of man, to know Him as Love, the supplier of all good, and as Truth, in which there is no evil or error. An unknowable God was being replaced by an understandable Principle and Father.

There is a chapter, "Recapitulation," in the textbook that is wholly devoted to questions and answers pertaining to God and man and other aspects of the teachings of Christian Science. For example, the question "What is man?" contains this statement in the answer: "In divine Science, God and the real man are inseparable as divine Principle and idea" (p. 476). By keeping in mind this scientific unity, we realize that true thoughts proceed from the one Mind, God, and that man, His idea, reflects them. This is why in a critical hour (or in any hour) we need never be at a loss for God's care and unerring direction if our thinking is open to Him rather than to external influences or appearances.

To illustrate: One day during a journey in driving rain, a cab passed our car and suddenly veered off the road in front of us, crossed the grass verge, and came up against a tree. The door of the cab burst open and the driver was flung out into a ditch. My husband and another motorist found him unconscious. I ran back to our car for a mackintosh to put under him. There, on the floor, lying open where it had fallen, was the textbook. I stopped to read a line to steady myself. From the open page the words fairly leapt out at me: "When an accident happens, you think or exclaim, 'I am hurt!' Your thought is more powerful than your words, more powerful than the accident itself, to make the injury real." (I had observed evidence of an injury on the man's head.) I read on quickly: "Now reverse the process. Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why, and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact proportion to your disbelief in physics, and your fidelity to divine metaphysics, confidence in God as All, which the Scriptures declare Him to be" (p. 397).

I could not have been given a clearer answer to this situation. I clung to these familiar words even when the man was taken away in an ambulance, still unconscious.

I continued to keep these truths alive in my thought in the next few days. Making inquiries later, I was grateful to learn that the man had spent just one night in hospital and in a few days was again driving about.

If we are looking to find answers to the trials we encounter —to trouble in the body, the home, business, relationships, and so on—we will not easily find them by concentrating on the problem. We must start with God, Principle, the good cause of all good effect, the only cause of all that is real. The so-called mortal mind, which claims that man is a finite, fleshly creature, subject to chance, change, and upheaval, is but a bundle of misinformation about the only Mind and the real man. It would reverse all that is good and true. But it is a counterfeit of Mind, and therefore it must be untrue and so powerless. Man's real selfhood is the spiritual image and likeness, the reflection, of God, the expression of His nature, as the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible indicates. So it is imperative to start with God and continue with Him and His ideas through to the ultimately realized healing, when the discord disappears and harmony is established.

It is such a great help to see that, by its very nature, infinite, everlasting Truth is always first on the scene and, as we may discover, can be proved to be the only reality. A man, born lame, laid daily at the gate called Beautiful of the Temple in Jerusalem, asked for alms. But instead of alms, the answer he received one day was the healing of his lameness. Those years of suffering vanished before the uplifted thought of Peter and John, who had learned through Christ Jesus' teachings and healings not to revere mortal testimony about man. (See Acts 3:1–8.)

There are many helps to learning more of Truth and thereby finding the answers we seek. Christian Science Reading Rooms are quiet places where the Bible and Christian Science literature can be studied. Through our study we're able to make spiritual truths our own, to apply them as we go about our daily business, spiritualizing our thoughts and lives—and knowing that this is possible because "it is God which worketh in [us] both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). There are services and testimony meetings in Churches of Christ, Scientist, where each one can experience the support and prayer of the congregation, as all seek to understand God more fully. There is the help of Christian Science practitioners, who pray for others upon request, maintaining in thought the unity of God and man.

Jesus carried his Christly assessment of man as God's image with him wherever he went, and consequently all forms of sin and suffering were replaced with evidence of this truth. We need not be sidetracked by the outward appearance but can learn to maintain in some degree an inward spiritual conviction of the innate wholeness, safety, and soundness of man. Jesus lovingly encouraged his followers, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you" (Matt. 7:7). What clearer indication can we have than the assurance of Christ Jesus himself that answers are at hand for seekers of Truth! And the Science of Christ reveals them.