From her childhood Mary Baker Eddy was interested in spiritual healing. As a child, she accomplished a number of healings through her trust in God. These are well documented by her biographers.

At the time, the people around her never dreamed she would eventually write a book that would heal millions of people through the reinstatement of the healing method used by the master Christian, Christ Jesus. Nor could they have imagined that she would found a church with branches around the globe, establish several magazines, and launch an international newspaper. Yet that's exactly what she did, and at a time when women were generally expected to be followers, not leaders.

Historically speaking, the first half of her life, from 1821–1866, was preparation for the tremendous work of the second. Within a year of her marriage in 1843, her husband died a few months before their only child was born. She endured widowhood, needing to rely on the charity of others in order to have a home. Ten years later she was married a second time—to an itinerant dentist who proved unfaithful. The marriage failed to bring the stable home she hoped for, and she lost the custody of her son. It ended in divorce twenty years later. Through this difficult period ill health led her to make an intense search for physical healing.

The issue of God's healing power was never far from her thought even as she explored various curative approaches practiced by physicians and others. Gradually, through time and experience, she began to perceive the influence of the human mind on the body and health. She investigated homeopathy and other healing methods that were not strictly medical in nature. She caught tantalizing glimpses of a spiritual truth that seemed just beyond her reach, and at times, her physical health improved only to lapse back into sickness.

Then, a pivotal moment came. It was wintertime, February of 1866, and she was on her way home when she fell on a patch of ice. There were serious injuries, and the physician attending her did not hold out much hope for her recovery. After two days of suffering, while friends and loved ones gathered round for what was expected to be the end, she experienced a life-changing insight.

Here is how Mary Baker Eddy describes it: "On the third day thereafter, I called for my Bible, and opened it at Matthew ix. 2. As I read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and the result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I had before enjoyed. That short experience included a glimpse of the great fact that I have since tried to make plain to others, namely, Life in and of Spirit; this Life being the sole reality of existence" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 24).

The rest of her life was devoted to bringing this method of healing to others. Through deep prayer and an intensified study of the Scriptures, which followed her restoration to health, she perceived that Christ Jesus' healing works were not miraculous occurrences. Rather, Jesus' teachings were meant to show everyone how to heal on a scientific, that is, reliable and provable, basis. Thus, Jesus intended all of his followers in all time to obey his command "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give" (Matt. 10:8).

Through her study of the Bible and her own work of defining this healing system, which she called Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy realized that a book explaining the Scriptural roots of her discovery and the application of these divine laws was needed. Christian Science was not simply a mental science. It was, to her, literally divine Science, God's spiritual rules of health and holiness that could be proved on a daily basis. No element of chance entered into the law of God.

Her work on the book, Science and Health, became an odyssey, a journey that was both mental and physical. She felt impelled by Spirit to write, and considered herself to be serving as a scribe to divinity. At the time, her funds were limited and people were not always friendly to her radical ideas about an all-good God who neither knew nor sent evil, a God who created man spiritual and perfect. She moved from rooming house to rooming house, all the while developing her ideas through prayer and study of the Bible and by putting them into practice in healing.

One example is a healing of a one-and-a-half-year-old child. He "had wasted away almost to a skeleton with a chronic bowel disease. He could eat only gruel and had passed nothing but blood and mucus for many months." Mrs. Eddy "came up to the child's crib, took him in her arms, and held him quietly, then kissed him and put him back. In less than an hour he was out of his crib, playing, eating normally, and perfectly healed" (Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, p. 256).

Even at this early stage in her discovery, her students noted her fearlessness in the face of sickness (see ibid., p. 255). Her understanding that God had never sent sickness, that such troubles had no standing whatsoever before almighty Love, totally deprived disease of any authority. It did not matter whether this authority seemed to take form as suffering, as fear of contagion, or as a belief that further efforts at healing were hopeless.

The first edition of Science and Health was published in 1875. While some people wrote disparagingly of it, there were others who saw something deeper in the book's message. Mary Baker Eddy's expectation was for the book to serve as a textbook for the general public, who so greatly desired healing. She writes, "I saw before me the sick, wearing out years of servitude to an unreal master in the belief that the body governed them, rather than Mind." And she continues in the next paragraph, "The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of their own beliefs and from the educational systems of the Pharaohs, who to-day, as of yore, hold the children of Israel in bondage" (Science and Health, p. 226).

Even as she revised it and further clarified its message, she was an earnest student of the book. She felt that God was revealing divine reality, and her goal was to let God, Spirit, speak. The book wasn't meant to be a testament to her personality or to bring her fame and adulation. It was meant to heal and redeem, and through this work to make the power of God evident to anyone who turned to it in need.

That her continuing work on Science and Health took place under the utmost trials—sometimes literal court cases, sometimes the trial of being deserted by people she had trusted—gave it an energy and strength beyond measure. There is no doubt that each word of the book was put to the test in meeting the practical demands on her and her work in establishing her Church. The book's present usefulness and healing impact show it has stood the test of time.

What will the next century bring? Will Science and Health still be relevant? As long as there is a need for spiritual growth, as long as there is sickness, fear, sin, war, uncertainty about God's goodness, or any other kind of trouble, this book, this companion to the Bible, will be a friend to all in need.