A WOMAN was shopping for chairs with a friend, but paid no attention to the chairs she intended to buy. The salesman helping them was wearing a bandage over one of his eyes. When they left, the friend questioned her lack of interest in the furniture. "Could I think of chairs when the man was suffering?" was the answer.

The next day, when the friend went to pick up the purchase, the salesman asked, "Who was that lady with you yesterday? I had an abscess on my eye and when she went out, I took the bandage off, and there was not a sign of it left" (Irving C. Tomlinson, Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy, Amplified Edition, p. 60).

The woman, Mary Baker Eddy, was the Discoverer of Christian Science, the founder of this magazine, and the author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The salesman, in awe, wanted, and in fact yearned, to know who that woman was. She had not asked anything about his problem. Yet his life had just been transformed through the impact of what she knew about him.

What did she know about him, and how?

That incident took place in the early 1880s. There was little knowledge, at that time, about the genetic history of individuals. Genomes were unknown. But what Mrs. Eddy understood about the spiritual identity of everyone was all that was needed to help the salesman. His recovery was the result of her acknowledging a spiritual reality beyond what appeared in front of her, a reality that preceded the circumstances of his birth or parentage. She knew that his spiritual identity was intact and originated in something unchangeable, in something prior to and above his experience at that time.

In her own search for health and happiness, Mrs. Eddy had previously investigated several systems of healing and discovered that there is a mental factor that helps the body improve. When she found her own well-being by reading one of the cures performed by Christ Jesus, she realized that healing was not just mental in nature, but also spiritual. That is, it had a direct relation to God. She continued to research the Bible, which she had studied all her life, and to heal other people. She wrote down the inspired reasoning that restores health and eventually published a book on the subject. And she began to teach others to restore health, too. That is why the students of her book Science and Health and of the Science it contains are able to understand how she healed that man in the furniture store, as well as many other people, and how to heal in the way she taught.

Human conditions improve when a person understands that life is governed by a concrete Principle, an eternal presence so inclusive that it occupies the minutest or vastest space in the universe, regardless of how near or distant that little or big space may be. And regardless of how invisible this Principle may seem. This Principle is Love; it is God Himself. Not a super human being somewhere out in the universe, of whom we request favors. That kind of asking would imply separation. Prayer is spiritual awareness of the infinite presence of God.

You can arrive at this awareness by reasoning spiritually and intelligently. Prayer consists of acknowledging who each of us is spiritually. It denies authority to anything that diverges from Love. And this prayer changes a picture of suffering and restores peace and well-being. The prayer that heals recognizes that "the harmony and immortality of man are intact," as Mrs. Eddy states in Science and Health (p. 521).

It was only natural for the salesman to want to know who that woman was who had healed him. Mary Baker Eddy was a woman of extraordinary accomplishments. The world cannot afford to ignore her achievements. It is yearning to find out about this benefactor of humanity. Her lasting influence has transcended her time and national origins. People want to know about her and the ideas she introduced. They need to know about her and the healing truth she discovered. She is emerging as a figure of truly universal stature.

Heloísa Gelber Rivas
Associate Editor