Jean Stark Hebenstreit,
C.S.B. of Kansas City, Missouri
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Many of you will remember the title of the musical comedy "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." I might appropriate their words to say a funny thing happened on the way to the lecture. I was thinking about you thinking about those of you who would be comprising the audience this afternoon when I realized, with great good cheer, something significant that you and I have in common. We have the same Father! The same Creator created us! So in Biblical terms, you and I be brethren. Early in the Old Testament, Moses gave this account: "And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."(1) And later on in the Scriptures, the equivalent "Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?"(2)
These Bible passages are making reference to monotheism, one God, without a second or equal; one creator, one cause, one Father and none else. Then, whether it's your choice or not, we're related, we're relatives. Now I don't want to alarm you that doesn't mean I'll be showing up at your house for the holidays.
But it does mean that we have a blessed and blessing relationship with God, our Father. And that relationship with God is basic to healing inasmuch as what is true about the one cause would naturally be true about its ensuing effect, for like produces like; whatever is true about God, our Father, must be true about His offspring, His image, His likeness, inseparable from Him and exactly like Him; and whatever is not true about the creator could in no way be true about His creation, His very expression. Logically, then, man is, by reflection, by right thought, all in expression that God is in essence.
So here we are today with this momentous opportunity to look right through the material drama to realize the truth about God and man; and see its practical import to humanity. Truth is simply that which is a monopoly of reality. It is inescapable, then, that reality must lie beyond the veil of matter with its limitations; that Spirit being infinite, the things of Spirit, God, would have to be illimitable and would constitute the only veritable truths of being, the only attestable facts. It follows then that error, the opposite of Truth, is not a fact, not a condition, not a state of being, but only a misstatement about being. It has to be no more than an illusion, an error of thought. And in today's progressive era, even many physicists have now indicated their conclusions as to the insubstantiality of matter, and the relevance of one's thought on one's experience.
The Bible, on which Christian Science is totally based, gives the correct portrayal of true being and action, in Jesus' statement "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."(3)
The Lightfoot translation of that Bible verse about the son of God reads this way: "No moment of his life but is the expression of the life and action of the father." That's the Bible and it is talking about man, the son of God, about you and it says that no moment of his life but is, in reality, the expression of the life and action of the father.
Jesus never said he could do nothing. When he said "I can of mine own self do nothing," wasn't he saying, in effect, "I cannot act without God, my Mind of whom I am expression." He was really explaining how he could do his mighty works, specifying from where his authority and power came. And, as the Bible reveals, Jesus never left the precincts of his own inspired consciousness to heal any case.
When the Apostle Paul said "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" wasn't he indicating that the knowledge of man's oneness with God, his identity as the Christlike image and likeness, the reflection of God, made him able to do all things? Then isn't that true about your identity as well that you can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth you?
There was, at one time, a little boy in our Sunday School, who would sing with great gusto, although not too much accuracy, the wonderful hymn "Joy to the world, the Lord is come" in his own inimitable style "Joy to the world, the Lord's in town." That's a pretty good outlook, because if the Lord is come, He must be in town, affirming the truth that God "is holding you in endless Life and one eternal round of harmonious being," to use the words of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.
So what happened to me on the way to the lecture was a happy, smiley face as I contemplated the Scriptural ratification of our having one Father, God, good, thus an all-embracing divine family unit, in which each one of us has spiritually ordained well-being in his own individual and important role as the son of God, God's manifestation, with an unlimited inheritance of good, from Him. Then, learning from the Bible, that man is the son of God, you will not be tempted ever to belittle yourself, or to belittle another.
One thing that's so special about families is that they share and care for one another. So because you and I have the same Father-Mother, I want to share with you my most valuable possession. You may not want it, and that's all right with me. But at least I'd like you to know about it, that it's available to you, and that it could have an enormous impact on your life. I say that because it has had such an enormous impact on my life.
My most valuable possession is a book a unique book by a most unique author. It's a book whose words have totally transformed the lives, the health, the careers, of hundreds of thousands. And, as is being recognized publicly today, it's a book whose words have changed the world. The title of this book is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.
Let me tell you what this book could mean to you by telling you what it did mean in the life of one near and dear to me. He was a medical doctor, an outstanding man who, up to that time, had resisted looking into Christian Science even though he had seen it completely regenerate the life of an associate.
However, he said he had managed to evade the ever-recurring desire to allow Christian Science to prove its claim to heal and regenerate. There'd been no conscious desire with him to seek God. But he became very ill and as time went on, he grew much worse physically and more desperate mentally, until there came a crisis while he was away on a trip.
On that Sunday morning, feeling so ill, he recalled how his associate's life had been so utterly revitalized by the study of Christian Science, so he decided to attend the Christian Science church.
He said he would never forget the quiet beauty of that simple service, nor the desire which then came to him to know more of this philosophy. So interested did he become, that he got a copy of this book Science and Health. The next evening, after a day of social drinking, he came back to his hotel room, sat down, got a spittoon, lit up a cigar, and opened the book; and was astonished to note that, while with respect to other things his vision was double, he could see clearly to read. And the first sentence he read sobered him. It was this: "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings."(4) That got his attention for sure.
So, that night he quit resisting the truth and learned what it meant to come face to face with the knowledge that of his own self, he could do nothing. He said later he learned that no one ever really needs anything but to have the understanding which came with redoubled force to the Psalmist, that "Power belongeth unto God."(5)
My friend spoke of the blessedness of that hour when to his heavy laden heart, came a measure of the peace that passes all human understanding, because that very night, through the change in his thinking, yielding from a material base to the spiritual, bringing his thought into conformity with Truth, God, good, seeing himself in fact, as God's own likeness, living under the uninterruptible law of Principle, he was completely healed! And he knew it! He was in awe, he said, at the breathtaking suddenness of the healing. Being greatly uplifted, he was able to sleep peacefully that night, and awake with a song in his heart that never ceased.
From that point he began the absorbing study of the wondrous truth of Christian Science, contained in this book; and as his study proceeded earnestly and prayerfully, he found old shackles simply slipping away from him. He'd long had defective eyesight that was healed. He found himself possessed of a stomach that ceased to rebel; the tenacious tobacco habit was destroyed, going out so totally that it no longer affected him, either to attract or to repel. He'd been a social drinker and that drinking habit left him, and he was relieved of the curse of gambling which had been a mania with him.
He had no helper in Christian Science, no practitioner at that time, but was healed by reading Science and Health. Now you and I both know that just words don't heal anything; there is nothing in words alone; there is everything in meaning. It's what those words did to lift thought spiritually, to enable him to perceive reality for the first time and the effect, then, that his spiritualized thought had on his life.
So as he grasped the Science of the change in himself, there came the natural desire to search the Bible, referred to in Christian Science as "the chart of life." He gained an understanding of the Christ that makes free. And with the spiritual perception that the divine Mind, God, is the scientific healer,(6) he abandoned the professional practice of material medicine, as an M.D., for the practice of the medicine of divine Mind.
Mrs. Eddy writes: "Those who laugh at or pray against transcendentalism and the Christian Scientist's religion or his medicine, should know the danger of questioning Christ Jesus' healing, who administered no remedy apart from Mind, and taught his disciples none other. Christian Science seems transcendental because the substance of Truth transcends the evidence of the five personal senses, and is discerned only through divine Science."(7)
Any aspiring man, like my friend,
who is seeking to express that Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus"
cannot undergo retrogression, God is with him, and before him; he has found the open road which
leads only upward and onward.
Science and Health, that made such a profound and urgently needed change in the life of my friend, explains that: "It is not well to imagine that Jesus demonstrated the divine power to heal only for a select number or for a limited period of time, since to all mankind and in every hour, divine Love supplies all good."(8) In every hour would include this one, wouldn't it?
Jesus' theology recounted in this book clarifies how divine Love supplies all good. It presents the expository documentation of the Science of Christ, the Science of God and man, of creator and creation, the Science of celestial being, the Science which Christ Jesus utilized with such spectacular success. He employed no material remedies although they were readily available to him. Obviously, Jesus' theology was his remedy, his theology was his medicine. And his theology, his understanding of the omnipotence of God, God's absoluteness, enabled him to heal all that he encountered that needed healing. Mrs. Eddy comments: "If God created drugs for medical use, Jesus and his disciples would have used them and named them for that purpose, for he came to do 'the will of the Father.'"(9)
Jesus' theology, his system of healing, undergirds the mission of the Christian Scientist who learns from this Textbook, with its Key to the Scriptures, how to follow the example of the master Metaphysician in his unrelenting warfare on troubles, sickness, want, woe, imbalance, divisiveness, all the evil in the world. This book, along with the Bible, teaches the effectiveness, the practicality to humanity today of coming to know God, and one's own relation to Him, seeing through the mist of materialism into the realm of reality.
Mark Twain, in one of his commentaries about the materialism of his day, told of leaving the Mississippi riverboats to become a reporter in Carson City, Nevada. From there he wrote an old friend that Carson City was indeed a den of iniquity, with booze, wild women, and twenty-four hour gambling. He said: "It certainly is no place for a good Presbyterian, so I no longer am one."
Of course that was told in jest, but looking round we see those who are misguided, seeking satisfaction everywhere but the only place where it can actually be found. People run after strange doctrines, cures and cults, diets and drinks, fads and fancies, seeking satisfaction in matter when it is to be found only in Spirit.
There are so many misleading systems extant, offering all kinds of confusing theories even to the overwhelming proliferation of astrological charts on every hand. There was a magazine article telling of a woman checking her husband's horoscope, when she looked up and told him "Oh, if you'd only been born two days later, you'd have been witty and charming and generous."
And that's about how sensible the confounding conjectures contingent upon materialism really are.
That doesn't mean that we look to the truth in Christian Science as just a handy support or a soothing syrup, a quick fix and study this book as one would take a dose of medicine or a tranquilizer whenever something disagreeable turns up.
The truth which Christ Jesus
taught and proved, and which has been set forth in the Bible and in Science and Health has not come just to
make us more comfortable in matter. This truth is here to transform our entire
sense of what is real, and what is right, and what is enduring, and thus is
practical in transforming and advancing the world. Christian Science hinges on
transformation of thought from the false to the true and the effects of
thought on what takes place.
Science and Health explains: "As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man dawns upon human thought, and leads it to . . . the spiritual sense of being and of what Life includes. Thus the whole earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error."(10)
The Master unfailingly distinguished the real spiritual creation, from the human concept, or misconcept, of creation. He consistently knew what was real, what was true.
Truth by its very nature is universal; its action doesn't stop with you and me. God is not just the God of Christians or of Christian Scientists. He is the loving Father and governing Principle of the entire universe. As the Sermon on the Mount puts it metaphorically ". . . He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."(11) That's Jesus' great teaching that is pitched to the healing of the world's ills as well as its sins, and of blessing even those who curse us.
I know of a woman who came face to face with a man staggering out of a saloon. She smiled, and offered him a Christian Science pamphlet that she had. He not only rejected it contemptuously but was profane in his remarks. Instead of falling back before this onslaught, she smiled again, and with great kindness said to him "This can help you stop being afraid."
Almost at once the hostility ceased and he asked "How do you know that I'm afraid?" She assured him that she understood and cared. Then she said "This little booklet can open the way for you to read the Christian Science Textbook, because in that book you can find what you need to solve the problem."
Now one value of that incident is that the blustering and antagonistic reception couldn't hide the deep need this man had. True compassion is not put off by physical sense testimony but always opens the way for the Christ to enter in just as the door was lovingly opened for this man who walked through it. The Bible reveals the marvelous power of Christliness to bring into people's lives the healing, the peace, the comfort, and regeneration which they are needing. And it is a truism that God helps those who help others! And God does it in today's vernacular big time!
How did Jesus the Scientist pierce
through misconception and illusion to heal from the basis of fundamental
reality? How did Jesus do his transforming work? His healing method, as he made
plain, was fixed in his total reliance on God, not just as some alternative, or
eventual help, but as the divinely operative, powerful Principle of all true
healing. He did his transforming work by knowing what was already true about
God and man. So he knew what was already untrue. He didn't have to make it
untrue. In fact he couldn't. God had already done that. He had the correct view
of creation, which correct view was then objectified as conduct or conditions.
Whatever is held in thought is not long out of experience. As we learn from the
Scriptures, the world without is the externalization of the world within.
Science and Health, which characterizes Jesus as "the most scientific man that ever trod the globe" says that "He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause."(12) And of course in finding the one cause to be Spirit, God, good, he removed the liability to be ill or discordant, to be troubled or dismayed. He healed by turning wholly to God, to His allness, His onliness, God, with whom all things are possible. Can you imagine anything beyond God's control?
The Bible makes plain that Jesus disdained human ways and means for the solution of any problem, relying always on the dynamic power of divine Truth acting on human belief, the power of Truth to be the reconstructor of the body and of all concerns.
His Science of Christ proved the words of the Scriptures that "The fortunes of the righteous are the Eternal's care."(13)
So, let's make no mistake about it neither Jesus' caring for the multitude nor the Christliness of the Master was part of some lost or forgotten time. The multitude and the Christ are with us now. The Christ is referred to in Science and Health as "the ideal man", or "the real man" the manifestation of God. The right idea of man displaces the false concept and then the right idea is expressed, objectified in what is called healing.
Christian Science calls for the most realistic form of thinking the world has ever known. It calls for being undeceived by the unreliable testimony of the physical senses.
Not too long ago, I had worked at my desk most of the day with the lamp turned on. Leaving the desk momentarily and returning, I noticed that the lamp shade was crooked. In reaching out to straighten it, I touched the finial, or top of the shade support, and it felt as if it had been lying on a fire of scorchingly hot coals all day. The burn on my fingers and the palm of my hand was so severe that I could not only hear the sizzle, but could smell the odor of burning flesh which was pungent. The pain was intense. As a Christian Scientist, I turned immediately in thought to God, and two words came insistently to me: "Dismiss it."!
I recognized these words as a portion of a statement in Science and Health, so I immediately looked up the entire statement. It says: "Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it with an abiding conviction that it is illegitimate, because you know that God is no more the author of sickness than He is of sin."(14)
That statement helped me immediately because it put the entire experience into the context of a false belief, a suggestion to thought rather than as a condition of reality. To be real, the condition would have had to be caused by God, the only cause and creator. And I had learned through this Christ Science that Mind, God, not matter, is causation. Science and Health teaches: "Matter can make no conditions for man."(15) That's reasonable because matter could certainly make no conditions for Spirit, God, of whom man is the exact likeness. I had to look to Christ, the right idea of man, and recognize the power of that right thought, the power of a spiritual, scientific thought to heal.
As I continued praying and rejoicing that Science and Health makes clear the spiritually scientific approach to healing, I happened to recall an article that I had read in a leading magazine, relating the effects of one's thinking on one's body.
This magazine article had nothing at all to do with Christian Science, but was the report of a research experiment on hypnosis conducted by medical doctors. A group of M.D.'s held a meeting, with one volunteering to be the subject of the test. He was told that he would be hypnotized, then his arm would be touched by a lighted cigarette; that a blister would form, but he would feel no pain or discomfort because of hypnosis. After he was hypnotized, his arm was touched with a plain lead pencil. Of course he felt no pain, but a blister formed. The obvious question was: What had formed the blister? It certainly wasn't the lead pencil. It had to be his own thought. Then what would have formed the blister had his arm been touched with the burning cigarette? Again, wouldn't it have been his own thought? This experiment, of course, was on the human level, having nothing to do with healing through spiritual means where we look, not to the human mind, but to the divine Mind for true action. But its relevance was the effect even humanly of one's thought on one's body, or one's experience. But looking away from the human concepts to the divine, to God, I recalled Mrs. Eddy's words, spiritually oriented, that "the mind of the individual only can produce a result upon his body."(16) And it would follow, his mind only could produce a result on his business, his relationships, his every day activity. Reasoning from that spiritual standpoint, I gained the conviction that God, good, is no more the author of sickness or pain than He is of sin, so I was able to see the pain as not of God, good, but as a false belief only. And a false belief is always amenable to truth, so I could dismiss it from thought with the conviction that because of God's allness and onliness, only good is real, or powerful, or possible. And from then on, I suffered no more discomfort.
Through looking to the Christ Science which Jesus employed and which can be employed by anyone, at any time, anywhere we can be undeceived by what the physical senses affirm. We're in position to know that man, every instance of man, has a non-forfeitable function in creation to be God's perfect creation, which He pronounced to be very good, to be God expressed, embodied. And when the truth takes over in thought, it is naturally expressed in experience, removing properly the false belief and its apparent externalization, revealing man as he actually is: God's manifest being.
So, as this book makes plain, healing the sick in Christian Science doesn't consist in projecting thoughts from one individual to another; it is not person over person; it is not belief in any supposed curative power of mental suggestion or hypnosis or thought transference. What it is, is the action of Truth itself displacing erroneous belief, which is already not real.
This action of Truth is explained by Mrs. Eddy when she writes: "Christian Science erases from the minds of invalids their mistaken belief that they live in or because of matter, or that a so-called material organism controls the health or existence of mankind, and induces rest in God, divine Love, as caring for all the conditions requisite for the well-being of man."(17)
Christian Science was not an invention of Mary Baker Eddy's, nor was it just a philosophical abstraction. It was a discovery of the Christ Science, a discovery of the very rule of healing which was the rationale for Jesus' entire ministry and which is, verifiably, practical and operative today. Mrs. Eddy said that she wrote this book as "a scribe under orders."(18) And those most closely associated with her reported that she studied the book more diligently than anyone else. She was spiritually oriented. She was spiritually-minded.
The Apostle Paul said "For to
be carnally minded (or to set the mind on the flesh) is death; but to be
spiritually minded is life and peace."(19) In that statement, wasn't he
showing us the way to be involved in the healing activity of the Comforter? He
was declaring that the issues we face, including the issues between health and
disease, between success and failure, indeed the issues between life and death,
lay in the choice made between spiritual-mindedness and material-mindedness. To
be materially-minded is, of course, to think in terms of matter as substance
and form. But to be spiritually-minded is to think in terms of Spirit as
substance and content and certainly power. Then wouldn't it be reasonable to
consider that it is not just to the religiously-minded, nor to the merely
morally-minded, but to the spiritually-minded, the spiritually knowledgeable,
those who understand God, Spirit, and man's inseparability from Him that
there is life and peace, and logically, then, health and harmony.
Science and Health points out "It is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce of material existence; it is chastity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, which really attest the divine origin and operation of Christian Science."(20) The operation of the Science of Christ, as explained in this book, is as dynamic and effective now as it was when Jesus, that incomparable individualist, was practicing it on the dusty roads, on the decks of boats, or on the hillsides. He made evident that we have present immortality, and that as has been noted, life is not something we have on loan for awhile, but is the eternal fact of true being continuous, impervious to time, or matter, or an ending.
However, on the human scene, modern pollsters say and really rather often that there just can't be a gathering of people, such as we have here today, without there being some in the group who have a touch of the blues, dealing with problems about business, body, parenting, health care, relationships, home, or any of today's panorama of challenges.
The word 'problem' is defined by a leading lexicographer, Webster, as a "question proposed for solution."
And Science and Health, the chronicle of the Comforter, offers solution, not just palliation, nor a modicum of relief, but permanent solution to what may seem so difficult in your world. This isn't just Pollyanna thinking, but a Science with a record of well over one hundred years of being proved in the laboratory of every-day living.
Isn't knowledge of the truth, with its proof, a proper definition of Science? And knowledge of the truth and its subsequent action is what this book is all about. It presents the field of study, the branch of knowledge which Christ Jesus taught, that "The unerring and fixed Principle of all healing is God."(21)
This book was generated as a result of the discovery of the Christ Science, of proofs of its healing Principle, of pure spiritual-mindedness with the author, great depth of study and research by her who made frank acknowledgment of indebtedness to the Scriptures for her Christianly scientific religio-philosophy. It contains the answers for those who are today seeking a reliable means of healing other than the current materialistic methods which are patently inadequate.
When Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science and was impressively healed from what was considered to be a fatal accident, she didn't just sit around enjoying the freedom of good health that she had so long sought, but she accepted the responsibility of establishing Christian Science as true Science, true religion, true medicine.
She says about the book, "The author has not compromised conscience to suit the general drift of thought, but has bluntly and honestly given the text of Truth. She has made no effort to embellish, elaborate, or treat in full detail so infinite a theme. By thousands of well-authenticated cases of healing, she and her students have proved the worth of her teachings."(22)
That's why Christian Scientists don't want to hug this text of Truth to themselves, but want to make it readily accessible to the public, share this discovery with the world, because its truths are practical they can be and are being proved. The Comforter is here to comfort all. The Comforter is here to comfort you.
Again, says the Bible, "Behold, now is the accepted time."(23) We concur that now is, in fact, the only time, the present, the presence of everything that really is, the presence of God and His infinite manifestation.
We refer to the Bible so often because it is integral to Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy said the Bible was her "sole teacher."
So we look to the Bible and learn from it that Jesus said, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." "Heal the sick."(24)
There is closest analogy between Jesus' 'Preach the gospel' the absolute truth and his 'Heal the sick.' They go together, they are concomitant and fundamental to individual salvation and in that way to world salvation.
Inasmuch as Jesus healed sickness and gave us a directive to heal the sick, in accordance with God's law, just as he did, let us consider briefly a Biblical instance of healing based on Jesus' teachings.
In the book of Acts there is the account of Peter and John going to church to pray. Outside was a beggar, crippled all his life, whom someone carried there every day so that he could ask for money from those on their way to church. He asked Peter and John for some money. Then Peter spoke to him with the compassionate love of one who had learned from Jesus how to heal. He said: "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk."(25)
Wasn't he saying, in essence, "In the name, in the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, in the only way and means he ever employed, in his teaching that "The unerring and fixed Principle of all healing is God" rise up and walk. And the man was healed!
"Such as I have" such as he had the divinity of the Christ!
Had Peter and John only given him an alms like everyone else, they would have just contributed to prolonging him in a state of want. But they gave him what every one of us owes to his fellow man: The Christly consciousness of who and what man really is, as God's own likeness, the image of his Maker.
What enabled the cripple to leap up and walk and enter with Peter and John into the temple? Didn't it have to be the scientific correct view of him that healed him, the power of spiritual right thought?
There were physicians in those days and drug dispensaries. Yet Peter gave him no pills, no physical therapy, no material treatment. Peter and John offered him no immunization, inoculation, vaccination or embrocation. He wasn't massaged, medicated, manipulated. And we can be pretty certain there was no inquiry as to his cholesterol count. There were no surgical procedures. Nonetheless, the man's legs were restored to soundness. How? The restoration obviously took place through the action that occurs through spiritual right thinking.
That incident teaches us that the power of spiritual right thought, with direct relation to the divine, will heal bodies and businesses, churches and nations. That is because spiritual right thought is at-one with the power of Spirit, God where all true power is. As the Psalmist said "Power belongeth unto God." That's our answer to all challenges that power belongeth unto God.
Peter and John identified their system of healing as that of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The Christian Science church so identifies its system of healing. And the system is all spelled out in this book that we are talking about.
Jesus put the Science and system of Christian Science into this revealing statement to the centurion who had come seeking help for his servant, "Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee."(26) And the servant was healed. The Master was saying, in essence, that as anyone has believed, that's how it will be unto him. Then we would conclude from what Jesus said that we see what we believe and only what we believe. As one conceives, so will he bring forth. The Master indicated that what we see is our own thought externalized, whether in ourselves, or the other fellow, a condition, a situation, or an organization. Nothing can be objective without first being subjective. So Jesus was teaching that healing takes place in consciousness explained by Mrs. Eddy when she writes: "To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power: and this is Christian Science."(27)
And just like Jesus proved his words by his works, demonstrating by their practicality the soundness of his teaching, this book enables one to rise above the inutility of mere theory to the practicability of proof.
This afternoon I have spoken of, and quoted from, the author of Science and Health. Those unfamiliar with Christian Science sometimes believe mistakenly that Christian Scientists idolize Mrs. Eddy and worship her. That is unconditionally untrue. She herself deplored any such assessment. But those of us who have known healing through her discovery and her indefatigable efforts in making this discovery available to mankind for its healing and redemption are, of course, ineffably grateful. And recognition of her outstanding achievements is indeed increasing around the world.
In an editorial, written about Mrs. Eddy and published in a non-partisan, independent newspaper, was the following account remarkable in its grasp of Mrs. Eddy's purpose and her work: "Mrs. Eddy's greatness came from rediscovering and restoring the method of Christ's healing. Her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, contains the rule by which to find one's relation to God and the resultant freedom from every evil that flesh is heir to. It is a book that must be studied to be understood, and hundreds of thousands today claim that it has introduced them to better morals, firm health, and a satisfying religion.
"Multitudes are proclaiming most solemnly and happily these facts. These multitudes are composed of intelligent, progressive persons in search of ultimate truth, who do not want unsubstantiated theories, but who do want religious facts scientifically demonstrated in the Christ-way right in their own consciousness and experience. The remedy for all sin and error and all discord and all disease, as taught by Mrs. Eddy, is Truth, and Jesus said, 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'" (Editorial Comment in Short Hills, N.J.) That's the explanation for all healing in Christian Science, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Those who knew Mrs. Eddy in person tell of the Christfulness of her life and her impressive healing work. But more than the historical records or biographical data, her writings really depict who and what she was. They are a transparency as to her vision and her purpose.
Mrs. Eddy writes: "If nineteen hundred years ago Christ taught his followers to heal the sick, he is to-day teaching them the same heavenly lesson. Christ is 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.' . . . Divine metaphysics is not to be scoffed at; it is Truth with us, God 'manifest in the flesh,' not alone by miracle and parable, but by proof; it is the divine nature of God, which belongs not to a dispensation now ended, but is ever present, casting out evils, healing the sick, and raising the dead resurrecting individuals buried above-ground in material sense."(28)
Jesus exemplified the Christ. And Christian Science is in strict accord with the teachings of Christ Jesus who said to you and me: "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him . . . Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. . . . And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth."(29)
Now Christian Science is the inescapable ultimate of the age-old search for what the Master called the spirit of truth, because Christian Science alone brings science, religion, and philosophy into focus as one and the same, the truth about God and man. Christian Science unfolds the Science of being and doing.
The Scriptures, and Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures, ordained as the Pastor of the Church of Christ, Scientist
present the Science of Being, the nature and essence of what God is, the
substance of your true identity as the likeness and image of God.
Science and Health is unequivocal. It says, "You can prove for yourself, dear reader, the Science of healing, and so ascertain if the author has given you the correct interpretation of Scripture . . . Christian Science is dawning upon a material age. . . The proof that the system stated in this book is Christianly scientific resides in the good this system accomplishes, for it cures on a divine demonstrable Principle which all may understand."(30) Having gained that spiritual perception of the divine demonstrable Principle, one's destination in his quest for health and peace and dominion has been reached.
Indeed, Science and Health provides journey's end for any honest seeker for truth.
1. Ex. 20:1-3
2. Mal. 2:10
3. John 5:19
4. S&H vii
5. Ps. 62:11
6. Mis. 59
7. Message for 1901. 18:8-16
8. S&H 494:11
9. Message for 1901. 18:17
10. S&H 191:8
11. Matt. 5:45
12. S&H 313
13. Ps. 37:18, Moffatt
14. S&H 390:20-23
15. S&H 120
16. Hea. 6:21
17. Rud. 12:16-21
18. Mis. 311:26
19. Rom. 8:6
20. S&H 272:19-25
21. Mis. 232
22. S&H x: 11
23. II Cor. 6:2
24. Mark 16:15; Matt. 10:8
25. Acts 3:6,8
26. Matt. 8:13
27. Miscellany. 160
28. Miscellany. 109:10-13; 23-4
29. John 14:23,27,16,17
30. S&H 547, 546
[The story of the medical doctor who was healed by reading Science and Health is the story of John M. Tutt, himself a Christian Science lecturer. It is told in a testimony that can be read here.]