MRS. EDDY tells us that after her own healing by spiritual means alone, she began to search for the Principle of this healing and held to the Bible as her only text-book. The result of her study, as stated in Science and Health (p. 110), is well worth pondering by every earnest seeker after Truth. She says, "The Scriptures were illumined; reason and revelation were reconciled." In these few words, which state an important fact in the spiritual unfoldment of humanity, Mrs. Eddy not only gives her own experience, but voices that of thousands who have followed the line of her discovery, thousands who had long desired to find the truth which they instinctively felt to be contained in the Scriptures, but who had missed it to a large extent because they sought to make the teachings of the Bible agree with material belief.
No thoughtful person would deny that superstition has greatly obscured the teachings of the Bible, and when scholarly criticism invaded the realm of theology it not only assailed superstition, but its influence was largely destructive to the simple faith which had satisfied a good many people up to a certain point. But the faith which can be shipwrecked or even shaken by a storm of criticism, or by the hardest experiences of mortal existence, needs to find a truer foundation, one whereon reason and revelation can stand together, the one as enduring as the other. If any Scriptural criticism tends to illumine the pages of the Bible so that they bring comfort, moral purification, or healing to the student, then such criticism should be welcomed by every sincere Christian; but if the criticism is mainly destructive, dealing with flaws in the letter while it fails to reach the spiritual fact, its service to mankind may well be questioned. This may be said, however, that the uprooting of the accumulated false growths of the ages is inevitable, and if the field is really cleared, the sooner will the "good seed" mentioned by Christ Jesus find its rightful soil and spring up with blessing for the whole human family. The trouble is that some who have seen what appear to be mistakes in the Bible, and who have exposed them, have not hesitated to offer their own opinions in substitution for that which they reject, and in many instances these opinions are even more material than the views which they controvert. At the same time, we may rejoice that again and again true gleams of inspiration have come; and these never leave men where they find them, but ever portend more light.
Our revered Leader says, "The Scriptures are very sacred. Our aim must be to have them understood spiritually, for only by this understanding can truth be gained" (Science and Health, p. 547). Christ Jesus understood the value of the spiritual sense of the Scriptures, its absolute necessity to human development, and so he said, "Search the scriptures," but at his first recorded public reading of them there was a violent collision between his thought and that of his auditors, as we find in the fourth chapter of Luke's gospel. His comment upon the Scripture which he read was that the healing ministry of Spirit, of which Isaiah wrote, was being fulfilled in their midst. Then the listeners whispered, "Is not this Joseph's son?" He next proceeded to tell them how few there were in the olden time who had accepted the ever-present Truth; and at this point all who were in the synagogue rose up in wrath, "and thrust him out of the city," even sought to kill him; but he escaped from them, and went on with his work of healing and teaching. The record tells us that "his word was with power," and all who are healed in Christian Science bear testimony to the fact that the word of Truth is no less powerful today than at the dawn of Christianity.
