Christian Science, the discovery of Mary Baker Eddy, is the Science of being or of reality. It tells of the nature of God and His creation. Thus it deals with the spiritual; for God is Spirit, and His creation is like unto Him. In revealing the truth about God and His spiritual creation, including man, Christian Science teaches the unreal nature of that which mortals call matter; and, consequently, its realm is altogether apart from the sphere of "natural science," which treats of so-called matter and its phenomena.
It has been the endeavor of the spiritually-minded in every age to help their fellow-men to a better understanding of God. The effort at times may have been crude, when the understanding of God was slight; but wherever there has been an appreciation of reality, a knowledge of that which is beyond the perception of the material senses,—spiritual Being,— those who have had the vision have tried to translate it into terms understandable by their fellow-men, and have succeeded in proportion to the honesty of their purpose. This spiritual vision has shown itself in moral rectitude and in spiritual power, giving dominion over the human passions and endowing whoever possessed it with those spiritual qualities which confirm the divine nature of man.
To human sense the truth about God has been a gradual unfoldment. The Christian of to-day is aware that this unfoldment is particularly apparent in the history of God's people, as evidenced in the historical, poetical, and prophetic books of the Old Testament, and later in the New Testament,—in the gospels, the apostolic epistles, and Revelation. The majority of Christians believe that the highest understanding of God the world has received was given by Christ Jesus, and that his revelation was final. Christian Scientists, however, do not look exactly in this way on the Master's work. While they treasure it as wonderful, acknowledging him as the great Way-shower, the "altogether lovely," "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," the Messiah who revealed the Father in the majesty of divine simplicity and demonstrated his knowledge in the healing of all manner of disease and sin, still, they know that, as Christ Jesus himself had prophesied, a further revelation of God would later be given to men. And they understand this revelation to be Christian Science.
