CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS acknowledge Christ Jesus as the Founder of Christianity. They accept, as did he, the Hebrew Scriptures, which contain the religious history and poetry of the Jewish people, history and poetry which set forth what their prophets and seers had discovered about God and His laws. They likewise acknowledge Christ Jesus as the Messiah and as the introducer to the world of a new and higher order of religious sentiment and spiritual understanding. Mrs. Eddy's words on page 138 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" exactly summarize the attitude of the Christian Scientist towards Christianity: "Jesus established in the Christian era the precedent for all Christianity, theology, and healing. Christians are under as direct orders now, as they were then, to be Christlike, to possess the christ-spirit, to follow the Christ-example, and to heal the sick as well as the sinning."
Few Christians are disposed to cavil at the words of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science just quoted, with the exception perhaps of the last clause, in which reference is made to the healing of sickness. But why should any Christian take exception to that? Did not Jesus heal all manner of disease among the people? Did not he send out first the twelve disciples and then seventy of his followers to bring the gospel of the kingdom of heaven to the people and to heal the sick among them? And did not he leave this message for his followers in all time to come, as Mark records: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. . . . And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; . . . they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover"?
Mrs. Eddy had for long prayed for enlightenment on the mode of healing used by Jesus. She had been an earnest student of the Bible from her early years, and was familiar with its commands as well as with its promises. But it was only after much suffering and disappointment with the various systems of the human mind, and after she had exhausted the search along the line of modern material methods of healing, and when to appearance she was at the point of passing on, that the glorious truth dawned upon her thought that the Christ, as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error" (Science and Health, p. 583), is ever present to meet the needs of suffering humanity. The apprehension of the Christ, Truth, broke her own dream of suffering—healed her; and from that moment she set herself to discover the Principle and rules of spiritual healing which to begin with she had but dimly perceived.
