In the year 1866 Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science. She had met with an accident, and the injury caused thereby could be healed neither by medicine nor by surgery. While in this condition, and apparently about to pass on, her consciousness became spiritually illumined, and with the illumination came her recovery. She could not explain at the moment how it had come about, but she was certain that a miracle had been wrought.
Then, for about three years, Mrs. Eddy withdrew from society, as she writes in the chapter entitled "The Great Discovery" in her autobiography, "Retrospection and Introspection." And during this time she made diligent search in the Scriptures for the explanation of her healing. In this she was successful, finding in the Bible the divine Principle and the rules for its demonstration, thus discovering the Science which underlay the teaching and works of Christ Jesus, the great Way-shower who had proved the power of God so successfully in the healing of disease and sin during his ministry on earth. The Bible was thus Mrs. Eddy's only textbook in her search for and discovery of the Science of spiritual healing— Christian Science.
After putting her discovery thoroughly to the test by healing numerous cases of disease, Mrs. Eddy wrote the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and published its first edition in 1875 under the title "Science and Health." This book she revised repeatedly; for she was desirous that it should carry its divine revelation to the world in language as free as possible from ambiguity, so that all who studied it might readily apprehend its meaning. Of the Christian Science textbook she writes on page 456 of Science and Health that it "contains the full statement of Christian Science, or the Science of healing through Mind." That Science and Health does contain "the full statement of Christian Science" is gratefully acknowledged by all genuine students of Christian Science, who make a practice of systematically studying it along with the Bible in order to secure the inspiration needed for the solution of their problems.
