In the year 1866 there came to Mary Baker Eddy the revelation that Christ Jesus' gospel of the kingdom of heaven was the good news of the heavenly Father's ability to heal and save mankind not only in Jesus' time but for all time. That for which he gave his earthly all had for centuries become to an extent abrogated. Most Christians believed that the sinner could have direct access to God for pardon, but that the sick man could no longer avail himself of Jesus' spiritual method of healing disease by direct recourse to God.
Throughout the years, however, since the third century, when Christian healing gave way before human despotism, individuals have turned in full faith to God and experienced immediate healing of disease; but healing such as this has often been classified as a special dispensation. When our Leader opened her thought to divine healing as a present possibility, and experienced an immediate recovery from the effects of an accident, supposedly fatal, she did not regard it as a special dispensation, but as a proof of the working of a universally available spiritual law which Jesus had both preached and demonstrated.
This discovery she named Christian Science, and in due time students of this truth became known as Christian Scientists. Perhaps because they felt so keenly that they had entered into a new way of living, the expression, "When I came into Christian Science," became current. Like many convenient phrases, it is both correct and incorrect. Truly the first definite proof that the understanding of God heals men today as it did long ago on the shores of Galilee, is like entering into a new land. To those who have suffered from supposedly incurable diseases and have received healing, it is like the reprieve which comes to a convicted man at the eleventh hour. It is an opportunity to start anew, but it is a start rather than an accomplishment.
