To lovers of beautiful literature, the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, abound in passages of unsurpassed richness and color. An arresting example of this is to be found in the Preface to her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. ix, x). She writes, "There is an old age of the heart, and a youth that never grows old." And in the next sentence she continues, "The fleeting freshness of youth, however, is not the evergreen of Soul; the coloring glory of perpetual bloom; the spiritual glow and grandeur of a consecrated life wherein dwelleth peace, sacred and sincere in trial or in triumph."
While most readers would willingly concede the artistic appeal and beauty of these lines, it is only to those who are earnestly and humbly seeking the spiritual import of their meaning that Mrs. Eddy's words are of practical value. In many such cases, the dawning of this spiritual enlightenment has resulted in healings of physical disorders, despondency, lack, fatigue, and other discordant conditions.
The question of overcoming the mortal beliefs of age and decrepitude, with their attendant trail of weakness, woe, and want, has long engaged the thoughts of men. Quite aside from all material means and methods, however, are the benefit and blessing offered to disheartened men and women today, in this respect, through the teachings of Christian Science—teachings which are based on the Bible, on spiritual fact, not fable. In the first chapter of Genesis we read, "So God created man in his own image." Farther on we find these words: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Christian Science avers that since man is the image, the exact likeness, of the immutable, unchanging Principle, Life, God, he is not subject to material laws of decrepitude and decay, which end in debility and death. These truths, continually cherished in one's consciousness, inevitably bring about improved bodily conditions.
