Divine Science has always existed. It is the law of God, which is as eternal as God and coexists with Him. In divine Science man has ever lived as the reflection of God. His oneness with God necessitates his oneness with spiritual law throughout all eternity, "before the world was."
The human family, however, has ever been in dire need of a scientific knowledge of divine law. As recorded in the Gospels, Jesus, our Exemplar, gave mighty proofs of his understanding of divine law. He not only had knowledge of divine Science, but lived according to its rules, thus being enabled to bring forth exact results. He applied his understanding of God in the so-called physical realm, in healing sickness, raising the dead, reforming the sinner, overcoming the belief in material substance, destroying lack, subduing the elements, and so forth. So grand was his application of spiritual law that his lifework changed the whole course of human history. But Jesus' spiritual understanding of Science was something far more potent than anything that was ever seen in the physical realm or that material sense could cognize. He rejoiced in his spiritual understanding or knowledge of perfect God and perfect man, while the onlooker marveled at the healing results.
Jesus taught his immediate followers how this spiritual power could be used, and bade them use it, and for some time after his departure his followers practiced Christian healing. But as time went on, mortals asleep in the mist or mystery of pleasure and pain in matter caught only faint glimpses of spiritual law, and gradually the divinely natural phenomena spoken of as "miracles" faded out of human experience. Regardless of this waning of understanding, the law was still ever present, and Mary Baker Eddy in her hour of greatest need discovered it. The dawn of the truth came to her consciousness when at the portals of death, and as she read the account of Jesus' healing of the man who was sick of the palsy, she was restored to normal health. Thus, having proved for herself that spiritual law ever exists and is always available, she spent three secluded years listening for God's voice and accepting divine Science as it was revealed to her pure consciousness in all its pristine beauty and grandeur. God was revealing Himself to Mrs. Eddy through spiritual illumination, and at the same time she was learning how to give her discovery to the world.
