A dictionary defines "reason" in part as "the power of comprehending and inferring; the ability to trace out the implications of a combination of facts." Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has written in "Science and Health with Key to Scriptures," the textbook of Christian Science (p. 327), "Reason is the most active human faculty." She also says (ibid., p. 492), "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence."
How essential, then, that our reasoning be based upon sound premises and be rightly directed in order that conclusions may be reached which will benefit mankind! Christian Science reveals to a world weary of reasoning upon a material basis how to reason correctly, in line with Jesus' teachings, from a Scripturally sound premise of spiritual reality. The fact of spiritual existence is set forth in the first chapter of Genesis, which states that God, Spirit, created man in His own likeness—the likeness of Spirit, and that He pronounced His creation "very good." The perfection of spiritual being is the fact to be kept before the thought. It is the premise or basis for all right reasoning—man and the universe spiritual and perfect, maintained perpetually by God's law.
Thousands of individuals all over the world, through a study of Christian Science, are gaining an understanding of the fact of spiritual existence, and are learning to reason rightly from this spiritual premise. In proportion as their thought is spiritually active, they are solving their problems and realizing harmony in their daily lives. Jesus reasoned rightly from spiritual facts. His thought was at all times so imbued with the truth of "spiritual existence" that the healings he effected were instantaneous. He knew and proved the evidence of the physical senses to be false.
