How reassuring it is to know that Christian Science does not ask us to give up the only truly effective medicine, for Christian Science affords us the same medicine which Jesus employed with such remarkable results. Its potency is evidenced in numberless healings, such as those recorded in Matthew (15:30, 31): "Great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet; and he healed them: insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel."
These healings were not miracles. They were natural manifestations of Truth destroying error. Jesus understood the Christ, man's real selfhood, and knew that this spiritual selfhood is present for all mankind to know and to demonstrate. He taught his disciples to heal, and said that we should do the works that he did. Healing by spiritual means continued for about three hundred years in the early Christian church, but during succeeding centuries it was lost to the world. Scholastic doctrines and the materialization of worship—rites and ceremonies taking the place of spiritual discernment and moral regeneration—hid the healing Christ.
But the Christ, the divine manifestation of God in human affairs, could not be indefinitely obscured. In 1866 Mary Baker Eddy discovered the Christ-method of healing and named her discovery Christian Science. Explaining the scientific basis of her discovery, she states in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 460): "Our system of Mind-healing rests on the apprehension of the nature and essence of all being,—on the divine Mind and Love's essential qualities. Its pharmacy is moral, and its medicine is intellectual and spiritual, though used for physical healing." She also says in the textbook (p. 453): "A Christian Scientist's medicine is Mind, the divine Truth that makes man free."
