"All history is a Bible." These words A of Thomas Carlyle's echo a great truth. The Bible is the Book of books. From a literary point of view it includes allegory, biography, history, law, letters, poetry, and parables. The literary point of view, however, is not the one with which a Christian Scientist is primarily concerned. In a report of a sermon by Mary Baker Eddy we read (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 170), "The material record of the Bible, she said, is no more important to our well-being than the history of Europe and America; but the spiritual application bears upon our eternal life."
Spiritual experience does not belong exclusively to the past, nor is it confined to a future. It is always in the present, in the eternal now. The reason for this is that spiritual experience belongs to God, and since God is ever present, spiritual experience must be ever present also. Mrs. Eddy may have been referring to our spiritual experience when she wrote (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 12), "We own no past, no future, we possess only now."
The Bible, both the Old and the New Testament, when spiritually understood records our spiritual history. The truth it contains occurs in the ever-present now. Christian Science reveals the spiritual interpretation of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but to illustrate this point let us turn to the New Testament.
