Mary Baker Eddy was always deeply religious. In her young womanhood she sought the solution for humanity's difficulties in the church, but found some of its doctrinal beliefs stereotyped and limiting, condemning and confusing, rather than helpful and saving. 1 his rigidity of belief tried to shut out the budding revelation of God's impartial love to all His children which was even then going on in her consciousness. Deep within her heart was the conviction that God is Love and that He loves all of His children alike, and that sickness, sin, and death can be healed through prayer when one knows how to pray aright.
In the study of the Bible she found the answers to her questions and learned through prayer and revelation the Science of Christianity. When other church denominations refused to accept the spiritual concept of God and man and the spiritual healing through prayer which had come to her pure receptive thought, she was forced to establish a church. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the textbook of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy asks and answers a question (p. 131): "Must Christian Science come through the Christian churches as some persons insist? This Science has come already, after the manner of God's appointing, but the churches seem not ready to receive it, according to the Scriptural saying, 'He came unto his own, and his own received him not.'" Thus it was that she established a church, one that has proved itself effective in satisfying the human need for health, spiritual understanding, and progress, and for salvation from sin and its dire results.
In a letter published in "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says of the edifice of The Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts (p. 141): "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, our prayer in stone, will be the prophecy fulfilled, the monument upreared, of Christian Science. It will speak to you of the Mother, and of your hearts' offering to her through whom was revealed to you God's all-power, all-presence, and all-science."
