Throughout the ages men have engaged in garnering and dispensing the fragrance of flowers and spices. Householders have treasured their rose jars, filled with the spicy essence of sweet petals, and perfumers have built up a world-wide business in fragrances of all types. In Christ Jesus' time it was the custom to set aside certain fragrant oils and spices against the day of burial. These were usually expensive and often acquired at great sacrifice. Mary Magdalene showed her contrition and her love for Jesus by bathing his feet in a fragrant oil when Simon, his host, had neglected to provide the courtesy usually extended to an honored guest, that is, having a servant wash his feet. Later, when Jesus had been put into the tomb, she and other women brought sweet spices intending to anoint the body.
The holiness and purity of Jesus' unselfish life have perfumed the world with a sweetness unparalleled in history. In recent times Mary Baker Eddy discovered the laws underlying Jesus' teachings and ministry and gave them to the world in an exact Science set forth in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." The fragrance of her spirituality and unselfish desire to bless mankind has perfumed the world through the revelation which she received from God. In her book "Miscellaneous Writings" she makes a statement typical of her own life (p.228): "To be a great man or woman, to have a name whose odor fills the world with its fragrance, is to bear with patience the buffetings of envy or malice— even while seeking to raise those barren natures to a capacity for a higher life."
Christian Science teaches that man, made in the image of God, as the first chapter of Genesis states, must be spiritual and must partake of God's spiritual nature, for the Bible also tells us that God is Spirit. Hence the fragrance of being is expressed through man in spiritual qualities, such as love, perfection, holiness, wisdom, unselfishness, and spiritual understanding. Furthermore, Christian Science teaches that God and His spiritual creation are all, and that the belief of a material creation is a false concept without actual foundation, even though appearing to be real to mortal sense. This Science instructs us how to utilize spiritual law to solve all our problems. It proves through demonstration that the realities of being, the spiritual fads of creation, are primal and eternal and that they are established in individual consciousness when thought is turned Godward.
