A Young man who had studied the Bible in an orthodox Sunday School was inclined to scoff at the title of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, when it was first called to his attention. What need, he asked, was there for a key to the Bible? Had not his parents and grandparents read it regularly and led good Christian lives in accordance with its precepts? Had not the Psalms comforted thousands throughout the ages, and had not the teachings of Jesus come down through the centuries with a luster that time could not dim? He knew the answer was "Yes." Yet he also wondered how God could be infinite Love and permit His children to suffer sickness, poverty, and other afflictions without providing a way of escape. Could a kind and loving creator bring disasters and wars? Could Jesus be the Way-shower and yet his followers be unable to walk in the way he outlined or do the things he commanded them to do?
About this time, this young man, just out of college, took up his residence in a locality several hundred miles distant from the one where he had been urged to look into Christian Science. He resolved that since he had no acquaintances or friends to influence his thinking, he would make an unbiased investigation of this new religion. At a public library he found a copy of Science and Health which he read almost continuously during the day for the next three weeks. As he perused its pages, the indisputable logic of its teachings took strong hold on his thinking, and to his surprise he found that he also read the Bible in a clearer light than before. He became convinced that he had found the key to its teachings.
Previously he had been taught, and believed, that man is both physical and spiritual, having a material body inhabited by a soul. Christian Science teaches that man is made in the image and likeness of God and is wholly spiritual. To read the Bible while holding to the belief that man is material now, but becomes spiritual after death, beclouds its many clear and positive statements regarding man as the child of God, who inherits only the nature and qualities of his creator. Christian Science accepts perfect God and perfect man as the reality of existence. It classifies a so called material man as a creature of the physical senses, and it holds that this sense illusion cannot override or annul the harmony of being. Having caught a glimpse of these truths, the young man began to apply what he was learning to daily problems of all sorts—ill health, poverty, unemployment, human relations, and others —with the result that they were solved.
