The transforming power of Christian Science is best apparent in lives which have come to express happiness and health through its ministrations. The inevitable laws of God, of the one Mind, which is Love, are ever present and immutably good. Christian Science awakens humanity to the understanding that the healing of mankind's condition and circumstances is within the orbit of these always beneficent laws. Physical healing is one of humanity's great needs. Often such healing comes instantly, but sometimes by gradual steps. But come it must, sooner or later, for Truth is irresistible, establishing that only which is real and right and dissolving forever that which is unlike its own perfect and lovely nature.
The transforming power of Truth is described by Mary Baker Eddy as "the alchemy of Spirit." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she writes (p. 422): "As when an acid and alkali meet and bring out a third quality, so mental and moral chemistry changes the material base of thought, giving more spirituality to consciousness and causing it to depend less on material evidence. These changes which go on in mortal mind serve to reconstruct the body. Thus Christian Science, by the alchemy of Spirit, destroys sin and death."
Alchemy was the forerunner of our modern chemistry, and among the many activities of the early alchemists was the endeavor to transmute the base metals into gold. In human affairs, however, "the alchemy of Spirit" is taking place in quite a different way, and the transmuting agent is the Christ, which reveals the true idea of God and man, and in its eternal tenderness and joy exchanges mortal ways for the pure gold of man's likeness to God. This divine process is aptly defined in this familiar Bible passage (I John 3:2, 3): "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."
