"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God." These are the opening verses of St. John's Gospel.
The thrice-repeated "Word" has echoed down the centuries, but its profound spiritual intent has rarely been understood. The Word has a twofold meaning: the Christ-idea, embraced in God, and the visible sign as illustrated in the healing power of Jesus. The twofold significance of the Word is apprehensible through spiritual sense only. Jesus' inward understanding of his spiritual origin, together with the outward expression of that understanding in healing, constituted the supreme proof of his divine mission—the Word made flesh.
The Word opens the path to a higher understanding of divine Life. The higher and scientific understanding of Life, the revelation of the Science of Christianity, has been given to this age by Mary Baker Eddy in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."
The scientific rules relating to spiritual healing and to the regeneration of thought were discovered by Mrs. Eddy. The spiritual interpretation and application of the Word lead on to the realization and demonstration of man's immortal nature, his divine status, his spiritual sonship, which Jesus clearly exemplified.
Mrs. Eddy explains with scientific exactitude the application of the Word to human thought and action and unveils its consequent regenerative power. The Christ-consciousness, discernible in all Jesus' sayings and doings, is the high goal of mankind's endeavor. This consciousness illumines and interprets a later verse in the first chapter of John's Gospel: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."
Speaking of her own first efforts in Scriptural exposition, Mrs. Eddy writes in the Preface of Science and Health (p. x): "Various books on mental healing have since been issued, most of them incorrect in theory and filled with plagiarisms from Science and Health. They regard the human mind as a healing agent, whereas this mind is not a factor in the Principle of Christian Science." In this recognition that the human mind is not a factor in the healing, lies the great secret of spiritual success in the application of the Word as taught by Christ Jesus.
The realization that the Word of Truth reveals the divine origin of man and his true identity will lift thought from the false seeming of the mortal dream to the reality of spiritual living and being. The understanding of his spiritual origin will endow the seeker with true consciousness; it will reveal the God-given dominion chronicled in the first chapter of Genesis. This dominion is the essence of Mrs. Eddy's discovery and opens the way to the attainment of the Christ-consciousness as a present possibility through obedience to the rules stated in the Christian Science textbook. Spiritual dominion fulfills the purpose of Life, which was achieved by the Master, namely immortality, together with the complete conquest of the so-called Adam-dream.
In a message written in April, 1899, upon the subject, "Not Matter, but Spirit," Mrs. Eddy says (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 152): "The restoration of pure Christianity rests solely on spiritual understanding, spiritual worship, spiritual power. Ask thyself, Do I enter by the door and worship only Spirit and spiritually, or do I climb up some other way?" And on the next page she adds, "Christian Science healing is 'the Spirit and the bride,'—the Word and the wedding of this Word to all human thought and action,—that says: Come, and I will give thee rest, peace, health, holiness."
From her writings it is clear that Truth with its immortal message of reality must pierce the mists of mere intellectualism, of false theology, false education, false thinking, and bring to light the Life of which Christ Jesus said (John 5:26), "As the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself," that is, the same quality of Life. Reflecting Life in its true and immortal nature, one proves its complete ascendancy.
The power of the Word appeared to the pure consciousness of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science with ever-present vitality. Because of her fundamental conviction of the eternality of her revelation, Mrs. Eddy was inspired to carry forward her great task in the face of concerted resistance and opposition. She knew that her message was fraught with divine authority. She proved that Pentecostal power is ever present and available. Undaunted by opposition, she pressed on to establish successfully her Church and all its accompanying activities. She had been healed, and she knew the nature of this spiritual healing, and that her mission as Discoverer and Founder must be undertaken and completed at whatever cost.
The ever-expanding horizon of the Word and of the power and significance of the Word is revealed to the spiritually alert who study, ponder, listen, assimilate, and practice the teachings of Christian Science. A higher initiative to follow in the path of Christ Jesus, whose utterances were with power, will gain an ascendancy over all evil. Mortal mind will be divested of its capacity to dupe or victimize, and the spiritual idea, the son of God, endowed with spiritual power, will be revealed.
The aim and purpose of the student are to follow this line of light in the humble desire to contribute to the ever-widening recognition of the activity and power of the Word. The Scripture is being fulfilled, and Jesus' saying (John 6:63), "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life," is being perpetuated in the daily, even hourly, experience of those who study the Bible and Science and Health and practice faithfully what they discern spiritually from this study.
