With God-bestowed spiritual vision Mary Baker Eddy turned to the Bible as her only guide to the Science of Life. So today the world has not only the Bible, but also her great work, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," a work founded on her discernment of the spiritual import of the Book of Books. These two infallible textbooks, in perfect agreement, point the way to the healing of every ill to which mortals are heir.
Christian Scientists can testify that many are the healings they have experienced from study and from the demonstration of the truths found in these two blessed books. The Bible Lessons, outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly, when studied faithfully never fail to bring some measure of healing. One student found a verse in Proverbs especially helpful. It reads (29:18), "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." Pondering this verse, she concluded: Then where there is vision and the keeping of the law, the people live happily.
But what, reasoned the student, is the law? It is more than the moral codes of Moses and the prophets; it is the law of the spirit of Life and Love, revealed and proved by Christ Jesus, the law which, as the Apostle Paul declares, "hath made [us] free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2). Today Christian Scientists know this law as the Comforter, Christian Science.
Christian Science stands foursquare on the true account of creation given in the first chapter of Genesis. Herein we find that God created the universe and man spiritual and perfect; He made man in His own image and likeness, immortal. He did not make man material and mortal. From the false sense of man as given in the second chapter of Genesis have come all the woes of the world. Fear, sin, and ignorance of the true are the primary causes of every trouble experienced by men. Ignorance must give place to knowledge; fear to perfect Love, which casts out fear; sin to holiness. How can we accomplish this? By continued study and proof of the truth of God and man contained in our textbooks. Consecrated study will bring to light and correct the errors latent in thought. Never should we fear the uncovering; we should welcome it and the revealing of good. Not fear of evil, but love of good is the stimulus in healing.
What a glorious vision opens to us as we study and realize that there is but one God, good, not two, good and evil, spiritual and material; consequently there is but one complete reflection, the spiritual idea, man, and the real universe. When we grasp the fundamental fact in Christian Science that a good, perfect God, Spirit, can have only a good, perfect, spiritual reflection, we grasp the basic and scientific starting point for healing; and with continued study and prayer healing comes.
Christ Jesus always turned to God for inspiration in his healing work. He knew that of himself he could do nothing but that which he saw the Father do. He knew that God made man to express perfection and that in reality everyone is the perfect son of God, not the offspring of human parents. For us to see and to heal as Jesus saw and healed, we must realize that we are now the sons of God. Jesus told Nicodemus that to see the kingdom of God he must be born again. So we too must be born again of Spirit.
From the premise of spiritual, present perfection, we work out our problems. Only from this mount of vision can we see and attain the kingdom. If we start wrongly, we end wrongly. It is vision of the perfect —first, last, always—that wins perfection. Not, however, in a moment do we attain reality, but as we hear God speaking to us "at sundry times and in divers manners," to use Paul's words (Hebr. 1:1).
By maintaining continual vision of God's man and universe, the student mentioned in the beginning of this article kept her human sight clear. Early in her study of Science she glimpsed and in small measure has proved Mrs. Eddy's great statement in Science and Health (p. 131), "The central fact of the Bible is the superiority of spiritual over physical power." This central fact of the Bible and of Christian Science, understood, clarifies vision. It is the law of the Spirit which makes free from the law of sin and death.
The science of optics, the student was told, decrees that after a certain time in life one must put on reading glasses, and then with aging, stronger and stronger lenses must be used. Knowing through her study of Christian Science that man is ageless, that good sight is the natural effect of spiritual discernment, and that one really sees through the lens of Spirit, she resisted the thought of wearing glasses. At one period in her life her sight somewhat blurred; but as she stood faithful to the definition of "eyes" as "spiritual discernment,—not material but mental" (ibid., p. 586) and to the other references to eyes, sight, and vision in Mrs. Eddy's writings and in the hymns of the Christian Science Hymnal, her vision cleared. She has never put on glasses, and today reads the finest print.
Man, spiritual man, eternally reflects his all-seeing Father-Mother God. Christ, Truth, is the light of the world; and in this light, the world sees light and must become fully enlightened.
Our Saviour teaches (Matt. 5:8), "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Purity is a basic quality vital to sight and to strength. Tennyson, seeing purity as strength, has Sir Galahad say,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
And surely Christ Jesus had more than the strength of ten; he had limitless strength and vision derived from God, because his heart was pure. Could he have given us his great Sermon on the Mount had his heart not been pure and his vision clear? No physical power governed the life of Jesus. Superiority of spiritual over physical power was the central fact of his life.
Mrs. Eddy lovingly counsels us to follow Christ. She says in the Message to The Mother Church for 1901 (p. 34), "Obey strictly the laws that be, and follow your Leader only so far as she follows Christ." Had it heeded the counsel to follow Christ, the world never would have become embroiled in tragic wars. But happily today it is beginning to listen. The signs of the times show a marked turning to the Bible; and finally awakening spiritual vision will bring a general turning to Science and Health. Christian Scientists revere their Leader, Mrs. Eddy. May the whole world heed the injunction in Proverbs (31:31), "Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates."
Who would not discern perfect God and perfect man and perfect universe! "Where there is no vision, the people perish." But where there is vision, "he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
