THE history of mankind's acquaintance with the Bible is one of expansion. Most of the books of which the Bible is composed were originally limited to a single nation, but its message has burst the bonds of language, of doctrinal interpreters, and of laborious handwritten reproduction. As each restriction has been removed, the message has reached a new segment of humanity, and its influence has increased greatly.
"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy unlocks the meaning of the Bible, long hidden from mankind. This book is as certainly a gift of God to humanity as is the Bible itself. Therefore its message is destined to be as readily available as that of the Bible.
Science and Health has been translated into a number of languages, and now a further step of progress has been taken; it is available in paperback form at a moderate price. How grateful Christian Scientists are to see that the message of their textbook is being more widely presented to mankind! For they know that this message is intended to reach everyone who is seeking the truth.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). The Word expresses the divine consciousness, the Mind that is God. Human consciousness must be educated out of its false, mortal beliefs. Human language is necessary to reach this mentality. Just as Jesus appeared to mankind in corporeal form in order to save them from their delusions, so the divine Word is expressed for the same purpose in the highest form of human language—the Bible and Science and Health.
Mrs. Eddy, who discerned the full import of Jesus' example and of the precepts of the Bible, tells us in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 85), "Of this also rest assured, that books and teaching are but a ladder let down from the heaven of Truth and Love, upon which angelic thoughts ascend and descend, bearing on their pinions of light the Christ-spirit."
These priceless gifts to humanity—the Bible and Science and Health—must be studied with the greatest diligence and consecration. Their purpose is to raise thought from the material to the spiritual. In this process the individual consciousness must become so completely imbued with divine truths that spontaneous thought is established on a spiritual plane.
When one undertakes to learn another language, he studies and speaks it. He learns the grammatical rules of the unfamiliar language and translates its words into the corresponding words of his own language. But he is not considered to have mastered the new language fully until he is able to think in it.
This experience parallels the learning of the new tongue of Spirit. Its rules must be mastered. Then the translations are made. This process is described on page 123 of Science and Health in these words: "Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas."
It might be said that affirmative prayer is thinking in the language of the new tongue. And the ultimate aim of the learner is to think exclusively in that language. This is why prayer is so necessary to the progress of the Christian Scientist. For the Word must become to him not merely printed symbols in precious books, but spiritual ideas filling his consciousness.
The incalculable power in human experience of thought that is even temporarily engrossed in spiritual facts was illustrated in the experience of a busy wife and mother. When the phonograph records of Science and Health were first made available by The Christian Science Publishing Society, she had bought them. One summer afternoon as she listened to the records for about three hours while doing routine work in the kitchen, her consciousness became imbued with the messages of Truth.
Her little daughter, who was running barefooted in the yard, suddenly screamed. A piece of broken glass, hidden by the grass, had cut a gash in her foot several inches long. The foot was bleeding profusely. Hearing her cries, the child's father, a dedicated Christian but not a Christian Scientist, ran to the little girl, held up the foot, and examined it anxiously.
The mother also saw the material evidence of an accident, but her thought was so filled with spiritual truths that she could not accept the unhappy picture as real. No effort to cling to any particular statement of Truth was necessary. Her consciousness was filled with the reality of God's presence and of the complete safety and harmony of God's spiritual idea, man. As the father held the foot in his hand, while both he and the mother were watching it, the skin swiftly closed together.
"Where did it go? Where did it go?" the father asked, in some confusion, as the wound simply vanished.
This beautiful experience is explained by a statement of Mrs. Eddy's in "Rudimental Divine Science" (p. 9), "The spiritual power of a scientific, right thought, without a direct effort, an audible or even a mental argument, has oftentimes healed inveterate diseases."
In human history the Word, as expressed in the Bible and in Science and Health, is destined to reach all mankind. In the experience of the sincere individual seeker who practices what he learns, the Word, in its highest sense, must become all important to his consciousness and being.
