A centenary is a period of one hundred years. It is also an evaluation of such a period. When Mary Baker Eddy discovered Christian Science in 1866 and later gave her discovery to the world in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she cut sharply across many accepted standards of thought and conduct and challenged us to higher issues. Her discovery that all is divine Mind and its manifestation as idea had a shocking impact upon the materially-minded; yet to the open-minded it came as release from the choking cords of matter limitation.
Christian Science teaches that all reality is a continuity. Creation itself is a continuing unfolding of God's thought. By its infinite nature God's thought, though complete, is never ended. Christian Science therefore is more than mere impact upon human consciousness and life. It is influence. It is a sustained inflowing of power to effect change for the better, to reverse false laws of matter and uphold true laws of Spirit.
There was a strong element of prophecy in Christ Jesus' parable of the kingdom of heaven likened to "leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."Matt. 13:33;Our Leader declares: "In all mortal forms of thought, dust is dignified as the natural status of men and things, and modes of material motion are honored with the name of laws. This continues until the leaven of Spirit changes the whole of mortal thought, as yeast changes the chemical properties of meal."Science and Health, p. 118;
