The possibility that Jesus would have expected Christians today to be able to heal through prayer had never been raised in my religious training. The Bible was kept safely on the shelf, an object of occasional curiosity, but certainly not thought of as a textbook for living. An introduction to Christian Science began to change all that. In a variety of ways I found myself asking the question "Is the promise of experiencing the healing love of Christ in accord with Scripture?" Perhaps I was like the Jews of Berea mentioned in the book of Acts, who upon hearing Paul and Silas speak of Jesus Christ, "searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so." Acts 17:11. The Bible study impelled by those early questions has grown into a daily practice for me.
Mary Baker Eddy spoke of the important place daily Bible reading and family prayer had in her childhood. Throughout her life, she said, the Bible was her primary source of inspiration and comfort.
Mrs. Eddy became convinced that the healings in the Bible were based on spiritual law and were not simply unexplainable miracles or myth. The tragedies and illness of her early life encouraged a search for the divine Principle behind the numerous healings recorded in the Old and New Testaments. She wrote, "The miracles recorded in the Bible, which had before seemed to me supernatural, grew divinely natural and apprehensible; though uninspired interpreters ignorantly pronounce Christ's healing miraculous, instead of seeing therein the operation of the divine law." Retrospection and Introspection, p. 26.
