Great changes are going on in our world. Revolutionary changes. And yet in many cases they seem to be going largely unrecognized. This is a transformation that can't be easily quantified or analyzed. But it can be felt—by those who have hearts. The effects are visible—to those whose senses are open to the dawn of truth.
This transformation isn't happening because of market forces or political upheavals, nor is it the outcome of armed conflict or the output of think tanks, laboratories, or seminars. The greatest change of our times is going on in the realm of human consciousness, and the agent of change is a book.
At first glance, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy is an unlikely candidate for a revolutionary manifesto. It contains little that could be called mere theory, offers no political slogans, no propaganda. It's not a book about revolution; rather, it's a book that—pondered, understood, and applied—is impelling, compelling, and propelling radical regeneration and spiritual progress in human lives. Sick people are being healed by reading it. Those who've been prisoners to self-destructive sin are finding freedom. All because a woman so loved God, and so loved the Bible and the human family it was written to liberate, that she gave her whole being to a search for the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures.
It is not a book's words, of themselves but the Christ, Truth, which these words disclose that impels, compels, and propels thought to change. The whole universe feels the effect of each individual response to Jesus' call to repent: to be wholly remade in mind and spirit, to awaken to spiritual manhood and womanhood in Christ.
Letters from recent new readers of Science and Health describe in simple, profound ways what's happening as they read. They write of "spiritual upheaval" and lives "completely changed." They say it plainly—"I have regained my sight." "The sores have healed." "I have recovered my normal memory capacity." And poetically, "I felt as if I were returning 'home' to a place I loved, and had somehow left in error."
The book's effect can radically change the reader's life purpose. One writes, "I've found peace of mind ... and I am leading others to peace." Another speaks of his new desire "to be in the public practice of Christian Science." Someone in a small village wrote, "At first I studied alone. Now there are five of us."
Science and Health is not a self-help book; it isn't a refuge for the self-centered. It is a profoundly Christian book that stands squarely on the Apostle James's blunt credo "Shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works" (James 2:18), and on Jesus' promise "If ye continue in my word, ... ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31, 32).
Jesus defined the essential requirement for being made free: "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed ..." The New English Bible offers this translation: "If you dwell within the revelation I have brought, you are indeed my disciples ...." Mary Baker Eddy continued in, lived in, the Master's word. Through years of searching and yearning, struggling to find genuine spiritual understanding and lasting health, she was compelled to explore the Scriptures in great depth. Jesus' words, and the divine laws on which they are based, became as real and familiar as home to her. She literally did "dwell within the revelation" Jesus brought.
Through the same light of God-given revelation came her book Science and Health. Writing of the book's reception when it was first issued, she noted: "... critics declared that it was incorrect, contradictory, unscientific, unchristian; but those human opinions had not one feather's weight in the scales of God. The fact remains, that the textbook of Christian Science is transforming the universe" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 372).
Seeing the signs of transformation
Just as in Jesus' day, healing coincides with rebirth and reformation. This is a book that brings one face to face with God as infinite Love, the only intelligence or Mind of the universe, revealed through the activity of the ever-present Christ. We learn of man as God's wholly spiritual creation, and what it means actually to be made in God's likeness and to be unfailingly loved by our Maker.
As you read this book, whether it is your first time through, a return visit after many years, or a continuing daily exploration and discovery, you should expect to see transformation take place. Like the effect of light and warmth on a seedbed, it is natural to expect signs of stirring. What might some of these signs be?
• The spontaneous desire to help and heal others. Those who yield to the book's transforming power naturally become healers, for themselves and others. They yearn to help others know the freedom they've found.
• Questions from neighbors, friends. What does science have to do with Christianity? Why are you generally so unafraid? How can you be so sure God exists and cares about us? How can I find the peace you have? Will you tell me how you pray? A life transformed by the book radiates with spiritual light.
• A childlike hunger to learn, a childlike fearlessness to give. If we're being transformed in some measure each time we open the book, no reluctance to be a witness for the book can keep us from sharing it freely.
• A solidifying conviction that one's prayer for the world makes a difference. How often, as was true of Job in the Old Testament, some element of our own restoration and transformation comes when we pray for our friends. How wealthy are those who count as friends anyone inside the radius of their thought, anyone in need of Christ's touch.
• The blossoming of peace deep within our own consciousness, even though the world itself may seem to be a long way from becoming the "peaceable kingdom." Patience sharpens our perception of Truth's transformative action in the universe. We need patience with ourselves and patience with the world's billions. Transformation of the universe is happening—one mended heart, one liberated and spiritualized consciousness at a time.
• The need to drink from Christ's cup filled with mortals' doubt and disbelief. A sweet compassion is needed to respond to the thought that will believe only what the physical senses see and feel, and that may even dismiss clear evidence of healing through prayer as unexplained exceptions. Christ Jesus responded to unbelief with few words and full love. And the compelling assurance that his followers would do "greater works."
Today, as in 1875 when the book was first released, the publishing of this book isn't complete without our own healing proof. Our healings are what keep our understanding of the book vibrant and growing. Testimonies given at Wednesday evening meetings, printed in this periodical and others, offered heart to heart, help make the book a contemporary force in society and lead thought to apprehend the Principle of divine Science—God and His saving laws.
Removing the strictures
Human nature resists change the way a riverbed resists being carved into a canyon. The harder the stone, the slower the change. Like the hermit-from-infancy, Kaspar Hauser (see Science and Health, pp. 194–195), mortals often prefer their familiar darknesses to the light of day.
It was no surprise to Mrs. Eddy that her book was often received with resistance and dismissal. While she hoped that open-minded thinkers and religious leaders would at least accept the book's challenge to look beyond material views of life, God, and man's nature, she also understood how doggedly human opinions resist being overturned. In the opening sentence of her chapter entitled "Some Objections Answered" she writes, "The strictures on this volume would condemn to oblivion the truth, which is raising up thousands from helplessness to strength and elevating them from a theoretical to a practical Christianity." Farther along on the same page she throws down the gauntlet to both critic and friendly reader: "In Christian Science mere opinion is valueless. Proof is essential to a due estimate of this subject" (Science and Health, p. 341).
Proof. Deeds. Works. Health restored and sin abandoned. Lives freed from fear. As the veracity of the book's statement of the Science of Christ is proved more widely, censure will be shown to have no weight and criticism no cutting edge. The true cutting edge is the advancing cause of practical spirituality; it's what is going on in the global laboratory of human consciousness.
If we're afraid to share the book with a friend in need, we may be accepting the constriction of mortal mind's resistance and feeling bound by it. Love for God, for Mrs. Eddy as author and Leader, and for mankind dissolves all strictures on giving. The book itself contains the full statement of Truth, and the same Truth that blesses the willing seeker also protects the caring sharer.
We should ask ourselves, Am I thinking about the book as Mrs. Eddy did? Am I as much a student of this book as she was? Am I expecting the same kind of fruitage from reading the book, and from sharing it with others, that she did? Am I watching for the inevitable signs of the universe undergoing spiritual transformation? Do I love my neighbor enough to give him what I love most? How much do I want others to have this key to the Bible's inestimable power to heal and save? Am I recognizing, regardless of surface appearances, the innate desire of every child, woman, and man to know God and to feel God's immensely comforting love?
Think of the possibilities. Around the clock, around the world, Science and Health is being opened today, at this very moment, by unbiased thinkers, and by others who may question and doubt. But each is a seeker. Each is adding momentum to Truth's transformation of the universe. May every reader feel the profoundly encouraging assurance of the book's opening sentence: "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings" (Science and Health, p. vii).
