The discovery of Christian Science in 1866 marked a decisive turning point for progress in medicine.
This fact stood out to me in bold relief not long ago as I was rereading the classic American novel Little Women. The book, written in the mid-1860s by Louisa May Alcott, effectively transports the reader into the mental atmosphere of the nineteenth-century New England society in which the Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, lived.
As a reader of the book, I'd had the benefit of the teachings of Christian Science all of my adult life, whereas the characters portrayed in the novel had no knowledge of Christian Science whatsoever. I had learned, and proved in my experience over and over again, that disease is not God's will, and that it can be cast out and destroyed through the power of God, the medicine of divine Mind, in the way Jesus destroyed it. So when I came to the parts in the book where the young and gentle Beth (a paragon of Christian virtues), her three sisters, and their parents are all accepting her illness as an incontestable reality leading to inevitable death, and then graciously bowing to her demise as somehow fulfilling God's will, I found myself vigorously rebelling. How, I thought, could a follower of Christ Jesus not rebel!
