Early in her discovery of the Science of Christianity, Mary Baker Eddy asked the son of some Quaker friends if she might heal him. He had a painful bone felon on his finger. He agreed, and promised to be obedient to her instructions. The healing came almost overnight. One of her biographers says that it made quite an impression on the family. "No one quite knew what to say, and they were scarcely ready to accept the healing of a sore finger as a miracle.
"'But it is not a miracle,'" Mrs. Eddy told them. "'It is natural, divinely natural. All life rightly understood is so.'" Sibyl Wilbur, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1976), p. 141 .
A miracle is often considered to be a divine act that deviates from the known laws of nature. When Christ Jesus healed, many believed his works to be miraculous. But Mrs. Eddy discovered that his healings were not miraculous or supernatural. Christian healing, as she learned, is a natural result of an understanding of the nature of God as unchanging, omnipotent good. To practice Christian healing is natural. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy defines a miracle as "that which is divinely natural, but must be learned humanly; a phenomenon of Science." Science and Health, p. 591.
