Mary Baker Eddy's groundbreaking book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, was first published 125 years ago. For more than a century, this book has met humanity's increasing demand for a more spiritual understanding of health, a better basis for lasting relationships, and a greater sense of security and peace. Around the globe, people are finding answers in Science and Health, and their lives are being enriched, transformed, and healed by its message of practical spirituality. The value they place in this book is seen in the outpouring of love and gratitude that impels them to share Science and Health with others.
This series invites you to explore the healing message of Science and Health—a message that has benefited millions over the past 125 years and that continues to do so today. We look forward to hearing how Science and Health is impacting your life.
Three times... when Science and Health has healed, encouraged, corrected me...
I had just made the connecting flight at Dulles airport! Two-hundred-mile-an-hour headwinds had made it a slow trip from Boston. The next departure gate was close, so I made it with a few minutes to spare. I gratefully dropped into my seat for the next leg of the trip. The airline music gradually sank in. I probably was the only one on the plane who recognized it, maybe the only one who even heard it. It was an unexpected reprise from my "folksong period"—an Indonesian lullaby I used to sing to our children at bedtime. Memories of those dear times filled my thoughts. It was a contented moment.
Out of that contentment, I picked my travel Science and Health out of my briefcase and leafed through its pages to the chapter "Science of Being." As I read, the ideas and meanings became especially fresh and rewarding. I had been working at some metaphysical concepts—striving for a better spiritual resting place about the shape of things to come—and about God's interpretation and control of His own universe. The contentment and the isolation on that journey joined to give me a place for the most natural and single-minded attention to letting this textbook on Christian Science instruct me.
Answers came; new insights almost surprised me. I felt cared for, with a settled sense of peace and well-being, and even new energy. A renewed purpose came from this communing with God through the transforming ideas in Science and Health. It wasn't a healing time in the conventional way, but rather a restoring of thought and a sturdier spiritual equilibrium. I will remember that night flight—and be better for it.
During those hours with Science and Health, I thought of other times when I have reached for this transforming book and let it nourish me. A nine-hour layover in the Nairobi airport. I read the entire chapter "Christian Science versus Spiritualism" slowly and carefully two or three times during the night. Alone and a stranger to the surroundings, my hours of waiting were companioned by Science and Health. And its reassurance and clarity were needed. On the TV in the waiting room, news continued all night about serious anti-government demonstrations going on in the city. I thought about Mrs. Eddy's direction to pray for the leadership of my own country, and I felt certain that my night in Kenya, even as a transient visitor, could be spent in prayer for that land and all its people.
Those 30 pages gave me a clearer conviction of the blessed control of all by God. I studied and prayed about God's love for all mankind. For my countrymen, for the people in the city—and for me waiting at the airport. That long night was endured, and I was given hope and safety. The practical and divine concepts Mrs. Eddy gave me through her words in Science and Health changed that night for me and made very real the Bible's words "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."1
A third and different kind of remote time with Science and Health was on the edge of a small lake in the Trinity Alps of California. I was leading a group of Explorer Scouts on a ten-day hiking/climbing trip. Two days into the trip, something happened with my knee that made hiking very painful. I prayed and pressed on—slowly. A base-camp stop for three days had been planned—and was a necessity for me.
Side trips and a climb of Thompson Peak went on with others leading, and me resting and praying.
The morning we were to leave I woke very early. With just enough light to read, I turned to Science and Health—to the chapter on Prayer. I needed to know how to do it better. I found a sentence on the second page and stopped. It was a moment when a touch of heaven came to earth.
The sun had come over a distant horizon and was shining on the glacier above us. In that alpine scene I read Mrs. Eddy's words, "Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it."2 I was still deep in shadow, but in about another hour I would be in direct sunlight. Not because the sun was rising higher, but because the earth was turning, and my campsite would move into the sunlight. I felt, really felt, that what I read about prayer was moving my thought into the sunlight of God's truth, into harmony with the Science of being. That sentence in Mrs. Eddy's book literally moved me into health—into God's light of health and action.
As I rolled my sleeping bag, helped with breakfast, and prepared for the trail, I thought about the healings in the Bible where, at Jesus' words, people rose from their beds and walked and leaped and praised God. My joy imitated theirs. I moved freely, and with strength and thanks.
Three very different times and needs. Three times, among the hundreds, or thousands, of times when Science and Health has healed, encouraged, corrected me, made me know God more deeply and myself more correctly—to be a better servant in His Cause.
