When Mary Baker Eddy experienced the spiritual breakthrough that led to her being healed of life-threatening injuries, she might have kept her insight to herself. But on her spiritual journey, she had known and had seen much suffering, and her innate compassion put her onto a different path. Like Jesus' parable about the good Samaritan, who stopped to help a wounded man after others had passed him by, Mary Baker Eddy took her discovery to the next level—the one that would help people and then help them to help others.
Her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, is proof of her Samaritan-like response to the world. She devoted her life to explaining through this book how people could heal themselves and others. She wrote eloquently, "The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of their own beliefs...." Science and Health, p. 226.
Perhaps because her healing had come about through passages she read in the Bible, the development of what would become her textbook on healing began with the Scriptures. She says, "For three years after my discovery, I sought the solution of this problem of Mind-healing, searched the Scriptures and read little else.... The search was sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing." Ibid., p. 109.
