In the Preface of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which sets forth the divine Science of Mind-healing that Jesus practiced, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Future ages must declare what the pioneer has accomplished” (p. vii). This occasional series looks at how the life and ideas of this extraordinary woman have pointed the way, and continue to point the way, to individual and collective progress Spiritward.
Healing the sick and the sinner had been at the heart of Jesus’ ministry as recorded in the four Gospels. And throughout the New Testament we see this practice of healing pursued and performed by his disciples and early followers. But despite Jesus’ statement that over the ages all who believed in him would also be empowered to do the works he had done, this hope diminished. It resulted in humanity, including Christendom, virtually burying spiritual healing in the ashes of time.
Over centuries, spiritual healings were viewed as isolated occurrences, as evidence only of chance or good fortune, rather than immanent and systematic demonstrations pursuant to God’s consistent love and care for mankind. Then in the 19th century, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, came in with a life-changing revelation, restoring “primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing” (Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17), as she put it. This illustrated the fact that whatsoever has once been true, is true forever.
Writing in Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy said: “The author has endeavored to make this book the Æsculapius of mind as well as of body, that it may give hope to the sick and heal them, although they know not how the work is done. Truth has a healing effect, even when not fully understood” (p. 152).
Mrs. Eddy had discovered how Jesus healed, and she healed and taught how to heal in the same way, through firm reliance on a God who is always present, unceasingly active, and forever loving. Her writings clearly explain that from God come only reflections of spiritual good, because His nature is wholly good. In establishing that God is indestructible Spirit, all-powerful Truth, and all-embracing Love—the Principle governing the universe—Christian Science reveals the Godlike nature of His image, man, both male and female. To this day, Mrs. Eddy’s ideas have companioned with seekers for truth, empowering them to grow in the understanding of healing and the freedom it brings, in accordance with what Christ Jesus taught: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
This new light, diametrically opposed to long-held beliefs and theories, demonstrates healing as stemming from a permanent and infinite source, God. Grounded on fixed rules and laws, the practice of spiritual healing has become firmly established as a potent and reliable means to heal and be healed.
Decades ago, as a young man in the Democratic Republic of Congo—the middle of Africa—I was profoundly touched by the writings of this New England woman from half a world away. When I came across this healing system, it challenged my feeble concept of the nature of God. I had long believed in a God I eventually could see after death, provided I had lived a good life.
I was in the middle of my university studies in Kinshasa, my hometown. While visiting a classmate, I picked up a small pamphlet lying on his table and read it. The pertinence of the questions and the depth of the corresponding answers made me inquire about it. My colleague told me it was a Christian Science publication, a teaching I had never heard about. Impressed by what I had read, I resolved to attend a Sunday church service. Attending that service made me glimpse that I could have a more intimate relationship to God—starting right then. The mistaken view of God that had buried spiritual healing in the ashes of time lost its grip on me.
I started studying the Bible together with Science and Health. This study brought with it a new sense of God as a close and loving Father-Mother, a very present help in any situation I could find myself in. Beyond that was the realization—radical to me—that there is only one Mind, not two or many—and that as ideas of God, each one of us reflects all the qualities that God possesses: beauty, soundness of thought, purity, wisdom, health, and so on. To think of myself and others as entirely spiritual had a sweet resonance in my consciousness, and I was eager to grow in this new perspective.
Progressively over the years, Christian Science became the foundation for my own healing experience. The ideas shared in the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, along with those in the periodicals she founded, were so relevant in all aspects of life. I began to grasp that Jesus’ teachings were not only timeless but for everyone, regardless of gender, geographical location, or life experience.
As I went along in my professional life, first in my country’s educational system, then in the hotel industry, and finally in a telecommunication company, I practiced to the best of my ability the teachings of Christ Jesus as explained in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings. I found them practical and relevant.
One day, after I had studied this divine Science for several years, my workplace manager found me incapacitated, and he sent me to the company health center to be examined. I was diagnosed with hepatitis, and prescribed a week’s medication. Upon returning home, I chose instead to ask for prayer from a Christian Science practitioner.
This experienced fellow church member was neither a medium nor an intermediary between God and me. The Christian Science treatment he was giving me, spiritually addressing my thought through his prayers, helped me see God’s wholeness and perfection, and that of God’s entire creation, including myself. I became conscious of my inherited spiritual and flawless nature in the image of the one Father-Mother, God, and I quickly regained my strength and all symptoms of illness vanished. At the end of the sick leave, I returned to the health center for a check-up, as I had been instructed, and was found completely well.
Moving forward in the practice of spiritual healing brought me a totally new view on the subject of healing. I understood that health, harmony, and good constitute the true nature of reality. This realization has been a vibrant incentive in working to sort out all my needs, and in helping others by going into the full-time practice of Christian Science, and a few years later, becoming a teacher of Christian Science.
Spiritual healing, as practiced in this divine Science, has everything to do with a clear understanding of and reliance on God’s love and power canceling out anything unlike good. It is grounded in the perfection and the allness of God, and in man’s inseparability from Him as His immaculate reflection. God is recognized as the sole healer in each case, and it is necessary to leave everything in God’s hands, just as Christ Jesus systematically did. Jesus explained: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. . . . The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” (John 5:17, 19). Laying the responsibility of healing with a perfect, ever-present, and almighty God made Jesus an unbeatable healer.
This characteristic of Jesus’ healing ministry is the foundation of healing through prayer. It contradicts the traditional view of healing as a laborious process to fix something that has gone wrong, a view still widely prevailing. Following in Jesus’ footsteps, Mrs. Eddy healed quickly and efficiently, as a result of her unwavering conviction of the immaculate nature of God’s creation, incapable of discord or decay.
A woman named Helen Grenier tells how when she was a small girl and very ill and due to see a physician the next day, she was healed by Mrs. Eddy. She went to Mrs. Eddy’s house seeking healing and was gently led to a seat. After a few words between them, Mrs. Eddy closed her eyes briefly, then took her hand and told the young girl to come again the next day if she was not better. She didn’t need to. In that one visit, Mrs. Grenier recalled, she had been completely healed (see Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, Amplified Edition, pp. 115–116).
In one of her writings, Mrs. Eddy points out: “When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite recognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein.
“In the same spiritual condition I have been able to replace dislocated joints and raise the dying to instantaneous health” (Unity of Good, p. 7).
Christian Science healing continues to be practiced on this same basis. In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount he states: “He that seeketh findeth” (Matthew 7:8). This is exactly shown in Mrs. Eddy’s life and repeated in that of the numerous followers of her teachings, from the last part of the 19th century up to these days. So will it continue to be for all honest seekers of Truth, because of the unchanging nature of God, who attends to all the needs of His beloved children, each one of us.
The efficacy of this system has been evidenced for around a century and a half, with thousands of accounts of healing shared every week during the Wednesday testimony meetings of branch Churches of Christ, Scientist, throughout the world. Tens of thousands of healing accounts have also been published in Christian Science periodicals such as this one over the years. Christian Science healing is not a condemnation of other treatment methods, but it is a uniquely scientific endeavor to walk on the path of the Master of Christianity, Christ Jesus, and it reveals that with God, every good thing is possible.
The study of the Bible together with Science and Health has blessed millions of “unprejudiced minds—simple seekers for Truth” (Science and Health, p. 570). Its fruitage has also brought this healing system outside the sphere of Christian Science church members, and culminated in the recognition of Mary Baker Eddy among other authors whose writings and ideas have changed the world. Also, more individuals around the globe have been feeling unsatisfied by conventional medical treatment and traditional theology, and have been turning to God as their source of healing.
The understanding of the perfect nature of God, along with the Godlike man and woman, has been, is, and ever shall be true for all eternity. A statement in Mrs. Eddy’s Rudimental Divine Science covers the whole ground: “Health is the consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else” (p. 11).
Today, the healing system established by this spiritual pioneer is practical, permanent, and available to all. So are the relevant proofs of the good it accomplishes for humankind, in this age, and for generations to come.
