1866 Injury, Healing and Study Leads To Christian Science
In February 1866, after a fall in Lynn, Massachusetts caused a spinal injury, she turned to God. She is quoted saying:
| “ | On the third day thereafter, I called for my Bible, and opened it at Matthew, 9:2 . As I read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and the result was that I arose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I had before enjoyed. That short experience included a glimpse of the great fact that I have since tried to make plain to others, namely, Life in and of Spirit; this Life being the sole reality of existence. | ” |
However, she later filed a claim for money from the city of Lynn for her injury on the grounds that she was "still suffering from the effects of that fall" (though she afterwards withdrew the lawsuit). Mary's attending physician Alvin M. Cushing, a homeopath, testified under oath that he "did not at any time declare, or believe, that there was no hope for Mrs. Patterson's recovery, or that she was in critical condition."
She devoted the next three years of her life to Biblical study and what she considered the discovery of Christian Science. In her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, Eddy writes "I then withdrew from society about three years,--to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind that should take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative Principle, --Deity."
Convinced by her own study of the Bible, especially Genesis 1, and through experimentation, Mary claimed to have found healing power through a higher sense of God as Spirit and man as God's spiritual "image and likeness." She became convinced that illness could be healed through an awakened thought brought about by a clearer perception of God and the explicit rejection of drugs, hygiene and medicine based upon the observation that Jesus did not use these methods for healing:
It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his healing. … The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 143:5, 367:3)
She eventually called this spiritual perception the operation of the Christ Truth on human consciousness.
Claiming to have first healed herself and then others, and having learned from these experiences, Eddy felt anyone could perceive what she called "the Kingdom of Heaven" or spiritual reality on earth. For her, this healing method was based on scientific principles and could be taught to others. This positive rule of healing, she taught, resulted from a new understanding of God as infinite Spirit beyond the limitations of the material senses.
Mary became well known as a healer, and first-hand accounts survive claiming that miracles occurred similar to miracles performed by Jesus, who calmed a storm and raised people from the dead.
Read more about this topic: Mary Baker Eddy
Famous quotes containing the words healing, study, leads, christian and/or science:
“Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long-expected healing wings could see,
When thou didst rise,
And what can never more be done
Did at midnight speak with the Sun!”
—Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)
“A man who would woo a fair maid,
Should ‘prentice himself to the trade;
And study all day,
In methodical way,
How to flatter, cajole, and persuade”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“The Card Catalogue: “See also” leads into the wilderness.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I’ve almost gained my heav’nly home; My spirit loudly sings;
The holy ones behold they come, I hear the noise of wings.
O come, angel band, Come and around me stand.
O bear me away on your snowy wings, To my immortal home.”
—T. Haskell, minister and hymn-writer. Published in Christian Harmony. “Angel Band,” l. 5-8.
“Science is the language of the temporal world; love is that of the spiritual world. Man, indeed, describes more than he explains; while the angelic spirit sees and understands. Science saddens man; love enraptures the angel; science is still seeking, love has found. Man judges of nature in relation to itself; the angelic spirit judges of it in relation to heaven. In short to the spirits everything speaks.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)