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Science and Christian Healing.
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The woman who created this structure and achieved all these things presented earlier, is known today by the name Mary Baker Eddy. As this book presents the results of research into her greatest and also her most fundamental achievement, the name Mary Baker Eddy will appear many times in this two volume book. This is necessary in order to establish her authorship of the structure that is being set forth in the following pages. The repeated use of the name may be repulsive when it is seen as it were an attempt to convey a sense of adoration or deification, which is not intended. Regardless of this danger, great care has been taken not to isolate the Science that she discovered from its author, for this discovery of Science represents the achievement of a human being, one of humanity, demonstrating the native capability of man. Were that achievement of science seen in isolation from its author, her work might to be regarded as a divine gift to humanity, as indeed it is regarded by some, while in reality it is the product of 44 years of labor: reasoning, searching, discovering, documenting, demonstrating, refining, and growing spiritually. Only in the very deepest sense can her work be regarded as a divine gift to humanity as it unfolded out of the resources of the human intellect that is universal to man and reflects the nature of the image of God that defines mankind.
The question immediately arises, who was Mary Baker Eddy? Was she a genius, a saint, or a privileged individual endowed with unique spiritual abilities? Some regard her as unusual, as no one in the history of mankind, apart from Christ Jesus, has healed so effectively on a purely scientifically metaphysical basis, as she had done, and this on a commercial scale. Also, she had even been able to 'teach' others to do so likewise. Was she a saint, then? Hardly! The textbook in which she documented the science of metaphysics was not pulled out of thin air as it were a divine message to humanity. She worked nine years on the first edition of it, which was subsequently updated as new insights emerged. Over three hundred editions were produced in this manner. She was undoubtedly a genius, one of the many that emerged during the brightest period of learning in North American history - the years following the American Revolution, which epoch may well be regarded as the North American Renaissance.
The background for the discovery of scientific Christian healing: a North American Renaissance.
To appreciate the nature of what is presented in this book, a short view into the history of the epoch is needed in which Mary Baker Eddy was born, in order to place Mary Baker Eddy into the historical context of the scientific development of that age. This connection is important. The presentation in this book is based fundamentally on Mary Baker Eddy's work as it relates to the outlined structure for the development of scientific perception of spiritual issues. There simply exists no other work of similar scope that matches even remotely her provisions for future ages. Nor exists there any other scientific platform for Christian metaphysical healing than that pioneered by Mary Baker Eddy which has been proven by countless well documented cases achieved by people around the world over a time span of more than a century.
Mary Baker Eddy was born in 1821 in the United States of America, at a time when the general attitude towards learning and scientific discoveries had been raised to great height as the outcome of policies that resulted from a people taking control of their destiny. It was an age of a mental revolution that had unfolded in the wake of a political revolution half a century earlier in which the nation had shed its colonial yoke.
This view into history takes one back to the mid eighteenth century. Britain ruled much of the world at the time. France had been defeated as a maritime power in seven years of war from 1756-1763. With a near total control of the seas established, Britain's hold on the colonies became firmer, taxes and duties became more severe, and so became its rule over the colonies, including those on the North American continent. By this time the Venetian ideology was firmly in control of Britain which added its own characteristic nastiness to the colonial repression and exploitation of the colonies. The famous Boston Tea Party of 1773 illustrates the kind of explosive response that was growing in the background to the escalating colonialism, producing a drive for freedom of such intensity that took many by surprise.
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