Heal consciousness and the body is healed. While there is new and growing awareness of this principle, the principle itself is not new.

As Jesus Christ said to those gathered on the Mount of Olives, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” What is this truth? In responding to that same question posed by Thomas, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” During his ministry, Jesus demonstrated the healing power of this truth over and over again, healing every manner of sickness and disease among the people.

This divine truth, this power of spiritual healing, is here today. It works today. It is healing today.

Mary Baker Eddy, who was ill much of that portion of her life from 1830 to 1866, engaged in a diligent search for more effective ways to heal than were offered by the practitioners of the then newly emerging practices of allopathic medicine. She explored hydropathy, homeopathy, various forms of mental and physical manipulation and many other techniques, all with varying degrees of relief. She was aware of the popular practices of mesmerism and hypnotism. In 1866, however, she suffered a serious injury from a fall on the ice and was declared by her attending physician not to survive more than a day or so.

Eddy called for her Bible and read an account of Jesus healing someone of a serious physical condition. Although she had read the Bible regularly throughout her life and was intimately familiar with these stories of healing, it suddenly dawned on her that the healing came because of a divine absolute principle and that the principle was universally and eternally applicable. The same principle that Jesus used could work in 1866. And it did! Eddy was immediately healed. The physician found her the next morning walking around in the downstairs parlor ready to take up her daily chores.

Mrs. Eddy then devoted her life from 1866 to 1875 to the fuller discovery of that healing principle. She wrote her findings in a book, which is now the seminal primer on healing through prayer and which sets forth a spiritually scientific statement of life and health. That book, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, is read by millions who are finding their freedom from physical and mental illness. Hundreds of thousands of seekers are finding new insights into spiritual healing on the website, www.spirituality.com.

Healing through the divine principle which Jesus taught and demonstrated is available and working today. It is evidenced by the thousands of contemporary healings documented and reported by those healed. Everything from coughs to cancer has been healed spiritually, through prayer, applying the same truth that made men free in Jesus’ day, and without intervention of any medical procedure, drug or surgery.

I have been healed relying exclusively on prayer. A heart condition, a bronchial condition, severe toothache, and other sicknesses have all yielded to the healing power of prayer. Healings of other members of my family have been even more noteworthy. The prayer that brought about these healings included, in some cases, only simple affirmations of God’s goodness and care for his children. In other cases, prayers included deeper consecration and more careful study of the Bible and Eddy’s textbook on spiritual healing.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is available in commercial bookstores and on the web at www.spirituality.com. Those who engage in the full-time practice of this form of healing for others are listed in the yellow pages under Christian Science practitioners.