From that hour dated her conviction of the principle of divine healing,
and that it is as true to-day as it was in the days when Jesus of
Nazareth walked the earth. "I felt that the divine spirit had wrought a
miracle," she said, in reference to this experience. "How, I could not
tell, but later I found it to be in perfect scientific accord with the
divine law." From 1866-'69, Mrs. Eddy withdrew from the world to
meditate, to pray, to search the Scriptures.

"During this time," she said, in reply to my questions, "the Bible was
my only text-book. It answered my questions as to the process by which I
was restored to health; it came to me with a new meaning, and suddenly I
apprehended the spiritual meaning of the teaching of Jesus and the
principle and the law involved in spiritual science and metaphysical
healing--in a word--Christian science."

Mrs. Eddy came to perceive that Christ's healing was not miraculous, but
was simply a natural fulfilment of divine law--a law as operative in the
world to-day as it was nineteen hundred years ago. "Divine science is
begotten of spirituality," she says, "since only the 'pure in heart' can
see God."

In writing of this experience, Mrs. Eddy has said:

I had learned that thought must be spiritualized
in order to apprehend Spirit. It must become
honest unselfish, and pure, in order to have the
least understanding of God in Divine Science. The
first must become last. Our reliance upon material
things must be transferred to a perception of and
dependence on spiritual things. For spirit to be