"Divine Science understood and acknowledged"

How thrilling to re-read these marvellous accounts of the wonders wrought in healing in the early days of Christian Science!

I have been doing some thinking about then and now.  It seems to me that, over the years, the world of medicine and surgery has seen and noted what can be accomplished by scientific prayer, and has found ways of emulating these great works, mainly through surgery, such that most folk now believe that physical things can be "fixed" through material, "superior", up-to-date, materia medica methods.  Mrs. Eddy declared that: “Until the advancing age admits the efficacy and supremacy of Mind it is better for Christian Scientists to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while the mental healer confines himself chiefly to mental reconstruction and to the prevention of inflammation.  Christian Science is always the most skilful surgeon, but surgery is the branch of its healing which will be last acknowledged” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 401:27-3).

I was reminded via this while pondering the account of Aaron’s rod.  Remember the story in Exodus (7:8-12)?  Moses and Aaron were endeavouring to get Pharaoh to let the people go out of Egypt –   

And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, When Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, Shew a miracle for you: then thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent.  And Moses and Aaron went unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the Lord had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent.  Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments.  For they case down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.

Pharaoh refused to let the people go.  He never did let them go, actually, did he?  Moses had to listen and follow God’s guidance in leading the people out through the Red Sea.

Science and Health (S&H) tells us that “Sickness, sin, and death must at length quail before the divine rights of intelligence, and then the power of Mind over the entire functions and organs of the human system will be acknowledged” (p. 384:30). In my search for “acknowledged” in Mrs. Eddy’s writings, I found this in the Glossary of S&H:  “Hiddekel (River). Divine Science understood and acknowledged” (p. 588:5).

Now the river Hiddekel is the present day Tigris River.  It flows from Turkey through Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Kuwait.  Eddy's definition is divinely scientific, so could it mean that there will to be a cleansing of these countries of wrong thoughts about God, making way for Divine Science, i.e. that Divine Science will be championed there?

One could remark on the remarkable stirring and overturning that is going on in religions at this time, sure evidence of "the breaking up of material beliefs" - “The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears” (S&H p. 96).  Does this signify a purifying of thought, as exemplified by Mrs. Eddy when she tells us that, “The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream” (S&H 540:9-11).  How appropriate for the Hiddekel/Tigris!

Joyce Voysey