What corrects?

We all need correction from time to time. We should be glad of it. It keeps us on the right pathway. If we're a musician, our ear might discern where we're going wrong. If we're a child, our parents might offer guidance.

Sometimes, we decide on a course of action because of particular information - or lack thereof. I have some friends who had decided they would not visit Brunei but would sail right past. With more accurate first-hand information however, they changed their minds and have decided they wouldn't miss it for the world.

Getting the right information out is important. It can clarify and adjust. My school motto was (and still is, presumably): Scientia est potestas - knowledge is power. Before passing judgment, we need to be sure of our facts, that is, we need the right knowledge of the subject.

In "No and Yes", Mary Baker Eddy answered some of the misconceptions then abounding about Christian Science. Perhaps the same misconceptions are alive today.

The Introduction begins with some gentleness - a reminder that we can't change the sentiments of others overnight. In fact, it is not our work at all. Only the "still, small voice" of Truth at work gradually and silently, changes our natures -  expressed in the Bible as daily renewal of the inward man (II Corinthians 4: 18).

Eddy further explains that what corrects individual thought is "Life, Truth, and Love" (all synonymous names for God), and states that we "should not spread abroad patchwork ideas that in some vital points lack Science".  Just as we would not be true to the science of mathematics if we were to omit the number three in our calculations, so the learner needs the whole fabric, as expounded in Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures, for a correct platform from which to learn Christian Science.

This then sets the scene for the pages that follow, pages that face head-on some prevalent misconceptions and misunderstandings in regard to the Science of Christianity.

Julie Swannell

PS In her Miscellaneous Writings, Eddy speaks of a "life corrected" as "illumin[ing] its own atmosphere with spiritual glow and understanding." See page 356.