That Christian Science heals I can truly affirm from experience. While I was unloading a five-hundred-pound barrel of oil from a trailer truck, the barrel slipped and crashed against the door of the truck. My right hand was crushed between the barrel and the door, and the evidence indicated extensive damage to the hand.
I managed to get home and ask my wife, who is also an earnest student of Christian Science, to help me with the situation. This she lovingly did. There was not much suffering from pain; however, a tormenting fear that I might not regain the full use of the hand presented itself to me. It was several days before I was able to lift my thought above the evidence of the senses and calmly contemplate the truth of being as I had learned it in Christian Science.
In the weeks that followed I reached out often to the divine Mind in prayer. One of the truths that became tangible to me was the inseparability of God, perfect Mind, and His expression, perfect man and the universe. In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says (p. 306): "If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from His reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be childless,—no Father." I saw that if God could be separated from His reflection, perfect man, He would be Mind without its idea, hence no Mind, no God.
However, the writer of Ecclesiastes declares (3:14), "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever." I recognized that man, being inseparable from God, who is perfect, cannot experience imperfection in any form, notwithstanding all material sense testimony to the contrary.
These and other thoughts were cherished in consciousness until they became solid conviction, and the conviction expressed itself in the restoration of the damaged hand to normal usefulness. This healing has been inspiring to me because it unveiled a clearer perception of the infinite power available to us.
Another healing which has meant much to me was that of an injury to my back, which occurred about four years ago. It was necessary for me to call on an experienced Christian Scientist for help to alleviate suffering. I had been having an unpleasant experience with a supervisor at my place of employment, and I was resentful over treatment which I felt I did not deserve. Happy results were brought about in this situation when I became willing to obey Jesus' admonition (Matt. 5:44), "Pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." I began to understand why this admonition is necessary. When one gains the divine idea of Love and entertains this idea in consciousness, it inevitably expresses itself in human experience as good health. When I ceased to resent the treatment I was receiving and began to love and to be helpful, I was healed, and the human relationship became harmonious.
A healing which means even more to me was the gradual overcoming of self-consciousness and a feeling of inferiority. This healing came about through spiritual growth during years of my study and practice of Christian Science. Since my school days I had believed that I could not express myself well orally or in writing.
Our Leader says (Science and Health, pp. 109, 110), "The three great verities of Spirit, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience,—Spirit possessing all power, filling all space, constituting all Science,—contradict forever the belief that matter can be actual." As I pondered the truth of this statement I saw that God, Spirit, is indeed capable of doing all things because He has all power, is everywhere, and knows how to do all. Man as the image and likeness of God possesses by reflection all that inheres in infinite Spirit.
I finally gained the courage to claim my true selfhood as God's man and to deny that I was a limited and inferior mortal. Since that time I have been able to express myself before others with greater freedom. I can say from the bottom of my heart that there is no joy comparable to the joy of dominion over fear.— Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
