Shortly after Mary Baker Eddy (then Mary Patterson) discovered that the healing power of the Christ was still intact and still available to anyone who understood it, she learned a valuable lesson, one that stood as a beacon to her ever after. One of her students, Sue Harper Mims, recounts this in her reminiscences of Mrs. Eddy's final class.
Mrs. Eddy relates that in those early days after her discovery, her family and friends recognized that if they were sick and sent for her to pray for them, they would be well. But they would never admit what had done the healing work. As Mrs. Mims recalls, Mrs. Eddy said, "Sometimes as soon as they sent for me they would be healed, before I could get there, and then they would not know that it was God who had done it." One day, when she was called to see a sick child, a sense of personal responsibility seized her as she hurried to the child's home.
"I was so anxious to have the power of Truth acknowledged," she continues, "that I said to myself, 'He must not get well until I get there.' Of course that was not right, for I knew I must leave it all to God, but pride had come in and I had lost my humility, and the patient was not healed. Then I saw my rebuke, and when I reached home I threw myself on the floor, put my head in my hands, and prayed that I might not be for one moment touched with the thought that I was anything or did anything; I realized that this was God's work and I reflected Him. Then the child was healed." (See We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, p. 133.)
