A woman, burdened by illness for eighteen years, receives a letter from another woman healed in Christian Science, urging her to try it. She borrows a copy of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy and begins to study it. Soon her thought becomes spiritually illumined. She later describes her experience this way: "The revelation was marvellous and brought a great spiritual awakening. This awakened sense never left me, and one day when walking alone it came to me very suddenly that I was healed, and I walked the faster declaring every step that I was healed." Science and Health, p. 604. She had been healed of a large tumor accompanied by continuous hemorrhaging.
This account of healing appears early in the chapter "Fruitage" in Science and Health. The testimony includes: "There was no joy ever greater than mine for this Christ-cure, for I was very weary and heavy laden. I thought very little of either sleeping or eating, and my heart was filled with gratitude, since I knew I had touched the hem of his garment." Her words remind me of another woman healed of an issue of blood when she pressed through a crowd surrounding Christ Jesus and touched the hem of his garment (see Mark 5:25-34). Both women were awakened from the dream of disease and suffering by Christ, Truth.
Healing in Christian Science comes through spiritual awakening. After we have been sleeping or dreaming through the night, it's often morning light, the dawning of the day, that wakes us. As the light of Christ, Truth, dawns in our consciousness, we are roused from the illusion of suffering. In this light, pain and disease dissipate as the substanceless shadows they really are. We awake from the nightmares imposed by the educated belief that man lives in sentient matter, to glimpse through spiritual sense that as God's image, man is wholly spiritual, governed by divine laws of health and harmony.
