When I was in the third grade, I did not care for arithmetic. But every Friday we had speed drills: twenty problems to be solved in twenty minutes. For a couple of weeks I panicked and didn't even try; I'd just write down whatever numbers came to me. (It never occurred to me that I might actually be able to solve the problems.) My teacher saw my dilemma, though, and decided to help me solve it.
One Friday, just before the speed drill, she came to the back of the room where I was sitting (in the hope of escaping attention), led me to her own desk up front, sat me down at it, gave me a clean sheet of paper and a newly sharpened pencil. Then she said, looking at me with confidence and love, "Do just one problem at a time." Something made me feel I could do it. So I started in, intending to do just one. Having finished the first, however, I went on to the second. And the third, and so on. When the twenty minutes had passed, I had done all twenty problems. I don't recall my exact grade, but it was between 90 and 100 percent; and I never had trouble with those speed drills again. I found out later that my teacher was a devoted Christian Scientist. Without talking about it, she had introduced me to the source of her confidence and love— Christian Science.
Later, my mother became interested in Science. I didn't pay much attention to it at first, however, because Mother had, in preceding years, taken up and then left one unorthodox Christian religion after another. When she took up Science, however, she never put it down.
On one occasion, not long after her initial acquaintance with Science, I had a painful earache. Mother asked me if I would be willing to have Christian Science treatment. I thought it would please Mother if I said yes, so I agreed even though I didn't expect anything special to happen. I assumed that after a while the earache would run its course and go away and that then I would be encouraged to give credit to Christian Science for this "healing." Things didn't work out that way, however. In less than half an hour after my mother had phoned a Christian Science practitioner to ask for help, the earache simply disappeared. Furthermore, I felt a vivid sense of peace and joy. I didn't have to pretend to have been healed! I was healed, and every part of me knew it.
Since then I have had many other healings that have amply confirmed for me the effectiveness of Christian Science treatment. When I was a freshman in college, I suffered with appendicitis. It was a difficult time, and I was out of school for quite a while. A Christian Science practitioner was called who gave me consistent and loving support through prayer. When healing finally came, it was like the break of day. I had been singing to myself the words of Hymn No. 280 in the Christian Science Hymnal. The first verse begins:
Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;
To His feet thy tribute bring.
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Who like us His praise should sing?
When I came to the word "forgiven" in the third line, I knew that I was healed. I was filled with a sense of God's kindness and mercy. Unforgiving, unforgiven, and guilty thinking was gently washed away by the waters of His love, leaving me both restored and inspired—physically and mentally.
On another occasion I had a quick healing of a cold that I'd originally thought might persist for days. The problem was that I had mentally set up ungodlike images—false material views—of various associates and was expending a great deal of energy resisting the very perceptions I myself had set up! When I took those images down—when I began to perceive my associates as God knows His children: appreciating their loving, Christly expressions of His perfect self—the cold receded rapidly.
Another time I was healed of apparent blood poisoning in one of my legs with the prayerful help of a practitioner. There have been other healings too—of headaches, fainting, and ivy poisoning. I was never seasick, even during some very rough weather while on active duty in the United States Navy, and I also have experienced divine guidance in solving human relationship problems.
Sufficient supply has been demonstrated. Particularly helpful in this regard has been study of these words from Hymn No. 224 (Christian Science Hymnal):
He that has made my heaven secure,
Will here all good provide;
While Christ is rich, can I be poor?
What can I want beside?
From the beginning of my undergraduate education to the end of my graduate studies, funds were on hand as needed, despite the fact that at times I could not imagine when, where, or how they would be found. This demonstration has continued to the present. I have also been able, first as a student and later as a teacher, to master academic challenges through Christian Science. In fact, I could cite so many examples of this that a small book would be needed to accommodate them all!
The thing for which I am most grateful, however, is the gradual but steady purification of my life. Physiology and psychology would have it that man is a product of chemistry, heredity, and environment; that he is stamped from birth or even conception with virtually ineradicable mortal traits. Thus human selfhood becomes a kind of prison from which there is little if any possibility of escape.
But then into the jail cell of flawed personality divine Science comes with its promise of release and a map of the way out. As Mrs. Eddy writes of Christian Science in Science and Health (p. 114), "It shows the scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of being, and sets free the imprisoned thought." Later in the same book she says (p. 425), "Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew." For the degree to which this blessed reformation has taken and is taking place in my life, I am unutterably thankful. Someday each of us will awake to our true nature as God's pure likeness, discover our complete, untouched, spiritual innocence, and hear Him say, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine" (Luke 15:31).
West Haven, Connecticut
