Testimony of Healing April 18, 1925 Issue

Christian Scientists have many opportunities for expressing...

Clara C. Hanson

Christian Scientists have many opportunities for expressing gratitude, and I would delay no longer in giving to the field grateful acknowledgment of the many blessings and healings that have come to me during the more than twenty years since this wonderful truth came into my life, transforming it from semi-invalidism and discouragement to health and activity.

I wish to speak especially of a healing which came about after an accident. On the morning of November 16, 1914, a bullet of twenty-two caliber was accidentally shot from a rifle a few feet behind me, and entered my skull about two inches back of the left ear. I was lingering at the breakfast table with a friend who made her home with us at the time. Not knowing that a rifle was being handled, I first thought it was an electric shock. When my friend said that I had been shot, immediately there came to me the realization that God's presence is all there is. I did not lose consciousness even for a moment, and this clear sense of God's presence took away all fear. I was doing the work at that time of First Reader in our church. The lesson for the Wednesday evening testimony meeting the night previous had been on God's deliverance of Daniel from the lions. I was indeed soon forced to prove the truth given out there, — that God's protection and power can preserve His child intact, and annul claims of all claims of material law to injure. I was the only Scientist in the home, and the others requested that a physician be called; but I said, "No, call a practitioner," giving them the telephone number, and they did as I requested. Then I said, "Do not tell any one else." A boy in the family who attended our Christian Science Sunday School was asked to read the first section of the Lesson-Sermon for that week to me. The subject was "Soul and Body," and it seemed to be written especially for me. One verse from the Bible was, "Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord." Then came the definition of "flesh" from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 586): "An error of physical belief; a supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter; an illusion; a belief that matter has sensation." This section was read over several times, until the child's thought was quieted and we knew that the flesh was no part of my true being, and that the spiritual, perfect man was unharmed.

After the child had gone to school I read the whole lesson through, then walked to the telephone and talked with the practitioner. There was no faintness, no pain,—only a dull feeling in the head and a slight ringing in the ears. I went upstairs to my room, where I could be quiet and free from observation. All through the day, one passage after another from the Bible and from Science and Health—messages from God—came to my thought to reassure and sustain me. That evening, when a member of the family came home from work, he insisted upon calling a physician, since there was fear of the need of a possible operation; and to satisfy the fears of the family, I consented. Upon examination, the physician said that the bullet had entered the skull and that he could not tell where it was lodged, but that if certain symptoms appeared, which he named, an operation would be necessary to remove the bullet. Though not called, he came the next evening to see how I was; but that was his last visit.

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