Testimony of Healing January 12, 1929 Issue

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil,...

Leontine Moore Palmer

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." I had an interesting encounter with this "roaring lion" about three years ago: it approached me wearing the disguise of headache. I wondered why this same problem, headache, was appearing again, as it had been relieved many times before through Christian Science treatment. I wondered why it kept returning. My question was answered by Mrs. Eddy's statement (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 240), "If mortals are not progressive, past failures will be repeated until all wrong work is effaced or rectified." I saw that there must still be some lesson which I had not grasped. As I reviewed other similar attacks, I remembered that the first thing I had always done was to search my thinking for some unkind thought or word I had expressed, always working from the standpoint that the disturbing headache had come to me as a penalty or punishment for wrongdoing.

On this last occasion, I could find no reason for penalty, as I had been experiencing great peace and joy. There had been no disturbing thoughts that I could remember, so I knew the cause must be something more subtle than I had before discovered. Suddenly I realized that the reason this "lion" so often wore the disguise of headache was that it was the disguise which I most feared, or the disguise which seemed most real to me. A headache always seemed to appear when I was among a circle of friends who were not studying Christian Science. It therefore seemed to me that this error was tempting me to fail as a witness to the power of Christian Science to heal every sense of pain and discord. As I strove to reason along this line, knowing that a headache was not good, hence was not of God, and that if I understood that God was the only power, headache could have no power to rob me of my peace and joy, or my desire to be a true witness of God, good, the headache suddenly vanished completely, and I was perfectly free to carry out my plans for the day.

I am most grateful that Christian Science has never failed me. I deeply appreciate the great help I have received from reading the testimonies and articles in The Christian Science Journal and Christian Science Sentinel. Several years ago I read in the Sentinel the experience of a woman who, while sojourning in the tropics, had been relieved of the annoyance of mosquitoes by realizing the truth of Mrs. Eddy's statement in Science and Health (p. 514), "All of God's creatures, moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible." This testimony was a great help to me some time later. For several years we had been besieged with moths. We had tried every material remedy that we had seen advertised, or that had been recommended to us, but the moths only appeared to increase. The remembrance of the woman's testimony came to me. I immediately disposed of all so-called material remedies, and holding to the foregoing statement from Science and Health and the reassuring promise from the ninety-first psalm, "Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling," I was enabled to cast out fear of this power of destruction. For more than a year after this I was away from home, and was thereby forced to put this method to the test. When I returned to my home and had occasion to use some of the articles that had been packed away, I found everything undisturbed and in perfect order. I am grateful that Christian Science helps us to solve the lesser problems as well as the greater ones.