Testimony of Healing January 17, 1901 Issue

An Illusion Dispelled

Edward H. Tobey

While my entrance into the understanding of Christian Science was not through physical healing, I yet belonged to that large class who suffer from the many ills to which mortal flesh is heir, and to whom the changes of weather and the succession of the seasons bring, with dreary regularity, a train of ailments, fears, and miseries. As I look back to those days of bondage, from which, through Christian Science, I have happily escaped, I can readily understand why it is said of mortal mind that it deceives and deludes us, that it lulls to sleep and terrorizes with frightful dreams, calling them realities. Under its fatal spell the evil tares were so mixed with the good wheat, that life was often a burden — the winter was too cold, the summer was too hot, the spring too wet, or the autumn too dry and chilly — in short, the days were never just right. Now, however, in this blessed thought, all days are good and all seasons are healthful.

A trouble which held me firmly for many years was that of hay fever. I will not go into the details of its seeming symptoms and the absurd belief as to its cause and prevalence. Some years ago it was asserted that ripe peaches were the cause of the malady, and so we confiding victims religiously avoided that fruit just when it was most tempting and delicious. Last August I had forgotten about the hay fever, when some one still afflicted by it began to tell me how badly he was suffering, and while I denied its reality, that very night I was attacked by the old enemy. In the morning I went to Science and Health and armed myself with the Truth. Then, recalling the fable of the peaches, I put into practice my denial of the reality of the trouble by deliberately buying several peaches and eating them during the day, and that night the trouble entirely disappeared.

Now, the point of the above, and the lesson of it to me is, the illusive evidence of the so-called physical senses. It might be said that the Truth cured me of this disease; but this experience taught me to go further, and to assert that there was no disease to cure! To recognize it as a physical malady to be cured, would be to give it a reality, whereas it was only a delusion of mortal mind, not to be treated or dealt with, but simply to be mastered. It came from nowhere, it went nowhere, it never existed. Therefore, without a cause, without existence, there was nothing to cure. Here is the glory and power of Christian Science, that it opens the understanding, that it purifies the thought from all error, and reverses the old order of living by transferring the source of health and strength from the "beggarly elements of the [external] world to the inner spiritual consciousness.

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