Testimony of Healing January 21, 1905 Issue

Eighteen months ago, when I was a beginner in the...

Elizabeth Cahill

Eighteen months ago, when I was a beginner in the study of Christian Science, a statement from its text-book arrested my attention. With my mind steeped in pantheism, I had taken up Science and Health in the hope of learning from its pages a way to the solution of the perplexing problems of life and mind which then confronted me. While I had found numerous passages, beautiful and grand, that on page 89, line 17, appealed most strongly to that love of understanding which had led me to the open door of Christian Science. Like Maggie Tulliver, I had thirsted for all knowledge. I had known the blind, unconscious yearning for something which would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life and give my soul a sense of home in it; and furthermore, the yearning had become a sharp hunger which demanded speedy satisfaction. From Balzac, from Hugo, from Carlyle, from Emerson, each in turn, I had caught glimpses of the living energies of divine Life, yet these seers had given me no clearly defined sense of a Principle which could enable me to govern my thinking. It was from Science and Health that I learned how thought is to be guarded and controlled.

From this book I learned the only rational, and therefore satisfying, interpreation of the Bible. While I believed life to be in matter, soul in body, the glorious admonitions of Paul would only perplex me. In my earliest readings of our text-book, mortal mind rebelled against the teaching that God was not the author of the material universe. The uncompromising statements which declare that matter is unreal and unknown to God, created a violent storm in a mortal thought which believed the visible universe to be God. But at last came a day when the glorious pages of Apocalypse lifted me up to that plane of seeing where I could more clearly understand Mrs. Eddy's teaching relative to matter and spirit. (Science and Health, p. 573.) The joy of that revelation surpassed anything within the reach of my memory. Then it was that the immaculate conception of Jesus and his resurrection were as clear to my spiritual sense as any problem in geometry had ever been to my human reason. I had been a wanderer through many strange lands of philosophic thought, but at last I found myself truly established in the realm of Mind, where the supremacy of Spirit was no longer a matter of opinion but where the allness of Spirit was spiritually discerned.

Since that day I have had occasion to prove the truth taught in our text-book. The Christian Scientist knows that all problems are mental, that the destruction of an error manifested in a bruised muscle is just as much a problem in thought as the destruction of envy, malice, or deceit. When we know that we reflect infinite understanding, then envy, malice, deceit, together with all petty limitations of mortal thought, will vanish from our consciousness. Should our problem be one requiring concentration, memory, constructive imagination, the same changeless and ever-operative Principle is at hand. As the children of God, we know that we are the reflection of Truth, which is infinite. Whether in writing a poem, in painting a picture, in telling a story, our effort is one and the same,—to reflect Truth. Then we perceive our powers in all their strength and beauty, realize our spiritual perception of what is beautiful, and pure, and true. We should at the same time realize that only spiritual perception can direct us aright. Then we shall escape from any false, mortal sense of the good and the true. We shall make no compromises with the reports of the carnal mind which is enmity against God,—Truth. To be absolutely governed by the one Mind is to perfect, and this perfection will manifest itself in beautiful thought, in beautiful speech, in beautiful action. A life governed by the divine Principle of harmony is, indeed, a grand, sweet song.

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