Testimony of Healing November 9, 1907 Issue

Glancing carelessly over the pages of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"...

Elizabeth M. Andrews

Glancing carelessly over the pages of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, for the first time, just to please a friend, and with the determination to skim and not to be interested in its teachings, the words, "never admit a discordant thought" (p. 130, 159th edition), caught my attention, and like Banquo's ghost, would not down. It was the message which first awakened me to the fact that Mind is power. I knew nothing of Christian Science, and ignorantly classed it as a fad. When we come to understand the Principle of Christian Science, we can look back over our experiences and recognize the pivotal points where we, like the children of Israel, were in sight of the promised land; and see that, as in their case, our murmurings and fears sent us again adrift. I now know that I would have been spared some very unhappy experiences, destructive to peace and happiness, had I then and there apprehended the call of Christian Science as the voice of Truth knocking at the door of my consciousness. On the contrary, it irritated and antagonized me. I had always tried to act up to my highest concept of right, but felt that my thoughts were my own. I seemed to get great satisfaction out of dwelling on my troubles and various annoyances. I believed I was doing the best I could, supposedly with more to do than I had time or strength for. I also indulged an attitude of criticism, and sometimes bitter resentment towards others, and had a vivid desire for the chance to "get even" by returning hurt for hurt, slight for slight, and perhaps adding a little interest. I argued that it was my privilege to think as I pleased—a very sorry one it proved to be and a queer kind of pleasure.

The call of infinite Love, the call to let the ever-operative and unalterable law of right thinking reign in me—by knowing no resentment, bitterness, depression, fear, selfpity nothing unlike God, good, to be in me—fell on deaf ears. I would have been greatly surprised, not to say pained, had I thought any one was holding such bitterness and dislike toward me as I held toward others. I would also have been ashamed to claim publicly the thoughts which I jealously held as my own. Truly has our Leader said in her Message read at the dedication of First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Concord: "Only the makers of hell burn in their fire" [Sentinel, July 23, 1904]. At one time I would have pleaded the excuse that my mental state had a physical cause and that I could not help it; now I know my condition was all mental, and that I could have helped it by guarding my thoughts.

But Truth never gets weary, however ungraciously received. It keeps on knocking, until our consciousness is awakened to the sin of wrong thinking and the dream shadows and clouds of discord are dispelled by the sunshine of right thinking; then we get a glimpse of the "heaven within" and what life will be when we shall all know God, good. Thus did this one sentence from Science and Health wedge its way into my consciousness, impelling me to go back to the "little book" to learn how to accomplish this seemingly impossible task. I learned that to obey it literally and absolutely was to find one's unity with good, to cast off the illusive material beliefs whose only existence is in mortal mind, and to gain a knowledge of man's rightful, normal state as created by the one perfect Mind, in whom nothing exists that is not in harmony with good.

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