Testimony of Healing May 13, 1911 Issue

On the 19th of August, 1910, I accompanied my husband,...

Isabel M. Pattison

On the 19th of August, 1910, I accompanied my husband, who with two assistants left our home in Wallace, Idaho, to visit a placer mining property, the last thirty miles of our journey being made with a pack-train over steep mountain trails. Our destination was reached the following evening about seven o'clock, the pack-train starting immediately on its return trip. There were great fires in the forests, but we were advised that there were none nearer than twenty miles, and as there was very little wind we thought we would be safe. As the evening came on, however, the sky became red in the distance, and on the following day the smoke grew so thick that we could not see each other without a light. This blackness continued until about five o'clock in the afternoon, when the sky became lurid in all directions. Four men were at the camp when we arrived, and all said that there was no danger; but we thought there was something to meet, and accordingly went to our tent and read the Lesson-Sermon. We also read many times the Ninety-first Psalm, and other chapters of the Bible which appealed to us as especially helpful. We knew that God was there with us, and that we could not be separated from Him even for an instant.

By five o' clock the wind had increased to a gale and ashes were falling fast; shortly the wind became very hot and we could hear a tremendous roaring and crashing as the fire and wind felled the trees. Some of the men came to us and said we had not a moment to lose, and the two prospectors who had already gone to bed were awakened. They dressed hastily, and we all started up the steep mountain, choosing the side with the least timber on it, for it grew very abundantly over this region. One of the men had told us of a flat about a mile and a half up the mountain, and it was our aim to reach this if possible. We left everything except a Navajo blanket, thinking it might be needed on the summit, where we expected we would be obliged to stay until morning. By this time the wind was a hurricane; the trees were crashing in every direction, many being uprooted before burning. Aside from ourselves only one of the party knew anything of Christian Science; his parents were loyal Scientists and he had been helped many times. I spoke to him, telling him to remember that God is our Life, and that divine Love would surely take care of us. The fear that came over me as we started up the mountain was indescribable. I could scarcely breathe and seemed to lose all strength, but I kept declaring that God was there and that He was omnipotent; therefore evil was powerless. A great fear that I might be a burden to the others seized me, and then I declared that God's children could not burden each other, that we were all made in His image and therefore I had as much strength as the others. I began to grow stronger at once, and then came clearly to my thought the promise, "My presence shall go with thee." That was the last of the fear, and there came a wonderful quietness and sense of peace.

We were obliged almost to bury our faces in the earth every few minutes to get a breath, and this with the great wind hindered our progress very much. When about one third of the way up the mountain the fire rushed up the gulch where our camp was located and leaped like lightning up the mountain on either side, coming up like a great wall behind us and on the other side of the gulch. It seemed as though the whole world was on fire. We started to run up the mountain, but had gone only a little way when we saw the flames leap over from the summit and start down, oh, so fast! Then there came a great shower of fire, of twigs, bark, and moss all ablaze, and in an instant everything around us that could burn was ablaze. Both of us had been working vigorously though silently, but now we fairly shouted the truth above the roar of the flames, declaring that as God is Spirit His children are spiritual; that we lived and had our being in God, and therefore God must be consumed before His children could be; that the mountains were His, and that because God is, evil is not.

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