Article August 5, 1916 Issue

Precedent in Healing

R. STANHOPE EASTERDAY

WHEN the patriarch Samuel set up his Eben-ezer "between Mizpeh and Shen," on the occasion of a signal victory over the Philistines, he not only commemorated God's ability to help, but foreshadowed a willingness to do so, and intimated large possibilities in this direction throughout all time. Thus in his significant statement of remembrance, "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us," he rebuked prevalent faithlessness, and established in the form of irrefutable logic a comprehensible foundation for wholesome faith in Deity in all ages. The admission that God has ever helped, carries with it the inevitable conclusion that He will continue thus to help in every hour of need.

When David, an unarmed shepherd boy, eschewing the armor of Saul, went boldly forth to face a fully armed giant, he reassured himself as well as Saul with the retrospective argument, "The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine." He was thus able both to declare and to prove that "the battle is the Lord's." On another occasion in the experience of God's chosen people, when their attention was definitely directed to the task of subduing the "seven nations" which were said to be "greater and mightier" than themselves, they were reminded, "Thou shalt not be afraid of them: but shalt well remember what the Lord thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt.

Bringing the lesson definitely home to ourselves, presentday dependents upon divine power, it has been reasonably determined that in the personnel of the twelve disciples, including along with these the great "apostle of the Gentiles," there were represented the various types and tendencies of universal humanity, among them, for instance, the impetuous Peter, the doubting Thomas, and the loving John. Thus there are to be found reasonably in the history of the apostles, in their lessons and their overcomings, numerous examples calculated to make practical in present-day Christian experience the argument of precedent. Coupling with this the fact made so clear in Christian Science, that the world's Saviour by virtue of his having been "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," is literally and absolutely the Wayshower, we have ample justification for Mrs. Eddy's contention in her epitome of "Mental Practice" as found on page 220 of "Miscellaneous Writings," that the mental declaration "You are well, and you know it," may be effectually and always supported by "audible explanation, attestation, and precedent."

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