Article February 9, 1918 Issue

Progressive Work

CLARA STOCKWELL MC CORD

We insist upon children learning the first processes of arithmetic thoroughly and accurately, because they will be used in solving every problem afterward, on and up through the most abstruse calculations; and so it is in the Science of Christianity. There, too, certain fundamental lessons must be mastered; they must become such a part of our mental equipment that we can use them as it were unconsciously. When the writer was a beginner in Christian Science she learned some lessons from a comparatively brief experience that have been of great value and of almost daily usefulness ever since, and she hopes that others may be helped by a recital of them.

I was suffering from a physical disorder which was supposed to be hereditary in the family through several generations, and which always meant two or three days' incapacity with each recurrence of the trouble. After I became interested in Christian Science I was able to overcome a number of ailments, but this particular one I thought to be beyond my reach. When it occurred to me on the first day of this attack to call for help, error at once began to argue that I was too sick to go to the telephone; that it was so troublesome to get a response over the long distance line; that the annoyance therefrom would cause an aggravation of suffering; and back of all this was "a fear that Mind is helpless to defend the life of man and incompetent to control it," as Mrs. Eddy says on page 377 of Science and Health.

Then all at once I felt that the thing for me to do was to trust in God. I at once made my way to the telephone, but for some reason was unable to make the operator hear me. I rang again and repeatedly called for "long distance," only to hear an emphatic voice at the other end of the line say, "I can't hear you." So I gave up and turned away, expecting disastrous results from the nervous strain, but instead found that I was completely healed. Rising cautiously from my chair I went out and walked around in the yard, almost dazed from the suddenness of the revelation. It seemed to me that my troubles were all over; that if Christian Science could perform such a miracle as this, I would in future only have to know that the thing for me to do was to trust in God, and i would be healed. Later, however, it dawned upon me that it was my complete childlike self-surrender to trust in the power of good which had brought the immediate relief. My thoughts were not then fixed on physical healing; they were uplifted toward God.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Progressive Work

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access