Article August 24, 1918 Issue

"Be of good comfort"

LIDA S. STONE

With many others, brought up with loving care and solicitude for my spiritual welfare, I once believed that the healing effect which followed the act of the woman who pressed forward with eagerness to touch even the hem of the garment which Jesus wore, in order that she might be made whole of her malady, was due to the personal goodness of a man of flesh and blood, who in some supernatural way possessed healing power. I never doubted that this woman as well as others was freed from the discord, no matter what it might be; but it never occurred to me that God was the Principle of Jesus' works. I believed that drugs cured sickness and that God endowed them with healing efficacy, though in what way He manipulated them I never puzzled out,—a fair example of scholastic tangles. The body of sickness I believed to be my body, instead of the embodiment of my thought, and so I was like one in a wilderness, knowing no way out and yet making desperate efforts first in one direction and then in another.

The time came, however, in later years when a sister's child was restored, in six weeks, to health and vigor through Christian Science after the case had been pronounced incurable by the best physicians in the city, and at the same period another child was healed in three days from what was pronounced malignant scarlet fever. These works filled me with wonder, then with deepest interest, which resulted in my seeking Christian Science for myself. My need was sore. Physicians I had had in goodly number and of the best reputation, but none gave me one healing or saving thought. The fears and suffering which accompanied the "anæmia," or wasting of the blood, were extreme, and the apprehension as to the outcome was not reassuring. The comfort and peace which came with Christian Science treatment was something which I had believed would never be mine, and while the complete eradication of the disease was not accomplished quickly, yet it came in due time by the goodness of Love's eternal law.

I have always been grateful that the desire for the bodily healing was not all-absorbing; hence the many proofs that the healing was being accomplished did not pass unnoticed, rather were they thankfully acknowledged. One such proof has always been very dear to me. At this particular time I was suffering intensely, so that it seemed as if no part of body or mind was free. I was in a home where Christian Science was not regarded with much favor, and added to the mental and physical suffering was my fear of the thought about me. I finally asked some one to read to me from one of the gospels,—anywhere, so long as I could hear the gentle Master's words!

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