Testimony of Healing August 28, 1920 Issue

I have always been helped so much through reading the...

Elsie M. Shaw

I have always been helped so much through reading the testimonies in the Sentinel and Journal that I would like to tell of some of the benefits I have received through Christian Science. I did not come into Christian Science for physical healing, but because my religion did not satisfy me. Still I got the physical healing almost at once—as soon, in fact, as I began to apply what I had gleaned from reading "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. At the time Christian Science was first brought to my notice by a friend, I was suffering from overwork, was painfully thin and colorless, and extremely irritable and difficult to live with. My mother urged me to have treatment, but I declared I felt quite well, so then she proposed I should try and put in practice as much as I knew. The same friend who had told us of Science gave me some references from Science and Health that she thought would help me and I studied our textbook rather more earnestly, with the desire for healing—and the healing came. In a fortnight I looked very different and never since that time have I gone back to that condition. That was, I think, early in 1914. In June, 1916, I was working as a V. A. D. in a hospital in France in the midst of materia medica thought where the belief of poison was very strong. I developed a septic toe, and did not seem able to overcome it myself,—although I was able to do all I had to do in my daily work, which entailed a great amount of standing about. The appearance, however, grew worse daily and my mother wrote offering to arrange for absent treatment for me, an offer which I gratefully accepted. I wrote to her on a Thursday and on Sunday night when I went to bed I noticed the toe was becoming normal. On Monday morning the healing was perfect and has remained so ever since. This healing absolutely proved to me that "Science can heal the sick, who are absent from their healers, as well as those present, since space is no obstacle to Mind" (Science and Health, p. 179). I heard later that the practitioner, who was unknown to me at the time, had given me one treatment on the Sunday afternoon and the healing was practically instantaneous. My third physical healing was from the effects of an accident. I was riding a borrowed bicycle along a country road, when going at rather a sharp pace down a hill and rounding a corner at the bottom I found the road was blocked by two nursemaids with perambulators and some small children running alongside. Although I rang my bell vigorously they did not hear, so I put on the brake. It happened to be a very powerful one and I shot over the handlebars and landed on my face in the road, which was covered more or less with small stones. My face was very much disfigured, but the sense of shock disappeared immediately as I declared the "scientific statement of being," which is found on page 468 of Science and Health. I repeated the first sentence over and over again almost unconsciously, until my thought cleared, and I realized that matter had no intelligence to say it was hurt. I finished my ride and went back to the house where we were staying, and on opening my Science and Health I opened it at page 424, where is written, "Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God's unerring direction and thus bring out harmony." Although the accident still seemed rather real to me, I continued to know that I was God's reflection and therefore could only reflect good, and in three days there was hardly a trace left of the injury. I am extremely grateful for these physical healings and for the confidence one has that, whatever claim may arise, God is ever present and is "a very present help in trouble." But I am more grateful for the light that Mrs. Eddy, through Science and Health, has shed on the Bible, whereby all its glorious promises are shown to be applicable to us all here and now, and for the changed outlook it has given me on life. The more I study this wonderful Science of Christianity the more grateful I feel to Mrs. Eddy for giving this truth to humanity after she had discovered it for herself. I am also most grateful to all the earnest workers in the field who have helped me many a time in various ways, often in the early days, by their example and steadfastness when I was assailed with doubts. I am also very grateful for the Journal and Sentinel—the articles in which have often helped me on my way. The daily reading of the Monitor is the greatest joy and blessing to me; in fact, the periodicals at the present time seem to be more beautiful and precious to me than ever before, and to help me more than ever.

(Miss) Elsie M. Shaw, London, England.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

Having been greatly helped and comforted many times...