Testimony of Healing May 26, 1923 Issue

I should like to express my gratitude to God for the...

Elizabeth H. Peterson

I should like to express my gratitude to God for the peace that I have received through the study of Christian Science. I have always tried to live a Christian life, and it was impressed upon me from childhood that the way to do this was to be helpful to others. This seemed to be so much a part of me that at the time I started to study "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, I felt I was responsible for other people's happiness; and if anybody were in trouble, or even made a blundering mistake, I felt that as a Christian I must rush about and try to rectify things. This, of course, was impossible for a human being to do: I would fail to bring harmony to the friend I wanted to help; my family would suffer discord as a result; and I would feel the discouragement of a useless life. What a comfort and relief it was for me to learn that man's life is in divine Mind; that the right understanding of God heals our troubles and mistakes; and that to be really a help to one's friends and all humanity is to see man as spiritual, subject only to the law of God, good, and free from the seeming law of matter, which really has no power.

Another healing that has been such a comfort is to know the right way to give and to receive. I used to feel that in receiving a gift (particularly if it were very large from a material standpoint) the receiver was under everlasting obligations, and could not balance accounts unless a similar gift were made in return; and if that were impossible, then the receiver should be subject to the demands of the giver. I can see plainly now that this was shutting out love; that the real gift was an expression of love; and that the receiver could return love in the same measure, heaped up and running over, whereby both would be benefited.

I should also like to express gratitude for the freedom from worry about my children. To know that they belong to God, and that no harm can possibly come to them, but that all good is theirs, is indeed to me the "pearl of great price." I am grateful for the Sunday school, where children can learn to work out their own little problems through the correct understanding of God and man.

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