Article January 5, 1924 Issue

"A grain of Christian Science"

WILLIS REED BURDICK

The thought is sometimes expressed by the beginner in the study of Christian Science that he is too materially-minded to understand its teachings; and he may base this belief on a number of reasons, such as his religious training in childhood, the studies pursued in college, and his business associations. Sooner or later he will learn that this is but one of error's many ways of trying to keep him out of the joy and happiness that Truth has for him, and that as he sincerely and persistently strives to obey Paul's admonition, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth," he will find that he is gaining in the ability to divide, that is, understand and demonstrate, "the word of truth." Mrs. Eddy's statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 449), "A grain of Christian Science does wonders for mortals, so omnipotent is Truth," is of great encouragement to one who is tempted to believe that the time for him to begin to make demonstrations, to prove God's power in his own experience, is a long way off, and that he can attain to this point only after a great deal of study.

The writer, after years of illness and after being told by several physicians that nothing more could be done for him, turned to Christian Science for help. His early life had been spent in the business of his father, a pharmacist, and he had been an earnest student of medical practice. This had biased his thought to the extent that he was very antagonistic toward what in his ignorance he believed Christian Science to be; and it was only in his extremity that he became willing to investigate it. A Christian Science practitioner was asked for help, and Mrs. Eddy's words on page 167 of Science and Health, "Only through radical reliance on Truth can scientific healing power be realized," were impressed firmly on his thought. A few weeks later an acute attack of intestinal trouble, to which he had been subject at intervals for more than fifteen years, appeared in the middle of the night. The suffering was intense. The practitioner was thirty miles away; there was no telephone in the house; and there was no one in the home or the neighborhood, as far as was known, who was interested in Christian Science. That his understanding of Christian Science was too limited to be of any service at this time, the tempter tried repeatedly to get him to admit; but he refused, and, instead, clung to the little—and it seemed oh, so little—he had acquired. The result was that within an hour he was healed of that attack; and during the years that have since passed there has been no recurrence of the trouble.

This was to the writer a convincing proof of Mrs. Eddy's statement given above, that "a grain of Christian Science does wonders for mortals, so omnipotent is Truth." He gave thanks to God, and rejoiced in the harmony realized from "a grain of Christian Science." In the months that followed, he learned the necessity of obeying the remainder of the statement, "But more of Christian Science must be gained in order to continue in well doing." Through this obedience he was healed of the so-called incurable disease that had brought him to Christian Science.

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