Testimony of Healing October 3, 1925 Issue

I sometimes think, as I contemplate the marvels wrought...

Forrest L. Dutcher

I sometimes think, as I contemplate the marvels wrought by Christian Science in the thoughts of men and in their conscious living, that few could have had more reasons than I to be grateful for this redeeming knowledge. Few men, perhaps, have had as much need for the correcting of their thought and the harmonizing of their life as I had when, broken in health physically and mentally, doubting and scoffing, I first turned to inquire how I had been helped by Christianly scientific thought. Since then, through the many years of my sometimes confused quest for this apprehension of Truth, healing after healing has come to brighten and to render worth while a life that before had been all somber and almost worthless.

I want to tell something of my healing of paralysis, and of the splendid lessons gained through experience. Fortunately,—and I am grateful for the wisdom that ordered it,—the Church Manual forbids in Article VIII, Section 24, "a description of symptoms or of suffering" in testimonies of Christian Science healing. Had that regulation extended to the newspapers at the passing of our great war President, I might now be giving a different testimony. And, of course, that might have been as true had I been alert to the danger from mental suggestion and to the protection from it which Christian Science offers to its students. But I was mentally asleep; and sometime afterward I began to manifest the symptoms which I had been reading about in the President's case, and which were not unknown to me, as my father had passed on in much the same way some years before. I did not realize for some time how serious my problem might become. I tried to persuade myself that it was trivial, and would soon be solved. Other matters claimed my attention, until one afternoon I found it necessary to leave my work and go home. When, on my arrival there, my wife became disturbed by my condition, I said to her: "There is a stiff fight on this time and I need your help. Get the textbook and the Concordance and find 'Take possession'" When she had turned to page 393 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, she read: "Mind is the master of the corporeal senses, and can conquer sickness, sin, and death. Exercise this God-given authority. Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man." As the logic of the reading and faith because of our own past experience in the healing power of Christian Science helped to clear my consciousness, I knew that we had won a difficult position. The next day an old friend, a Christian Scientist, came unexpectedly to visit us for a few days, and when he left he proffered his help until such time as I should feel able to release him, which I did some ten days later. During that bondage, which in some degree extended over many months, I found much comfort and much help in the inspiring Sunday services. Many a Sunday evening I went to church oppressed by a sense of a heavy burden, and left, as in the hymn we sometimes sing, bearing "a song away."

I know that I need not say we are grateful for that healing, and for all this Science means to us; grateful to Mrs. Eddy for having revealed the interpretation of the promise, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."

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