Testimony of Healing November 16, 1935 Issue

I am grateful for the great need that humbled me sufficiently...

Anna Columbus

I am grateful for the great need that humbled me sufficiently to cause me to seek help in Christian Science. I had been told by one of the most eminent specialists that my eyes had been neglected until they were beyond help and that I should eventually become blind. The trouble was diagnosed as spasms of the nerves of the eyes, also compound astigmatism.

For the better part of two years. I had been unable to read more than a line or two at a time. During the first year of my study in Christian Science I was unable to read much except the Bible and Christian Science literature. In searching for instruction pertaining to the healing of blindness, I found this sentence in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy (p. 448): "Blindness and self-righteousness cling fast to iniquity." I did not turn down the sentence as not applicable to my case. I pondered it much until I saw that blindness was classified with self-righteousness, and to be healed of blindness, one must overcome self-righteousness by seeing the righteousness of God. I went back to study more carefully the entire sentence, "Blindness and self-righteousness cling fast to iniquity." How was a self-righteous thought to see the iniquities to which it was clinging fast? From the meaning of those words it seemed a hopeless task, for a self-righteous thought is sure it is right and is holding fast to what it believes is right or it would not be self-righteousness. It unconsciously thinks that what it cannot see is not to be seen. By further study I finally read in Romans, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things." I was of a critical nature, and this verse opened my eyes to see that by honest application of it to self-correction I need no longer delay my healing by clinging fast to iniquity. My eyes began to improve immediately and in about four years I laid off glasses, and my sight was better than ever before. I had never had a specific treatment for my eyes, nor had I given myself one.

For over twenty-five years I have received daily help from this verse as a means to self-knowledge. One is not guilty of all he beholds if he sees it as a mistake, an unreality. But in so far as an error in another moves one to irritation or condemnation or possibly to a false sense of sympathy or approval, it has found a weak spot in his own armor, showing where he himself needs healing. He must continue working until he can say, as did Jesus, "Neither do I condemn thee." He has then loosened the thought from himself as well as from the one condemned, and can prove its nothingness by seeing that it is not a quality of the one Mind, and has neither reality, power, nor presence. When this method of self-correction is continued long enough, he will find that with every trial he is also learning humility and love, the other two steps mentioned by our Leader in the article "The Way" on page 355 of "Miscellaneous Writings."

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