Testimony of Healing February 9, 1935 Issue

Christian Science has brought me many beautiful healings...

Arnold Hirsch

Christian Science has brought me many beautiful healings and experiences. I was healed quickly of the effects of a heavy fall, of neuritis, nasal catarrh, inflammatory rheumatism, and other ailments. I am deeply grateful to God for these healings, and for divine good unfolding to me as a happier experience and a brighter and more satisfying outlook on life. Especially do I feel grateful for having come into Christianity. It seems incredible now to think that but for Christian Science the Bible might have remained a closed book to me, and that the greatest of all blessings—a knowledge of Christ—would in all likelihood, so far as I was concerned, have continued unrecognized as the true goal of mankind's highest aspirations, hopes, and endeavors.

Born of Jewish parents, it was difficult at first for me to enter wholeheartedly into the spirit and atmosphere of Christian faith and life. Although my previous religious training had been practically negligible, I was never entirely free from a sense of instinctive and spontaneous antagonism toward Christianity. My awakening to the Christ, Truth, came at the time of the healing of inflammatory rheumatism. For about three years I had suffered with this, until one day a crisis came with more pain and much swelling. And such was the nature of the malady that I was unable to lie down at all, or even to sit in a chair for more than a few minutes at a time. For five days and nights I was obliged to remain standing practically all the time, without sleep and without rest. Notwithstanding, I am grateful to say that despite this trying situation I was calm, unafraid, even cheerful. Moreover, I was filled with expectancy, but not merely of receiving physical healing; rather I had a sense of some beautiful mental experience about to unfold. Suddenly the thought came to me that I was using what I was pleased to call a mental system for healing physical conditions. Not a little abashed and humbled by these reflections, I resolved to open my thought to the perception and reception of Christianity as taught in Christian Science. Soon I became occupied with repeating portions of the Sermon on the Mount that I remembered. Then, unexpectedly, I recalled some experiences of the past which had left me hurt and resentful. What a contrast, I thought, between what my reaction had been as compared with what it might have been if I had honestly accepted and sincerely adhered to the teachings of Jesus! It dawned on me then that what needed healing was not so much a physical condition as it was these emotions of bitterness and ill will claiming to have reality. This brought the realization that if Christian Science was to mean anything vital to me and become practical in my experience, I should have to be entirely willing to accept the Christ as an essential and integral element of Mrs. Eddy's divine revelation.

Everything else was forgotten while I gave earnest and prayerful consideration to the necessity of clearing my thought of the errors now being uncovered by the operation of the law of divine Love. Being a Christian, as I began to see it, meant bringing spiritual love to bear on every phase of human thought and life. It was not easy at first to surrender a sense of self, take the spiritual point of view, and—in this instance specifically—to return blessing for cursing. But I persevered in making the effort until, like the glorious sunlight bursting through the darkening mists, I found I had gained the conviction that there really had never been any cursing at all! Then, as a newborn sense of love and good will asserted its rightful place in my thinking, I was filled with gladness and rejoicing, knowing that I had demonstrated my freedom from a belief of resistance to Christ as well as from the taint of unchristian enmity to a fellow man. A few minutes later I found that I could rest comfortably for several hours. Gradually during the next week or ten days the pain and swelling subsided until every vestige of them disappeared completely. This was over five years ago, and there has never been the slightest semblance of rheumatic disorder since. But the coming of the Christ into my consciousness must remain for all time the greater blessing; and for this I give credit to Christian Science and to the loving and inspiring work of Christian Science practitioners.

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The Father
February 9, 1935
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