Testimony of Healing October 16, 1937 Issue

It has long been my desire to send a testimony to our...

Leslie Burn Andreae with contributions from Muriel S. Andreae

It has long been my desire to send a testimony to our periodicals in order to put into words something of the gratitude I feel for Christian Science and all it stands for. Hearing of it many years ago, I laughed with others at what I thought it was. Then, about 1920, I read the textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, and that reading healed me of prejudice and intolerance toward Christian Science, but I did not pursue its study further. Some years later, through a brother, I came to realize something of what a vast and important subject it is. I was also assured that it could be demonstrated as one studied, and so I started to read once again. This time I was ready, and realized with some surprise that some of my thinking since 1920 had had its source in the textbook.

An early healing, from which I have subsequently learned much, was the overcoming of susceptibility to an irritating rash caused by the leaves of a plant which I had been growing for winter house decoration. Shortly after I took up Christian Science it became necessary to repot a number of these plants, and I declared emphatically that it was ridiculous that a plant which we loved, and which gave us such pleasure and joy throughout the winter, could harm us. Neither my wife nor I have been affected by the leaves since, and we can handle the plants with impunity. How often that healing puzzled me in its very simplicity when later other things, seemingly much more important, appeared harder to demonstrate! Then realization came that our attitude to the plant had been entirely in accordance with Principle, Love. We had loved it, cared for it, watered it, protected it, and, above all, in spite of its seemingly unpleasant characteristic, we had felt no resentment towards it. And so the simple emphatic declaration healed. Other physical healings have been those of water on the knee, healed in five days without my having to stay in bed; and some internal trouble, for which I was grateful to be able to turn to a practitioner for help. A lump of wax in my ear, which seemed to be giving me a jab every time I swallowed, disappeared instantly on my declaration that nothing could separate me from God.

Though seeing only physical healing in that first reading of the textbook all those years ago, I have since had proof after proof of the efficacy of Christian Science in all sorts of other problems. Disagreeable traits of character, impatience, intolerance, quick temper, have begun to lessen, and I was early healed of a tendency to regret and dwell on past mistakes and failures, seeing clearly that such things have no place in the real man. Matthew 24:18 healed me of that. I am grateful, too, for guidance and protection on many occasions, and through demonstration have proved that when we entertain a desire which we know to be right, the more we can leave it to Mind and the less we outline for ourselves, the surer and better will be the demonstration. A few months after studying earnestly I experienced a healing of strong resentment through my own understanding of the spiritual meaning of John 18:6. Only a year or so before this I had tried to read the Bible understandingly and had failed. This remarkable change proved to me that Science and Health is indeed a "key" to the Scriptures, and that the Scriptures heal when spiritually understood.

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